The HINGE MANUAL & Related Articles

HOWLING DOG P RESS

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An INTRODUCTORY “MANUAL” for HINGE THEORY LINGUISTIC METAMORPHOSIS THROUGH HINGE THEORY DYNAMICS IN THE LANGUAGE STRUCTURES OF HELLER LEVINSON: HINGE EXPANSION IN RELATION TO PRECEDING THEORIES OF LINGUISTIC FUNCTION

“At the level of Hinge Production, each word insists on its word associates. In this sense, the practice of the author is to detect (to identify) the reproductive impulses inherent in the word being witnessed.” —HL HELLER LEVINSON, the author and creator of Hinge Theory, has spent his entire literary career inventing and reinventing poetic form, theory, voice, structure, style, and the nurturing of those component applications into the expansion and alteration of what he envisions as universal linguistics, particularly as applied to poetics. Thus far in his work in language development, he has yet to devise or discover any existing theory more revealing of the building blocks and social tools incorporated in linguistics, than that of the matrices evolving within applied Hinge Theory.

Heller Levinson engages, unearths, and unleashes universal forces of language: interconnectivity of spirit, emotional intercourse, primeval revelation. His work is “hinged” not only to history, but reveals an essential coda for reinterpreting it. During world crises, the overwhelming impulse of social structure is to homogenize and uniformly shrivel the human spirit. Levinson’s work salvages and empowers our interior landscape, creates tools/techniques to enrich, deepen, and vitalize it.

Hinge is conceptual and inceptional. The philosophical interweavings of Levinson’s work (most vividly implemented through Hinge Theory) embrace Derrida, Foucault, Mallarmé, and Wittgenstein, musically harmonizing and resonating with Prokofiev, Thelonious Monk, and avant garde jazz musicians such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy.

It’s argued that “anti-poetry” is “non-linear,” convulsive. Some perceive Hinge to be “nonlinear” rather than linear. Hinge is no more anti-poetry than it is word salad. Hinge is poetry evolved: “multi-linear,” revealing a multiplicity of meanings from multiple angles, from multiple matrices simultaneously; it “hinges” onto work from past or present, recreating it at any given point with new layers of meaning and application. The more one engages it, the more Hinge unfolds fluidly, dynamically, to expand one’s consciousness and perceptions; the more that a line is Hinged, the more Hinge operates to expand the conscious perception of subject. It is a “power shift” of language and empowers the use of language into a wholly unique paradigm of linguistic applications. It is associative, but it is not random, though randomness can evolve, then devolve back into non-random constructs, even though Hinge unfoldings may take odd turns of consciousness.

Levinson works throughout the paradigm of language metamorphosis, specializing in poetry & prose. His compositions run from traditional to highly esoteric and visionary in function, application, and what he terms "species impact," i.e., how language/linguistics change the brain's synaptic chemistry and physiology. Conceptually, it aligns with broad theories of the "meme," and Wittgenstein's "language games." States Levinson, “Language evolved from original interstellar gases which brought forth life. It is the primal source of creation.” Hinge Theory portends no less than the profound renewal and revivification of language through exploring infrequently used terminology, word juxtapositions and connotations (and the invention thereof), and poetic examination of the interconnectivity of the word matrix, therefore, of concepts and life experience, individually and in social groups. Hinge Theory explores the intrinsic musicality of language, aligned in respect to some of the precepts of Ezra Pound [for one, “a poet who does not study music, is deficient”]; it thrusts P.O. Box 853 · Berthoud · CO · 80513-0853

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forward the experience of poetry as the musical breath of life, and the poet, therefore, “composes” and "plays" the verbal disciplines. This unfolding Linguistic Destruction, Construction & Reconstruction implies prodigious ramifications affecting and extending not only to literature and linguistics, but also to art, music, science, education, sociology, politics, psychology, religion, and, potentially, to every human discipline. Hinge Theory in activation is a lingual “power shift” of language usage and understanding of function, and it causes a shift in the reader’s perception of not only the language paradigm, but also of life itself, summarily promoting transcendence in the reader's perception of the "I Am." Hinge Theory changes the core of thought processing. The mapping out of our world (including our role within it and responsibility toward it) through Hinge Poetics is a life-long project, altering and revolutionizing our current perceptions of the reality we inhabit. In the truest sense, it is a major linguistic paradigm shift. *

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In 1822, Jacob Grimm published the second edition of his monumental linguistic thesis concerning sound variables in the German language, demonstrating that the systematic and predictable way the sounds of language evolve offers linguists a way to trace current languages back to their roots. Hinge Theory employs both the sound and the rhythm of words to establish rupestral design [rupestral: composed of or inscribed on rock; in this sense, marking an inevitability arising from rhythmic cornerstones; one might assume that Hinge, therefore, is concrete, yet it operates on the concrete and abstract levels simultaneously, with one arising from the other], adhering to the belief that each word has an organismic integrity, and, as such, chooses it's associate words (much like cellular reproduction), so that there is a natural, bodily flow to the lines. For example, take the lines ganglion frieze chop /lumber lank ladder pelvic roam in the poem "smelling monk": each word preternaturally locks onto the following word, or, to put it another way, each word “breeds” through definition, connotation, and pure aural vibration. Hinge naturally unleashes the music intrinsic to each word’s morphemes, each word, each phrase, each line, each stanza. Furthermore, Hinge “evolution” is not limited to origin in the past and expansion to the present. Hinge operates multi-dimensionally, multi-tonally, multidirectionally, and multi-chronologically. Hinge dynamics reach back into the past from the present, and inoculate former applications with new layers of meaning, music, and nuance. Hinge, therefore, is not “word salad,” unstructured and without distinct evolutionary lines of procedure. Rather, when one becomes adept at Hinge usage, one can certainly demonstrate the maxim of the jazz pianist, Thelonious Monk, who stated, “Anyone can play a composition and use far-out chords and make it sound wrong. It’s making it sound right that’s not easy.” In operation, Hinge traces current language usage full circle to its primordial origin in the plasma of creation, in the grimaces, gestures, and core communicative strata latent in the human soul.

