On a Stair

by Ann Lauterbach

Ann Lauterbach's fifth collection takes its title from Emerson's great essay, Experience: "Where do we find ourselves?" he asks. Lauterbach's stair sits precariously between a quest for spiritual vitality and a sense of the overwhelming materiality of our world. Identifying with the clown, the nomad and the thief figures whose ghostly marginality haunt this book, Lauterbach brings us, with a dazzling range of formal and imagistic resources, to a new understanding of how language inscribes the relationship between self-knowledge and cultural meaning.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Born and raised in New York City, Ann Lauterbach studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Columbia University. Before completing her M.A. in English. she moved to London to work in publishing and art galleries. Upon her return to New York, she continued working in art galleries for a number of years. Lauterbach then began teaching writing and literature.

She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Foundation for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and in 1995, she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Lauterbach has taught at Brooklyn College, Columbia, Iowa, Princeton, and at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is currently Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College, where she has also been, since 1991, co-chair of writing in the Milton Avery School of the Arts. She is also a visiting core critic at the Yale Graduate School of the Arts.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big snow, little snow is what the Indians
say, and the grey
turned yellow and you followed it
to the tower with ice house below,
prayer room above. The big snow
slowly fell. Someone had found
a remnant ecclesiastical carpet
to lay on the stairs. Last year, he said,
I was not the same as now
that my sister is dead, my father dying.
And you wanted to know
what to make of the snake-eating man
on the far side of an island
where the song, a prelude to everything we tell,
began. And you wanted to know why,
in the yellow light, gangs form to extinguish it.

- On (Tower), to Elizabeth Rubin, pg. 17

* * *

More comes along to sustain flap flap a departure
this much is uncertain in the wreckage of Verdi

or why asks the girl to her self (looks at now)
voice of the tenor currents of opus

the handheld child mentioned in passing
day on its side too many pages

turning if then flat as a five
numerical exposure every thing countless

plus evocations plus seedlings plus fish
among ingredients where a kiss leaves its mark

translating habitude to the rash on the throat
incidental flight no less than free fall

Source of the whose of why of when
what map travels what speed what incentive

incidental expression then a career
o dally awhile off the expedient trail

gather a myth from the unused archive
save a place at the stop (wave to the camera)

bring some white twice as big as an orchid
the spoils of a wish the path of a snag

arrange to meet at the edge of a lip
did you smile in your sleep did you order this

beast or trigger (hand under belt)
what did he say at the close of night

among the epithets permanent (sequestered)
(could not be found) bracket our sequel

sock lost on the rug target of ruin
city of haloes of exits of sorts

flap flap the dragon I thought it was Sunday
at least it was under the ambush of evening

fetch me a braid the stairs are they open?
speak not to strangers they covet your tongue.

- Free Fall, pg. 29-30

* * *

Had then the dream cash (something persistent)
from bed to bed, unanchored
as from earth to fire to air
crash or clash or
the memory embodied in its shape
a man with gold portfolio
behind a wall, a villa, its shape
larger than "earth" or "water"
unattached to the sign at the side of the house
unattached to the dress
not the tiny bird on the long dark bough
calling me me me
not the plastic scissors (a cartoon)
great drift of ragweed
melody crouched under noise -
o thing, you cannot cradle this relic
as it travels thru what is.

- On (Dream), pg. 53

* * *

Young man, your mouth
belongs to an alphabet, the one
that starts near O and moves quickly on to
Q. This could be found in the diary, only
it would be after the X.
It would be after the X
which stymies passage, where only
shadows cross the threshold strung with lies.
The temporal would exist, then, because
the wind - what you never did say - would
let it fall into place like a tent for angels, or for what,
in such requisitions that angels come to make, we get to hear.

Already noon has dragged her riddle into view.
I have forgotten the answer.
Some malady in thin water,
island of lost fathers, returning ghosts with forgotten ties.
What the tongue does, it also undoes.
The deft hand on the wires or strings, remember?
A body hanging, a chair capsized.

- Delayed Elegy, pg. 64

* * *

Speak, Mistress Quaker, a parable waits from which
blessings issue, conditionally, as in a hunt, a possible hearing
wherein the manifest flirts, beguiling, almost at home.
Speak on, Troubled Specter, as in a calm
quick. Seed that, so
the trail is viable, literal, glad
as in love's timing: tick-tock luck.
A siege of incipient cures! A brevity so enhanced
the Pilgrim finds her way along the path of red berries
through the wild into the dilated Spot where following ends and begins
and ends again. You were in a tale, a choice you had not made,
whose dim constellation gathers dew on the sleeve of hours,
the iteration of just cause saving one against the other, as in a court.
Be kind, Mistress of Woes, Hooligan of Ages. Be a Treaty we sign.
Chafe against brittle nudity, swallow the excellent potion, remain among thieves.
Remain among thieves, steal Advent from avarice, dark from idiot sight.

- Invocation, to Bernadette Mayer, pg. 85