Vol. 7, No.1 VERSE Spring, 1990
CONTENTS Page
POSTMODERN POETRIES: JEROME McGANN GUEST-EDITS AN ANTHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE POETS FROM NORTH AMERICA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM ............................................................. 6
GL YN MAXWELL: OUT OF THE RAIN ................................. ................. ,. 74
The editors wish to thank Jerome McGann for guest-editing the long feature in this issue. VERSE gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the following benefactors:
Larry Angelo (Friend), Ashley Brown (Friend), Richard Cassidy (Patron), Mr & Mrs R. A. N. Crawford (Supporters), Dr P. Davies (Friend), Ulla E. Dydo (Patron), R. Farrell (Friend), Sir Joseph Gold (Friend), Jack Hagstrom (Friend), Jeffrey Harrison (Friend), Mr and Mrs Henry Hart (Friends), Walter Hudson (Friend), Mrs Patricia Deery Kurtz (Friend), John L. Lepage (Friend), Myrna and Frank O'Brien (Friend), Harry F. Saint (Friend), M. T. Watson (Friend), Pamela Whitmire (Supporter).
© 1990 Copyright of individual pieces remains with the contributors. This magazine publishes international poetry in English, with a strong translation section, critical articles, and reviews. All submissions are welcome and must be accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope or international reply coupon. U.S. material should be sent to Henry Hart; all other material to U.K. editors.
Subscriptions, including postage and packing for one year (3 issues): United Kingdom: £S.OO (cheques payable to 'Verse' sent to U.K. editors) United States: $12 (checks payable to 'Verse' sent to U.S. editor) Other Countries: £9 (send international money order to U.K. editors)
EDITORIAL ADDRESSES: Robert Crawford, Dept. of English Literature, University of St. Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL, Scotland. David Kinloch, Dept. of Modern Languages, University of Salford MS, England. Henry Hart, Dept. of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 2318S, U.S.A.
Verse is grateful for the continuing support of the College of William and Mary, and is subsidised by the Scottish Arts Council.
ABOUT THE POETS
Bruce Andrews' two most recent books of poetry are Give Em Enough Rope (Sun & Moon Press, 1987) and Getting Ready to Have Been Frightened (Roof, 1988). Sun & Moon Press will bring out I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up (or, Social Romanticism) in 1990.
Rae Armantrout has published three books of poems: Extremities (The Figures), The Invention of Hunger (Tuumba), and Precedence (Burning Deck). A fourth book, Necromance, is forthcoming from Sun & Moon (1990). Armantrout lives in San Diego where she teaches part-time at UCSD.
David Bromige, born in London, now lives in Sebastopol, California. Among his many books of poetry are Tight Comers and What's Around Them (1974), My Poetry (1980), and the prizewinning collection Desire. Selected Poems 1963-1987 (1988) .
Tina Darragh, borm in Pittsburgh, now lives near Washington D.C. Her most recent book is Striking Resemblances (1989). Her other books include my hands to myself (1976), Pi in the Skye (1980), and on the comer to off the comer (1981). a(gain)2st the odds will appear in 1990.
Alan Davies lives in New York City. His most recent book is a collection of his poetical and critical writings, Signage (1987).
Jeff Derksen: Vancouver, B. C., Canada. Until, a chapbook from Tsunami editions, recent work in Raddle Moon, Motel, and Poetics Journal. Editor of Writing magazine, founding member of the Kootenay School of Writing (Vancouver).
Christopher Dewdney lives in Toronto and has published nine books of verse and prose. The most recent is Permugenesis. A Recombinant Text (1987) .
. Jessica Grim is the author of Intrepid Hearts (Coincidence Press, 1986) and co-editor of Big Allis. She lives and works in San Francisco.
Carla Harryman lives in Berkeley. She has published six books, including Property (1982), Vice (1986), and - most recently - Animal Insincts (1989).
Lyn Hejinian lives in northern California; she is co-editor (with Barrett Watten) of Poetics Journal. Her book The Cell will be published in 1990 by Sun & Moon Press, and her translations of a collection of poems by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko entitled Description will be published this winter. Her other books include My Life, Writing Is an Aid to Memory, The Guard, Redo, and Individuals.
