Goest

by Cole Swensen

Treating subjects from landscape to sculpture to a 19th century technical encyclopedia, the poet is fascinated with light, glass, mirrors, flame, ice, mercury—things transparent, evanescent, impossible to grasp. Likewise Swensen’s lyrics, which, with elliptical phrasing and play between visual and aural, change the act of seeing—and reading—offering glimpses of the spirit (or ghost) that enters a poem where the rational process breaks down.

From “The Invention of Streetlights”

Certain cells, it’s said, can generate light on their own.
There are organisms that could fit on the head of a pin.
and light entire rooms. .
Throughout the Middle Ages, you could hire a man.
on any corner with a torch to light you home.
were lamps made of horn.
and from above a loom of moving flares, we watched.
Notre Dame seem small. .
Now the streets stand still. .
By 1890, it took a pound of powdered magnesium.
to photograph a midnight ball.

“Goest, sonorous with a hovering ‘ghost’ which shimmers at the root of all things, is a stunning meditation—even initiation—on the act of seeing, proprioception, and the alchemical properties of light as it exists naturally and inside the human realm of history, lore, invention and the ‘whites’ of painting. Light becomes the true mistress and possibly the underlying language of all invention. Swensen’s poetry documents a penetrating ‘intellectus’—light of the mind—by turns fragile, incandescent, transcendent.”—Anne Waldman

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2004

About the author

Cole Swensen (b. 1955— ) in Kentfield near San Francisco, Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of over ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. A translator, editor, copywriter, and teacher, she received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University and a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz before going on to become the now-Previous Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. Her work is considered Postmodern and post-Language school, though she maintains close ties with many of the original authors from that group (such as Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Barrett Watten, Charles Bernstein,) as well as poets from all over the US and Europe. In fact, her work is hybrid in nature, sometimes called lyric-Language poetry emerging from a strong background in the poetic and visual art traditions of both the USA and France and adding to them her own vision.

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the heart of the white world next to Paul's bed. This was in the Fall of 2004. This was at the edge of Paul's bed in the apartment with two floors. On the left side of the bed in October. On the dull slope of saying no. On the roof in the morning smoking while he sees me. Goest thru the white rooms of a down house, driven underneath the bed like a dog. The play of light on all these surfaces?

[Lightsey]

I love Swensen's style, but this is not my favorite of her books. The long central section feels a bit too sketchy--the subject material/collage material changes so rapidly I can't get a hold of anything deeper in it. (I like the opening and closing sections, though.) Still, it's Swensen, and any time I get to look into her picture of the world is a good time.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like watching someone make Apollo out of scraps of glass and chemical dust

[Jessamyn Duckwall · Rating 2 out of 5]

two stars not because Cole Swensen isn’t a good poet, but because i liked Gravesend so much and i just could not figure out how to connect to the poems in Goest. at least mostly. i found myself feeling interested in bits of language here and there but otherwise couldn’t *feel* these poems anywhere in my body and just felt sort of blank and unaffected while reading.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Life is not a personal thing."
- Gilles Deleuze

Asked in an interview how she felt about her writing being labelled "confessional", Chris Kraus responded, "'Confessional' of what? Personal confessions? There’s a great line from a book we published by Deleuze: Life is not personal. The word ‘confessional’ is not a good descriptor of my work. We were talking about the New York School poets – they were the ones who pioneered this use of this 'I,' an active 'I' that’s turned out onto the world. “I” in this case isn’t the point – That would be memoir. The story of 'I.' And mostly I hate that – everything else becomes merely a backdrop to the teller’s personal development. It’s an utterly false, uninteresting view."

In Goest, Swensen seems to following a similiar train of thought as Kraus... Or perhaps they are both passengers on the same train? Swensen writes with an aversion to the first person, instead remaining impersonal with the reader, with her subjects, by writing in the second and third person.

Divided into three parts, the first and third parts, "Of White" and "On White", evoke the depersonalization alluded to with Swensen's inclusion of the quote from Deleuze. In particular, the poems of "Of White" have the strongest depersonalizing effect with their short stark form and their bland content...

Oddly enough, there was always a city block of clear weather on every side of her, a space just large enough that the casual passerby simply thought, "What an odd spot of calm," and often even people who knew her well never quite put it together, as, after all, it's not that unusual to have a break in a storm, though they'd developed, after a while, an odd inclination to be with her without really thinking out why. Other than that, her life was neither better nor worse than most, except, of course, for the crowds.
- The Girl Who Never Rained, pg. 3


You walk into a house
in which several people are sitting in the dark
around a dinner table, eating, drinking, laughing.
- Others, pg. 4


One

Green moves through the tops of trees and grows
lighter green as it recedes, each of which includes a grey, and among the
greys, or beyond them,waning finely into white, there is one white spot,
absolute; it could be an egret or perhaps a crane at the edge of the water
where is meets a strip of sand.

*

Two

There is a single, almost dazzling white spot of a white house out loud
against the fields, and the forest in lines
receding, rises,
and then planes. Colour,

in pieces or entire; its presence
veneers over want; in all its moving parts, it could be something else

half-hidden by trees. Conservatory, gloriette, gazebo, or bandshell,
a door ajar on the top floor.

*

Three

The trees are half air. They fissure the sky; you could count the leaves, pare
time
defined as that which
no matter how barely, exceeds
what the eye could grasp in a glance:
intricate woods opening out before a body of water edged
with a swatch of meadow where someone has hung a bright white sheet
out in the sun to dry.

