Geof Huth's Blog, page 43

Books Read in December 2010

My year-end review, anticipated or not, will have to wait at least until tomorrow. For tonight, here's a list of the "books" I read over the last month.


December 9, 2010

1. Nelson, Stephen. The Faithful City: Visual Poems. afterlight press: Hamilton, Lanarkshire, U.K., 2006.

2. Nelson, Stephen. Flylyght. The Knives Forks and Spoons Press: Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, U.K., 2011.

11 December 2010

3. Schlegel, Rob. Bloom. Green Tower Press: Maryville, Mo., 2010.

4. The Center for Cartoon Studies. A Brief Introduction How to Start to Think about Learning to Draw Comics, Plus A Guidebook to The Center for Cartoon Studies. The Center for Cartoon Studies: White River Junction, Vt., 2006.

12 December 2010

5. Clowes, Daniel. Caricature. Fantagraphics Books: Seattle. Wash., 1998.

13 December 2010

6. [Jones], Jonathan. the library of last resort. the sticky pages press: [Brussels], 2010.

15 December 2010

7. Stetser, Carol. Vista. Sedona, Ariz., 2010.

8. Martone, John. vireo. Privately published: np, 2010.

18 December 2010

9. Bennett, John M. and [Shawn] McMurtagh. A Lost World. Luna Bisonte Prods: [Columbus, Oh.], 2010.

10. Steinman. S A atio. Luna Bisonte Prods: [Columbus, Oh.], 2010.

11. Bennett, John M. Clock Lake. Luna Bisonte Prods: [Columbus, Oh.], 2010.

12. biloid, paloin. ink kin. Protext Press: Cleveland, Oh., 2009.

13. Baker, Ed. Things Just Came Through. Red Ochre Press: [Silver Spring, Md.], 2005.

14. Işın, Serkan. Dada Korkut. Ebabil Yayınları: Ankara, 2009.

15. Martone, John. Cottonwood-down. Np: Np, 2009.

16. Martone, John. cumulus. Np: Np, 2009.

17. Vassilakis, Nico. The Thin Woe. Sub Rosa Press: [Seattle, Wash.], 2003.

18. Cone, Jon. Sitting, Getting Up, Sitting Again. Standing Guard in a Corn Field Press: Iowa City, 2005.

19. Dellafiora, David. Hermetically Sealed. Redfoxpress: Achill Island, Ireland, 2010.

20. Blaine, Julien. 3 Singes & 3 Elephants. Redfoxpress: Achill Island, Ireland, 2010.

21. Andryczuk, Hartmut. Westerland Offline. Redfoxpress: Achill Island, Ireland, 2010.

22. Vitacchio, Alberto. Through. Redfoxpress: Achill Island, Ireland, 2010.

23. Groh, Klaus. Frutas y Terra. Redfoxpress: Achill Island, Ireland, 2010.

19 December 2010

24. Baker, Ed. what's a phantasy. Red Ochre Press: Takoma Park, Md., 2001.

25. Baker, Ed. Shrike—a love poem. tel let: Charleston, Ill., 2000.

26. Baker, Ed. Nine Perfect Ensos; Song and Dance; Hook, Line—Crab. Red Ochre Press: Takoma Park, Md., 2000.

27. Baker, Ed. Full Moon (a selection). tel let: Charleston, Ill., 2001.

25 December 2010

28. Bagazine # 4 (2010)

26 December 2010

29. Jones, Jonathan. yes/now. The Sticky Pages Press: Brussels, 2010.

27 December 2010

30. Jones, Jonathan. wr:the. The Sticky Pages Press: [Brussels], 2010.

31. Martone, John. shell. Privately printed: [Charleston, Ill.], 2010.

32. Stetser, Carol. Written on the Road. Privately printed: [Sedona, Ariz.], 2010.

33. Annarummo, Carl. Wells! Greying Ghost Press: np, [2010].

34. Copeland, Lydia. In My Room. Greying Ghost Press: np, [2010].

28 December 2010

35. Shields, David. Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2010.

29 December 2010

36. Topel, Andrew and John M. Bennett. Dot Dog. Luna Bisonte Prods: Columbus, Oh., 2007

37. Topel, Andrew. Scores. Avantacular Press: Jacksonville, Fl., ca 2007.

38. Gonzales, Babs. The Be-Bop Santa Claus. X-Ray Book & Novelty Co.: San Francisco, 2010.

39. Vassilakis, Nico. staReduction. BookThug: Toronto, 2009.

ecr. l'inf.

