Way

Leslie Scalapino. A text that happens in real time-- lots of play, turns and inversions. In the epigraph, which informs the whole text: concerned with reciprocal relationships-- where everything is dependent for its existence on maintenance of appropriate conditions-- and therefore infinitely interconnected. Since these infinity factors are inevitably always shifting, no[ ]one [thing] "can even remain identical with itself as time passes."

The speaker is situating herself and others among herself and everything else,

(15)

that-- the

so-

cial world

--them-- as

in it

on ground that's constantly changing, not only because it's under scrutiny (perhaps in spite of it)--

(34)

myself

under

an

oppression

and

the bird

that-- lit on me

briefly

seeming

to have picked up

on that

in short short lines that feel breathy rather than frantic or choppy. Constant play with line break and language, chopping words into bits to emphasize different possible meanings depending on where they're situated in lines, lots of pronominal play, esp. with "their"-- standing in for "there" and "they're" and thereby stressing the inherent relationship between the three. (Sometimes also at odds with "my" or "our," also underscoring politics of relationships, place, and possession.)

Written in prose and verse; often on the page as sets of 2 stanzas, a little like diptychs-- but not uniquely so (also sometimes in threes, single stanzas, or a mix of prose and verse stanzas).

Not totally sure I understand what she means by the "inverse"-- seems to appear sometimes not only as "inverse" but also as "introversions" and "negatives"-- I think "opposite" is too reductive? see here:

(116)

the man-- that had

really happened-- starving lying

in garbage-- that is on

my part-- or on one's part-- and

not done away with in

that way

my-- it would have to be-- being

introverted-- having nothing to do--

as that-- situation of the man

lying there-- not producing

that

when-- the state of introverted has

got to be-- in myself-- as a

negative event-- so that man

lying there-- though not producing

it

and on a related note, interested in mapping relationships (spatial and existential) but also turning on the idea of a "senseless point" in these relationships...

(102-3)

and-- a senseless

relation of the

public figure-- to his

dying from age-- having that

in the present-- as him to us

as is my

relationship to the mugger-- a

boy-- coming up behind

us-- grabbing the other woman's

purse-- in his running into the park

the boy-- who'd

been the mugger-- and had run

off into the park-- with the other

woman's purse at the time-- and that

relation to him

as being the

senseless point-- though without

knowing the boy-- who was the mugger-- after

that-- or of course then

either-- but that as not being it

(again, I'm not sure what to make of this idea-- is this related to the (seemingly?) arbitrary nature of many of the affecting factors that make situations, things, people, scenarios? curious to your thoughts, Cathy.)

Politics of space and relationships runs through entire text, most overtly maybe in bum series, but I wanted to look at an excerpt in hoofer:

learning-- it seems

silly-- to accept the authority

--or want it-- of some situation

of needed-- and sought after

instruction-- as destroying

not of the hurt-- back-- in my

falling--which had not be done

in that way-- but

of fragile flesh-- and not

in a situation of authority

when it is performance-- not of

our culture-- the flesh being fragile

--and not hurt-- in the women being licked

between their legs-- by the men, but who're

customers-- or who're not that-- but aren't

socially important-- are ordinary

(love the play, btw, with "who're") I'm not sure what's meant by "fragile" except that it's later related to the life of a bum-- so it seems to be the point on which the text is turned to relate one instance of fragility and relational politics to another separate, different, but somehow related instance? (this reminds me of Abigail Child's Mirror World)

and a little poem, after Leslie Scalapino, R.I.P.

best-- everyone

wants

--what's--to feel

chosen

frist poem

The day is swill

before breakfast

Reds are second, A sadder

way to lose

Then buy a wide

MARGARINE

.

Toast:

to stomach and entrails

to which your belly descends

illuminati

Knots. Botched patch.

A fervor, for tea. I mean need

it.

Gotta get me a fever-o

ice ice

ingrained. On the smooth

vermouth skate

your slender foot

which goes alone

into ice, ice

memory pie. Awake and rude, jabber

from low dell, a

God, a WALKIE-

TALKIE.

YES I CAN HEAR YOU FINE

AMEN

.

This mlk sacrifice cries

when it spills, Bloody

useful.

