thinking of summer

how you may hold many faces
in one hand
the style of performance revolves
around a curl of hair an aroma
lips moistened just
in time for
an entrance
or exit in to any variety of wardrobes
(hide in and among)
a curl of
style like sweet
silk laden lengthened hanging
from trees
or fingers
crossed
around the notes
break through
one gesture (re)peated

Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community

some old fiction or something

i'm going through some old work, thinking about compiling the various pieces of strange prose fiction or whatever genre you want to say, gathering things that came from somewhere and have otherwise sat around in the computer for some time... it's hard enough to publish strange poetry, what about strange prose... so i've just not thought much about sending much of this work out... i don't even know where to send it... though there are a few places that are a little less genre determinate such as Quarter After Eight... alas, the subtly implicit question, regarding how one does work one is inclined to do and also consider publishing as a necessary element to the ever getting a job situation, or, i'm tired of sending crap out only to get a multitude of crap rejections back in the mail... and i'm tired of the lectures on playing the game, being resilient and persistent, needing to have some connections in order to get work out there, whatever.... so here's a little ditty about mr. wilson:


Meatloaf is essentially interchangeable, with what? something thrown out entirely, silken and thank goodness for ever leaving the house getting away entirely and here we are burning teeth. cousin, watch out for cracked ice suddenly it may not be good not at all this time what is no good said obituary said this time we are searching for kindness. a woman she had mercy, walked the streets of mercy talked to the windows shopping for mercy thinking about how too many people are lacking these days lacking entirely. post: communion will be served at the 13th chime. Post: Mr. Wilson please report. Post: Lord have mercy. She sat down to feast, a brief intercession. Pray for me. Lead me to the light. To eat and a variety of blended vegetables. a variety. Thinking if only the stray thoughts were put down on paper. Thinking: Mr. Wilson ought not recover too quickly. Thinking of salvation and turning away from what she thought and flesh. Beyond vegetables. Mash potatoes. I was thinking of an after dinner fruity drink. Thinking of a rare species. It is not so wrong if it feels good. Intercess shock .. Post: these are the rules. Post: do not mix. She knows now that if Mr. Wilson arrives he will not drink wine. His eyes like Bella Legosi. She rewinds the tape, again. Mr. Wilson has not come this week. Yesterday she saw him on the street selling cigarettes. Last month he replaced light bulbs. Today he is to bring fresh bread. Post: Mr. Wilson? The dish is dirty. She looks over the newspaper in front of her. Cut into pieces. Sometimes an article. Sometimes a headline. Sometimes a word. Sometimes a photo. Sometimes a paragraph a block of prose. Sometimes she has cut through around into the text. Pieces of news paper moving around the table. Her hands over the pieces. Moving the pieces. Putting pieces together. Pulling them apart. Rearranging. The whole table becomes a newspaper puzzle. The dish is on the floor. Mr. Wilson is already aware of the events of the day. He only uses the newspaper for the floor. Puts it all over the floor. Opens pages and lays them out all over the floor from wall to wall. He will not bring a new newspaper. She knows all of the stories. Out of order. He will bring a cigarette. Lay it on the table. They will watch the cigarette. Moving around the text. Photos of people smoking. Not color photos. The newspaper is not USA Today. She is not sure what day in the U.S. is it. It is not today. Mr. Wilson did not come today. He is scheduled. Next week he will vote. She knows he will save a tree. Send someone to sit in the tree. He will compost. In his pocket. Carries extra newspaper in his pocket. She has a design of text. A newspaper crescent moon. A story about robbery. A shooting. Child abuse. Nestled in the curve a picture of a clown. At the circus. Last week the clowns left. They took their little cars and lollipops. The news is not always happy. She lifts her gaze from the crescent news. The curtains across the room are open slightly. Sunlight hits the red chair. Late afternoon sun. She has already eaten breakfast. The red chair flames. She remembers the popcorn from the circus. But not from last week. Mr. Wilson sold popcorn before he discovered cigarettes. Popcorn never lasts. Post: incoming message. Post: this is a public service announcement. Post: this station will play none of your favorite bands. One time Mr. Wilson won at checkers. He was born under a sign of luck. On the table, the star of david, in newsprint. Eventually it will be December. The sentences in the star were composed in July. A paragraph about a lost toddler. She walked from house to house. Rang doorbells. Her father was asleep. A sentence about the military in China. A headline: Local Cigarette Salesman Follows Clowns Out of Town. Mr. Wilson was not expected for diner in July. The circus hasn’t toured since 1976. Tomorrow each headline will paste itself into a perfect cube. She has solved each equation for the good of society. Soon it will all make sense, a particular order. Cutting the text into paragraphs into phrases cutting the words into letters. Cutting letters into dust. A pile of newspaper dust exactly n the middle of the table. Post: with a low tonight of 19 degrees. Post: no one ever really sleeps through the night. Post: where articulation intersects, I will find you, the story of the day.

letters

old pieces, from an old piece of work, found and uncovered...


dear elle,
you told me a secret. you took your hat off. ask me.


dear elle,
i enjoy cheesy love songs. particularly those from 1979. to someone i mentioned your state of affairs. i sleep teal. it has been called a hard habit. the stucco in your voice signals a spot of closure. the end of a sentence. your knee covering spit. i tell you cover me up. history is not accurate. tame your wild vocals.


dear elle,
syntactical illusion. carry on a cup of wasting over into. push over a useless vocabulary. tell me, do you do the dew? in what state as of moment? the last sparks are dim and flaring lost. dead animals caught and choking into skeleton. overheard intimate language.

pound – zukofsky – niedecker… a reading

niedecker:

My friend tree
I sawed you down
but I must attend
an older friend
the sun


pound:
1. direct treatment of the thing
2. to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
3. to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase

pound:
an ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time

niedecker:

Well, spring overflows the land,
floods floor, pump, wash machine
of the woman moored to this low shore by deafness.
…
pound:
it is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works

pound:
use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something


niedecker:
…
you water my worms
you patch my boot
with your mending kit
nothing in it
but my hand
pound:
do in fear of abstractions

pound:
use no ornament or good ornament

niedecker:
…
I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else
…
What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

pound:
there is in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer

pound:
the experimental demonstrations of one man may save the time of many

niedecker:

Hear
where her snow-grave is
the You
ah you
of mourning doves

pound:
it will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and luxurious riot. we will have fewer painted adjectives impeding the shock and stroke of it. I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither

niedecker:

How white the gulls
in grey weather
Soon April
the little
yellows

zukofsky:
the lens bringing the rays from an object to a focus
that which is aimed at
desire for what is objectively perfect
inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars

niedecker:

Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can’t mouse in

zukofsky:
that historic and contemporary particulars may mean a thing or things as well as an event or a chain of events

niedecker:

Lights, lifts
parts nicely opposed
this white
lice lithe
pink bird

zukofsky:
this rested totality may be called objectification


niedecker:

July, waxwings
on the berries
have dyed red
the dead
branch

zukofsky:
the implications are that a critic began as a poet, and that as a poet he had implicitly to be a critic

niedecker:

I’ve been away from poetry
many months

and now I must rake leaves
with nothing blowing

between your house
and mine

zukofsky:
a poem as an object…experienced…perfect rest…theologically perhaps… like the ineffable…the context…dealing with a world outside, inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars…desire for what is objectively perfect…context based on a world…this object in process…the poem as a job…

niedecker:

My life is hung up
in the flood
a wave-blurred
portrait

Don’t fall in love
with this face—
it no longer exists
in water
we cannot fish

zukofsky:
a context associated with ‘musical’ shape

niedecker:

Now in one year
a book published
and plumbing—
took a lifetime
to weep
a deep
trickle

zukofsky:
intention must be distinguished from accomplishment which resolves the complexity of detail into a single object

niedecker:
…
We stayed till the stamens trembled

zukofsky:
(quotes contemporary American poet) a machine made of words


niedecker:
…
Leave me the land
Scratch out: the land

May prose and property both die out
and leave me peace




sources:
Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect”
Louis Zukofsky, “An Objective” and “A Statement for Poetry”
Lorine Niedecker, The Granite Pail, Ed. Cid Corman, 1996

on a friday

display
a crane, moving, industrial
behind a billboard
in front of the printed
architecture
of city
scape
not an e
scape
but haze
mutes silver
buildings
late september view
of heat
holding fast
to the notion of a space
surrounding
or in a place
like something that doesn't belong
in the desert

i don´t seem able to load any photos at this time, so here are some others, similar to some of my own, of ouro preto, a great colonial town sculpted into the hills of Brazil...

contemporary art in brazil

went here today in person... one of the best possible museums...
it is work from artists from all over, including but not limited to brazil, and the setting and atmosphere is amazing and fabulous...

http://www.inhotim.org.br

some pics in pampulha, belo horizonte, brazil

here's selmin's blog with some info and pics of belo horizonte:

http://www.lonelysatellite.blogspot.com/

thinking space

Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space


"For the house furnishes us dispersed images and a body of images at the same time. In both cases, I shall prove that imagination augments the values of reality."

"We are never real historians, but always near poets."

"Through poems, perhaps more than through recollections, we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house."

"Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived. These drawings need not be exact. They need only to be tonalized on the mode of our inner space."

or the spacial geography of
the unintended
opportunity
a counseling
or the movement shiver
of water across a puddle
under sun
we tried once
a topographic understanding
inhabited by mountains of image
and decor
but the specific leaf wanders
across town in search
of any new way
to see

brazil aug 2007

visiting belo horizonte, brazil for 2 weeks to co-teach a seminar at UMFG (University Federal at Minais Gerais)...

the hostel:

the hostel has breakfast and finally today we got up for it...
yesterday i slept 'til almost 10 i think... pretty tired... and today
we were up and out in better time... there's an open patio
between the "dining" room and our room with many plants, trees, vine growing vegetation,
some little palm trees, flowers... sort of tropical...
and the dining area (also where we sit to use the computer and work) has a big
glass door that just stays open to the outside patio...
a nice cool but fresh breeze blows around the patio this morning... temps in the 70s, sunny, perfect...


the hostel room:

tiny room with tiny little beds and a tiny little bathroom... also include a little refrigerador and a little tv...


portugese:

no one speaks english. portugese is not like spanish. sometimes i can communicate a sentence or an idea. but i can't understand any of what is said back to me. i listen to the portugese cds and read the phrasebooks... but by the end of 2 weeks i'll no little more than how to order beer and food from a menu.


the seminar course:

critical geography, globalism, urban experience... sounds good.... we're still figuring out how/what we're talking about... spending today reading and preparing to begin the class tomorrow... will post some interesting or relevant quotes that might help focus/locate the ideas for the course... selmin is good and smart and insightful... and i can talk and make things up... so i think we'll get through it alright...


writing:

i don't know if i can write any poems here. i will record my thoughts. consider images. take notes... the actual writing always comes later, on the verge of forgetting...


photos:

to come.

Cell Fragments: a reflection in color

1.

First, choose a word…paper, word, lipstick…the sky this morning breaking through before new fall light, before snow… tile, face, sound…books piled around, the Marx readers are always red. Red. Like Communism. Or Bricks. Or Christmas. Fire engine red. Infra-red. True-red. Apple Red. Red Cross. Red Herring. Pirates. Stop.

2.

The record of a language painted, textured, smeared in the history of presence, forgotten or pushed aside, its pages crumbling, turning to ash and flame. Can you remember this moment already happening, again.

3.

European revolutionaries in 1848 adopt their color, wave red flags. Later it becomes the color for Communism in Russia, China, it spreads around the world. Then fear spreads around the world, a color becomes derogatory. Commies painted red.

4.

“Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States” The Register

“After reading this article, it occurs to me that Blue America sees Red America the same way Red America sees Iraq: A basically backward place full of nice people unable to destroy their own tyrants without our enlightened help. Also, the fact that they are unable to do this imperils our safety as much as it imperils their own. Perhaps this is why we are making no headway in either place...

Also, both places are dusty and full of oil.”

--punningpundit.com

5.

The red dragon on the flag of Wales. The country motto: Wales Forever. Welsh band Super Furry Animals sing “It’s not the end of the world / why?”

6.

And Redcoats. Marching through the woods. Not so camouflaged. Or the Red Badge of Courage. Stay and fight, or run away, the color of blood, and war. Or the courage of not war, other-than-war, the red badge of a future that does something different from history.

7.

Sunday, March 11. Two people (women) try to drive across some rail road tracks and don’t make it. The get around one train and collide with another. They die. Trains are held up for hours. Our 8pm train is cancelled. Getting hit by a train doesn’t get you where you are trying to go any faster. Two teens trying a challenge? Two drunk women not paying attention? Two people with music playing too loud to hear the second train? What about the flashing red lights, the white and red striped arm that you have to drive around strategically if you are trying to beat the train. Two mothers no longer waiting for two someones to come back home.

8.

Blood no longer looks like blood when the bodies from which it falls are mutilated and destroyed so completely.

9.

“Two Petaluma store employees and a shopping center customer were beaten by reputed gang members, apparently for wearing red clothing, police said Tuesday.”