Susan Howe lives in Guildford·, Connecticut. Paradigm Press has just published The Bibliography of the King's Book; or, Eikon Basilike. Sun & Moon will publish The Europe of Trusts shortly, and Wesleyan U. Press will publish a book of poems in fall, 1990, Singularities. The most recent issue of The Difficulties is devoted to her writing, and Talisman will publish a Susan Howe issue in spring 1990.
Peter Inman lives near Washington, D.C. He has published five books of poetry, the most recent being Red Shift (1989). 2
Karen MacCormack is the author of three books, the most recent being Quill Driver (Nightwood Editions). Her work has appeared in magazines in North America, Australia, and England, including Writing, Notus, Overland, andArcheus. She currently lives in Toronto.
Katherine MacLeod lives in Vancouver, B.C. She is on the editorial board of Motel Magazine, and a member of the Koolenay School of Writing. Her work has appeared recently in How (ever) , Big Allis and East of Main, an anthology of Vancouver writing.
Jon Mack was born in North Carolina and was living most recently in West Virginia. He has pubilshed a few poems, pseudonymously, in periodicals, but most of the writing is privately printed (including Air Heart Sermons and Nerves in Patterns). The work here is from his unfinished project Scientific Animals.
Tom Mandel's latest book is Four Strange Books (Gaz: NY, 1990). Recent work has appeared in Temblor, Sufur, Notus, Conjunctions, Tyuonyi, Oblek, and Central Park, among other magazines. Realism will be published by Burning Deck in the coming year. .
D. S. Marriott is the publisher and editor of Archeus. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Hours into Seasons, Strammheid, Floodtide, and Mortgages. He lives in London.
Steve McCaffery was born in England and lives in Toronto. His most recent publications are Evoba (Coach House Press, Toronto) and The Black Debt (Nightwood Editions, London, Ont.). His critical writings were collected and published in 1986 as North of Intention. He is a contributing editor of Open Letter.
Bob Perelman's most recent book is Captive Audience (The Figures, 1988). He is fmishing a dissertation on Pound, Stein, Joyce, and Zukofsky at UC Berkeley.
Nick Piombino, who lives in Manhattan, is a psychoanalyst. His most recent book is Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1988). A collection of essays and prose, The Boundary of Blur, will appear shortly, also from Sun & Moon.
Tom Raworth's most recent book is Visible Shivers (0 Books, 1989). Eternal Sections will soon be published by Sun & Moon Press. He lives in Cambridge, England.
Kit Robinson lives in Berkeley and has been an active member of the west coast writing scene. Among his numerous books are Down and Back (1978), Riddle Road (1982), A Day Off (1985), and Windows (1985) .
Stephen Rodefer is the author of Four Lectures (The Figures, 1982), Villon by Jean Callais (Duende, 1976), and most recently Emegency Measures (The Figures, 1987).
Peter Seaton has published three books of poetry. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. He lives in New York City. 3
Ron Silliman, born in Pasco, Washington, has lived and worked most of his life in the San Francisco area. Past editor of The Socialist Review, he is the author of many books of poetry and prose, which include various parts of his ongoing project The Alphabet. Most recently published, in book form, are the "L" and the "W" sections of The Alphabet. Lit (1987) and What (1988).
Larry Timewell (Bremner) is editor/publisher of TSUNAMI EDITIONS, a series of chapbooks emphasizing open-text work by (for the most part) Vancouver writers. Ruck represents the completed portion of a book-length project, and is dedicated to Dorothy Lusk Trujillo.
Barrett Watten is the author of Progress (Roof Books, 1985) and Coruiuit (Gaz, 1988) among other works. He recently participated in a conference of avant-garde poets titled' 'LanguageConsciousness-Society" in Leningrad and is preparing a collaborative account of it with Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, and Michael Davidson.
