Isle of the Signatories

by Marjorie Welish

“Public inscriptions are all around us. Their mystery and the lack thereof are the off-screen subject of Marjorie Welish’s gritty, beguiling Isle of the Signatories , to be pondered long after lesser inscriptions have given up their secrets.”—John Ashbery In her latest collection, Marjorie Welish invents a world of public inscriptions. From graffiti to scholarly dedication and from historical placards to words etched in granite, she employs a variety of fonts to explore the dangers of rhetoric, the mysteries of coded language, the enigmas of form, the powerful gift of dedication, and the strange sense and substance of both new and dying literary conventions. Are all contingencies still in effect?
Okay Okay Okay
Of or
referring to antecedent future sentences in
as, insofar as, even as, yes! Of which
antecedent future increasing salvage do we write? Recipient of the Judith E. Wilson Fellowship, the Howard Foundation Fellowship, and other prestigious awards for poetry, Marjorie Welish is the author of Word Group , most recently, and also The Annotated “Here” and Selected Poems , which was an Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist and a Village Voice Best Book of the Year. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University and Pratt Institute.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

About the author

Marjorie Welish is a poet, artist, and art critic.

Welish is a graduate of Columbia University and received her M.F.A. degree from Vermont College and Norwich University. She is also a painter and is represented by Baumgartner Gallery (New York City) and Aaron Galleries (Chicago).

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isle of the Signatories is divided into two parts. The first part, also named "Isle of the Signatories", is composed of seven poems: "Isle of Signatories", "Of Henceforth (Instrumental Version)", "Fibulae Iterated", "Unfolding Yes", "Epitaph", "The Observer Is Now", and "Art & Language Writes an Epitaph"...

1
The following lines were omitted:

 Even in Arcady I exist
 e-signature in whose writings
 lies the body
 or its facsimile
Et in arcadia, I also, Pierre
 Saw "Pierre" there also.

2
The following lines were omitted:

 I, too, have known Arcady
 Name, signature
 Here lie
 Ego's avatars also
 I, Jacques Rivière,
 The lie
 Fabrication requires a thinker, he said.
Whereas, he went on, attempting to think
 Any thought, yet

 Attempting to think henceforth
 As a text though ex temporare
 All were reprinted
 With the lyric effect
 His and "there is"
 By adverting to the effect.

3
The following lines were omitted, probably deliberately:

 I, Marni Nixon, unpaginated
 - spacing

 And the corrected typescript
 At table, as a text
 Attempting to think henceforth
To think as the corrected typescript would think
 through the lyric effect
 incited to rhetoric where structure had been.

 Followed by an additional line:

 I, writing.
[...]
- Isle of Signatories (pg. 3-4)



When next pantheonic,
 the Pantheon thereafter
will have been said to be the common source.

When next pantheonic,
 then the Pantheon has read itself
on the fast track to having had necessity.

When next pantheonic,
 then it obtains that there
shall have been the self-same entity.

When next pantheonic,
 (it obtains that) the closer
pantheonic entity may be a source.

When next pantheonic,
 the close worlds are
pantheonic metrical unit.

When next pantheonic,
 it obtains that
the close the close the cause the

When next pantheonic,
 obliges that causality -
that serrated one.

When next pantheonic,
 that closely related
respite, then . . .

When next pantheonic descent
 and so on becoming possible,
it holds that coin.

When next more likely pantheonic backwards-looking aspect,
 it obtains that coin.

When next pantheonic,
 consanguinity
will be in valise.

When next pantheonic,
 chamfered net effect also.

When next pantheonic,
 it, attaining to affiliated last
best property, finds antecedents in such and such.
 - Of Henceforth (Instrumental Version) (pg. 9-10)



Lost tabby, prowling the fire escape and tagged "Minou," may be yours. Please claim.

Setting forth. If, in relation to genesis, we shall have inaugurated advantage, we call the adventure good, a good thing. If illustrious, setting forth shall have inaugurated us to our advantage. And why not?