“”Not all the kids wearing red clothing are committing crimes,” Captain O’Rourke said.”

“Due to its extreme nature, wearing red clothing during a negotiation or confrontation is never the best choice.”

“In the US wearing red clothing is promoted by some groups to symbolize support for or opposition against the Iraq war, or to spread awareness about heart disease. See: Red Friday.”

10.

The set sun sends back rays reflected against the sky the last moment of a spring day constructed out of time.

11.

Red and yellow hammer and sickle logo tee: $16.95 on merch-bot.com. “The logo…makes a bold statement or no statement at all, depending on the attitude of you, the wearer. This is a must for the back of every angry youth on the planet.” (note: the “logo” is on the front of the shirt, but I guess angry youths across the world can wear this shirt “on their backs.”

12.

To invoke or embody. To call a color your own. The smell of dry grass as the summer wears on and ice cream trucks slow their rounds through streets ghostly without the sound of children. Different trucks, in different shades of cool and refreshing.

13.

A wedding in India.

Chinese New Year.

A Hmong funeral.

14.

She said she has emotional memory. She sees a scene from her childhood and knows, feels exactly how she felt at that moment, watching from the window, for example, the look of the street below. He says he remembers details. Every number of every player’s baseball card from the collection he had as a kid. I remember only bits and pieces of images, some of which seem to be in my mind because I saw them in photographs. According to my mental record, I couldn’t have had much of a childhood. But on the contrary, it was full of events and emotion. I can at the moment recall the huge red sun dropping in the sky in summer when we rode in the boat across the lake, returning from an impromptu dinner picnic on the small island in Muscamoot bay. Always that huge sun seeming to stand still in our western vision, keeping the evening sky lit and timeless.

15.

A moment, spatial, layered, a spot of time etched perfectly into this immediate suggestion that generic history is peppered with particular drops of

from an essay on the color red...

VIII.

She said she has emotional memory. She sees a scene from her childhood and knows, feels exactly how she felt at that moment, watching from the window, for example, the look of the street below. He says he remembers details. Every number of every player’s baseball card from the collection he had as a kid. I remember only bits and pieces of images, some of which seem to be in my mind because I saw them in photographs. According to my mental record, I couldn’t have had much of a childhood. But on the contrary, it was full of events and emotion. I can at the moment recall the huge red sun dropping in the sky in summer when we rode in the boat across the lake, returning from an impromptu dinner picnic on the small island in Muscamoot bay. Always that huge sun seeming to stand still in our western vision, keeping the evening sky lit and timeless.

"when i touch your skin, or hear singers in the dark, i get so electric..."

--mei mei bersenbrugge from Heat Bird



some summer writing exercises...see below....

story

she runs right in front of the car at the moment i am spitting a cherry seed out the window, juice slipping down my face, no time to reach for a tissue or find the brake quite fast enough. she came from out of no where, like a drunk at the corner of cass and the fisher freeway yelling at no one and stumbling into the street to fight with the hood of my car (last week). this week: wildlife. my metal and her fur collide and then separate in an instant. i slam the brakes just as she looks at me to realize the mistake of her impatience, like the ipod clad pedestrian causality in nyc who knew only after stepping too confidently off the curb. unlike the oblivious urban trekker though, she is down and then back up in an instant. the stop is immediate and skid-free, the hit quick and short, the closest thing to blood shed is the cherry juice dripping from my lips to my new fancy summer shirt. but unlike the drunkard without reflection, she picks up, carries on, goes back to warn the others about their future of impending technological doom.

night school

fluorescent light blocks out the dusk that threatens to put us all to sleep, notice broken clouds grey in part illuminated in part almost pink above the tree dusk creeping around the clock while we try to fit in every story before parting. what evening light comes between vertical blinds, at an angle, blowing with air from the fan, clanging plastic blinds disturb spontaneous conversation, or a question, addressed out loud, while what was clearly lit by dry warm sun all afternoon turns soft like under the gaze of a particular lens, and buildings melt together with their contexts, while we listen to explanations of mysterious stories convoluted by language and movement in multiple directions, like on days I pack bags with folders and books from places all across town.

the broken clouds remind me to sleep fast, run slow, learn to wade through the moving dusk

paste

groove

solid

red brown earth tone

laminate

tea

shimmer

perpendicular

wonders across blue

waxed fingertips hair-free

shimmery passage of stinging

skin the dry humid pressure

against aging veins of

my hand pull

at an exoskeleton

(external)

ragged and cringing

parsley

or some solid caffeine

sliced

a thermometer laced with fruit

mint

whiskey

cold and chewy

against the heat swimming

through a pita

with cheese

knees sweat in every direction

basil, garlic

circulate

through what is left

keeping me from

melting

apart

a walking measurement

a spider

a text

who forgot walking or light

intervals, and the king

of missteps

in france the bald examine light

interpret intervals

measure traffic and

the spiders who forget

how to breathe

the plush must be worn away

--lyn hejinian, from My Life

green leather, felted, ragged, having forgotten any specific time of day. the photo, of the girl, on her couch. light damages the color, (dis)articulation. an image disconnected from its own story. wears thin like the tales you give of someone’s history, and call them my own. the indeterminate color of overused age. it can only be this, without a fuzzy understanding of where we once were.

returning to chaato street

after ashbury’s leaving atocha station

the cold sugar crackled under the book

disturbing color and reminding her

above all

listening for it –

we later…

and the layered ducks

the can, falling over trees, in order

for aggression and religiosity

to fold

inward over particular participants…

strike

the yard is your resting place

and broken layered green

a visual dog calls out

for compensation discomfort

or my inexact concrete pounds

explode earthly change

and flowers

in opposition to

across from the morning

hauling chemical abuse

the sink falling from the wall

slowly they separate

chewing the pipe

before we realize electricity –

cars enable sight

orange buckets of rain

one drop holding fast to the lens of her red glasses

every morsel crumbling to the bottom of the foil bag

intricate beaded sparkling stones lying at my feet

ink falls in straight and curled lines across a day

tile floor spilled thick with cherry coke

the gel pen lingers on canvas, sparkle language flows

on carla harryman’s memory play

dreams of an adult

thinking she is a child

thoughts – characters – animals

in vivid detail

memory stored inefficient – computer development of memory – evolution in world –persona – characterization – original creatures – memory moving through time

instruction – patterns – separating parts – fish from bowl

child recalls an event

traumatic etc. memories

movement between child – adult – understanding – language

language poetry goes disney

the way you say vs what is said

or

the articulation of self in context

the shot sent scratch across a highway

march 3

a shot, a highway,

and the eggplant shaded,

a frog, mingle around

the billboard –

await jose

and scratch at the dirt

3 poems

after Bin Ramke and others

plastic lice bisects an uncle skewed

blind dust

toil asparagus lice

skid blind

what have you

uncle

botanical blackbird

is the same as

or circulate among

electric

blind uncles spend light

a botanical apparatus skews

the well-groomed toil

dust skids across

the image of a blackbird

bisecting lice

grass

infinity

what you can’t see

smell

asparagus

asparagus dust

and the mention of

skid

skew

a blackbird

what the blind uncles couldn’t have known

toil botanical

lice and light spent

bisect the grain

of plastic wood

from PAMELA: A NOVEL by Pamela Lu

“…since the main challenge of contemporary life rested not in going out and identifying the “there,” which was everywhere, but in discovering a “here” that wasn’t “there,” for this “here” was slippery and always seemed to be somewhere else” (21).