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CONTENTS
Introduction ....... ....... ... ........ .............. ..................................................... 6 Lyn Hejinian, "Oblivion"....................... .......................................... .... 9 Alan Davies, "The New Sentience" ....... ............................................... 13 "By Inference" ................. ............................................. 14 "Literature, so boyish" .................................................... 14 "The leaf is death" ............ .. ............. .......................... .... 14 Tom Mandel, "Poussin" ..................................................................... 15 "Gray May Now Buy" Peter Seaton, " An Ethics of Anxiety" ....................... .......... ......... ..... .... 18 Christopher Dewdney, "The Beach" ...................................... .............. ... 20 " The Theatre Party" Karen MacCormack, " Hazard" ... ................................................... .. ..... 22 , 'Export Notwithstanding" D. S. Marriott, " Leben" .......... ........................................................... 23 Jessica Grim, from Rodework (Part II nos. 2, 3, 5) .............................. ...... 25 Stephen Rodefer, " Desire" ......................................... ......................... 27 Carla Harryman, from The Words ................................ ................ .......... 29 Nick Piombino, "9/20/88 - 912/89" ...................................................... 30 Jon Mack, "Voice a Verse or What" ............................................... ........ 32 Barrett Watten, from Under Erasure ....................................................... 33 Peter Inman, from " Dust Bowl" .............................. ............................... 35 Rae Armantrout, " Making It Up" ........................................... ................ 37 " Retraction' Jeff Derksen, "Mister" (from Redress) ..................................................... 39 Bob Perelman, " N eonew. A Sequence" .................................................... 41 Larry Timewell, from Ruck .. ................................................................. 44 Tina Darragh, " bunch ups" (selections) .................................................... 46 Tom Raworth, [six untitled piecesJ .................................. ........................ 48 David Bromige, "Romantic Traces" ........................... ............................. 50 Kathryn MacLeod, from "mouth-piece" ................................................... 52 Kit Robinson, "A Mental Finding" ......................................................... 54 Bruce Andrews, "Facts are Stupid Things" ................ ............................... 58 Steve McCaffery, "A bridge is the passage between two banks" ..................... 61 " Codicil " Ron Silliman, from Toner. .............. ....................................................... 64 Susan Howe, from "Nether John and John Harbinger" ......................... ........ 66 Charles Bernstein, "Debris of Shock/Shock of Debris,. ................................ 69
5
POSTMODERN POETRIES
JEROME McGANN
They are clearly difficult
in every sense machined, metallic to the tongue the g listening dispersed
throughout
ing about full of folk
(the body of a poem) openly ly itself the feel the truth snared caught and taken in (the body of falsehood) (the house of life)
eye
Jon Mack, from Scientific Animals
That is just one way of putting it, there are others. The style of the passage is more narrativized, perhaps, than what one might have come to expect from Language Poetry (now so-called) - that considerable body of work which emerged, during the past twenty years, as the intellectual and stylistic focus of postmodern poetries in general. But then Jon Mack's poetry was not written as part of the Language Movement. Hindsight leads one to see the ("inorganic", nonlinear) relation. And while writers associated with various " Language" poetries make up the greatest part of the present collection, the aim here is to give a more catholic view of the radical change which poetry has undergone since the Vietnam War. By no means is every poet represented here a L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E Poet. This fact is important to see if we are able to understand some of the most salient characteristics of postmodern poetries. Unlike earlier movements (imagism, say, or futurism, or even romanticism), Language Writing did not come seeking to occupy the literary center. It tried, rather; to mark out a space in which it could work, and to this end the writers associated with the movement founded a number of important magazines, chapbook series, publishing imprints, and other outlets for their work. The movement began (in the early 70s) as a relatively unnoticed event in the larger postmodern scene - at once localized (even atomized), and scarcely visible beyond itself; and it remained at the periphery of the larger scene throughout its years of development in the 70s and 80s. Only now can we see the comprehensive understanding which this movement acquired, both practically and theoretically, of the larger poetical field in which it had emerged, and where it has always occupied only one relatively small area. A key feature of the work represented here is the decentering of the "I". Mack's title Scientific Animals is an allusion to George Meredith's Modem Love, a crucial text in the history of the degeneration of the romantic eye. The poems in this issue of Verse take that degenerative history for granted. The I is engulphed in the writing; not an authority, it becomes instead a witness, for and against. Equally important are the styles of difficulty one encounters in this work. One does not feel that footnotes would help. The difficulties are simpler and more fundamental, are registered at the primary level of grammatical (dis)orders. There is, as Alan Davies suggests, "a new 6
