The Animal is in the World Like Water in Water

by Leslie Scalapino, Kiki Smith (Illustrations)

Poetry. Art. Originally printed as an artist book by Granary Books in an edition of 40 in 2010. "THE ANIMAL IS IN THE WORLD LIKE WATER IN WATER is a collaboration of drawings by Kiki Smith and poetry by Leslie Scalapino (myself).... Kiki Smith sent me color xeroxes of a completed sequence, forty-three drawings, which she'd titled, 'Women Being Eaten by Animals.' I wrote the poem using the sense of an unalterable past occurrence: One female, apparently the same girl, is repeatedly, in very similar images as variations, bitten and clawed by a leopard-like, lion-like animal. Both person and animal have abstracted features, giving the impression of innocence or opaqueness. As in a dream of similar actions or a dream of a single, timeless action, the girl flecked with blood while being unaltered by the animal's touch, there is no representation of motion except stillness of the figures floating in space of page. Neither the girl nor the animal articulate expression, as if phenomena of feeling(s) do not exist."The words make in an outside/space a sense of the undoing of social tyranny as undoing of any hierarchy in individuals' feelings and perception as well as in people's values (public indistinguishable from private). Without hierarchy, past-reality-future is apparently free paradise of childhood and of birds. This outside space of the word/or that is my words abuts the other visible space of 'Women being eaten by animals' (Kiki's original title). While reading as well as seeing the images (but also if only seeing the visual images?), the viewer has the experience of body and mind being separated as if that is caused by the outside world. This experience of the viewer arises from their sense, in seeing, that one is separated from the scene of the girl and the animal alone together as if making love; and a sense of separation arises from the girl and animal not mimicking expressions of experiencing sensations. The disconnect that's itself the dreamlike dialogue between 'not being experienced (by the senses)'--and separation or union (both together?) of mind/eye and body/sight--has to be first enacted by Smith's visual images, in order for the language to broach this (subject) matter at all. Is dialogue possible without language?"--Leslie Scalapino

Genres: Poetry

40 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2013

About the author

Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. One of Scalapino's most critically well-received works is way (North Point Press, 1988), a long poem which won the Poetry Center Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award.

Scalapino was born in Santa Barbara, California and raised in Berkeley. She traveled throughout her youth and adulthood to Asia, Africa and Europe and her writing was intensely influenced by these experiences. In childhood Scalapino traveled with her father Robert A. Scalapino (founder of UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies), her mother, and her two sisters (Diane and Lynne). She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon and received her B.A. in Literature in 1966 before moving on to earn her M.A. at UC Berkeley. Scalapino published her first book O and Other Poems in 1976. During her lifetime, she published more than thirty books of poetry, prose, inter-genre fiction, plays, essays, and collaborations. Other well-known works of hers include The Return of Painting, The Pearl, and Orion : A Trilogy (North Point, 1991; Talisman, 1997), Dahlia's Iris: Secret Autobiography and Fiction (FC2), Sight (a collaboration with Lyn Hejinian; Edge Books), and Zither & Autobiography (Wesleyan University Press).

Scalapino's poetry has been widely anthologized, including appearances in the influential Postmodern American Poetry, From the Other Side of the Century, and Poems for the Millennium anthologies, as well as the popular Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize series anthologies. Her work was the subject of a special "critical feature" appearing in an issue of the online poetry journal How2.

From 1986 until 2010, Scalapino ran the Oakland small press she founded, O Books. Scalapino taught writing at various institutions, including 16 years in the MFA program at Bard College. Other schools she taught at over the years included Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, UC San Diego, and Naropa University.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Rachel Aloise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coincidentally, I received this book around the same time as the elegant and much tamer chapbook If We Could Speak Like Wolves. Both explore similar themes in very different voices. While the latter flows effortlessly, this sequence of poems and drawings is very challenging, even confrontational in a way. Leslie Scalapino’s experimental writing intrigues me, but I can’t pretend to understand it! This doesn’t have to take away from the enjoyment of poetry (and in this case it did provoke a more visceral reaction) but the accompanying short essay was even more perplexing.. I admire the artist Kiki Smith and my rating mainly reflects this.