FLOWER TURTLE [I] DOVE* YOU A.M.

RAM a CALF an OXOX A CHILD

But what happened to the funnies?

--A pickle!

But where do you keep the butter?

--My holy churn!

*I above you, cloven you, dove

and gloved you; hovered you, by Jove

moved you, over, you; I proved

you, roved, shoved, and wove you.

School of Udhra

Nathaniel Mackey.

Song of the Andoumboulou: 9
gorgeous language, really sensual:

...pools our
palms cupped. Our palms keep,
their muddled waters near
the root of the world-axis
tug
our boat's, our bed of sweat's
blown seeds...

The body floats. The oldtime people sing,
say hurt is light angels eat,
come whispering meekly by the
banks...


what he's doing wih line break:

Baited lip. Love's lawless
jaw. Said, "I love you," loaded
like
a pointed gun.


song:11
allergic to time because we react to it?

song:12
remembering--these are songs, have the rhythms of songs though the rhythms (punctuated by internal rhyme) are interrupted occasionally--

...light, slack hoped-for rope
groped at, unraveled.

progressions, similar to those in Inanna song: 14

Nodded out, all
hell broke loose, blind earth, blue heaven.
Burst of adrenaline. Dreamt I was dreaming, drugged,
boated
back and forth between ruts.

I think Mackey can pull off some of these tricks (repetitions and building progressions) from older texts (like Inanna) because of his line breaks-- even in the direct repetitions, the phrases/verses are lineated differently (but not so as to seem to beat the phrase senseless, drawing out every possible variation)

privileging of space: playing on readers' expectations: are blown

away

--forces reader to make semantic sense vertically as well as horizontally, left and right and right and left. Though they never stray outside a thin strip running down the page (not all over the page) and therefore seem to still resemble songs

Warmed-over gospel. Stick-figure truth. (p19)

Some patterns/repetitions/themes:

light, blue, legs (world beginning only as slender feet, slim legs wrapped around man, Legba) "wouldn't say what" (refrain) and

pronoun use: "Irritable Mystic"

His they their
we, their he
his was but if
need be one,
self-
extinguishing
I, neither sham nor
excuse yet an
alibi, exited,
out,
else
the only where
he'd be.

(67) Book of he, book of she,
book of him, book of her,
Them
to the what-sayer's Who is
this "they"?, this their coded way
of continuing, that she came
back...

and (81)

covered
we were and by that touched "I-ness" to "I-ness,"
inward, wombed inducement
arced into "us-ness,"
otherness, nothingness...


these segments display Mackey's constant separating, grouping, scrambling, regrouping of the self/selves-- seems to be related to the idea of twinlessness-- here both peerlessness and incompleteness; wholeness of individual and half-ness; diverse, fragmented, yet collected/ive. (100 visions and revisions of these origins):

(79)
...No him, no you
no
her, no them. Nipped,
non-pronomial...

I and I and I
ad infinitum

86)
Ominous music made a mumblers
academy,
vatic scat, to be alive
was to be warned it said...

The Cloud of Unknowing

rendered by Evelyn Underhill. My notes:

Chapter 3) "It behoveth always to be in this cloud in this darkness"

how?

4) "And our soul by virtue of this reforming grace is made sufficient to the full to comprehend all Him by love, the which is incomprehensible to all created knowledgeable powers, as is angel, or man's soul; I mean, by their knowing, and not by their loving"

knowledgeable power v. loving power

4) for time is made for man, and not man for time

God does not give 2 times at once-- what does this mean?

"travail not in thy wits nor in thy imagination on nowise: for I tell thee truly, it may not be come to by travail in them, and therefore leave them and work not in them

darkness= unknowing; wot= to know/comprehend; list= to be disposed to

there is a cloud of unknowing between us and God

5) cloud of forgetting beneath (do not even think and praise God for His goodness-- better to love Him and praise Him for Himself)

8) contemplative better than active

Active life is troubled and travailed about many things, but contemplative life sitteth in peace with one thing

10-11) set aside all thoughts/distractions (even people) lest these distractions, if developed, lead you to one of the 7 deadly sins

12) meekness & charity-- 2 virtues that encompass all others

14) shouldest thou deceive thyself, and ween that though wert full meek when though wert all belapped in foul stinking pride

16) ... for it is the condition of a true lover that ever the more he loveth, the more he longeth for love

16) (Mary) And therefore she hung up her love and her longing desire in this cloud of unknowing, and learned her to love a thing which she might not see clearly in this life

---negative capability?