sentience" at work in this work. It is grounded, at the technical level, in what sometimes arrives as a wholesale derangement of the sentences. The title of Davies' poem refers us to another text, Ron Silliman's important analytical/historical study of modernist poetical styles, "The New Sentence". This fact is to be noted here because it underlines yet another key feature of postmodern poetries: their commitment to ideas and critical thinking. Postmodern poetries cannot be divorced from the philosophical, critical, and political prose with which they regularly orbit. Indeed, sometimes it is not possible to decide whether a particular work is "prose" or "verse", "criticism" or "poetry". Davies himself is a distinctly philosophical poet - the style of the Tractatus informs much of his work - but then all of these writers exhibit their own special intellectual commitments. Is Bruce Andrews a philosophical poet? If Thomas Paine is a philosophical writer. A proper anthology of this work would include a large body of these writers' intellectual prose. Of course it has not been possible to print such work in this issue. One can only name here a few of the more important texts which are available: Howe's My Emily Dickinson, Bernstein's Content's Dream, McCaffery's North of Intention, Davies' Signage. "They are clearly difficult" because they put a high premium on clarity of mind and vision. Such clarity is not easy to achieve, particularly in our time, when the media of human intercourse is a feeding trough of propaganda and feeling and soap. "They are clearly difficult" because their work demands attention, attentiveness. And they are postmodern because the light they cast falls equally upon the just and the unjust, the trivial and the consequential. The World has always tried to distinguish such things, but the distinctions dissolve in the humaneness of the ludic consciousness. What emerges are not the disney lands of illusion - those are precisely a postmodern subject - but the imagination of those places, the poetical judgement that they are what they are, that they define one of the ways we live now. With such poetry comes" An Ethics of Anxiety", but equally an imperative to reconstruct our instruments of vision, to move through fantasy into what romanticism called "imagination". Blake spoke of cleansing the doors of perception; Shelley, of removing the veils of familiarity. In the writing represented here, however, "language" (a social eventuality) rather than "vision" (a personal experience) provides the work with its dominant metaphors and processing codes. Constructivist in their approach, these writers regularly seek to foreground their artifices in order to dispel that "aura" of genius and consequence for which poetry too often has sold itself on those markets where none come to buy. In this sense all the writing here is languagecentered, whether the work in question is "Language Writing" properly so-called (e.g., the selections from Hejinian, Bernstein, and McCaffery) or whether it is not (e.g., the selections from Howe, Bromige, or D. S. Marriott). From a social and historical point of view, this collection aims to show certain features of the contemporary avant-garde poetry scene which are not apparent in (for example) Ron Silliman's otherwise excellent anthology In the American Tree (1986), or in several other good collections (for example, Bernstein's two sets of "Language Writing" selections in Paris Review, 1983, and in boundary 2, 1984; or in Douglas Messerli's "Language Poetries, An Anthology (1987). Fine as these things are, they do not give any sense of how postmodern writing has now moved into a distinctive "second generation". Furthermore, although poetry associated with the Language Movement is almost always imagined as an event of the United States, this association is by no means accurate. In the present case, therefore, the work of many younger writers has been included; and an effort has been made to represent some of the large body of similar writing now being produced in Canada and Great Britain. More of this work might and probably ought to have 7
been printed, as well as the work of poets from New Zealand and Australia who are connected to these lines of literary development. But various limitations intervened. A good look at the scene in Great Britain may be had through Andrew Crozier's and Tim Longville's anthology A Various Art (1987). In 1889 Havelock Ellis wrote an essay in The Yellow Book which described the style of contemporary poetry as " one in which the unity of the book is decomposed to give place to the independence of the page, in which the page is decomposed to give place to the independence of the phrase, and the phrase to give place to the independence of the word" . For anyone acquainted with the books and other printed formats in which our contemporary writing appears, Ellis's description will seem uncannily apropos. The work in this collection is carried out under the explicit sign of what Veronica ForestThomson called, in her important study of 1978, Poetic Artifice. Not the artifices of poetic power, which Wordsworth mistakenly (if usefully) pursued, but the artifices of masque and game which we associate with Rochester, D. G. Rossetti, and Wilde; or with Dickinson, Stein, and Loy. Like certain late nineteenth-century writers whose work they recall, these poets work a field of pjtiless sympathy. No one, least of all themselves, escapes. Everything is broken down, examined, weighed out, and numbered. The only recQurse is avoidance, and of course the "difficulty" of such writing makes avoidance an easy option to choose. Failing that, one may succeed in reading this work with pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Everything is in the writing, for good and ill alike.
JEROME McGANN's books include The Beauty of Inflections (OUP, 1985) and Towards a Literature of Knowledge (OUP, 1989).