“For what other reason would cartographers design a building map with the highlighted phrase “You Are Here,” accompanied by a large arrow indicating the place you were supposedly standing…Where does this map get off, telling you where you are or aren’t at the moment…Or consider the point itself: Where exactly is “Here”? At the exact point indicated on the map?...And consider the ever-present tense of the phrase “You Are Here”: If you walk away from the map, are you still “Here,” as the sign says? If you leave and come back in a week, does this mean you’ve been “Here” all along?” (22)

“…we continued to examine the situation from all points of reference while we were still inside that very collision and even after we escaped it, which in actuality we never did, since we were perpetually moving from one near-collision to the next, or finding ourselves in situations of existence which, no matter how hard we tried, made no sense at all. This sensation of whiplash suggested that we were moving much faster than ourselves when in actuality we could barely keep up with ourselves, and when in fact our generation was, by all popular accounts, going nowhere” (23).

from "META-LIGHT ON FILM"

in response to / a conversation with DuPlessis' DRAFTS

4 (IN) Which

"How white "all color" the color / of luminous death"

white death radiates unleavened

lifting cities elide the spectrum

of language spoken

"articulate a blank blanked space, a dotted dotty line"

moves by way of perception on a page of noted / pieces flake

onto, fall off the edge, eliminate margins what refuses here

to circulate circumnavigate

the binary

"each line is an inter; there is no action"

interstice / interstitial

in which there is no (character, plot, life-changing ring tones glittering) but think "otherhow" (yes I know you are listening)

digress in order to depend on sentiment -- in other words the shimmering ink spreads under the puddle dissolves each word

"inside the paper of the page / the iris watermark I suck"

" a brush flick of / shimmer" (I swear I used this word before turning the page)

"amid which nuzzle worms and shaking dew."

"cherry words" sprinkled over salad homemade dressing tells each story of how we came to be clever ugly cruel each crack in the sidewalk undisturbed (I can see the words before they appear control the page with my thoughts) patterns reflect moods of sky and social action

"on which words could be feeding the cow / inside the ruminant middle."

but the images clash here as I trip over the waves of possible action beheld in subsequent syllables others following others following ourselves folding our words into the palms of hands de-coded, uncolored

"the whole structure of transcendence" (show this)

BOLD BRAVE

a nice image is, simply, nice

show the juxtaposition of intersection and blasting

simultaneous. Require the detail of specific spots of memory

a scene I have constructed to pull toward

this present

an instant horizon imagines how to change what has already

but may not have to

always

to blast this or she

was never listening

when the original events were told

in verse

form

(pause: how to work in space of breaking

out of this pale face)

(the words fall off the edges flakes slipping away to the floor or where

blow around float away)

PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME by Ezra Pound

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,

London has swept about you this score years

And bright ships left you this or that in fee:

Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,

Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.

Great minds have sought you- lacking someone else.

You have been second always. Tragical?

No. You preferred it to the usual thing:

One dull man, dulling and uxorious,

One average mind- with one thought less, each year.

Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit

Hours, where something might have floated up.

And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.

You are a person of some interest, one comes to you

And takes strange gain away:

Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;

Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,

Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else

That might prove useful and yet never proves,

That never fits a corner or shows use,

Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:

The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;

Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,

These are your riches, your great store; and yet

For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,

Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:

In the slow float of differing light and deep,

No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,

Nothing that's quite your own.

Yet this is you. - -

DuPlessis on Pound

from Blue Studios


Chapter 6 "Propounding Modernist Maleness"

DuPlessis writes on Pound (the poet and his practices) as an example of "managing" the women poets, thinkers, artists that might have otherwise moved more fully into the modernist circles inhabited by Pound and his contemporaries. Specifically here, DuPlessis gives a reading of Pound's poem "Portrait d'une Femme" which is presented as a poem addressed to a generic woman (as muse, inspiration for and subject of the poem), but is more specifically, in actuality, about Florence Farr, a woman artist and actor who was active in the respective artistic and literary circles of her time (barely a generation earlier than Pound), and was on good terms with the poet Yeats, among others.

"A postformalist reading strategy...must look at the deep formal mechanisms of literary texts with New Critical Care yet link formal moves to the issues that purist New Criticism rejected: social substance, biographical traces, constructions of subjectivity, historical debates, and ideological strata" (122).

In the poem Pound moves Farr from status as real person (woman) to a place of "figured representation as muse" (124) and thereby removes any agency that she might have/had. Through both content and formal strategy, he presents the female figure of the poem "as virtual lack, inadvertent creativity, and compromised ability" (125). In this way (without agency and possession) she becomes the generic muse figure.

"The poem becomes a muted, backhanded tribute..." to her own modernist tendencies and strategies, both acknowledging and "disparaging" the "source" of the artistic production (of her own work and of her place as real in his poem) (126).

In her own life, Farr "played the muse but also mused the play" in her relationships with other artists and through her own "critical agency"; "she situated herself on both sides of the muse-agent compact" (127).

"...for females entering modernity, artistic agency and erotically charged inspiring with free love bravura are mixed together and give tremendous professional power and satisfaction in ways that the pure stereotyped form of "muse" wisdom-in-passivity-and-sublimation cannot articulate" (127).

For a time, it's possible that Pound felt like a rival to Farr for the attentions of Yeats on his own (Pound's) work (128).

"Pound produces [this] work by the thematic occlusion inside it of the work of the woman on whom the poem is based" (130).