17) (Martha/Mary) Martha exhibits 1st stage of active life; Mary 2nd stage of contemplative life

20) Martha (an active) was preoccupied with things of this life (needed to abandon all them and focus on 1 thing [like Mary-- with Christ]) therefore Mary hath chosen the best part

21) 3 stages: good better best

_1)active-- good and honest bodily works of mercy & charity

_2)good ghostly meditations of man's wretchedness, Passion of Christ, and joys of heaven

_3) singular love in contemplation

26) charity: put others in cloud of forgetting, let God send you love for them (He will, don't worry) "He will peradventure send out a beam of ghostly light, piercing this cloud of unknowing that is betwixt thee and Him"

--and then you'll feel inflamed with the fire of His love

29-30) when thoughts/sin stir in you

_1) travail, knowing it'll be over soon (look past them)

_2) cower, let God handle it?

33) no perfect rest in life as pain of original sin will always be upon us

35) contemplative occupied with 3 things: lesson, meditation, and orison (reading, thinking, praying)

37-8) a short prayer pierceth heaven-- prayed in full spirit; arouses pity.

prayer concerned with removing evil: "sin"

prayer concerned with getting of good: "God"

don't search for more words-- not by study but by grace

40) sin, sin, sin! out, out, out!-- prayer of contemplatives who feel "other" (sin) rising up in them

41) discretion (moderation) in all things but pursuit/seeking God's love (and moderation)

44) perfect sorrow: "sit full still, as it were in a sleeping device, all forsobbed and forsunken in sorrow"

47) hide the desire (even from God... or try), that it be more ghostly/less bodily: hide it from God lest you make a bodily shewing to Him, either in gesture or in voice or in word (and therefore impure)

48) author doesn't wish to depart "that which God hath coupled, the body and the spirit"

49) a good will is the substance of all perfection

51-2) misunderstanding of words "in" and "up" turn their bodily wits inward

53) nervous habits are the very tokens of unstableness of hearts and unrestfulness of mind

57) misunderstand "up:" make bodily God and angels-- too close (not discounting revelations [divine])

59) in hearing "lift up" or "go in" not stirring bodily but time, place and body be forgotten in all ghostly working (don't picture it-- it's ghostly work, not bodily) thus no imagination-ing

60) high way to heaven run by desires not paces of feet

61) all that's bodily is subject to that which is ghostly

62) powers of the soul, principal: memory, reason, and will; secondary: imagination and sensuality

64) reason: depart evil from the good. Before the fall reason might have done this by nature

will: power through which we choose good, then love/desire good and liking/consent to God

Memory containeth and comprehendeth it

65) Imagination: was obedient to reason pre-Fall

67) when thou feelest thy Memory occupied with... soul and their workings in ghostly things or of any creature that's ghostly and even with thee in nature by this learn to know thyself in furthering of perfection-- then though art within thyself and even with thyself BUT

when thou feelest thy Memory occupied with no manner of thing bodily or ghostly but only with the self substance of God as it is and maybe-- then thou art above thyself and closer to thy God (but how? reminds me of Rachel's experience in summoning a succubus, re: 'step 8: summon the succubus." thanks, loads of help)

68) thou shalt be nowhere; nowhere bodily, is everhwere ghostly

70) defailing of bodily wits= more readily coming to know ghostly things, defailing ghostly wits= coming to knowledge of God

73) 3 types/manners of grace: Moses, Bezaleel, Aaron

75) all holy desires grow by delays, if they wane by delays they never were holy desires

Vancouver Lecture 1: Dictation & "A Textbook of Poetry"

Spicer. Not on my list, but recommended to ease comprehension of his idea of "Outside"-ness and Blaser's essay on that practice. Some quick notes:

(10) Outside v. inside-- impulse to override what's coming in from Outside

***I think this could be interesting in a poem, to see the struggle, but maybe not... this thought did make me think of two poems that have moments like this, sort of, that I really like: one of Stepha's hound poems, dreamscape, ending with God help me, nice moment that disorients the reader from narrative/passive listener to direct addressee, and Edson's "The Neighborhood Dog," with the line, "I don't like to see that/don't like to see a dog get like that" or some such. (Also of course Bishop's "One Art" ("Though it might look like (write it!) like disaster"). I like those intrusions and visible seams.