8
L YN HEJINIAN
OBLIVION
I can take no note of time Some part of some light The person of its agency, in the responsibility of night Noise and oblivion neighboring Near, but not to the objects seen - near to the sights themselves Then of sounds not ears Near to the subjects that veer In swoon, that perfect balance of the head
Memories are most easily made in books The many densities are dependent on all other surrounding densities But only a woman could have thought it Womanhood expressing anger and sex, then dream and sleep Many times I began to write my memories, writing but not from memory A support, an other - across the floor from me is the ... Overhead there is a noise What is "there is"? Nothing but English The body continent which is snug or a peach The peach teaches thuds - the thuds I might want to think A punch to streets or trees - no not streets, thoughts - measuring air The airs split over and over tips Twigs are the many sounds of life The fight in each word maintaining its thing And out comes a bridge between justice and necessity Ghost and jealous mother The moon can only be seen from one side, this one
9
"Death is like the sun," my friend said, "you can't look at it" Between the cells of we who sublimate and come back gaps Rain I am thinking so before my eyes - no, behind them Animals don't have names (who said they should have names?) - their suffering is invisible It's reflective to be eye-catching and ascend the precipitation My sensitivity to light at night exacerbating my sense of sound We have only the sound of the crickets for self Tapping on the sand plane sucking Like the insect I really have no ignorance but twilight and lunatic speed
Getting into the pale bed supported by that balance of the head - pressure Raises praises, praises ashes Words are joined together in a word The composition of the consciousness of being the self enjoying sex In a state as a windsock - is the eye sharp Is the eye not an orifice belonging to eyes They are composed between darkness and pleasure
Enjoying six - a man and a woman exceeding themselves by half again there are three persons' hands A concave shadow casts The fingers close toward the sun I can imagine what might work to light the obvious oblivion A zone which is the sleep where dream remains It fills with life just one side of it Only the sight of her front and own feet - because she has short memory Humans accumulate innumerable reminders to compensate for their short memories And time is glamorous too somehow Everything is real! and we live to see its brilliancy! In mind but light - to which so much adhered
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Where is the sleep which dream retains One thinks about the money one could learn and can't keep silent A science of night in ptter space But they doubt if they never thought of readers Life shall be larger than our dreams and with peripheries Little clusters of buds of a dazzling white There was something abrupt about the close of a cheerful sentence That in the room in which they all spoke together That manner of dwelling on words I could make modifications make idiots And that's to make a solitude which is relentless But now habit has come to take me in her arms and carry me to bed In the morning it was I alone who loved I analysed it, I spelled it
A person has an estranged empathy, not relinquishing but putting itself, on the windowsill, assessing (can we say so?) its condition with feelers as the bug there A nightmare in a failure of oblivion, returning The opposite of being recognized is not being unrecognized but being oblivious A person wanting to be no one - with the impossibility of acting on its jealousy I had a dream in which my suitcase - the bulletproof one - was chained to the ceiling of a ferry and they wouldn't wait for me So I was really angry - having that experience which always speaks of itself In the newspaper there is contiguity between news of the space craft Voyager's views of Neptune and a public viewing of Huey Newton's body in open casket Not Huey Newton's self How solid There was a spy intruding in my surroundings, and I scarcely answered when someone spoke to me
11
It is amorous to be seen and to be kind So when I see a page of words I plan them Well, if it were Russian? Because we have a different history of significance our person occurs on a different scale Her potential largeness - the bulk of a pedestrian and her swollen legs and feet - which she enlarges so as to diminish a terrifying place The skull thickens with age The nail pierces her head She lives in a landscape of light around the domestic interiors of agoraphobes It is Leningrad to be submerged
Let us say that it was taking place in realism That language itself is partially so And the self a reflexive form, receiving reassurance despite finitude None of it seeming to know which direction it was going in I quote Blanchot ''I'm not the center of what I don't know" Van Gogh " We will become good by doing no harm? - it's a lie!" A person no longer so well defined A work of art conducive to subjectivity The specificity of a certain amount of person - 117 pounds or 65 inches and maintaining something slightly below the standard temperature After mutilation it would have lost some of it's seWs discretion Walks to the window
Space is seductive Having sex in a state There's no musc in poetry but there's rhyme Time - individualized, bouncing, the time is like life
I've been sleeping like something drugged in the dark from eleven to four Immobile, hot, not caught, with dreams committed There are real things to be repeated I don't want to move and think I've had enough to eat So that was the problem, food A table, two Russian men, and a great tough goose We think of beauty We lose a battle . Weare very cruel
12
ALAN DAVIES
THE NEW SENTIENCE
You should enjoy your suffering. Realizations come in the form of words if not before. Arguments weaken the facts which in any event never mattered, or existed. You die as what you are. Write bread lines. You don't test the limits of what is by asking the impossible of it. Bunny haunches. And it should go on from there as if everything had happened. The culture made a decision. Mmmrnm. I am a mortal verb. I am asking you, quietly, for you. It's nice to see a face. Maybe something happens that mutes the speechless. There's no way to recall a clarity. Leached passions only overmake the heart. Don't go looking for it. The language. This sex could be our quiet lullaby. All we ever do is fulfill our fantasies.