"The real figure has been transformed from a critical, powerful, influential, outspoken, and original historical woman to a textual "femme"--one of a muse of modernism--an inadequate, anonymous and displaceable female figure...Pound's poem is a mechanism in the service of one kind of male subjectivity by the active creation of a shallow but provocative female muse for the containment of historical New Woman effervescence and achievement. This is an important transposition in the relationship of modernism to modernity. By representing a female figure in this way, Pound has contained, grounded, or stalled consideration of the impact-laden presence and agency of the "real person" on whom the poem was based, making the figure an Old Woman with useful muse properties, an exemplum of old stuff that still somehow inspires. Poetic representation masters this female figure, using poetic institutions like "muse" in order to deflect attention away from the historical achievements of Farr, the hidden subject" (133).

"Making an coequal historical woman into a poetic muse thins her...evokes the past of poetry as an institution obscuring her...the muse is a mechanism that takes a modern subject--a New Woman-- and changes her into an encumbered, static, nonmodern subject...moves Farr backward...creating female belatedness from a woman pioneer in order to consolidate a male pioneer from a man's sense of his own belatedness...The resistance to acknowledging females as modern subjects...may be said to begin, in Anglo-American modernism, with poems such as this one" (136).

"Pound uses poetic convention to protect himself from historical shifts around gender" (136).

madness is a medicine from which the length / has slid
--lyn hejinian, writing is an aid to memory


across the angle narrated along a sentence minute particulars find themselves placed/placing degrees of image of sense

rattles under each syllable like the convenient displaced notion confronting only fragments of what i can recall -- lemon-scented stickiness spread thin like an original idea -- the page refuses to interrogate just what she meant by the severe separation of tense

each frame holding her own against
the tendency to blast history

otherwise responding to winter a blast of mist breaks away the squirrells having eaten all of the bulbs your screeching quiet thought working its way toward multiple pages and i don't even know after all of this time how to create an argument - there was a change in the weather but it helps little how no one ever cultivated the precise moment of epiphany or the particular ability to record oneself onto the page or how to create a self with no memory - i have no stakes in this having little relevance to the way that limb moves and the blood daily a concrete description - of little more than what repeats - a circular fragmented present -

behind yellow ink

shiver

break this cold spell

through the language designed to inform

identity

or one’s place

in regard to many places

at the carnival, observe entangled color

and sparkle

marginalized images circulate

fit into pieces

of a modern suggestion

between spaces of syntax

and topography

the observer breathes crowded

air, dreams of the arctic,

finds letters dismembered

shuffled into a pile

and begins to assemble

glass

will see you over
through
those words

silence of words

misused misplaced

cannot see you
through
fog

(or use thesauraus to insert
appropriate inaction
here: _____)

mechanics

list sized over a multiple (sites of what's repressed

cannot recall

due to an imposition of language

and association

can happen to anyone

normal

psychical

do not liberate what is

not pleasure)

sense of how many indeed will participate

in the theoretical process

of forgetting

palindrome

the hysterical moment captures

bliss instinct particle of snow lodged between

scenes remembered

not eating, sleeping, an instance of

trauma cannot break through

the precipitation, a tuesday, a repetition

of intent hidden under the lid of mind

comes just before, or after the blue

haze of future caught through past

unmoving

still

good practice?

i'm trying to write "regular" poems... is it working? is it worth it?

no idea

just practicing, working on a new mss that will include more traditional "looking" things and i don't know what the content will be doing, from one to another, across the body of the thing...

am i giving up innovative use of form and space on the page?

no

though in either case that is/would be difficult to see/determine from this blog format

in any case, line breaks or no, listening to sound and movement of language on and off the page

dotting the landscape

Such pleasant office have we long pursued

Incumbent o’er the surface of past time

--W. Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book IV

because for each piece of snow

that fell against

on a day

when I was 11

a moment now like old crystal

the light hits

through the afternoon window

they were married in 1905

mittens on string threaded

through the arms of a

coat

limbs

impervious to everything

winter

at the instant of x

Brutes abstract not.

--John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

the way that I can put each number

against the cool of your skin

lingering above

cotton

the ratio matching nature

greek symbols across the sidewalk

like hopscotch for theorists

explaining each dimension

of yard grass limb

stretching over moments

from the very first

when you stood, brown corduroy

and i listed the mathematics

of inclination

thoreau, hawthorne, or how the west was won

the pace at which

or a train moving

progress

the movie was called dodge city and it was

cowboys cowboys

and guns

mayhem

lacking civic (drink responsibly)

the sheer movement into nothingness

an explosion

violent speed

of apocalypse

if the sheriff can’t save us

this time

relates

“Of this kind is the distinction betwixt figure and the body figur’d;

motion and the body mov’d.”

--David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

your marble sphere my box

dimensional

the words laid one on top

across

broken letters

an articulation of history through space

on the page

who was defeated

whose artifacts

weapons

kiss me present tense against shining marble

does not move

its form holding together

molecules

straddling

how much means

across letters objects

viewed from every direction

will not simply show and tell

sliver paper

how her mouth curved
the impossible
hands breaking black
parade
solid eyed blackbird (how many ways)
the taste of barbaric glass
drum silver and tell me
about the straw paper words
lurking hysterical
silver sliver inside
lice tinfoil glass
curves

giggle inside words
breaking children glitter

an offering
for em

‘i shed before walking out the door’ she writes in hopes that he stays this time, that he comes back that he begins to breathe a sense of place, fills his lungs with sitting still and listening. there are birds here. a river. a lake if you attempt the stroll. ‘this is my intention’ she thinks. ‘to distinguish you from the flowers. to paint you into this everyday.’ you breathe deep, deep enough to hold distant places in your lungs so deep those places fill your eyes, you don’t see her skin shiver before you turn into the heat, into the horizon, ask for more and return with nothing, or do you return, or does she imagine it, next to the kerosene lamp, pieces of pottery at her feet, watching what she remembers of your skin, revolving.