*

Four

A white bid in a green forest is a danger to itself. Stands out. Shines. Builds
up inside. Like it's dangerous to cry while driving or to talk to strangers or to
stare at the sun and a thought other things
we've always heard
people who wear white see better at night, though they gradually lose this
trait as they age.

*

Five

The air across the valley is slightly hazy though thinning though patches
remain between the groves of trees that edge a clearing in which stands a
single house. A child in a white t-shirt has just walked out of the house and
is turning to walk down to the lake.
- Five Landscapes, pg. 10-14

It can be said of the poems of the second part, "A History of the Incandescent", that depersonalization is created by approaching a subject entirely apart from the poet herself. In fact, reading the poems of the second part, I found myself asking, "What is this? Why am I reading a history of the incandescent? What does this have to do with anything?" I was confused until I chose to read these poems not as a departure but as a continuation of the theme of depersonalization...

 noctes illustatas
 (the night has houses)
 and the shadow of the fabulous
 broken into handfuls - these
can be placed at regular intervals,
 candles
walking down streets at times eclipsed by trees.
- The Invention of Streetlights, pg. 23

The third part is almost a hybrid of the first and second parts, returning to the theme of depersonalization of the first part, and yet taking the form of the poems of the second part (illuminated, if you will, by this form). What's most interesting about the poems of the third part is the shift from the impersonal to the personal, as Swensen finally adopts the I and inserts herself into the narrative...

One

I'm on a train, watching landscape streaming by, thinking
of the single equation that lets time turn physical,
equivocal, almost equable on a train

where a window is speed, vertile, vertige. It will be

one of those beautiful equations, almost visible, almost green. There

in the field, a hundred people, a festival, a lake, a summer, a
hundred thousand fields, a woman
places her hand on the small of a man's back in the middle of the crowd
and leaves it.

*

Two

A wedding in a field - the old saying: it's good luck to be seen
in white from a train. You must be looking the other way; so many things
work only if you're looking away. A woman in a field is walking away.
Gardens early in the evening. Trees
planted a few hundred years ago to line a road no longer there.
There's a lake, pale teal; its light, field after field. Spire, steeple, sea

of trees that line roads long disappeared along with their houses, which were
great houses in their time.

*

Three

A vineyard unleashed. The varieties of green. One glances accidentally
into entire lives: plumage, habitat, and distance between
the girl raising her head, turning to her friend
lost under the trees - you say it was a ring?
Engraved, the birds rise up from the field like grain
thrown. Into a line of birds planing just above the wheat.

*

Four

Each scene, as accidental as it is inevitable, so visibly, you look out on, say
a field, say leaves, with a river on the other side, another life, identical
but everyone's this time. Trees in a wallpaper pattern. An horizon
of dusk that barely outruns us. He started with pages and pages

and then erased. This one
will have a thousand pictures.

A field of houses pierced by windows.

*

There's a wedding in a field I am passing in a train
a field
in the green air, in the white air, an emptier here
the field is everywhere
because, it looks like something similar somewhere else.
- Five Landscapes, pg. 59-63

[Renee Alberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book kept almost grabbing me. While the lines incorporated a lot of lovely space (even in the layout on the page), they never really seemed rooted enough to grasp the poem completely. It felt like reading someone's notes to a poem. Another review mentioned that her other books are better, and I'd be willing to try one of those.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of hers that I've read.

[Leena · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a little ridiculous how much I loved this book.

Full disclosure: I bought a new phone and finally had the ability to use the Libby app to check out things from my library, to read on my phone. I don't read on my phone much, but I am happy to have the option. I was testing the app and settled on poetry as a genre to browse, because it's short and not meant to be read in one sitting, you know?

I honestly picked this book because it had an award on the cover. I figured, this one looks good. Why not?

And it turned out to be this lovely, nerdy book of poems. I found it interesting, observant, and introspective. I felt it played with scale a lot, which is always super fun in any work. And the historical references just brought me joy.

You may be saying to yourself, geez lady? What the heck do you know about poetry? Why should I care about your review? And that's fair. I read a lot of haiku/senryu and tanka, but that's about it. But, hooray for the serendipity that brought me to this book. I wanted to share the love.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

curious journeys
into the field of knowledge
green sound of the thought

Favs: Others, The Invention of Streetlights, The Invention of the Mirror, The Discovery of Bologna Stone, Of Manganese and Other Things, Five Landscapes

[Ann Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like Swenson's work. I find her language and ideas inspiring.

[c · Rating 4 out of 5]

hot damn i actually liked a cole swensen book for once

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's just something about translators who are also poets, I just don't get it and I love it!

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a remarkable collection by Swensen, but I had to read it three times through and even memorize one of the poems ("The Development of Natural Gas") before the internal sound logic of these poems was revealed to me. Thus I was able to move from a stance that was somewhat dismissive of what I saw as purposively obfuscatory work to a deeper appreciation of the aural quality of Swensen's rhythms. The final poem, "Five Landscapes," is a strong and appropriate coda.

[Katherine Factor · Rating 5 out of 5]

pythagoras rules!

[Elizabeth Metzger]

Just bought this at Woodland Patter. Lovely first poem, but still to-be-read.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially like the invention section in the middle. Any book of poems mentioning Leibniz gets my vote anyway.

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book sent to me as a surprise, I really liked Ms. Swensen's poetry, especially "The Girl Who Never Rained."

[hali salome · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked the prose poem w the bees (is this a theme in books i like?)?

[Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how I wish all histories were taught—in verse.