And it's become clearer that the Martians are just a handy metaphor (bearing across) to describe something that's pretty difficult to describe: the Martians seem to be the source, the inspiration (I mean that in the sense that the writing is inspired, in the Biblical, God-breathed sense-- which somehow, I think, aligns with Spicer's idea of dictation) that we're to listen to and not to interfere with (that is, to listen to and write down what they say). BUT what he's saying seems not dissimilar to other ideas about this, which he addresses (well, poets' ideas, anyway) but sort of dismisses... however, q: how is this different from an oracle? Religious connotations aside, the only significant differences I see are that the poet exercises some authority (chooses to write it down, weighs its authenticity) and the poet (for some reason, probably lack of humility) claims the poems as his/her own, whereas the oracle would acknowledge the message comes from somewhere else. Which is another difference, perhaps: Spicer is pretty adamant that he's receiving POEMS NOT MESSAGES. And he's of course very clear that he can't identify the source but it's not divine. But what's the real difference?

Even thinking biblically (thinking of John writing Revelation) the book claims to be a recording of a vision, which he probably couldn't comprehend and therefore translated it into the language/images/references he had access to, this taking for granted of course the idea that Scripture, including prophecy, is inspired and therefore a form of dictation. So what's the difference, and what the hell do these Martians want with poetry, anyway?

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer

ed./trans. Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer.

Including: "The Hullupu- Tree" "Inanna and the God of Wisdom," "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi," "The Descent of Inanna," and "Seven Hymns to Inanna." Arranged so that the story is told cyclically, as Inanna matures from young woman to queen: her throne is made in (from) The Huluppu-Tree; she is blessed by her great-grandfather-in-law-to-be, Enki, god of wisdom and the Waters; her courtship and honeymoon years with Dumuzi, the shepherd (also referred to as the ox?); her descent (stripping/surrendering of the me, death) into the underworld/encounter with Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld/her counterpart, and her ascent/bargaining for her return/offering of her husband; and the hymns that praise her, affirming her ascension and rightful placing as goddess. (Dumuzi is eventually caught by the galla, demons who seem unamused by his wily tactics to evade them.)

Yow, must say that "The Courtship of Inanna" and "The Descent of Inanna" eclipsed other sections. The Courtship is incredibly-- if not weirdly-- erotic, and I've been excited to read The Descent since I found out it was probably an inspiration for Notley's Descent of Alette. Listen to this language from The Courtship (and I acknowledge that the choice of the translators certainly must play a significant role in its effect, but still):

(Inanna:)

"...As for me, Inanna,

Who will plow my vulva?

Who will plow my high field?

Who will plow my wet ground?

As for me, the young woman,

Who will plow my vulva?

Who will station the ox there?

Who will plow my vulva?"

Dumuzi replied:

"Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva.

I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva."

Inanna:

"Then plow my vulva, man of my heart!

Plow my vulva!"

Pretty sexy, in an ancient Sumerian shepherd-on-goddess kind of way. But also: you can get a sense of the repetitions, a hint of the long lists of repetitions that characterize these texts. The interesting thing is that there's generally a move to the more specific: "the king... I, Dumuzi the King," or in another section, "Bring...Bring her... Bring my sister. Bring my Geshtinanna, my little sister."

Also, the lists work synecdochically: what's listed is meant to give a taste of the splendor, the variety, the whole-- but they also serve to create odd tensions (what's not listed? why are certain things juxtaposed?) Look here:

Dumuzi spoke:

"Why do you speak about the farmer?

Why do you speak about him?

If he gives you black flour,

I will give you black wool.

If he gives you white flour,

I will give you white wool.

If he gives you beer,

I will give you sweet milk.

If he gives you bread,

I will give you honey cheese.

I will give the farmer my leftover cream.