This

breaking bowl

this bowl falling and breaking

broken and lying at my feet

is this your bowl

shards i’m afraid

only shards are left

and pieces

pieces of shards of this bowl

at my feet

07 - thought 1 -

be in the moment, present tense, first word best word, a rose is a rose is all you can do is start here, keep starting, consider this, and consider...

writing having fallen off toward the end of a semester... a bind not simply double but multiple...which moment in which what occurs that may or not be writing. to write, to think, to read...to do homework and write something else...

begin this year again. writing. there is little hope in this present/future tense for publishing... no single pieces, no whole books. dusty manuscripts. lovely and friendly rejection notes. this accumulation of historical (all moments until this one particular, every particular moment turning into history, into memory if i could remember other than this, single, instant), pieces of, unmoving, seeming circular in one single space.

begin again. continue to begin. continue with the single instant.

picasso's mirror

Mirror framing blue lines a circle swirl of green can you see how this moves like an image reflected like present and past a single moment the tip of green a wave frames white or transparent so called glass background of squares circles she leans her head away from so called glass reflects pale skin a single strand of hair (yellow) tinged cannot see through this at all red like the horizon of

flowered walls
intend
concrete
old ballroom glass
lights shimmer
(violently, lovingly, ferociously, lovely)
a thought to its third degree
maintains itself
green
(the wind tears chill)
old hotels and a river
without politics
waits for the return
of politics
and coffee
a red chair
ambiguous sentiments
and dusk

hold my hand yellow moment
juggling fire outside the window
a crowded afternoon
start again

tanbourines clang like faces
on the mall
demonstrate
organge jumpsuits represent
clang like without faces
corner crimes

how do you feel about squares
with dotted line edges
as if each square
can be punched
out

80 words without dialogue

She stood at the edge of a precipice, between one moment and the next, a sailboat named “Joy-Luck” passed on the river below. The sound of road construction filled the air. Smashing concrete. Trucks. Trucks backing up. Machinery. Along the river the three-lane highway turned to four, dust floated and swirled around her 8th floor terrace, and she realized that joy and luck never intertwine, even if the boat moving toward the distance could have taken her, at least, closer.

102 words and some symbols

She is taking a scissor to every word, slicing individual letters. Tatters of ink stain her fingers, her lips, she presses each letter to her tongue to make it stick, presses the characters between sheets of wax paper, irons, lets it cool. The waxed alphabet in its variety of shades and fonts, serif, sans serif, bold, capitalized, lower case, is ready for the archives. “This will make all the difference,” she says to the bird who only speaks letters. “T,” he replies. “There will be no future of words if we don’t protect the letters,” she tells him. “S,” he squeaks. “D.” “J.” “G.”

a response

misconstrue
your grade
(this poem is more like a “C” poem)
the paper on foucault, however
subjective
use more images
fragments of care like the falling branches on my infected
ash tree
can you settle for a page
on which
every word begins with “M”
merry maids misled mist monday moving maintenance maneuvers
i am just thinking out loud here
usually it works best in line
breaks
a shadow of a leaf
(his burning anticipation, the fullness of the flower’s scent,
insert additional lines here)
a dog is a dog is a dog
until the continuum of history becomes
no such thing
and baseball teams win when the city most “needs” to feel
like a winning city
like a real team
like a reasonable argument
logically
or
you cannot respond
to what has not been summarized
properly

sunday in the rain

what i’ve told you has been otherwise in circulation
history repeats
the fragmentation of
details
which red it was or the date was sometime in September
an object
leaf, stroke, yarn
connected to 100 buttons scattered
across the floor a series
of tests to determine in which system
each button
would like
to participate
a sense of order
the pattern becomes jumbled
once the buttons move too closely
together
at velocity
scattered repeats of
fragmentation
the details of which
would require
every square to be highlighted
in red

Perennial

The words are in Japanese
triangles
triangular

Step out of your dichotomy and we will begin translation

1. the words are not the words themselves but representations
of words formerly used as words

2. the words are images of the history from which the language of images

there should of course be a number 3

3. place your bets: sine, cosine, the inversion of any referent
(having never been to Japan)

The story is of a woman, a drifter, only walked by the light of the moon
(having heard this before, again, it becomes apparent)
The drifter is a woman with no language, or no history
Can one have history
without language?

Depending on the time of the moon’s rising and setting witnesses saw her pass
in any weather
nameless to others having never spoken

In the original description the subject is verbena, and its smell
In subsequent descriptions
Or the ratio, dependent on the appropriate angle

memo

these slender pieces
of
molecule
molecule
drip
gravity holds us together

his body was filled
with the chemicals that make up flame retardant

your black saturn
so shiny and new
forgive me

pass this on to the future

the plums i didn’t eat for lunch
not sweet
fresh from the farm

have we not (don’t say evolved, don’t say adapted)
been selected for this
all along
particulates
of a symphony for example (the one repeated/repeatable refrain)

can you hum the entire movement?

an ode
to an old
acquaintance

we swallow
and breathe
in a dangerously close space

proximity of red tiles
a recording device
lines on a road
separate me (green subaru)
from

hejinian exercise 2

take a line from a piece in hejinian's My Life and use it to begin a piece of your own writing:

i was in a room with the particulars of which a later nostalgia might be formed. neon lights. slot machines. the music hum twirl fantasy notes of casino bliss begin here as in a moment before gold squares on the floor, the detail broken each bead of light. or the chandeliers dangle colored glass reflects a trill shimmer of not quite melody parading endlessly like a dream until the clowns come in--come into the dream--wild haired and manic singing nursery rhymes roaming to the beat of coins lost to the intention of what might still, in this moment, tomorrow.

hejinian exercise 1

take a line from a piece in hejinian's My Life and use it to begin a piece of your own writing:

The afternoon happens, crowded and therefore endless. A mistake of what otherwise mingles painful. Red, pinched against a backdrop of everyday abuse, abuse, how long can they hold you in a cell the size of a coffin? Slipping again, he said like bombs behind you, or in your background, real or otherwise. She said turtles, and lavender. I wrote of Picasso once, and lavender, but this is not on the news. Of note is the four years away, four years in isolation, four years of endless happening, crowding ideas of a day that came otherwise before, again, today.

the importance of writing (exercises)

samar came to my classes today to talk to the creative writing students. she read a fabulous piece that weaved together her own conflicting/ed feelings and some information about the start and continuation of the war in lebanon, her family in lebanon and in dearborn, her time at an artist community so physically distanced from the events she was otherwise so connected with(and simultaneously disconnected from). Her writing in this piece moves and jumps, slows and lingers, as the words and lines on the page both take up space and leave space open to sound, to feeling, to the space of space itself. the language both makes connections and is unable to connect as the words physically exist together up-close, and separate from one another as a reader moves, as samar read aloud, from page to page.

although, as she says and i agree, the point of writing is to write. i also contend that she needs to start putting a book together because the rest of us are going to want to read and hear more of her work.

Following this, i'll include my own writing responses to the writing exercises she gave to the students.

on a day of the week

has

a.) too much
b.) enough
c.) not enough

been written about sept 11?


how long can we, should we, do we have to

a.) reminisce
b.) testify
c.) re-live
d.) conspiracy-orize
?