Personal Papers at the End of the Year

Geof Huth's Papers, Primarily 2007-2010, Ready for Transfer to the University at Albany, (31 December 2010)I usually end the year with a year-end review, but I haven't had the time to collect all the statistics yet, and I won't have time to do it, so I'll end the year instead with the story of my actual transfer of my papers to the University at Albany today.

This morning, I had a few piles of stray papers to file, which I did, and then I packed the car. Though I expected to have to make two trips to Albany today, I managed to pack 26 boxes in the car with very little effort, and probably could have handled 30 in total.

One View of My Car Filled with Boxes, University at Albany, Albany, New York (31 December 2010)The trip to Albany was uneventful, though I had barely enough room to use my legs to operate the car. After my arrival at the university, I narrated a brief video of about my car full of records in the time before my colleagues Brian Keough and Geoff Williams (the latter whom I once shared an office with at this university) appeared to take these boxes from me.

We spoke for quite a while, out in this mild winter day, about archives and other matters, Geoff making a joke about the quantity of my papers and the lightness of some of the boxes. (He'd just handled the box that was primarily T-shirts, which I noted were publications in this case.)

Geoff Williams with the Last Box Going to the University at Albany's Archives and Special Collections (31 December 2010)And that was it. The papers are now donated to the University at Albany, ready for anyone to use them. And since I've provided a little professional service by foldering all of these records in acid-free folders and making sure everything was in order, they're ready to use immediately.

Happy new year to all.

ecr. l'inf.

surhiss

[another pre-2010 pwoermd that didn't make it into my collected pwoermds]

26 Boxes and That Much More Space

Twenty-Six Boxes of Geof Huth's Personal Papers Almost Ready for DonationI spent the entire day today, from mid-morning until a few minutes before midnight, completing the organization of my personal papers, which I'll be donating to the University at Albany tomorrow. I live under the illusion that my papers are in much better shape than they really are, and then I'm surprised into huge amounts of work in a short period of time. Yesterday, for instance, I found a reasonably large vein of correspondence running through a box that should have had no such thing inside itself. Even today, I would run across vagrant pieces of my papers that had never made it into a box, let alone a folder.

But all is well now. I'm got my papers almost perfectly in order, and a little bit of work tomorrow will complete the job. It's been a little over four years since my last donation, which wasn't in quite as good order as this one is, and it was time to make more space in the house. Looking back on the past few years through the lens that these boxes offers, I'm surprised by how many chapbooks, magazines, and other small publications pass before my eyes during that time, by how much correspondence I receive, and by how much writing I do. And these boxes don't contain any of my purely digital writing, such as this blog. They do contain some writing I do as part of my job, and I was surprised today to note that my weekly notes out to staff accumulate into the size of a small novel each year. Most of these boxes of records, however, are not evidence of my productivity, but evidence of the work of others.

Bob Dahlquist, "Canada Goose" (ca 2006)And it's often hard to give away, particularly, the works of others. But the need for space and some sense of order demands it. Right now, my third-floor office suite is almost pristine because I've removed all my papers from that floor, thrown out unnecessary papers along the way, and organized the space a little better. (It's still a mess, I'd say, but the mess is confined to the periphery of the rooms.)

