Four Ferocious Fulmars

First link's to the music game Hooked on Music created by Citizen Science and discovered through Radio 4's Inside Science. It's meant to be a large scale study of what makes songs catchy (or not) and it's bloody fun as well. The song starts, and if you recognise it you get to sing the bits that are missing. Bit like karaoke being used for the good of science.

Wonder if something similar would work for poetry?

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Read Jose Varghese's post on Paxman, nice to get his perspective on it.

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George Szirtes blogs like crazy and they're always very readable. This week it's speaking Hungarian and reading to old ladies. Wish he'd write some fiction.

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Came across Jon Stone for the first time via Ben Wilkinson on Facebook and through Jon the excellent Sidekick Books blog, etc. It's stimulating stuff as well, and aside from the video game/poetry posts Jon has put up that I'll think about later, there's an entertaining dressing down of Don Paterson's contribution to 'Letters to a Young Poet,' which was broadcast on BBC3. So Don and Jon, they argue like it's true love.

Here's a few excerpts from the article:

Don: The truly original idea must be part familiar, so that it can take the reader on a journey from the known to the unknown.

Jon: But anyone who has ever found themselves baffled and dismayed by other readers' enthusiasm or glowing testimonials will know that there is no formula for emotional impact. 

ROY: Ye-ah, but. But there are some givens, surely? I mean, we're an endurance predator that's evolved in a specific environment; emotion in-so-far as it's an evolved part of our physiology is at least systematic, if not formulaic. Isn't that why Hollyoaks works, not to mention ALL OF THOSE KOREAN DRAMAS?

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Don: Readers read poetry to take them closer to something powerful and dangerous that they will not usually be prepared to let themselves feel.

Jon: Don's correspondent risks ending up lacking individual character in his poetry as a result of seeking guidance as to how to impress Don the reader, how to write poetry in the style of Don Paterson.

ROY: Jon is bang on I reckon. But then, isn't that just how it works? The anxiety of influence and all that? And the ones who overcome the influence mix stuff up into something interesting?

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Don: The brain will entertain anything that is sung to it first, even things it vowed not to let pass.

Jon: Pertinent - this whole essay is an exercise in singing sweetly in order that the listener's brain entertain (and perhaps accept) what are often very wild assertions. So point proven, I guess. 

ROY: Duh, persuasion is built into language, to the extent that they're pretty much synonymous. That's why your post's so bloody iconoclastically brilliant too.