13
By Inference, fo" r my closest friends
There must be at that level some instruct ion or is it just instinct
the way the moth tries so hard and rhythm ically to free itself from the web.
For me I just knew where the place was ev en though I had no idea what the word mea nt
or ifin any way it could be limited.
Don't we already understand the sides of the driveway?
You're forced to assume a persona in your job. Which part of it writes for you? H ow Big is it?
What did you bring it up for? Why do you rub it in?
Almost the only thing you can discover in that state are elements of new forms.
Literature, so boyish really, and a little silly.
This leaf is death. It's not nothing. It's an illusion. And in your case it's trapped in a thought.
14
TOM MANDEL
POUSSIN
1.
One must wake to make oneself understood; after silence so long, a pulse still beats under the skin.
2.
You opened eyes that saw along with others' false opinions common to all that unconscious observe life unfold a surface of lines and colors imitating everything under the sun to the end of someone's delectation.
3.
Without light nothing is visible. Without a transparent medium nothing is visible, and nothing unlimited is visible either. Without color nothing is visible. Nothing is visible except in the distance, and without an instrument nothing is visible.
15
4.
Noble subject, of naked matter made with no quality of artifice strewn upon it from a worker's hand.
Destiny must conduct our placement ornament, decor and realism; its judgment must be everywhere.
5.
HQW well you knew to light the lamp, and where the switch was on the wall
who knew how to switch off the lamp, when to pour oil in the basin, and
illumine the room with lamplight glow. And how much more you knew
6.
I could say too, but to enfervor my crown with strong attentions
from below, these days I don't feel well afterwards, peering
down shamefully upon vicissitude, when around me meritorious minds
contemporary range their valorous and friendly Saturnian stars.
16
GRAY MAY NOW BUY
Master Of The Rising Sound, improve your words; improvise in view of the pendulum, and correct your words.
Master Of The Convex View, do I not serve you well? Vermilion glue hardens into an urban street.
Master of Furnace Number One now what whom when will you burn? Autumnal climate stuns a body, tumbling past the family marsh.
Master of The Lingering Memory gauze thickens, you falter to a wall. An opaque minister imagines, cruising our broken streets, the golden
vectors of its scum are rust. A lingering veil thins; a haltering nexus went blank.
Master of The Cave Called Cement your arms on thirsty sands were meant to lose their bead, and dirty deeds were meant to cower under cover of your hands.
Master of Forgottenness, Sir Honk & Shudder (go to him Roman language, whose perfume rises from our age).
Master of Non-Barren Thought, words are less foreign than you(r/'d) thought.
As the observers eye no more than black car passing in tropical traffic, so silently we enter the subconscious bar together we drink the terror of our eyes, ungathered noises that rend our foreign tongue.
His Phobic, Master of the Alley, only thought is less foreign than your words. Sometimes (did you know?) people, wild, careen.
17
PETER SEATON
AN ETIDCS OF ANXIETY
If in the depths of a warlike people You owe survival to wicked spirits Warning you to seize the occasion to escape Deadly contagion, by taking another mad rush At the good and the bad Words lingering heatedly within objections To traditional sacrifice, diffuse excess, Unconsidered immunity against everything You say when would this desolate impulse limit This adamant world to the scope of your assumption.
When would you write what you would read Of the sequence of all sexes rigorously reasoned From the secrets of great premises for what Was a true penalty and what was far and wide Definition inheriting but that This is words for a fraction of a better word Is not merely lost, it's bound To the mouth blessed with a body Administered by the nature of words determined To be true. How else can you write In someone's own words.