But I have wonderful publications and gifts from people, most of which are leaving me tomorrow. Almost at random, I chose this piece by Bob Dahlquist to remember. Bob is a designer who makes his living designing a typographic style to identify businesses. But he is a poet as well, a poet with type, and also with words, and he puts together large-scale poetic works on blueprint. This one above is a remarkable piece, but you need to get close to it to appreciate it. Up close, you can see the Canada geese (actually, a flock of birds each represented by the term "Canada Goose") flying above and among the giant letters on this page. And up close, you can see the hawk, much smaller, flying much lower across this typoscape. But these boxes are filled with beautiful visual poetry (the complete works of Márton Koppány, for instance, and great selections of work from Jonathan Jones, Nico Vassilakis, and Carol Stetser, to name a few), truly remarkable mailart (by Roy Arenella, Angela Behrendt, and frips, among many others), and some great poetry. Also boring stuff, I admit, because these boxes represent a certain fraction of the poetry world.


Geof Huth's 26 Boxes of Records Preparing to Leave Home from Geof Huth on Vimeo.
Geof Huth talks about transferring 26 boxes of his personal papers to the University at Albany on the day before his donation.

I talk a little bit about these records in the video above. It was my attempt not to write too much tonight, but that didn't work. Still, it's best to say more than less about the work in these papers and how they have enriched my life.

And that's why I have to give them away. These are a record that others need to see. I need to make them available to others so they can live their lives fully. So I'll give these pieces of my life away sadly, but I'll be happy that the people who made them can be remembered and appreciated in the future because of this act. I'll be glad that our world will be remembered and documented for others to see. And I thank everyone, all of you, living and dead (I noticed the deceased especially today) for what you've made and how you've extended people's lives because of it.

A good poem is a reason to live.

ecr. l'inf.

Preparing for the New Year

Geof Huth, "eXmaSscard # 24" (29 Dec 2010)In the past, I would make sure to design the family end-of-the-year holiday card before Christmas, but I don't worry about that deadline anymore. Nowadays, my deadline is December 31st, the end of the year. So I've done well by completing this card two days early (though I might try to find different envelopes tomorrow for this little publication, maybe blue envelopes to match the blue paper and ink of the card).

The genesis of this card is like that of all of these cards: I wait until an idea occurs to me when I'm not thinking of the card. At first, I thought of making the cards wider than they are tall and to draw something across the eventual crease in the wrap-around cover. But that wasn't enough, so I didn't start working on that idea. Today, while finishing a little prep work for the transfer this week of more of my papers to the University at Albany, I came across a partial ream of blue speckled card stock, and that told me that blue was the color to use.

With that color idea in place, I put together my card tonight. Expecting to create an asemic work, I instead created a semantic work that appears to be asemic. And then I obscured the simple words on the card further by drawing between and around all parts of the text. This has come out okay. Now, all I'll need to do is write notes to be in these cards and send them out. . .

Geof Huth, "eXmaSscard # 24" (29 Dec 2010)
ecr. l'inf.

gaeiousaeious

(a pwoermd written in Saratoga Springs, New York, on 12 June 2003, found just today in a huge stack of unfiled writings I'd forgotten even existed, and thus missing from ntst , my book of collected pwoermds)

A Poetics (60 Alone)

60. Poetreality

Riffing off ideas engendered by reading David Shields' Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, a book written primarily in texts appropriated from others and usually edited to suit him along the way. A work of art is a response to the world.


a. wreading

Reading is a form of watching, or watching is the method that produces reading. (The blind can watch with their ears or their fingers.) In the opening of a day, we open as well to watching, by the process of opening our eyes, which seem to us windows that open to the world, though they are really wells into which the visual world falls.

Writing is just the process of reading backwards, of unpacking from the skull what watching has filled the head with. In my case, "filled my head with"—since any generalized statement I make is likely just a fact for me, and temporary at that, or temporarily seen as such.

About to proceed past the end of the year, I am struck (as if by the nuts and bolts of lightning) that I have not been a writer this year because I've been a poet instead. I mean to be both, but time is a variable I can't control, so most of my thoughts appear in a fragmentary way, and repeated across multiple unrelated poems, rather than in something more like the stream of my prose, a stream that eddies against impediments to its own flow often enough.


b. everynothing

I can't be what I want to be, because there are limitations to being everything. ("If I can't be everything, / I want to be nothing" [in "89. Before Writing, There Was the Desire to Write It Down," written to K.S. Ernst in August].) But I amn't nothing. I am no amt of nothing, which means I'm all of it.