Yet another possibility exists: let cloth drop so that it drapes across the string now oscillating, pinned to the wall; take up the cloth. Repeat.

The reader will be well advised to fathom the obscurity by asking: in what sense does the editor presuppose self-evidence in remarking "Unclear".

Yet another possibility exists: pin a length of string at either end across the wall such that it supports a cloth when dropped; take up the dropped cloth from the low string now. Repeat.

Once upon a time, the outcome of our adventures, seeming advantageous, was called "The End"; so began a time after time. And later: of our seemingly indefatigable adventures in large dimensions once upon a time.

Roaming and meowing cat - is it yours?

Roaming tabby tagged "Minou"; is it yours? Please claim.
 - Fibulae Iterated (pg. 14)



1
CLEAR THE TABLE!
 On behalf of literacy
No, 1957.
A throw of the dice
 writes the die that does not
HEY HEY
 accrue points
 but which nevertheless is iterative
He makes 1788 his zero
 of extreme tincture.

2
WALL, SPEAK!
Zero loves blank.
Open source, avant la lettre.
Encyclopedia circa 1851
From fram sauce,
 The advent of signifyin(g) -
UNCLEAR. Normative editorial comment.
Itself unclear.
 of zero polyrhythmic, possible greater.
 possibly greater anxiety may
 be revised to fit our diaspora.
Then I commenced and continues copying the Italics . . .

3
Zero, a placeholder.
WATCH THIS SPACE!
. . . writing in the spaces left
Watch faces by PAKETA:
 3, 6, 9, 0
No, circa ______.
Fa la la la la la.
No, circa 1920.
The editorial remark "Unclear".
No.

4
IMPERATIVES ARISE!
Prerequisite is placeholder and cipher in a decimal system.
Each hour ends in naught
 Given: zero as excellent
Remark "unclear" calls for change without
articulating the sense that obtains.
 Given: zero as excellent versus zero effluent
 incongruity happens something like lizards -
Malevich's Black Square (c. 1915) -
 like lizards' suction constructs.

5
ACTION FOR DUMMIES
Zero every hour on the hour.
40,000 years BCE
 An alloy, possibly of strength
Unclear - see me.
"Mare clear," a normative
editorial remark that assumes its own
convention.
 and skill of strength and skill,
 manly in mettle
Excellent is! Manly was!
 justified this pin.
Hey nonnie no.

6
FOR NO READ YES!
"No" means "Yes" in Japanese.
Quiddities cites a word in Japanese meaning Yes.
 The advent of reading.
Normatively "Unclear" means "clear"
Never mind.
 Of reading unfolding yes
Negative, circa 1960.
 throughout the next statement
 likely an alloy
 of writing and reading and _____.

7
TABLA RASA, AND BE QUICK ABOUT IT!
Zero is naught.
The Japanese word for Yes.
AL-JABR died "sometime before" A.D. 850.
Scored for
axiomatic valor
 And so he wrote:
"Simple" is mandated, but in which sense:
basic, rudimentary, elementary, formulaic, simplistic,
stereotypical? Clarify.
 And so he wrote alternative endings
down to the 0, then begins ascending line
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

8
WALL, YOU ARE MINE!
Zero is void.
Experiment, itself a grid.
 Seventeenth-century mathematization of
Sets, virtuous
Confused, incoherent, complicated, dense, figural. Virtuous, confused?
Unclear.
 mathematization of arbitrariness, in reserve.
NOTHING IS DIFFICULT TO THE WILLING, 1699
 A math of the calligraphic -
 to write a genealogy of calligraphic 
 practice, practice on a reserve slip.
PRINT YOUR NAME.