Initially, Hinge Theory began with three basic elements as building blocks to the poem (or “Hinge application”): the pivot word, the particle word, and the postulate of those words in interaction. A more detailed explanation of the co-operative qualities of Hinge can be found in the section “Hinge Theory Diagnostic,” on page 71 of Smelling Mary. To offer an immediate example, is the following basic poetic construct from which an entire Hinge application could evolve: with adoration

pillagery

The word “with” is the pivot, “adoration” is the particle, and “pillagery” is the postulate. Pillagery ignites its predecessors with new layers of meaning, and vice-versa. The unification of these three words could stand as a complete poem. A more sophisticated example from the book, Smelling Mary, would be: 2.

with gypsy blood

spilling from

the warm brick

contagion ripens Through time and practice as the understanding and application of Hinge has evolved internally, there have been a succession of dynamic changes within the constructive and deconstructive forms, which have supplemented and expanded basic Hinge Theory. These modifications serve to clarify, support and strengthen the original form, rather than rendering it passé or obsolete. One can only conclude from this that the tangential possibilities of expansion, redefinition, and codefinition are gargantuan, perhaps infinite.

For example, one Formal Application Module of Hinge would be the continual fractaling of “morphemes” within words, to be found in successive words, or coming from past phrases. A Hinge Morpheme Module could be initiated by using the word “unbreakable,” separating its morphemes into the pivot, the particle, and the postulate, then fractaling them into new meanings, standard and non-standard; ergo, a non-standard module would be derived through the breaking up of morphemes in a single word. [This notion of fractaling morphemes is ripe for the creation of dialects within dialects, and idiomaticisms or idiophemes within standard slang, thus broadening intrinsic identity within any social strata using the form, without devolving into nonsensical communication, idioglossia, or idiolalia. It allows for the natural poetic potential of the language to evolve at will; to evolve into a symbol of unified national or provincial identity, such as the language of Joual, spoken by the French artist subculture of Quebec.]

Morpheme Application: un break

able

breaking apart into etc.s able

etc.s

un able

to be

broken.

“Hinge necessitates HALT. A br(e)aking for extreme curves, unexpected inclines, forbidding terrain. It opposes broadband, ‘real time’ & ultra-thin interfacings. It jolts & dislodges. To maintain Voyaging, Active Attention is required. Hinge participation is antithetical to the modern condition of Spectacle Servitude. To engage in Hinge Behavior requires the entire organism be activated. [Hinge fattens not flattens] My notion of the “Spectacle” derives from, and is coincident with, Guy Debord’s thesis as presented in The Society of the Spectacle. ” —HL *

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Linguist and political activist, Noam Chomsky founded the school of syntactic analysis, studying how words are ordered into sentences, and developed the hypothesis of a hardwired human capacity for 3.

language. States Chomsky, “if anything is going to vary in language, it is going to be at the morphological end.” Hinge Theory supports and reproduces this notion; yet the evolution of the pivot in relation to the particle and postulate often reveals exceptions to Chomsky’s precept. Furthermore, Hinge takes a slightly different emphasis than Chomsky by suggesting that language itself capacitates the human and establishes the “Wiring”; perhaps, it also repairs damaged “Wiring.” Hinge theory overthrows and revolutionizes syntactical progression multi-directionally; it reorders and reorganizes language for transmission through the synapses. As language evolves interconnectively through a different, and more dynamic grammatical ordering of phrases and expressions which produce uniquely interconnecting thought patterns, so does the human brain evolve, making interconnection among members of the species more versatile. Potentially, it will bring forth the restructuring of all human interaction. Hinge accomplishes this in a premeditated fashion; as language takes on a life of its own to naturally evolve throughout the Hinge Universe, it stimulates the brain to make more synaptic connections, branching out human realization into greatly heightened matrices of perceptive cognition. DaVinci’s “grand man of the universe” undergoes an overhaul of his circulatory and nervous systems.

Clearly, we are at a critical point in human history where the current Wiring has proven itself limited to the point of being defunct, as the same habitual patterns of human exploitation of other humans and the biosphere continue to plague us as they have done throughout the ages. A higher level of perceiving, understanding, and communicating through evolved mental capacity, producing new responses of interaction, is absolutely essential. Through imminent, Hingegenerated paradigms, the practitioner can be confident that a human race receptive to this dynamic form will be able to accomplish a thorough and ongoing re-Wiring of the human intellect and corpus, helping to facilitate our ability to survive on this planet through productive, creative, harmonious, and sanguine interaction.