I don't write for hunger. I write for heart.


c. 8mm

The parentheticals are where the answers lie.

"(What, in the last half century, has been more influential than Abraham Zapruder's Super-8 film of the Kennedy assassination?)"

A line from David Shields' book Reality Hunger and likely from him, since it has no referential footnote associated with it. His is a book about life and art, fact and fiction, truth and reality, and he claims no interest in veracity over deeper emotional truth. So did he say the Zapruder film was a Super 8mm film because he thought it was or because he knew it wasn't? Kennedy was shot in 1963, three days before I turned three and a half, but Super 8mm film wasn't released until 1965.

I'm not sure that detail matters, but it makes up my first mark in his book.

All I wonder about now is that Zapruder film. All I wonder about is something I'd never thought of before: Regular 8mm movie film was actually just 16mm that the filmer had to run through the camera twice in opposite directions, once to film one side of the film, and the second time to film the other, then the film was down the middle and spliced into one reel. So what happened on that day? Did Zapruder start out with a blank reel of film and only film along one edge? Did he begin that reel with a birthday party for a child of his? Did he film scenes around Dallas and then flip the reel so he could film the presidential procession? Where in Zapruder's memorializing of that day of his own life did he place those few seconds he caught on film of John F. Kennedy being assassinated? What story was he trying to tell? What personal temporary story was he trying to create when he created permanent history in its place?


d. snow almond

A huge snowstorm is forecast for tonight (the day after Christmas in 2010), but it did not start snowing until a few minutes ago, five hours later than the estimated appearance of the snow here. These are facts wobbling between two poles: mine as reporter and you as receiver. Maybe it is actually 1977, and I am a teenager living in Tennessee. Maybe the snowstorm is nowhere near where I am now, in a location I have not divulged.

But there is a snowstorm, a small one here and now, but a much bigger elsewhere. During the storm I took an almond, cracked it and ate the nutmeats within. Inside this almond shell there were two seeds nestled together into the shape of one. I immediately ate the two seeds and immediately regretted it, because I could show no-one else my discovery. Immediately (because everything occurs immediately even if it takes a while to happen), I thought I could search for another such almond, and immediately I realized that that was quite impossible, since I'd eaten a few score almonds in the last couple of weeks and never had seen such an almond then, just as I hadn't in the preceding part of my life. Opening that almond I discovered it had two seeds.

Writing must be the revelation of impossible discoveries.


e. panharmonicon

My goal as a poet is to play a panharmonicon. (Of course, knowing what a panharmonicon is could help with understanding here.)


f. sitation

Citation is evidence that we believe there is a difference between knowing and saying.


g. disattentiveness

Writing occurs during a state of both intense attention and auto-pilot. The conscious mind pays careful attention to what it only tangentially manages. The rest is given over to the massive subconscious, all the built-up memories, thoughts, and learning of a lifetime. Writing is always about the self, an expression of the self, and written out of the deep wells of the self in an automatic state. Writing is autorobomatic.


h. distinguishment

I cannot tell the difference between any two things. I don't understand categories. I store everything in big buckets (laundry, food, poetry). I can't tell the difference between writing and drawing, between writing and singing, between writing and living. (Each of these statements is a lie that is essentially true.)


i. prose

I write prose because I speak in prose, in torrents of words rarely paused to allow for a breath, but I don't know the difference between prose and poetry, and my prose is often more poetic than my poetry because prose is my native tongue. With poetry, I'm always speaking in a language I don't quite understand (which I do believe is a good thing).


j. words

Rations peak longer than words upon words.


