each crystal turning
toward a hint
knowing passersby shed
caffeine while i no longer
faces in a crowd
detail relation between
unnoticed and meaning
carried shining like
nickels
held firm
while every minute
sheds
a rock displaced
changing
the landscape

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Fugue of Death
by Paul Celan Translated by Christopher Middleton
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night we drink it and drink it we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete he writes it and walks from the house the stars glitter he whistles his dogs up he whistles his Jews out and orders a grave to be dug in the earth he commands us strike up for the dance Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you in the morning at noon we drink you at nightfall drink you and drink you A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete Your ashen hair Shulamith we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there He shouts stab deeper in earth you there and you others you sing and you play he grabs at the iron in his belt and swings it and blue are his eyes stab deeper your spades you there and you others play on for the dancing Black milk of daybreak we drink you at nightfall we drink you at noon in the mornings we drink you at nightfall drink you and drink you a man in the house your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents He shouts play sweeter death's music death comes as a master from Germany he shouts stroke darker the strings and as smoke you shall climb to the sky then you'll have a grave in the clouds it is ample to lie there Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon death comes as a master from Germany we drink you at nightfall and morning we drink you and drink you a master from Germany death comes with eyes that are blue with a bullet of lead he will hit in the mark he will hit you a man in the house your golden hair Margarete he hunts us down with his dogs in the sky he gives us a grave he plays with the serpents and dreams death comes as a master from Germany your golden hair Margarete your ashen hair Shulamith.
By Paul Celan, translated by Christopher Middleton, and published by HarperCollins in The Poetry of Our Own World, edited by Jeffrey Pain. © 2000 by Christopher Middleton. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Judith Butler

Although we are compelled to give an account of our various selves, the structural conditions of that account will turn out to make a full such giving impossible. The singular body to which a narrative refers cannot be captured by a full narration, not only because the body has a formative history that remains irrecoverable by reflection, but because primary relations are formative in ways that produce a necessary opacity in our understanding of ourselves. An account of oneself is always given to another, whether conjured or existing, and this other establishes the scene of address as a more primary ethical relation than a reflexive effort to give an account of oneself. Moreover, the very terms by which we give an account, by which we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves and to others, are not of our making. They are social in character, and they establish social norms, a domain of unfreedom and substitutability within which our “singular” stories are told. (Giving an Account of Oneself 20-21)

from The Geographical History of America

by G. Stein


Volume I

Money is what words are.
Words are what money is.
Is money what words are
Are words what money is.
There can be no romance without nature, there can be no money without words.
There can be nature without words.
Nature is here used in the sense of natural scenery and what land is.
And so nature is not what money is. (461)

indiscriminately

or wander

each space according

fragments

having not been

an array of detail

layered placing claims

each settled point

lingering

wander

complete

ancient timing
unraveled
whisper
over
colored flags
the unheard
stuck in my throat
smoke
flawless
i am always falling down
toes
or radiance
unhinged
bend at the waist
further
into the earth
whisper your
treasure
laden
cartoon
images
the narrator
translates broken scenes
recalled (remember take back etc)
her character hitchhiking across
states angles colors
of flags
whispering
prayers
against time
disperse

from Writing Down the Bones

by Natalie Goldberg

Go Further

Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that's why we decide we're done. It's getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

lucid dancing scattered

an orchestra leaves

whipped pasted wet

against ambition

faltering flagrant attempts

he said

consume or be

wasted return over time petals fall

over his tone marking time

one leaf or

another

lift lament red petals against

horns sound the dramatic finish

fall scattered dances where

otherwise would waste

intention carefully

orchestrated until such time

minus attention

muted shades

falter

or

cling

rapid

an arc of orange

cleverly layers a wild

union

of sorts dangling

just before

array

misplaced

a road map of any

state

curls over layers

colored

blank

a voice solid

deep

in a memory

still happening

arc among

wild blades

hue

pasted

clever

orange

before

voice (mis)heard

that once

winding off the map

flames

behind ever having

announced

union

curls

solid

clever

a blade leans

await

past reflected

here

intonation

sound of

a greek myth

set to

voice

kickin

a new tale

recitation

against lyric

flow

make each word

stand slam

consonant

sliding

assonance

alliterate

characters

quenching

kickin

beat this

barely

listen

off

the

page

Gertrude Stein

more from the Geographical History

Now you take anything that is written and you read it as a whole it is not interesting it begins as if it is interesting but it is not interesting because if it is going to have a beginning and middle and ending it has to do with remembering and forgetting and remembering and forgetting is not interesting it is occupying but it is not interesting.
And so that is not writing.
Writing is neither remembering nor forgetting neither beginning or ending.
Being dead is not ending it is being dead and being dead is something. Think of any crime of course being dead is something.
Now and that is a great American contribution only any flat country has and can be there that being dead is actually something.
Americans are like that.
No Europeans and so no European can ever invent a religion, they have too much remembering and forgetting too much to know that human nature is anything.
But it is not because it is not interesting no not any more interesting than being drunk. Well who has to listen to anything. Any European but not any American.

Gertrude Stein

from The Geographical History of America or the relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind


Part IV

The question of identity


A Play

I am I because my little dog knows me.
Which is he.
No which ishe.
Say it with tears, no which is he.
I am I why.
So there.
I am I where.


Act I Scene III

I am I because my little dog knows me.


Act I Scene I

Now that is the way I had played that play.
But not at all not as one is one.


Act I Scene I

Which one is there I am I or another one.
Who is one and one or one is one.
I like a play of acting so and so.
Leho Leho.
Leho is a name of a Breton.
But we in America are not displaced by a dog oh no no not at all not at all at all displaced by a dog.

The Clem 2

The Clem 1

eclogue

in order to reciprocate

we were talking about concrete

details

an urban setting

history in the present

(he was shot for appearing just

so)

respond to each line

with a new image

oatmeal

butterflies

the problem with

trash

in the city

musical quality

of poems

about garbage

political demonstrations

give something back

when even words

sounding through spaces

keep us in relation

Ed Roberson from City Eclogue

Height and Deep Song


Pulled by the full disaster's view of thrown
upward to the look-out's level
crying

from that ledge the song of what it comes
down to
but unable to jump strapped in

with the wonder the words can come up with
stripped in the scramble of birth spill--
the speechless

cover binding
the know this
on the spine

the body arrives screaming written
all over it

what breath is
then writing

more of

each hot fuss pink kills

the lyric tangled goodbye

she wrote crisp turning

trees in wind step

in time instrumental montage

speeding a beat bodies float in sync

outside of

the abstract quality of

clear paper sliding across sand

a display of chaos

wind screeching across years

of misunderstood

she curls half underneath the covers

and I think

trains passing through the dark

sound less violent

fading instead

like images without photos

that disappear over distance

the imagined

the almost

the near

potential

an arc of voice

carried distant fades

splashing shades sing along

roaring flames

a coral touch

of leaf

crumbling under

constructed words sculpted

into shapes sleeping

unsent

only as close as parallel

lines on the horizon