A major component of Hinge – in its relentless extensionality – is a continuous erasure of boundaries – i.e. instrumentalist/vocalist, lead/rhythm, poetry/prose, male/female, science/arts, etc. By shunning the conditioned and habituated, Hinge practitioners aspire to decontextualize and create atmospheres that are spontaneous, vitalized, and spiritually/psychologically nutritious. *

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Ferdinand de Saussure laid the foundation for modern linguistics analysis with his theory that language could be analyzed as it exists in the moment and not just from a historical perspective. Certainly, but that is not to say that there is not a historical perspective, for when you view language as alive and organic, then it requires cultivation, nourishment and caretaking just like any other organism if is to remain healthy and resplendent. Hinge essentially establishes a new lexicon by impacting upon a formerly moribund language — and therefore, dead thought patterns and cultural outlooks — with a rescue system, a thorough revitalization package, to echo a current term. Could Hinge Theory possibly be a much needed, long overdue “language bailout”—one that refuses to use the same old strapped and overextended lingual currency to haul debt-ridden humanity out of the gaping jargon of social and political rhetoric? The intrinsic nature of Hinge is evolution and revolution—it never principally “exists in the moment” even though it defines the moment, since its capacity for spawning change is its nucleus, its “nuclear character,” and its communicative nuclear character is one of intellectual fusion and fission, compressing then exploding like Dali’s swan into a thousand feathers of pure realization. Yet, Hinge not only relies upon the moment to unfold and embrace new conceptual patterns of intellectual rebirth, but also on how it has transpired historically, providing a transcendence not formerly available in language usage, nor in perception via language. Hinge continually displays the capacity to articulate from a single raindrop (pivot) to a literal downpour—a swirling deluge of lingual ramifications, connotations, and transient digressions into subject cognition not relegated by time and single linearity direction, rather bringing past into present, present into the past, while simultaneously projecting matrix patterns into the future, describing myriad paradigms of “existing notions within existing moments.” A downpour of individual applications form 4.

rivers of ratiocination that flow into a vast ocean of the collective conscious defined and redefined through the Hinge Matrix. The space/time processes of Hinge could be further extrapolated as “foreground, background, ground up.” *

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William Labov examined how race, class, and gender influence language, whereupon he eventually brought forth the subfield of sociolinguistics. Hinge proposes to construct a Linguistic Universe that is endlessly increasing in volume (i.e., an "expanding universe"), one that is both complementary and extensional, insisting that there is an inherent structure and telos to language that has heretofore gone unexamined. Heller Levinson has discovered and is building upon this remarkable Universe that just begs for scientific exploration. He is convinced, based upon his experience with how a living language within the Hinge Universe behaves, that there is the equivalent of a genetic code to language, that indeed the meme does ride upon the gene, directing its development to ensure the survival of the organism. Levinson further contends that as the Hinge particle grows through the various modular treatments and derivational applications, it will naturally seek out additional “fleshing” in alternative languages, thus, not only linking languages such as music, visual art, dance, and so on, but also and just as importantly, erasing the artificial barriers that keep them separated. Of course, one natural medium for this visionary linkage through Hinge would be a virtual, computergenerated cyberscape, but should it not also be applicable and available for direct person-to-person communication in real space/time environments?

It was the great, transcendental graphic artist M.C. Escher who stated, “One cannot possibly understand mankind if one doesn’t see that mathematics and poetry both have the same roots.”

Escher’s graphics warped reality into presenting alternative dimensions within a two-dimensional plane. Levinson’s Hinge constructions present simultaneous multi-alternative realities by warping language through the space-time matrix. Clearly, communicating through Hinged languages, crossing barriers and linking different forms and genres of language, has socio-political implications as well. Levinson offers this scenario: Imagine Palestine and Israel linking so passionately through the language frontier that the artificial prejudices and artificial geographical divisions of land “possession” are shamed into melting away. As Levinson writes metaphorically in his monumental poem “Cymbalology,” when the language of war is replaced by the music of Hinge, Palestine becomes one half of a cymbal set that symphonically co-orchestrates a closing together with the other half of the cymbal set, Israel—each realizing one is essential to perpetrating the other’s existence.

In parallel, as Hinge demonstrates a linguistic generative and intentional positive biasing, it reaches out to other disciplines to share in this generational, compounding march to creation, and this compounds in human DNA. Negative language impacts negatively on all components of human physiology. Despite being interpreted as “grammatically correct, grammatically sound,” if in actual usage, logic and language structure are corrupted or too deficient for deep communication, those inherent conditions of inadequacy would impact far more negatively on the species than, say, the use of random negative expressions. More than simply a “bad attitude,” it would be (and has been historically) crippling to the species for making significant evolutionary progress. Incorporating Hinge as a primary means of communication could lead, possibly, to an individual’s mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological and physiological serenity and harmony, thus producing the same results among races, nations, social strata, and genders. “…the electron in orbit around the nucleus is potentially at many locations at the same time. But the most perplexing phenomenon in the bizarre world of the quantum is the effect called ‘entanglement’. Two particles that may be very far apart, even millions or billions of miles, are mysteriously linked together. Whatever happens to one of them immediately causes a change in the other one.” [Amir D. Aczel, “En tanglement: the Greatest Mystery in Physics”] Between the observed language and the observing language, between the preparational preposition of pivotal prescience erupt exploratory advances, between the pivot and the anti-pivot, the postulate and the anti-postulate an alterior formulation of an ulterior universe congruently 5.