k. auto da fé

Every act of writing is an act of faith—that you won't fall, that you will gloriously burn in the Portuguese way but rise from the ashes of your own work and failure. We work through and with, not against or counter to, the contradictions of our thoughts and lives. What is interesting is not what is clarified and believable but whatever is obscure, uncertain, imperceptible but assumed, by whatever is only vaguely perceptible at the periphery of our vision, spectral and thus haunting.


l. performance

When I write, I perform, just as when I give a reading I also perform. The performance of writing is, certainly, most usually perceived as what is memorialized in the written text that remains after a bout of writing. While reading that text, the reader sees the writer (even if unnamed, even if I-less and gazing only blankly out of the text). The performance is the writer being demonstrated through the text as a self or a version of the self—and there are only versions.

But the performance actually took place before the reader sees the text. The performance is merely recorded for the reader, so it is only part of the performance. The performance of writing is the movement of a body, the way it writes quickly when filled with ideas (as it is doing in this sentence), and the way that it stops, pauses, scans the room, and thinks (as it did with much of the paragraph before this one).

Performance is the mind made manifest in the movements of the body. The quick nine-fingered way that I type. The dramatic way that my fingers sometimes dance upon the keys. The way my right hand jumps off the keyboard to begin deleting something. (The way deleting is an active part of that writing, the way editing is incorporated in the process of composition.) The way I stop to stretch my back or walk, or look out the window at the six trucks outside my window that are there to create a hole in the street and repair pipes—gas or water, I do not know. The way my eyes turn away from the low noon sun of winter. The way I pause sometimes at the sight of my right ear, bright pink and reflected in the screen of this computer, and then scratch the inside of the ear with my pinky in a single corkscrewing motion. The way that I write, physically write, intensely as if there is something important, something urgent, for me to say.

The way I tell you about it all.


m. futuring

Only humans are governed by and haunted by the future. Only humans realize the future is coming. Only humans think they can see it, the future, something that does not exist.


n. poem

These things I say. These things I believe.

A poem is a set of written words arranged in lines that end at prescribed points.

A poem is a single written word isolated on the page, set there for particular attention.

A poem is a particular visual presentation of written words that may contain images or may make images out of the words or the letters of the poem.

A poem is a the visual presentation of fragments of written words, or a single word, or fragments of a word or a single word, or individual letters that do not form or suggest a word, or the fragments of such letters or of an individual letter, or pseudo-writing in scripts that do not exist outside the bounds of the poem itself.

A poem is an instance of a voice reading or reciting a poem aloud.

A poem is a set of spoken words invented on the spot and spoken out to an audience that may include only the poet.

A poem is a set of spoken words without syntax but accumulated together for their sounds and what they suggest.

A poem is a set of meaningless sounds that do not represent or suggest words in any language and which are spoken aloud by the poet for their sound.

A poem is a set of words, or words without syntax, or meaningless non-representational sounds that are sung by the poet for the sounds they make and the connections between those sounds and for the emotion the singing portrays.

A poem is a digital object that may include text or spoken sounds or words or singing and that moves forward inexorably in the form of a movie.

A poem is a digital object that may include text or spoken sounds or words or singing and that can be moved through only with the intervention of a reader.

A poem is a digital object that includes aleatorically generated components such as text or spoken sounds or words or singing and that draws these components from stores of data created by the poet or by others, including a reader, and which continues forward with the intervention of a reader or not.

A poem is the performance by a body or bodies, including usually the voice, or of projected text (or text otherwise visible to an audience) or spoken or sung that includes acting in a broad sense, the incorporation of the space into the performance, and possibly the inclusion of the audience in the creation of the event.

A poem is a piece of prose written with an intense focus on the effects of language.

A poem is an essay, a manifesto, a poetics, the daily paper, a paragraph, a sentence, an entry in a diary, a letter to a friend, a note written and kept in a pocket and swallowed so that no-one can ever read it.

A poem is the creation of any of these poems, then the destruction of the poem, and the presentation of the story of the poem.

A poem is the story of the particular techniques used to create a poem that has never actually been made.

