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Jill Darling

Frog Island Press

English Department 612 Pray-Harrold

Eastern Michigan University

Ypsilanti, MI 48197

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Sex in the Library is an anthology of nine provocative, text-based performance pieces by members of the Writing for Performance class at Eastern Michigan University (Winter 2012). These texts represent an extensive range of textual and performance strategies examined and actualized over the course of the semester. The texts are captivating on the page: visually, linguistically, syntactically, and in terms of their performative, textual presentations. Each piece further points to its own dramatic realization off the page. From a musical score to an improvisational divination, the work included here is smart and dynamic, serious and hilarious, and of the caliber and genre-busting spirit of great Poets Theater work. Sex in the Library is a textual event indicative of many further off-page events to come.

Table of Contents

Emily Clarkson
Sound of Modern Silence                   

Emily Riopelle
The Monster                        

Kay Crawford                       

Melissa Bowling
What Was Once a Woman                   

G. Matthew Mapes
(rhetoric) X (labor) : an identity play in one act   

Matt Catania
iSpy and Sorel                       

Jonah D. Mixon-Webster
And We Made Them Kings                

Jill Darling
Mercury’s Conjunction to Venus               

Miranda Metelksi 


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i will tell him. on my own terms. in specific language. articulate the details.  i will show him. precisely. in no uncertain terms. explicitly. all of my hypotheses. conclusions. deductions. the process of logic. and support. for each point. i make each point with evidence. data. examples. rational explication. calm denotation. i explain to him my intention. my suppositions. my interests in the matter. my projections. forecasts. predictions. lay out my research. findings. supporting materials. i set up an organizational flow of content. draw connections. use transitions. make everything transparent. apparent. clear. decisive. i present him with my results. process plus product. trajectory. time line. goals. procedures. an array of clarity. indisputable. unanswerable. without question.

if she said. and then i said. and we agreed. or had a conversation. argued. a tone of voice. i would say. she would respond. we had this talk before. i tell her. she explains. we sigh. i yell. i apologize. i yell at the dog. i apologize for being loud. she said. in silence. i replied. in signs. if she intended. i would concur.

if you were here. I would tell you purple. if you were otherwise. I would be here. if purple were a name. I would recall childhood memories. if I were feeling yellow. you would return. if you returned. I would be here. if I return. we would meet at purple. if purple returned. we would have a conversation. if I ignored purple. you would bring the flowers. if I were here and you returned. there I would feel orange. if I were orange then I would know you were on your way. if I were on a journey. you would find me. if I met you there. we would celebrate yellow. if purple interceded. we would have a truce. if we draw up the papers. everyone will be happy. if we take another journey. no one will go astray. if we find each other. we will call all of the colors. if we shade our emotions with the pastels. it will rain in neon. if we draw out lime green and hot pink. we can be sure to find a new path. on any new path. we will eat skittles.

Monday Poetry at Noon at WSU

Department of English @ Noon Reading Series 2012: April 9, 2012 

Rob Halpern and Jill Darling

Date: Monday, April 9, 2012, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Location: 10th Floor Conference Room, 5057 Woodward Avenue

Rob Halpern is the author of two books of poems, Rumored Place (Krupskaya 2004), which was nominated for a California Book Award, and Disaster Suites (Palm Press 2009), as well as several chapbooks, including Weak Link (Slack Buddha 2009) and Imaginary Politics (TapRoot Editions 2008). 

Jill Darling is a recent Ph.D. graduate of the English Department. She has published Solve For and Begin with May.

Free and open to the public.

at 3am

sometimes reading student blog responses to readings we do for class makes me smile out loud... especially when I'm reading at 3am...

Da fuq? Where'd the bass line go?

write a story that contains a variety of words. Cage is like Stein and then some. silence or nothingness. the space between the composition and the performance. each line will be performed for one second. one after another. the lecture is indeterminate. the performance is indeterminate. there are instructions. however the outcome is indeterminate. this is an example. i repeat. the example of nothingness. to say everything to say it all. someone said that. in silence it seems as if nothing is said. a cough. a scratch. turning pages. sound happens. life happens. don't play music over the text but fill in the spaces. or let the space resonate. it seems as if we are getting nowhere. over the course of things. a certain presence. nowhere but here. write a story that contains a multitude of sounds. a cacophony of climax. resounding resolution. cackling characters. a sizzling scene. the silence and singing space of narrative. in line breaks or dense blocks of text the page is a visual performance of language. performance of words and sound on paper. spilling into a three dimensional performance in the world.