hinged; thus, …the particle in orbit around the Hinge pivot is potentially birthed of, and birthing, limitless nucleic nuances simultaneously, yet the most perplexing phenomenon in the self-propagating world of Hinge is the effect called ‘dis→en→tanglement,’ where the root particle—the observed language impregnated by the observing language— unleashes itself from former precognitive definition and explodes into multi-phasic, multicellular meaning, rife with MUPAE connotation and reforming/recharging definition. Two Hinge pieces may be very far apart, even years distant and separate in composition, yet are superimpositionally linked together forming strata and substrata of the same Hinge work, and whatever happens to one of them immediately causes a change in the other one. This is voice that transfigures human DNA, feeds and nourishes it, redefines and volumnizes our past while simultaneously expanding the matrices of our future. By our words our destiny is brought into being. As we continue to mutate our understanding of that which we inhabit, whether cosmos, neighborhood, or inner universe of mind, psychology, spirit, so too our presence (which is our genetic makeup) grows toward its self-established destiny, that which is our ultimate definition and fulfillment. From primordial pooling stew to Homo Christos, the god-man, human DNA through human language drives forth through the eternal golden spiral of self-completion through self-realization, and that realization is expressed through the godhead of language. [preceding three paragraphs including Aczel quote from the Hinge poem, “from Soutine this road congruence” by Michael Annis] Therefore, if we view Hinge Theory as a living linguistic organism "in perfect health” za (Whitman), we can use it prototypically to structure other systems to behave in more efficacious and symbiotic mannerisms. Given that Hinge Principles (those extant, and those awaiting discovery and invention) are catalytic to the advancement of all language, whether standard in usage, or newly conceived and spawned, those principles need to be recognized, then utilized in systems of government, they need to be researched and sourced so as to employ them to revamp failing economies, to demonstrate pathways to a connected Global Intention, rather than the current status of Global Tension. To see/experience how language can bloom and pulsate by submitting (exposing it) to a differing Attentional Practice, such as Hinge Theory, offers a hope source to all of us.

Hinge insists that the Particle (the subject matter) be treated Trans-Discipline, which is to say that just as there are multiple linguistic modules with which to explore and expand the particle “Mermaid” [for example, first published in ToxiCity, ref. “Finning the Mesmeric Mermaid Wake,” then successively Hinged in Smelling Mary —“with mermaid,” “in the hol(y)(iness)ding of mermaid,” “the road to mermaid road,” and “smelling mermaid”—and again further Hinged postSmelling Mary with applications such as “with mermaid smelling the road”], so there exist musical, sculptural, visual, architectural, and many other modules to treat the word “Mermaid,” which generates even more modules and applications within modules, not restricted “logically” by linear progression from past to present. Furthermore, in the same manner that each discipline has multiplicitous opportunities to enliven the Particle to reproduce fractally, simultaneously there will emerge the impulse for the various disciplines to merge and blend, to gain characterizations from their service to a Mutual Intention/Particle. Ergo, as one breathes in, what follows naturally is to breathe out; and the more one breathes, the more one enjoys breathing. *

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Edward Sapir advanced the notion that languages, to some extent, reflect the thought patterns and cultural outlooks of their speakers. Sapir’s student, Benjamin Whorf, theorizing from this notion, then developed what became known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the idea that languages actually channel the way in which they perceive the world. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis theorizes that thoughts and behavior are determined (or are at least influenced) by language. The hypothesis brings attention to the relationship between language, thought, and culture, presenting two main ideas: First, a theory of linguistic determinism that states that the language you speak determines the way that you will interpret the world around you. Second, is the contention that "We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the 6.

universe..." Sapir had studied the research of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Approximately one hundred years before Sapir published his linguistic theories, von Humboldt wrote, "Man lives in the world about him principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents it to him." Sapir’s writings state that there is clearly a connection between language and thought: language merely influences our thoughts about the real world.

Hinge Theory speaks toward a higher, more integrated and sophisticated plain of realization, recalling the philosophical propositions of Ludwig Wittgenstein, such as: 5.6 “the limits of my language, mean the limits of my world.” As each artform is intrinsically a language, and Hinge is not only malleable toward every creative form, but also naturally reproductive, Hinge sustains the continual expansion of one’s world. Hinge, ultimately an iconoclastic processing tool held up to the matrix of thought as a lightning rod attracting and unleashing ever-expanding cognition, is a lingual sorcerer’s wand piercing through the iconic limits entrapping one’s world. With it’s profound conjuring power unleashed, we come to fully realize that language IS our dwelling, IS our universal matrix, IS the marrow of our bones, and the Jacob’s Ladder around which circles the configuration of our DNA—as angels and demons of life and death continuously climb and descend through it to the core of who we are, making manifest our existence; i.e., by our language, we are existential: “I speak, and I am spoken, therefore I am.”

Hinge Theory’s function in relation to modern poetry, and poetic language in general, could be, conceivably (per Wittgenstein), “to show the fly the way out of the bottle.” The methodical dormancy and repetition of form, content, and style that has developed as proper poetic “etiquette” in American poetry over the last several decades, has only served to devitalize the language into a restricted grammar of stunted, non-exploratory, uncurious, uninventive, rhetorical solipsism, and poets are taught to write, think, and create much like Wittgenstein’s fly, while many of these wellinstructed, instructing, and assiduous flies have no realization whatsoever that the patterns of poetry they are tracing and retracing are already dead in a wasteland of powerless mediocrity. The official (silent) “voice of poetry” hasn’t moved anything more than a very little bit sideways, not from lack of practice and loud recitation, rather from endlessly circling itself in a self-imposed corner of accepted lingual behavior. Hinge offers the tools that not only point a way out of the bottle, but actually removes it.

For the sake of clarifying this overview of Hinge Dynamics, here follow brief responses to just a few of Wittgenstein’s precepts: 4.01 “… a proposition is a picture of reality” Hinge designs and describes a virtual oceanic matrix of reality and potential reality, comprised of a multiplicity of modules, each with the potential for uniting with others into volumes of unfolding meaning that become paradigm extensions of the world.

4.03 “Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language, and it is not surprising that the deepest problems are, in fact, not problems at all.” Hinge, as a highly advanced incorporation of “language games,” provides a self-regenerative, expansive logic, which, as it shifts its shape into increasingly complex forms of linguistic relation, offers angles and perceptions not available in conventional syntax. The intellectual “chemistry” produced through Hinge promotes the seeing of the world—philosophically, artistically, politically, spiritually, and socially—as a process of evolving ratiocination, rather than a stasis of “understanding” that probability dictates to be incomplete and limited at best.