A poem is the combination of any of these poems with something else not yet imagined.

A poem is an intensified manifestation of concentration upon language in all or any of its forms: text (shape), spoken or sung words or phonemes (sound), and meaning (sense).

A poem is a poet.

A poem is I.

Poem is I.

Poem is.

Poem's.

Poem.

poem.

poem

pm

p


o. I

The poet runs the entire world through the self, the all-seeing I. Even though all it perceives is what a single discrete body can experience, that is all of reality to the poet, and what comes out the other end is merely the poet alone. The poet processes all experience through that single conscious and unconscious I, and what we are presented with in the end is the poet, the poet's views, interests, obsessions, tics, tricks, failures.


p. oet

A poet is the manifestation in a single human body of a life of poetry.


q. fragging

I work with tiny bits of language because I know all we have are fragments. There always is a whole, but that is a mosaic made out of tiny misshapen tesserae. These fragments, these tiny pieces, are what hold us, what intrigue us. Out of a two-hour movie, we might be most moved by nothing more than an eyeblink, the turn of a head, a certain expression that flickers on and then off in an instant. Other fragments have built the stage for that micro-epiphany, but still that last fragment was needed to achieve the effect. We are moved by the slightest of words, of phrasings, the quiver of meanings coming off the smallest pun in a sentence, and then it all blows up in our faces. It all becomes, manifest by one tiny fragment of an always imperceptible whole.


r. connection

A poem is a series of connections, or at the very least one (as in the pwoermd). The poem that works for the reader, the listener, the perceiver is the one that creates a memorable connection, maybe nothing newly thought but something newly made, and which thus creates a connection between the reader and the poem.


s. limits

We are incorruptible only in the sense that we cannot exceed our limits. We are wholly contained human body/minds separable from all others and all other, and we are controlled by the limits of our own imagination. What can happen, though, is that our limits expand, that we can teach ourselves to move beyond the tiny selves we originally were into something larger, that we can incorporate enough foreign ideas (those originating outside our own consciousness) into our beings, that we can learn to understand that we grow only by becoming hybrid beings, by combining our imaginations, pitiably small and shrunken, with those of others, that we insert ourselves into the jumbled and contradictory hive mind long enough to steal what we can before we escape to return to our discrete and true selves, now expanded, now able to do something more interesting, but something that is always still and only us.


t. punchant

To pun is to understand and live fully within the world of language, where arbitrary shapes and sounds carry meaning, but which meanings can be easily corrupted or extended by context or microscopic changes to the DNA of words. To pun obsessively, to be incapable of not hearing another word or two in the reboant body of any word, is to be a poet, to be obsessed with language, to make with language, with a particular language, what cannot be made with anything else.


u. commercialism

Every poem is a product, necessarily so. For some poets, that product is a source of income, the poems produced by a poet being evidence enough of the reason to hire the poet to teach or to pay the poet only to write. For most poets, that product has little direct recompense: recognition, acclaim at those rare times when derision or ignorance are not the most common fruits of their labor. Since poetry exists now almost entirely outside the realm of Mammon, it has a purity equivalent to its broad irrelevance in contemporary life. Purity means the poet writes primarily for poets, for a tiny monastic breed of people intent on saving civilization for that mass of humanity that does not know it is in danger.


v. bar®ing

Baring is a means of barring. When we show who we are in our writing, which we always do, then we hide something else. We process and reprocess the world and present a product at the end that reveals us, but in doing so it still hides most of us, the real us, and it does nothing close to representing the entire world. Revelation of self is merely the smallest inaccurate abstract of the self we fully are.

(QED: While titling this entry, I tried to entitle it "bar(r)ing," but my word-processing program helpfully changed this to the registered trademark symbol. I let that stand, not as evidence of my ingenuity, but as evidence of my discovery and the utility of it.)