9
See verb enclosed
OURS IN NEXT!
 She said nothing.
"Zero" circa A.D. 870
 She said "antecedent"
See subject-verb-object
Clarify: to which
community, by whose
authority, for what
purpose, why?
See verb, see it be exalted:
 Then she said antecedent-permitting
 scarcity about zero might well indicate
 sets of at least one derived consequent closest 
Zero's insomnia
 - Unfolding Yes (pg. 18-23)



1
 Poulette et ancienne
 I don't know may be oaths

 Poulette et ancienne
 I know

 Poulette et ancienne
 I know don't know doesn't apply

 Low water pressure

 Why would water

Why would enhancing pressure be lacklustre

 in parentheses

 Why would there be less to the system

 If tampering be not
 - Epitaph (pg. 24)



PULL TAPE
 Tacitly Sentences. (Tacitly sentences at them.)
"As though the present were the first moment."

EXIT
 Sentence disinterred. The way of all sentences.
"Although as a future sparely linear."

DO NOT BEND
 Handwriting. Handwriting unbound,
"supposing that there be only one future copy."

DEPOSIT HERE
 For instance, Yes. The word Yes,
"only one future, perhaps truncated at one or both ends."

TO OPEN, CUT
 French sentences. French in the style of American sentences,
"then all eight versions of the future."

STAY
 A system of sentences, other sentences
"such that the future be non-empty."

PRESS DOWN AND TWIST
 Supposing a description that exhausts possible
"future sunsets."

KNOCK HARD
 Sentences to have, sentences to have and to hold.
"That non-sunset continues."

TO OPEN, TEAR ALONG PERFORATIONS
 Isotherms authored, isotherms elaborate
 sentences set against a sentence capable of the word
 beauty, the beautiful word,
"on the previous night."

IF UNDELIVERED, PLEASE RETURN TO:
 Isotherms encounter beauty at the site of inaction.
 Isotherms, beauty - deadlocked
"and formulating an increasingly turgid present."

SELECT 
 Delineating blue from green in the sentence, delineating blue
 from green is only roughly fixed. The sunset has only
 roughly fixed.
"this instant."

SEAL FLAP.
 Blue is occurring. Bluing is a whitener
"and may be read as hitherto."

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE . . .
 Blues is a postwar phenomenon, a postwar urban leaflet
"that will next be."

PRINT
 Gentian in a sentence, a sentence on cultivating nature
"that will next be that before it will be that."

THIS SIDE UP
 Comparative sentences arise to share the properties,
 all properties 
"that will be monotony, monotony everlasting."

MERGE TRAFFIC
 Phrases, phrases, phrase, phased, fazed
"onto a single tomorrow."

FOR FURTHER DETAILS, PLEASE
 Write a sentence, write to show that sentences\
 may possibly be stretched out
"throughout some intervals."

LINE FORMS HERE
 "O pen" written by the very translator from the French
"since or until sometime since."

TAKE ONE
 "O pen" in sepia tailing off may well have been written
 by you, reader of rare capacity
"indicative of a semi-past."

START HERE
 "O pen" becomes nothing a nothing of writing and of reading
 the ink frequents, providing us with a sentence
"until when next we refer."

ASK AT DESK
 . . . that "O pen" is a signature of one who would have his
 epithet "in movement" . . . dicts from the reader who would draw.
"A futurity says good-bye."

KEEP LEFT
 "O pen" of information abundantly lettered safeguard the mimetic
"collated pasts."

PLEASE RETURN THE ITEM(S)
 Neatly braced and another said would transfer words
 into proof.
"Marginal endureth."

CONVERT TEXT
 Enter a park from an elevated walk stretching from
 lattice where language seems.
"Tomorrow in perpetuity, we remember you."
 - The Observer Is Now (pg. 30-34)



1
INVECTIVE
 IN PERPEEUITY

CLEAR GLASS SQUARE LEANING

LET'S WRITE ALL OVER THE PLACE

IF, THEN; IF NOT, THEN WHAT?