5.4711 “… to give the essence of a proposition, means to give the essence of all description, and thus, the essence of the world.” Hinge, as a series of ever-unfolding lingual layers, multiplies description exponentially, thus, the essence of the world is realized to be exponential, rather than limited to singularity. If cognitive perception describes the world [the limits of language are the limits of my world], and perception evolves exponentially, it reveals the infinite quality of life, rather than the finite quality of “the world.”

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“… language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.” To give the essence of Hinge, means to give all description reproductively to essence, and thus the infinite essence of life. Cellular, intracellular, synaptic, circulatory, imagined and imagining, the mirrors of language are the living molecular mirrors entwining as the double helix of our DNA, reflecting light and sound and identity and experience, combining and recombining toward perfected individuality.

“Like everything metaphysical, the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of language.” The grammar of Hinge is intrinsically expansive, seeking boundlessness rather than boundaries. As it reproduces itself, Hinge harmonizes once-believed disparate and discrepant thoughts, cohering thought to reality in previously unrealized and unpotentiated unions, implying greater meaning to the phrase, “the deaf can hear, and the blind can see.” In the beginning was the Word, and the Word is Salvation.

If the Word is the catalyst of Creation, we must obliterate the notion that Creation only transpired at the Beginning of Time: rather, we must immerse ourselves in the ever-flowing river of Creation, as Creation is Now,, and Now is Eternal.

“Our way of life is mirrored in language. … Human beings are profoundly enmeshed in philosophical—i.e., grammatical confusions. They cannot be freed without first being extricated from the extraordinary variety of associations that hold them prisoner. You have, as it were, to reconstitute their entire language.— But this language grew up as it did because human beings had—and have— the tendency to think in that way.” Hinge can be taught, assimilated, developed, learned, and incorporated wholly as an ever-expanding series of revolutionary techniques for destroying preconditioned mindsets that sit like wardens over prisoners of culturally crippled linguistics. Hinge liberates thought; it doesn’t impound it.

Hinge not only reconstitutes the language, it reveals a primary difference in how language can be structured and evolve. Hinge advocates that outmoded ways of thinking be replaced; just as jazz took components of traditional blues and folk music, and then borrowed from classical music to produce a new, unheard before form of music and musical progression, which expanded, and reexpanded into a unique musical identity, language has that opportunity embodied in Hinge Theory. Because one has previously had a tendency to redundantly hit the same notes in the same patterns, doesn’t mean that one has experienced all that exists in the creation of music— or in language. Hinge progressively interweaves, synchronizing human intellect to the music of Creation.

And finally, Wittgenstein’s “the world is all that is the case …” — yet Hinge reveals to us how limited our perception of that world has continuously been. In language, the inception of Hinge usage—not only in poetic applications, but in other lingual constructs—is analogous to bringing a symphony orchestra deep into the heart of the Amazon rainforest to introduce Beethoven to lost tribes whose only music up to that moment of resurrection had been bird calls, rhythmic grunts, and the beating of sticks on gourds and logs.

To state “the case” is, to Wittgenstein, to offer a proposition; to Levinson it is to offer a “module” wherein a root word is used as the launching point for successive Hinges impacting or birthing directly different foci, or “particles.” Smelling Mary, the First Book of Hinge Theory, offers four separate modules: with hinges, smelling hinges, road hinges, and in the __ of __ hinges. Moreover, the modules internally intertwine as if they were endowed with lingual “wormholes” through which they evolve and devolve other compositions, utilizing, borrowing, and sharing lines, title elements, root words, particles, pivots, and phrases among them; furthermore, some applications are even Hinged to former non-hinge poems in previous collections, for example from Smelling Mary, “in the Wing of Mongolian Eagle” hinging off of “Mongolian Eagle’s Ascent,” published in ToxiCity: Poems of the Coconut Vulva, an earlier collection. It’s important to note that “in the Wing of Mongolian Eagle” is hinged, not derivative, and there is minimal linearity in its progression. Hinge operates through multi-matrices, bringing extant function, yet not simply increasing function spatially as in dioramically, or panoramically, but moreover in matrices of Time, i.e., kronoramically. Each poem, each Hinge, is cognizable individually, independent of what precedes or succeeds it, or what is around it or adjunct. In the supplemental material submitted to this panel of judges, several recent Hinge compositions are included—written after, but hinging back to Smelling Mary. Two of those 8.

newer pieces act accordingly: "with initiation" triangulates "with species impact" with "in the temperature of barn." “in the temperature of barn” is a piece included formerly in Smelling Mary, and it brings the grouping full circle [rather, full rectilinear triangle, and three-dimensionally: pyramidal] with the Pythagorean a2 [Egyptian: mother leg]+ b2 [Egyptian: father leg] = c2 [hypotenuse; Egyptian: child leg], and pi; ergo, extended with “smelling Pythagoras” and “smelling pi,” (both in Smelling Mary), i.e., the formation of a verbal triptych, with antecedent extensions. *

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Hinge operates as a paradigm of unfolding and self-regenerating aspect experience. States Wittgenstein, “There are many ways of experiencing aspects. What they have in common is the expression: ‘Now I see it as THAT’ ; or ‘Now I see it THIS way’ ; or ‘Now it’s THIS—now THAT’ ; or ‘Now I HEAR it as …; a while ago I HEARD it as ….” Up to this stage of development, our use of language has taken us on a routine tour of the perimeter of a (sometimes) brightly lit city, pointing at the lights from afar, implying life within the city of language, and language as the womb of creation (‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…’) Wittgenstein might say of the tour guide that he pointed at the city through the use of the terms this and that: ‘that light,’ ‘this building,’ and so on. Yet, Hinge alludes to language being the bringer of life, the creator and the recreator, and not only the describer. Up to this stage, the language-tour has rarely shuttled us into the heart of the city itself, to become one with the womb of creation. Yet, that is the intrinsic nature and stature of Hinge: to live, to breathe, to procreate itself, to bring the breath of life and liberty to the mind that has been on tour of the polis from inside a phone booth. As one rides Hinge into the city, the city discloses the pluralities of space/time interconnectedness among those elements which constitute it.