Where

a.) were you
b.) are you
c.) do you plan to be

while the world

on a monday.


fill in any or no blanks at your discretion.

sun today

at last the purple has become you

beauty (or define: the conditions of the aesthetic
regarding history regarding divided language)

ordinary is more strange than strange

hence, the purple

and how you used to wear that silk scarf around your neck
like a famous poet
reading aloud
singing to a mismatched piano
a room full of syllables

(you becoming what i always imagined the purple represented)

trace the moments intersecting with moments
lay these out on a chart
pinpoint each significance with a different colored pin
each point of our history

8:20

after thought
an image
scented

where have you been, i'm looking

foward, around a constellation of minutes
that may or not
exist

yesterday

an exercise

Take the first book you encounter (Thalia Field's Incarnate: Story Material; I pick it up from the top of one pile as I was across the room...)

Choose 10 words (randomly, flipping pages back and forth... a variety of nouns and other things...)

Write something

Spell
Slug
Sewers
Concrete
Salt or fog
Circuit
Violet
Warehouse
Cell
Chronic

Notice: the s and c words…. Happenstance


chronic infatuation in a space of salt and fog,
violet: a circuit relays individual blades
confined to the safety measures
of unrequited electricity.

a warehouse, a cell, a concrete passage
of misinformation,
containing only walls (painted violet), sewers
for what finds its way out
into the words into the world,

the otherwise chronic
stare from afar, lingering,
shielding eyes that burn too close,

from behind walls a slug moves through causes a stain
on the floor,
imagine,
when the light appears,
what color it will be.

an activity

The hanging folder of time carried through contents filled

No that’s too wordy

There is a lot of crap in that folder

Green cover

Sage is my new color

A list of nouns…hat, icicle, (lost) acquaintance, (on a) day (like) today, (pink) mold, scissors

Cover to cover and between the sheets

I want to tell you also that the contemporary condition in which I find myself nameless

A difference of (seeming) together but veiling parts, my fragment

On the shelf, next to ________’s brilliant __________

Take the list of words

Sentences

Step 3 of the paragraph completion process

Just the facts

And the nouns

Tomorrow another part

Adverbs

Help to make the sentence

whole

these hard economic times or this house is very large

Well the summer’s come to an end and now rain and the local animal shelters are filled to capacity.

I only had a cat once when I was young. It wandered onto the porch. Then wandered into the house. We fed it. I loved it. I think one day my mom found it dead in the basement. I shouldn’t say “it.” This cat had identity. He. We called him Benny for some reason, some particular reason now unknown to me. She told us he was hit by a car. Buried him in the backyard under the tire swing under the big walnut tree in the very back corner.

Before that, years before, I had a dog. It my mind he looks like one of those long-haired, black and white sheep-herding dogs of some kind. But I think he was really all mixed up. He was good, we were friends. But he liked to escape the yard and bite people. After my mom had to pick him up from the pound a couple of times, she took him in to stay. I don’t think she made up any stories about this. Maybe I was too young to argue.

My mom’s youngest sister, the youngest of 5 girls had a dog as a child. The dog died. They told her he was sent off to be a seeing-eyed dog for blind kids. She believed this until she was well into her adult years.

The Dearborn animal shelter is housing cats in trailers out back because it is overfilled. A cat you can leave home alone. But I wonder, how would I like a cat, and how would the cat like me?

the end of something, or

to start again

or

the circularity of

this

cultural or moral dilema?

Ellen writes,

But, I was reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by
Chuck Klosterman, and I ran across this question:

"Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one
box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the
other, Adolph Hitler's skull. You have to select one
of these items for your home. If you select the
turtle, you can't give it away and you have to keep it
alive for two years; if either of these parameters are
not met, you will be fined $999 by the state. If you
select Hitler's skull, you are required to display it
in a semi-prominent location in your living room for
the same amount of time, although you will be paid a
stipend of $120 per month for doing so. Display of
the skull must be apolitical. Which option do you
select?" (126)

So, kids, which one do you choose? I do want you to
answer me this one. Let's pretend that we aren't
students and that $120 a month wouldn't matter all
that much to us--or is something we could live
without. Would you rather have the turtle or the
skull . . . and WHY??


and I respond:
see link: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/06/20060606_2.asp

...in response to the question posed... there is some controversy about this new type of violent video game, and particularly this Super Columbine Massacre...the question of even making such a thing, just the thought of such a game is disturbing. How can a game of this title, or how could a hitler head displayed, ever be neutral/apolitical, or even educational? That is the question here; can Super Columbine Massacre, in which the players take on the personas of the killer kids, be educational and teach players about the negative consequences of violence, about life as a teen, about how not to handle their problems at school and whatever? Does the game give players an outlet to redirect their angst and anxiety? The creator of the game says he does not at all condone violence, but that he was one of those kids in high school who was pushed around too, and he can then on some level identify with Dylan and Eric. Is that scarry and disturbing? Or is it better to actually say things like that out loud; should we not talk more to kids who can identify with the killers and help them to not be killers too? Or should we just give them more video games to play? Because of course the other question is whether or not the creator has exploited the event for the purpose of making and marketing a new game and making some money (good job on his part; controversy always sells more product...), though the game is free to download...so who knows about all of that. I haven't tried the game, but the interview with the creator is intriguing... see what you think.

I think it is valid to note also that if you ignore the skull, keep it in the closet, eventually you will forget about it... having hitler, or columbine, on display, potentially reminds (and continually educates) us about what happened, what can happen, etc. But where does the line fall between educating for the good and encouraging something else? Or, is there a difference here b/c Hitler/Holocaust happened so much longer ago than Columbine...is there a settle-in-to-history issue at hand too? A need for some distance-time. But then, who decides that?

Personally, I have given in totally to the oppressive capitalist forces around me and so I would display the skull and pocket the money. Or I would just go get a real job at Walmart... I don't know, however, if I'll take up video games anytime soon.

poem

recite yellow


1.
down ice steps to move complete frozen aside from what flows underneath what moves over the top of blue ice falling from edges of rock every which way sensing you as i awoke alone remembering your fingertips imagine you writing the score for this as if it were a movie into the future of one question after another i repeat these words in front of the icy stairs how does one get back up or maintain extra padding over skin just in case winter which yes flows through gel ink into pens compete with the new technologies whisper i was saying morning after every other wherever you may or may not be deliciously singing through the film scene by scene


2.
vanish or curtains layer into the cold on sand beaches only partly in ice water i’m asking what’s been said recently the woman who refrains from my lavender where are the shining moments blanket or blue flower material with a zipper saying now the intricate directions of lace as satin trim on the collars of thermal under or if you prefer to shop at second hand stores be sure to have relatives help and remember to layer


3.
every other wherever you may or may not be deliciously singing through the film scene by scene vanish or curtains


4.
have all come and gone at one time yellow covered texts assent to sleeping all hours ignorant of noise and sliding ugly neighbors before dawn recite yellow mix with red trim, while wearing your best or at least a handed over sweater plaid, i dare say, peeks out of the closet my coat i declare blue with black like a bruise worn year after year what warmth have you of all places in january oh wind whispering wild what wake you at this hour?

etc.