story

When I take vacation I vacate. Or lean to the side, continuously. I can tell you, this is not a confession. It is an endeavor. To search for the limits of vacation, in terms of time and space. Where once was a beach, a tree, a broken heart, now exists a circle of accent and shades of tropical color. Where once existed optimism and woven dresses, now entails the continuum of gendered variation, skins layered with complexity. I was once heading in every direction. Leaving from every which way, or toward any other means of communication, when I decided. To vacate. The verb. Empty. Flee. Undo. Undone. Without. Dismissed. Disappeared. Once I went to the woods. Grew beans. Lived in a cabin. Once I went to the sea. Caught fish. A fish. Followed that fish to my death. Once I traveled to Venice. Winding streets, lost forever to the present. Once I hid in an attic and wrote poems for months on end. Once I traveled to Florida. Found love. Lost it. And traveled home again, alone. Once, even the horizon had become too much. Leaning, further on, against the end of days, I can tell you, this is a mystery story. Science fiction contained by metaphors of the past. Having left only traces, contained by syntax. And vertical form. In this space, having vacated every other, I found conflict. And resolved to continue on.

this invisible

i told you there may have been some sort of rhetoric

involved, in the combination of

events, toward the evolution of

circumstances

you cannot see it, but i know it like

thunder, and the accumulation of

sentences, subject, verb, a clarity of

intention, what was said and wasn't

said, quietly misarticulated and a

suggestion for more (words sounds metaphor)

take license with the only keys available so that

circumstances

will not determine outside of each structure of

feeling

at the top of the tallest building
array of color
film cut: Berlin in the 80s
cut again: Paris
wonder in image fragments
light swirl my stomach
from a building above, a prerogative
interrogate, flash image of
apartments
streets, littered with color
crumbling like graffiti from
the wall, cut
to a poet speaking in verse
verses likes lines of the film
in 16mm, and sliced, like a layer
of fog, celluloid fantasy of the real
viewer silent frame by frame
ventriloquises her own dialogue
over images of glen close, faded
a ghost of features: eyes, lips
in slow motion, nearly stopped
circus music, and the distraction of
make believe, suspended belief
words fall from glen's hair
secretly

how detroit is half full, of color, graffiti lines etched
on a postcard, coral against blue, outline of a skyscraper

a skyscraper, against a forest, can you hear it, in color
like graffiti that is art, publicly, on a wall, that is a city

a quixotic illusion of space, on a horse or in a dream
a city that is a heart full of water, pumping, like life in the veins of an ocean

an ocean of coral colored art, on posters that surround the city
of water, against a building of glass and dreams, or excursions

from one story into another, an adventure etched in lines
on a wall, against a city, as large as Quixote, as real as the fantastical

postcard, layered in blues, pumping like veins half full
of illusion and scenery, a windmill falling, a knight striving

etched in opposite pages, of space, layered in colored graffiti
like an ocean, told on walls, in grooves, at the very tip of the tallest building

instrumental imaginings
while the blue girl swims toward
death, she gurgles, breathing, blotches
for skin, and marshmallows
melting into her lips and washed
away, like the blue girl, enclosed with
secrets, others' mystery or guilt
like sugar, melting on her lips, washed
away, secrets of a life, of a blue
wave, ebbing and flowing
toward or away from saving, a living
and dying, intrumental to the succession
of imagined realities, like secrets, held
in the chests, of the drowned

a body or a voice

reading Lolita. the body. the disembodied. the narrative voice in first or third person. Lolita is not a voice. is not a point of view. is an object of the narrative. of narrative desire. of desire. Lolita is a fantasy. a possession. to be. possessed. tamed. those nymphets are driving me crazy (Humbert.) I will find out the mystery, the evil, why they possess me, by possessing them (Humbert). Her. she is them. the nymphets. this is an obsession. an addiction. but it is not. evil. evil handsome charming violent offense. the body or the voice. a voice of a nation. the landscape of a country, before the interstate system. from one highway to another. through one town and another. visiting one and then another and then another tourist trap, scenic byway, historical monument, cave, lake, hotel, marked hotspot on the map, famous attraction, whatnot. driving. reading. the body. a narrative of lack. lacking it's own main character. not a character. a voice. not even a voice. an idea of a voiced desire. fantastical elimination of subjectivity and free will. voice subject to constraints of power and gender. a manipulation of rational emotion. intoxication of power. possessing and containing. creating a void of a body, of a life, of a point of view. narrative homicide, gradual and violent torture.

untitled

this is part of a longer fictional prose narrative work I am playing with... don't know what it is or where it's going, but I just know that it's continuing, at the moment, which pieces like this...


I brought some envelopes with me this time. And then I ran into the clowns. Clowns for jesus. Really they were congregating on the corner, in their full body patterned clown suits, their faces painted about grey beards and facial hair, and two of them used canes to balance and walk around. I got so distracted when I saw the clowns that I gave them each an envelope, told them thank you for helping to save the world from evil, and then proceeded to give the rest of the envelopes as alms in the nearest church. By the time I got to the parade I had little to do but hand out beads and drink cold sweet tea while the marching bands passed by. I believe I will embark on a new mission to fill red envelopes with messages of immanent despair. I mean, when the refineries are burning at full blast and the plastic cups turn to mountains in the muddy street in front of our most colorful houses, then it can only lead to one thing. Or a series of things that include bad air and damaged emotions. In the future we will negotiate with trees, for oxygen and shared ingredients for color.