A Hinge construction, an evolutionary leap in the idea of “poem”—indeed, in the sum total of lingual communication—is like an egg that continues to multiply its components to produce a living zygote—that zygote growing and reforming until life breathes into it. Hinge is, by its intrinsic vita, a form of language architecture exploding with immense poetic power and subtlety in revealing the interconnectedness of ideas, realizations, and creative unfoldings. It is a dawn breaking forth with an uncountable multiplicity of rays, combustible, energizing, precipitous, and fertile. One takes a stallion ride on the language with Hinge, rather than herding words like cattle into a barn. Persons, minds, bodies, spirits, and souls inhabit language, and are cohabited by language. Hinge describes a meme as more than idea: it is a living Word riding on the journey of the genes, mutating them and guiding them toward their ultimate incarnate destiny. Hinge is a meme with the capacity to operate in an unlimited number of directions simultaneously. Language is known by circularity and fertility; it does not proceed out of the mouth of the Creator to return void. It flows out, back, and creates, in small circles, in concentric circles, in overlappings, eddies and tides. Hinge takes what has been viewed as a two dimensional sea, and expands its reality to four dimensions, including Time.

Smelling Mary’s cover proclaims No more dead poetry; a Hinged universe. Using the architectures of Hinge theory, one rescues one’s creative faculties from the concentration camp of dead language, ultimately meaning, one cannot return to the death sentence of lingual mediocrity that flushes through most contemporary poetry. To become an adept sojourner in the Hinge Universe propagates nothing less than the mind’s true liberation in lingual communication, and the ability to make leaps through the matrix of perception, conceptual realization, and expression. It is as novel, surprising, and joyful as the introduction of poetry might have been long ago to folks who mapped out their lives in simple declarative sentences.

—Michael Annis, publisher, Howling Dog Press For further exploration, see Smelling Mary, pages 134-147, “Dialoguing Hinge: On the Innovations in the Language Structures of Heller Levinson,” a discussion between Mary Newell and André Spears 9.

HINGE CHARTING

As discussed in a former declaration, there is no way to fulfill all of Hinge’s possibilities. Thus, I will begin charting areas that suggest (require) further development. The HC (Hinge Chart) will be added to as we progress. As the new “pulses” appear.

1. The area of Modular Modification:.

A. The first MM that we have applied is “were there” and to date there exist two applications – “were there mermaid like recalcitrant thrush,” and “were there outlaw like apparitional flaw.”

B. There are a plethora of MM possibilities and I will offer only a few to lubricate extension: so that, if, what if, if there were, similar to, different from, how, why, could, would, etc.

2. The employment of Mathematical Devices to Interbreed with the Linguistic Components. So, -- Interbreeding Mathematical Devices (IBM’s). Along the lines of a Mathematical/Linguistic Hybridization, i.e. utilizing mathematics to alter the value (and value here could apply equally to direction) of the particle, the word. To date there have been no IMD’s applicated. As an example I will present one that is currently in development:

Hinge Tabulatories alacrity2 + alembic2 = enhanced predisposition -ality

alacrity x alembic = magical squid

alacrity – alembic = foreshortening

alembic – alacrity = deprivation, ... amputational

outlaw2 + crow2 = bad day at black rock

3. MODULAR CONJUGATIONS (Inspired by Michael Annis’ unceasing suggestivity

The first Modular Conjugation was performed on the module “from ____ this _____” and it conjugates as “with ___ this ___.” This initial conjugation is implemented as “with two tails this incredulity.”

Other Conjugational suggestions are as follows: “of _____ this _____,” “to ____ this ____,” “toward ____ this ____,” “for ____ this _____,” “in _____ this _____,” “into ____ this ____,” “on ____ this ____,” “upon ____ this _____.”

The above will serve to initially lubricate an area requiring more extensive servicing.

—Heller Levinson

with insinuation, … nuance g(s)lide

the catapult

throning

to

spring

novelty

palomino

curvatures

stun

convexities

arousal pits

homocercal symmetries squid festoons ://: roam mollusk combinatory bonanzas in the depositories of tale lurch formations periscope heed

HINGE THEORY DIAGNOSTIC (Whereby the operations of Hinge are inspected in the construct “with insinuation.”)

We will designate the first three encounters with “with insinuation” the Pivot, the Particle, and the Postulate (the 3 P’s).

“With” is the pivot whose function is to spring (to unleash, to unmoor) the particle (in this case, “insinuation”) into a climate of free fall and unpredictability. And by free fall we mean that we are liberating the particle from its normative, conventional context and tossing it into question.

It might land anywhere and to any effect. “Insinuation” is emboldened to flag this as the element being sprung. The grammatical devices following “insinuation” are the comma and the ellipsis.