(QED II: a large ship or a monarch past the prime she's never had.)


w. conveyance

A poem is a conveyance. It takes us somewhere. As with all conveyances, it is made of many parts, some of which do not work, but the vehicle still moves.


x. tXXXt

When I'm writing but don't know what to say—don't have the fact I need to slip into place, maybe a simple number, don't recall the word I want to use—I put in three exxes (XXX), which conveys the sense of absence to me and which is easy to find while scanning or searching a text. But those triple exxes have subsidiary meanings that I cannot ignore, cultural meanings larger than mine.

Dimming towards some final extinguishing is the sense of XXX meaning extremely potent, as a description of alcohol, usually moonshine in our experience. This could carry the sense that the bits of text I'm looking for, the simple words I'm trying to remember, are so important, so powerful, that I can't allow the text to exist without them. There is the sense here that these words would be so powerful as to blow out our minds, or at least send us into a deep stupor, a bit of welcome respite from reality.

But the more common meaning of the letters XXX is of triple-X-rated, highly charged in terms of sexual content. This sense has a Barthesian feel to it that I can appreciate. An artistic text is always a sensual object, or intended to be. There must be some pleasure in it, even if it is only a marginally physical object. The pleasure of it is still felt in the body—in the head, in the heart, through the intake of breath, in the genitals. Writing is generative and gendered, giving itself over to the reader as the reader will have her (or him). The text produces emotions, reactions, considerations, other ideas. It entrances, enhancing the working of the senses, moving blood through the body, stiffening our resolve to be something, to do something, to accept the bounty of the spare yet fragrant earth.

(Glancing at the paragraphs just above, I am struck by the thought that I've left something out of them. XXX means something deeply to me that I can't train my mind not to see.)


y. guage

book if my life
the gauge of language

sence per pound
pound her pussy

a tmetic piece
pièce d'insis/tense

see if you say
said instead

reveal
relieve

measure of a man
meaning of a measure

sound of scents
sent of sound

trickling
ticking

word upon word
word up on word

poem in the shape of an apple
poem in the shape of a pear

sensual
sexual

sweet in taste
en suite


z. Emerson

Time after time, when I stumble upon a quotation that captures my attention—one pulled out of context for its ability to mean on its own, separate from the supporting scaffolding of the rest of the text—that quotation is usually by Emerson. His thinking always seems the clearest to me, his insights the most striking yet easy to accept. He has none of the crabbed and in-grown tendencies of Thoreau's writing, yet he is an intellectual above all, a thinker until dementia rotted away his brain, to his own embarrassment. And he and I share a birthday. As if I were the reincarnation of Emerson, less adept, less clear, like a substandard clone of an original, yet trying to continue his writing just the same.

thust

A Creation in Time

I finished responding to a brief interview today, but one that I think covered valuable ground, at least for my purposes. The process of responding to the set of questions presented to me allowed me to think through a few issues and to clarify them to myself. Here are two paragraphs from my response, two paragraphs on the idea that everything we create, certainly everything I create, is bound inexorably with the moment of its creation.

My poetics is a poetics of presence within the language. Thus the process of composition, the act of creating something at a particular moment, is an essential component of that poetics. I understand, accept, and promote the idea that we write what we write only because we created it at a particular moment. Sleepiness, ambient sound, a certain slant of light, and the experiences we've accumulated at a particular point in time all converge on the poem to create it. All writing is extemporaneous because it is always bound by the temporal sphere. There's no escaping it.

That book of tiny poems of mine is merely one piece of evidence of that. It's a book written at night during the winter, and I think it is clear that that is when it was written. It's a book written while just having read two books of minimalist poetry, Robert Grenier's Sentences and Mark Truscott's Said Like Reeds or Things. It's a book written into a little notebook Roy Arenella gave me, and that determined the number of poems in the book and the number of lines a poem could have. That notebook was also the direct inspiration for a pwoermd I appropriated wholesale. I wrote these poems to my wife Nancy while she was asleep, and that also affected what I would write. If I'd written the same book on another night, it would have been something else entirely. It is the accumulation of one man's experiences at one point in time, with those experiences most near in time affecting its production the most.

ecr. l'inf.

disquise