I am rolling in
punctuation
pause
dog bark
dog bark
a semicolon seems best here, describe
a sentence on either side
or a hyphen
the dog on a leash
on a leash
tamed by a period, question
mark why are we sitting here when
there is snow
falling over ellipses
ellipses
more ellipses . . . i get in trouble
for this when I speak
in ellipses
rolling over spaces
breaking
every
thought
I perform in quotation(s)
mark the end
of each line
the line that signals a line break
in prose
gathered, like a block quote
according to MLA
swimming through textual
notation
that has little to do
nothing do to
has not anything to do
with the content
of listening
and pleasure
the dog does a dance
a thought bubble above her head
speaks
syntactically
incorrect
properly
punctuated
desires

on Lolita

Having recently finished reading Lolita for the first time all the way through, it swirls around in my head. It is a heart wrenching story represented in a (meta) fictional/philosophical/psychological way that enacts the need for art in the articulation of experience. It is a book "about" aesthetics and morals, maybe, but it is also really a work that ruminates on, and examines, the relationships between language, human suffering, psychology, power, gender, and contemporary American life. The novel is painful and instigates potentially intense emotional responses in its depiction of power (H.H., language) and lack (Lolita, lack of language/point of view), and in its narrative arc that begins with the ending of death and destroyed lives. And yes, the writing itself keeps one engaged and moving through this brilliantly articulated psychological thriller while simultaneously tearing at its reader from the inside out.


from the Foreword:

This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual"; and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise. I have no intention to glorify "H.H." No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. he is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author! (5)


There was the day, during out first trip--our first circle of paradise--when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn--to mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart on--a roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face...that look I cannot exactly describe...an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration--and every limit presupposes something beyond it--hence the neutral illumination. And when you bear in mind that these were the raised eyebrows and parted lips of a child, you may better appreciate what depths of calculated carnality, what reflected despair, restrained me from falling at her dear feet and dissolving in human tears, and sacrificing my jealousy to whatever pleasure Lolita might hope to derive from mixing with dirty and dangerous children in an outside world that was real to her. (283-84)


Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of a blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H. and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. (309)

dear mr. beckett

I have been waiting here, in this airport, in this state, in this state of mixed emotion, in this layered existence of sexual and independent free-thinking and socially programmed subject, in a moment of entirely stalled and stale air, under the spell of romance and flowered scents, under the impression that something good comes to those who wait, or who work, or who let go of attachment, under the guise of confidence and balance, under a bridge to nowhere and everywhere at once, for something to happen or for everything to stop, for someone to feed me, to sing to me, to call me confidant and trusted soul, for an array of color such that stops sadness and anger indefinitely, for an assertion of something genuine, for a promise of ecology that doesn’t end in chaos and death, for a promise of peace or negotiated treaty among my pet fish who battle for each pellet of food, for a sign of luck or love to accompany the dice, for the dice to roll splendid, for the splendid dice to result in hopes and dreams, for the dreams of splendid dice to open doors and sell cars and make poems and create choirs that inspire lady luck to become man’s skilled feminine side, for whitney to love indefinitely and intimately through a gospel incantation that stops time puts an end to this waiting, for an extended moment of nostalgia in which we remember the real or unreal situation of ethical thinking, for books covered in orange like Zami’s stories of intimate awareness, for intimacy that is more like trust and personal intellectual understanding, for each tree to begin blooming with the knowledge that on a Sunday anything is possible if one is able simply to suspend time, disbelief, and expectation for previously contrived plans, the wait for which may linger on.

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at Dusie :

http://www.dusie.org/issue12.html

we are hardly finishing anything these days. becoming distracted by jesus and whether or not he supports planned parenthood. they help women. blasphemy. they give out condoms. hypocrisy. they talk to teens who have nowhere else to go. sin sin sin. the babies will save us. or be the end of us. what do you care megachurch with your money and your fancy pop music? the babies I’m talking about are metaphorical or sometimes not babies at all. the students know this, at least until they are not students any longer. how many millions did you make last year and did you declare it on your taxes? most of my tax money helps fund this country. if you don’t pay taxes how can you claim to support anything. you are in favor of nothing except your own money. what’s in your wallet? hypocrisy? blasphemy? that’s a silly question. rhetorical then. you are a blasphemer. I won’t tell your church. but know this, someone will check your pockets and then they will know. you can’t trade one idea for another when you have already gone on record. the poor people will never wander over to your camp. you are finishing what you haven’t even begun. not properly. but it is better this way. better that we can all see this. you steal ideas from music stars and perform your own image. but your image is incomplete. you don’t even know who sang that song. and apparently you didn’t even listen to the lyrics. since you’ve never struggled or overcome anything.  freedom is another word for nothing left to lose. ok, well that’s a different song, of course. one decade or another. at this point S would say I am on a box. soapy. my own soap opera (since I auditioned for all of the others and no one would have me). fortunately S is out of town this week. well, but I miss her. sometimes I get on the box just so she will reign me back in. next time I hope she will just take me with her whether I protest or not. I do love vegas at this time of year. but I am busy anticipating a political mission. planning implementation. performing in advance the rituals of action. act up. occupy this. stuff those envelopes.