The comma serves to create a pause and the ellipsis indicates that the particle is adjusting to another climate. We are “hinging” into a new opening. The use of alternative punctuation, say using a semicolon, or a dash, would frame differing results for the postulate. When the reader becomes conversant with the way the punctuation behaves, similar to how a conductor interprets the dynamics in a score, they will be alert as to how the postulate is being rendered. The postulate, “nuance,” settles “insinuation” and initiates one’s intimacy with the word. We need not ask “with insinuation, What?” We are told. With insinuation, nuance. We are made aware that we are not in any pejorative atmosphere, there is no hint of the derogatory tone that is often associated with “insinuation,” it is signaled that “insinuation” will be growing in a different direction as we roam “insinuation’s” more artful attributes. We are Orienteering. The use of the word “nuance” after the word “insinuation” reinforces the notion of artfulness by allowing the participant/practitioner/reader to bathe in the sensual, musical properties of alliteration issuing from the repetition of the “nua” in both words and in the “g(s)lide” of the relaxed sibilant “ce” sound after the “ins” and “tion” sound.

It’s as if (in a very magical and haunting way), “nuance” was delivered from “insinuation;” there’s something very visceral and powerful in this suggestion – the postulate being born-out-of the particle.

The following line and words (glide and slide) are a fleshing out of the artful aroma issuing from “insinuation.” The construction “g(s)lide” is an example of Hinge operating in a single word. In-

stallation of the (s) indicates that the word has dual functions fused into one transmission. The word glide is both glide and slide, they are interchangeable and flippable. It is both glide and slide working independently as well as being compacted together into glideslide. The imaginative participant, seeing the parenthetical (s) as flotational, may also choose to attach the “s” to the end of the word to form glides and slides, thus opening up a third dimensional function. The following words and lines (the catapult throning/ to spring/novelty/palomino curvatures) serve to acclimate (to insinuate to the participant) the context in which “insinuation” has landed. “Insinuation” is being rhapsodized, this is the turn “insinuation” has taken, “the catapult throning” implies that the apparatus (catapult) for hurling/launching is being enthroned, placed in a position of admiration, indeed the whole Hinge mechanism (the three P’s) can be seen as having glided and slid into a mechanism that thrusts it outward, tosses it forward to novelty, to feast on the subtle marvels of “palomino curvatures.” We have swung away from brash overtures, from braggadocio, from the merely outspoken, and are feasting on the “combinatory bonanzas,” the “arousal pits,” that “insinuation” can deliver/bestow; we are given opportunities to open the door of the word and experience its greater vistas, to see how the evenly divided tail of the fish (“homocercal symmetries”) can insinuate a symmetrical universe. “Squid festoons” is an image of squids forming a festoon as well as insinuating “squid” as a verb which, by virtue of their movement quality, have the ability to create or eject a festoon. The ://: device is intended to suggest “squid festoons” seesawing with “roam mollusk.”

“Roam mollusk” operates multiply. “Roam” can serve as an adjective identifying the type of mollusk we are dealing with – one that roams – or as a verb inviting us to roam the mollusk, to caress the smooth hard shell as well as to probe the soft underbelly. The last three lines could be a mission statement for Hinge Theory. “In the depositories of tale,” in the mythic wellsprings of story, formations are lurching forward to be discovered and addressed, we need only apply attention (“periscope heed”) to open the door.

The diagnostician wishes from his inspection that the participants’ association (intimacy, relationship) with the word “insinuation” should be vaster, more charged. The word “insinuation” should have amassed more Volume. It is a function of Hinge Theory to vitalize language, to insinuate more splendor.

A hallmark of Hinge is its propagatory nature. It resembles cellular reproduction in its capacity to spin-off and multiply. Components in a Mobile Probe Collective lust to be addressed, yearn to be spurred into free fall. In “with insinuation” “roam” was just begging for it. Therefore “with roam” was snapped into the Hinge shuttle and was sprung. With Hinge, we live in a universe of Flow Throughs, with “withs” connecting to other “withs,” with “withs” connecting to “roads” and “roads” to “smellings” and “smellings” to “withs” and with “withs” and “roads” and “smellings” intermingling with the latest Vehicular Structure “in the __ of __,” which will fuse with those ever omnicropping Dehiscent Agitators yet to be born. Hinge is a perpetual interconnecting profusely propagatory contagiously enlivening multi-universe of multi-complementary extensions.

—Heller Levinson and Michael Annis ————————————————1

… the element being sprung: We chose the preposition “with” in this volume because of the plethora of the intrigue; we could have a parallel set of poems using another preposition, such as “into” – into ... insinuation -though differing unfoldings would result as every preposition contains an intrinsic value just as every musical key has its own colorations and soundings.

2

... Mobile Probe Collective: Also known as MUPAE’s – Mutational Update Panel Animation Extenders.

HINGE THEORY: LANGUAGE’S EVENT HORIZON (an excerpt from a review by poet and critic Leigh Herrick) Inimitable independent book publisher Michael Annis has done it again. Determined to showcase some of America’s best and brightest poets, Annis’ latest publication is Heller Levinson’s Smelling Mary (Howling Dog Press, 2008) which posits a new poetics through a theory of language— and a theory of language through poetry. Drawing from his extensive knowledge of philosophy, and the proposition that math is the foundation of all life— including language—Levinson positions his poems, and has created a method for them to position themselves, as a means of studying the human condition in a place charged with Universal laws. This is poetry acting as theory of language through language that posits a Theory of Everything, including poetry. For Levinson it cuts both ways, and this is surely some of the most exciting, creative, and intellectually stimulating poetry to come out of America in years.