Or invest them with sublime expedients Of abandon cautiously preventing all that stuff That all this is fresh with From talking and doing no harm and note that That leaves monstrous propertions of writers With words in the womb. And that couplets Loose in a stanza on the ways of wars Accept piles of letters Heavy with accessible sounding leanings Whose powers I may now distrust.
In order to be in the books, loved For each letter in a word overflowing With the problems of poems poets See more books at the same time. They see Parts of the world assigned to poets Inspiring male material with a male name and Justice of the order of power in the will Dominating bodies in the same condition.
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They imagine you've just been told You can't be trusted, and that the world presents Genetic intimacies no longer loved for torments Represented in republican neglect. This plight Of the face of the earth that you reach Through my senses adapts the time of your life To when wild words sigh. This forbidding evidence Of reckless life dominates a consequence Of projection like lust preceding a deliberation Yielding to my next purpose which is something Different in discoveries Of fragmentary men put together In an embarrassment separating the estrous Instance from someone's sobering love.
If that's a meaning-making process that Unbuckles English six to ten times a day In the safety of our steel bodies ready For excitement the people You train to take place stop being taught. A stand-in for the symbolic being probably Here, complicated by saving my life, Acquires episodic reason to leave the end Of the past to an animation With which people will their presence On an atom of all places. Sometimes When I'm writing wounded, dead, Ambitiously deciding to be jealous Of the way I dressed myself last night I Become thought of in the revels and rituals For improving links through the loveliest universals, The kind that complete a delinquency that suits you, The kind that rub a little unity in your dust And radiate some essential to attention Leniently imposing the beginning on the past.
19
CHRISTOPHER DEWDNEY
THE BEACH
Two figures walk along the beach who, because of their remarkable clothing, expose and withdraw themselves at the same time.
Two figures who walk along the beach because of their odd appearance give the impession of being foreign clothing.
Because of their odd appearance they give the impression of being foreign bodies on the beach.
Because they expose and withdraw themselves at a remarkable time they deprive the scene of easy comprehensibility.
Something mysterious and unfathomable deprives the scene of easy comprehensibility and thereby closes it off from the viewer in a singular way.
Something foreign deprives the man lying on his back of our gaze. He draws our unfathomable wave to his face, chest and beach.
To the left we have a man lying on his back with legs stretched high and arms tossed behind his head being washed onto the beach by a wave.
To the icons he forms something of a viewer in a singular way and thereby closes the scene being washed onto the beach.
Two bulky wooden devices float in the water.
Two bulky wooden devices float in the water.
He forms something of a barrier in front of the two women who, like icons, look as though they had been unselfconsciously captured in a photograph.
He draws the two women with legs stretched high and arms frozen in time.
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THE THEATRE PARTY
The blind man blows his horn as if possessed, and grinds his organ even though there is no one who could reward his efforts.
The psychic doll grinds his horn even though they are all physical.
They are all cripples, physical or psychic, and the doll congratulates them sardonically.
They are unpretentious and without fear. Her left arm congratulates them outward.
Blue-eyed and naive, she sits in wonder and without fear, unpretentious and open, her left arm extends its palm turned outward.
Blue-eyed purpose grimly extends its palm.
They themselves seem least conscious of the purpose for which they are grimly expending their energies.
They themselves trying to climb their energies. The sailor least conscious of the stumps, a ladder by means ceiling.
The man in the sailor suit is trying to climb, by means of his arm stumps, a ladder which leads only to the ceiling where he is about to bump his head.
The man is only a masked situation, a macabre ball.
The actual situation is macabre, for the masked ball is awaited joylessly and in oppresive silence.
The actual sailor is awaited joylessly, for the head is a climb in oppressive silence.
NOTE: These two pieces are from a suite of five poems; The Woman, The Beach, The City, The Theatre Party and The Self Portrait utilize found material and permutations of that material. The source text was a catalogue commissioned by the St. Louis Art Museum for its retrospective exhibition of the works of Max Beckmann. The catalogue was written by Carla SchulzHoffmann and Cornelia Stabenow. In The Beach, The City, The Theatre Party and The Selj Portrait source lines alternate with interference lines which are generally permutations of the adjacent source lines. The permutation lines echo the line before at the same time as they preview the line after them. This profoundly skews the semantic valences of most of the reading subsequent to the first interference line (which is the second line in these four poems).
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