Schizoaffective

Michael Jacobson is best known for his asemic writing—writing that uses invented letters that are in no known alphabet. The idea is to create abstract letters to look at and ponder, much the way we might ponder abstract art. Professor Peter Schwenger in his recent book  Asemic: The Art of Writing devotes part of a chapter to Michael's asemic books and movies, calling him "creator of some of the most noteworthy work in contemporary asemic." You can see and purchase Michael's books at Amazon . Michael's latest work is not asemic; it is poetry.  Hei Kuu is a book of over 400 haiku that present short, fractured scenes from his life. What follows is an email interview with Michael, who is a good friend of mine. JP: In your introductory note you describe the poems as "senryu." What’s that? MJ: Senryu are similar to haiku but the boundary is blurry between the two forms of poetry. Haiku are more focused on nature where senryu is more focused on the human condit...

The term "dementia praecox" was first used in 1887 by Emile Kraepelin. It isolated a type of "madness" that exhibited hallucinations and delusions and later became known as schizophrenia. Since the English poet and visual artist William Blake lived from 1757-1827, he could not have been so diagnosed. However, according to his biographers Peter Ackroyd and Leo Damrosch, Blake exhibited symptoms consistent with what we now call schizophrenia. He had what he called visions, heard voices, and had command hallucinations. Some others thought him "mad." In his lifetime, Blake received almost no recognition. His reputation began to be built decades after his death, and he is now considered one of the greatest of the English poets. His reputation largely rests on his "illuminated books"—engraved books that combine Blake's stunning and dramatic visual art with his poetry. You can see pictures of his longest illuminated book,  Jerusalem , at this link ....

by Jay Paul   finding myself to also be a great raven soaring over a rolling field of long grass and wildflowers and a few isolated trees with great canopies a family walked on a trail mown through the grass the father a young bearded man pushed a baby buggy and the pretty young mother walked along   suddenly realizing that man was me 25 years ago with my now adult daughter and ex-wife in a scene that never happened but is representative nonetheless because we all did love each other in our limited and limiting ways and things did seem open to vast possibilities   then seeing myself as raven floating in the sky and realizing I am also a constellation of a great bear high in the sky behind the blue veil of sky I am a bear constellation watching a soaring raven who is also me watching a man who was me a quarter century ago   this could go on who is watching the great bear perhaps the moon there is no end to the multiplication of selves across space and time   and ...

 After last week's post on the nature of the interrelatedness of what we call self with other people and even things, I got to thinking about memory. What is it, and how does it work? In particular, I was interested in how memory interacts with the present moment. Before addressing memory, we need to establish what the present moment is. This is not easy. The present moment seems to be composed, for the most part, of anticipations, of ways of organizing toward a conceptualized and hoped-for near term future. For instance, if I am having a genial conversation with a friend, I focus on how to keep the geniality and friendliness flowing. I anticipate conversation topics that may amuse or entertain my friend. I anticipate topics that may comfort her. I pay attention to how what I am saying impacts her so that I can adjust, if needed, my tenor and emphasis. This is all toward keeping the conversation flowing into the future. I can sense her doing something similar in response to me. The...