In Smelling Mary, Levinson uses minimalistic means to engage the reader in the many tenets or propositions of philosophical thought while facilitating critical analysis of language itself, particularly as a function of universal order. Levinson calls his poetics Hinge Theory. Hinge Theory provides living poetry as an endless means of studying not just language, but language released from constriction in the attainment of its proper alacrity. Heller Levinson’s prismatic poetry as Hinge Theory is like a study in refraction, and language is the bend making perception up-for-grabs while sending out its myriad implications through endless possibilities as signifiers combining on the page. Hinge Theory is nothing short of a major paradigm shift in the landscape of modern American poetics.

Among the many fascinating things I find in these poems is their physicality, their seeming indirection organized by what energizes them, like a pulse you can feel, a sensuality that enters into you with directness and indirectness, like the best of jazz musicians, like the randomness of chaos with sensitive dependence on initial conditions, chaos that is self-organized in its mere coincidence, its seeming accidentalness that is anything but accident. In Levinson’s poems Thelonious Monk, String Theory, Bocciano, Derrida, Fibonacci, Pythagoras, and Wittgenstein collide, “with particularity,” “with implication,” in poems that function as “linguistic strips carriaging,” and whose words are palpable form that through contraction expand with “ascensional alacrity.” Smelling Mary has done nothing less than set the stage for a new poetic concept as old as universal breath, transpired into language, where the figurative and literal are equally suspect, where interpretation is transmigratory, and where each word, each unit of word, each space between words is sound; and sound, like that expansive A-U-M, is vibration: vibration out of which all is born.... .....

Like the Periodic Table, Hinge Poetry functions as the elements in infinitely combining possibilities, its language as much born of those elements as notes are of rocks. In a poem titled “in the temperature of barn,” Levinson asks (considering the plight of the barned horse’s life while thinking of one of the Paleolithic panels of horses in France’s Chauvet Cave): “Did these horses emerge from rock, massaged forth by some celestial sorcerer...” In context that is a literal and figurative question, but as the poet continues analyzing the “pedagogy of enclosure,” he contemplates “the need to reallocate territory / to chamber a domain & / trot it forward,” remarkable phrases reminding that the domestication of the horse, along with the development of lethal weaponry, was a pivotal moment in the Neolithic age as the onset of organized, human violence took its foothold in history. Trotting it forward, Levinson writes: “barn: a recruitment center to insure perpetuity a holdout against evolution’s exclusivity, its disallowance of retreat … this conference center schedules to resist the vanishing, dedicates to shape, to perpetuation configuration …

the abyss -- a de-shapement, an utter dis-figurement, the realm of no corners … is the abyss the theater of disappearance a monstrosity of vacuity … with no shape can we speak of an impulse, a charge … perhaps, a petulance? is the music of vanishing Franck, Satie, Rachmaninoff, … Little Walter Chauvet Cave, with its many panels, is the Paleolithic “conference center,” full of chambers once dedicated to shape, to perpetuation. A Society of the Spectacle (Debord) that sets itself up toward its own abyss, its theater of disappearance, is the same Society to which Levinson would show that theater, pointing to it not just as linguistic construct, but a place we actually find ourselves in, struggling against the many impending earthly disappearances, including Man’s, as wild horses near their human-imposed hour of extinction. This is a cry against inhumanity and the refusal on our part to change that behavior which threatens earthly life, now teetering on the edge at that abyss of disappearance.

Levinson’s overall alliteration and internal rhyme, his rhythm and the sheer sound of words he dangles into verb-ed nouns and participles become –ing, recall a Hopkins-like quality with a Césaire-ian arresting brilliance as in the surreal “with tower cranes.”

Like the supreme surrealist he obviously is, Levinson writes in such a way that nearly begs certain poems to be accompanied by jazz improvisation while daring the reader to say each line out loud, as in this amazing opening in “the road to apocalypse road”: ash winch

columns of absentee drift clouds unbellying

drums a battered bricolage spasticized bilious macadam mordant engine sputter shofars muffled glued intestinally from shovelfuls of outcry at extremity no vessel no lesions for passage food a ruminant a memory for clause… .....

Levinson’s Hinge Poetry is an ideology of the infinite and Smelling Mary is its manifesto as a world of word synapses fire from the base of thought, where thinking is expressed in a universe of morphemes spiraling into and out of their connectedness, energized by their own will to exist. It is philosophy in a symphony hinged of sounds, and a symphony of philosophically hinged sounds, each a permutation unfolding into its counterpart as inner and outer text, like galaxies, like stars, like cells, as modules existing to coincide with their next [con]text. Like the universe itself, as living expansion of unseen vibration, or as earth’s magnetic waves unfelt, Levinson’s Smelling Mary is a theory in poetic “sets” staged to [de]/[re]compose through postulates that engage the reader in that which is as much energized in its desire to simply be what it is (poetry, alive through its own pure selfregulating essence), as it is designed to expose what kills the life-force, including poetry’s. .....

What Heller Levinson offers in Smelling Mary is not only an augmentation of argument toward a purposeful poetics, but a language as cure for language that has carried with it all its history, which is language containing and contained by so much errancy. And this is not just a cure for poetry, but also, perhaps, as Ninian Smart has written, for the philosophy risen from, that is the result of, diseases of language (Wittgenstein). Whatever is next for Heller Levinson, Hinge Theory proposes all, and as he hurls his work toward its own unfolding future, Smelling Mary is here, delivering nothing less than poetry at its best, ensuring Levinson will be studied for centuries to come.

SMELLING MARY by Heller Levinson. [ISBN 978-1-882863-98-3; 2008, Howling

Dog Press, publisher; poetry/Hinge Poetics, 206 pages, w/ double covers—color outer, black inner— featuring 9 interior color plates; edited, designed & illustrated by Michael Annis; includes critical discussion on Hinge Theory by Mary Newell and André Spears] For ordering information or review copies, contact publicity@HowlingDogPress.com