COUNTERCLOCKWISE
 PLACATED
 LOW PRESSURE

TINTED LINEN OBLONG FOLDED

LET'S WRITE HERE

SO WHAT?

DUO
 ADUMBRATED
 SUBSEQUENTLY

STREAKED VEGETAL WHITE BENDING

WALL, YOU ARE MINE

THEN, AND ONLY THEN

PARAGRAPH
 VALOROUS

GENERAL REMARK NUMBER FOREST

WE SPEAK ALL LANGUAGES

SUPPOSE THAT

HERE LIE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
 PRACTICE

GREEN WOOD STACKED WET

RENAME IT!

IF THERE ARE FINITELY MANY

UNLETTERED,
 A NEW ARCHIVE

NYLON STRING TACKED WET

LET US TELL YOU HOW TO EXPLOIT US

EXIST

SENTENCE
 HERE INTERRED

STEEL WIRE PLAIT FRAYED

LET US TELL YOU HOW TO EXPLOIT US:

LET US DO WHAT WE WANT!

DEVOTED
 PHRASE

COFFEE SPILL PAGES BUCKLE

JUST DO IT!

IF YES, THEN

HERE LIE THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
 PRACTICES

COFFEE SOAKING RARE MONOGRAPH

RENAME IT! NOT IT IS YOUR STUDY COPY

THE GIFT

STREAK
 FERMENTING
 A MARK

RULES GOVERNING ORDINARY VAGUE

LET'S ATTEMPT TO THINK!

WHAT IF

2
 Zero
 (for two voices)

Indexing initiatives, when
 Not whenever, NOW!

Modernities, start your engines!
 The year is 1907
 (create acute annals)

Modernity
 (circle of)

Modernity: where ore when?
 More noise! For some persons, pessimism.

As for modernism
 Zip open!

When did modernity begin?
 With laughter we shall bury you!
 (Thank you, Stefano.)

Whenever modernist is, there shall be
 "'A'
 of a life
 - and a time"
 is Z's ideogram

When was modernity's beginning?
 a valve, circa 870

When did modernity begin?
 19A, Africa
 (the very contretemps)

Which modernity?
 And here's the orchestra to play it for you!

When did modernity make its mark?
 Mark my voids!
 (to mark)

When was modernity?
 Sleepers, awake!

Modernity ruptured:
 Death, in sentences.

 Sentenced to Death
 (populist or popular,
 which?)

 Wall, you are mine!

Now arriving on platform zero . . .
 (from the Arabic)

When did the modern era begin?
 Ahh!

Is contemporary art modern?
 Public take notice!

When did modernity begin?
 I don't know.
 (ground? groundless?)

 Death
 (my link text)

Has modernity begun?

In a though experiment, try cosmopolitan
 (laughter)
[...]
 - Art & Language Writes an Epitaph (pg. 34-41)

The second part is composted entirely of the long poem "From Dedicated To", which, incidentally, is dedicated to poet Keith Waldrop...

1.
"This copies distance . . ." Mallarmé
Any carte de visite
puts us in mind of his having been there

We shall have left
tickets in your pseudonym at the ticket window
an index

carbon copies,
the chorus wore shades as they chanted
and digested the narrative

he wore
they said to say to her that he wore her breakaway work.
Again, the incident

deploying self, in self-addressed envelope enclosing
signed lease
commemorative rubbing face down

2.
Politic impiety in scratches
a jar
a jar
incised piety and politics

ice
"or a sculpture made from articulable elements"
the epigraphist would be tempted to write
"is"

3.
Given al engthy message, mercantile
"or sculpture made from articulable elements"
addressing the social symptoms it speaks
what he should
naming many apologies
"I apologize in advance for its length"
[...]
- From Dedicated To (pg. 51)

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

in which nobody told me about her but so what I started reading it all the way from the bookstore till I got home. Something about words or signs and what they pointed to, and how pretentious that is, and how like an academic with a tenure track going round and round. But more visceral, in my opinion, more stabby.