Also, if you haven't checked lately, please see the cats' report on the da vinci Code, if you haven't seen the movie, this review might help you decide to go or not:

Lisablog

poetry stuff today

as in literally today, june 2 i think it is...funny if i get that wrong and the blogger heading gets it right... whatever, it's summer...

here's something interesting, find of the day:

http://jacketmagazine.com/29/duplessis-d73.html

a long piece by r. du p. no comment at the moment, working on flipping virtual pages, a rare computer-time activity...but notice the photo of r.d.p. at the bottom esp. since i've loved her for some time and never saw her in person... like when you have favorite radio voices...i loved ray suarez when he did that talk of the nation years back...

in any case, her new book: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work is coming soon from Alabama Press

see
Silliman's blog for the pic of the cover, you can also go to the Alabama site

I've also learned that Alabama will reprint The Pink Guitar...yeah!

Otherwise, to continue randomly in the swing of contemporary poetics which is rarely actually random in the sense that one might think of random as, well, random, when it is actually, random that is, ultimately organized and tends (or things that are considered random tend) to fall into patterns and predictable 'structures' or whatnot. To continue then, following my line of thought at the moment which is this actual moment of warm-sun pre-summer, post-margarita evening, having been reading Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary, I'll include something below:

from "All She Wrote" this is how I feel most days...

"The untied parcel service never delivered. I regret to say I'm unable to reply to your unespressed desires. I didn't get the book you sent. By the way, my computer was stolen. Now I'm unable to process words. I suffer from aphasia."

But whether she articulates or simply has the dictionary do it for her, through this book we are hit with one powerful yet simple yet subtle yet strong line of language after another. Language should be sensual, or we should have a sensual relationship with language and vocabulary and the sounds and feel of words. Go to the dictionary, Mullen tells us, just pick up the damn dusty book and have a read, or a sleep.

from "Sleeping with the Dictionary":

...the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language.

...all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illumiunated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet's nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work.


ok, so it may be a bit heavy on the overused poetic language...but the whole piece is dense with "this dictum that can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover's name." I guess you have to work through the moving and rhythmic syllables and sounds of the poems surrounding this particular piece and then maybe it is less dreamers and penetration and more, well, motivating you to turn back the covers and crawl in with some one special of a book of ("meandering" and "migratory") words.

I think some of my students actually opened some dictionaries they may or not have used in a while... thanks, Harryette.

Summer Blogging-on Lisa Jarnot

Well, so now that composition class is over, what's to blog about? Indeed, I can only do this while sitting here next to the window in the sun. It's time to talk about poetry. It is summer after all...

Having just read, and discussed with my class, Lisa Jarnot's Black Dog Songs. Didn't know if I liked it at first. The class was mixed in their responses. One girl didn't like it b/c as a person with ADD and some type of dyslexia she had a hard time with all of the repetition and seeming nonsense writing. Jarnot goes for the repitition kill that's for sure. And seeming nonsense is the point at times. She writes a poem for Dick Cheney, I'll start it here--actually by the time I finish I will have copied the whole thing b/c it's quick and fun...

Dumb Duke Death

down dire
death day
dim dale
ding dong
dame chase
cheap date
dance dodge
do dive
dull duck
do doze
dork deal
door dirge
chip cheer
dusk dew
duke duel
dab dash
chin chink
dim dark
dog dawn
dank dive
deep debt
dour dose
deem dead
ding dong
dug dirt
ditch dib
chimp chore
damp dank
death do
dead deal
duck dell
do deem
dawn down
dark deep
dog dawn
dig ditch
deed done
dead duke
ding dong

Just the title makes me thing of Ronald Reagan (via John Wayne wasn't he called the Duke or some such thing, that's what I think of) and Darth Vader like dark death, or maybe I just associate Cheney with Darth Vader but, yes, the death thing comes up a lot in the poem too. You've got your usual sound and alliteration stuff in there too, the two word lines with single syllable words, the repitition of 'ding dong' for instance, the animals (chimp chore...)...read and make of it what you will. But this poem is the 5th in the series called "My Terrorist Notebook," the introduction to which is a poem in a prose block that may be poem or prose introduction or neither or both that in any case begins "This is the beginning of my terrorist notebook--all terrorism all the time." And ends with some talk about we the terrorists blowing up all the little mousies...and the mousie moon...and it sort of ends in this totally open way so that what comes after, can be anything.

In class we talked about the use of animals in the poems throughout the book as possibly allegorical. She is making some political commentary, overt in her references to figures like Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld but less so in the content of the poems (as in these are not directly, old school political poems). How and why do the animals figure in, stand in for people or as 'symbolic' for lack of anything better, but they are not symbolic, not in the old poetry way, rather they point around and point toward (multiple) possibility. The animals give us a way to see and hear differently. The animals detach from our otherwise reality and we don't realize we are even more in reality through our interactions with the animals in the poems...not so weird as that sounds. Jarnot doesn't like animals weirdly... but when we get to the sestina that invokes Noah and the Flood we may or not realize we are learning something here.

But before what may or not be a reference to the flood, we have this section called "They" which includes poems that seem to parody something........ah ha, brilliant.....ok, so there are many ways to read these and indeed we had some varied interpretations in our class. One of our favorites was "They Loved Paperclips" and it begins "They loved harmony they loved ant hills they loved food and cookies and harpoons they loved the sound of laces of the shoes and snow..." The section then ends with the sestina called "Story" which may or not be about the flood, but it repeats versions of lines about rain, and ships built in stories about rain...and you get the idea. There are a lot of animals here too. And you get this past tense sense, what we also talked about with the "They" poems, that you could read these as some sort of parody of silly (suburbanites) contemporary people who talk and don't mean anything ("Oh, I love that, I love this, I love Starbucks...") and nothing is important b/c everything is made important, or some such thing. But you also get this past tense sense, like looking back (after the apocalypse) everything looks nice and wonderful ("I loved that stapler!") before it was gone before everything was wiped out...This section, following the "Terrorist Notebook" ends with the story which ends with the lines:

that had always been the trees, that had been there near the sun,
that had harbored all the birds, having eaten what was ate,
inside the rain near little ships with sheep in shadows of the sun.


more on the last section of the book later....oh, but in the meantime, check out Lisa's Blog: http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/lisajarnot/blog/