I will give you the farmer my leftover milk.

Why do you speak about the farmer?

What does he have more than I do?"

So obviously, Dumuzi is countering the hypothetical offers from the farmer with things that he, the shepherd, could get from sheep. But they're not exactly fair trades; Inanna can't eat the wool. And the offers take a sexual turn (honey cheese is referenced again later, by Inanna: "Let the milk of the goat flow into my sheepfold./ Fill my holy churn with honey cheese./ Lord Dumuzi, I will drink your fresh milk.") and then the sexuality becomes a threat, almost: ("I will give the farmer my leftover cream"... boasts? or foreshadowing his infidelity ("He will no longer perform his sweet task/ Among the maidens in the city" in The Return)?

The Practice of Outside

Robin Blaser.

Spicer was so marvelous since (because of) the fact that language wasn’t working. It didn’t give him a world. It didn’t give any of the rest of us a world. It just jabbered on & on & on.

-Blaser, on cosmology, in an interview with Paul Nelson

Key Points:

subversion (even abandonment?) of the lyric:

"He had said early on in conversation with a young poet that one had first to learn to use the I and then to lose it." (271) and perhaps also

"You have to-- not really want-- not what you don't want to say. It's a very complicated kind of thing. You can't play tricks on it. That's the second stage." (274)

“...he found the fundamental description of the lyric voice, which had defined the extent of the poem’s concern, and his dissatisfaction with it, and he also found the extreme question, who or what is speaking?” (299) good question. And later:

“…Jack’s concern for a flowing, incomplete sense of form: the basic question—who is speaking?—turns of the gossip, the baseball forecasts and the meannesses—turns into a world.” (322)

dictation: (related) “Now, the third step in dictated poetry is to try to keep all of yourself that is possible out of the poem… The more you know, the more languages you know… the more building blocks the Martians have to play with.” (275)

polarities:

“This is the necessary laying of oneself alongside another content, which brings form and keeps it alive—the double of language, where it holds to both reason and unreason, thought and unthought… to find what is also there at the gates—a discourse, recomposing, which also happens to be a ‘motive of things that we are not’.” (316)

“…neither baseball nor poetry are for amusement. They disclose something—perhaps only a virtuality. The rules are invisible, the players a visibility.” (317)

“Disbelief and invisibility are as real to experience as belief and visibility… If our visibility falls out of language, the language comes back to talk by itself.” (290) This leads to his idea of the “fix”:

the “fix”: “He also meant the language of it—a fix of the language that is not true to its own structure and that tends to stop the real in something one can only refer to.” (283)

and: “Jack in particular is clear on the part language plays in the composition of what we call real. Thus, the poetics becomes directive to perception and stance, a way rather than a fictive transcendence.”

perhaps: “The looking into something as it composes in the poem, especially as it is of our own time, is to see what is on the other side, but not separate from this side or its terror. One can’t see without meaning…” (285)

but certainly:

“The public, the political, the social are all forms of thought and experience… these forms must begin again because we are inside the death of these forms, the “fix” of them.” (289)

And I think it’s possible to say that the “fix” is necessary—perhaps even inevitable; Blaser says, “For us, outside the strangeness of poetry, discourse has been accepted as an act of language between ourselves, an agreement of logical structure that turns out to be our impositions of an order. This amounts to a closure of language, which brings it into our own limit, and ultimately that discourse will die as man does.” (291)

But how to get this “fix”?

opening/closure of language: “Where, so to speak, a public language has closed itself in order to hold a meaning, it becomes less than the composition of meaning…and becomes an imposition rather than a disclosure.” (275)

and Mallarmé’s idea that “Nothingness… was not an end but a point of departure”? (298)

and [a final aspect of Jack’s work]: “that the reader participates in the meaning of the poem—that the poetic reopens words into action… At the center of a poetry of this order, there is a perilous act, which is of the nature of thought itself.” (300)

which brings us, I think, to form:

“The poetic can only be a persuasive dressing-up of a system or a grid of meanings. It is then only a disguised discourse. The poetic, where it breaks out of the ordinary discourse and is either too elemental or to visionary, will have a life of its own and be true to itself.” (302)

Coleridge, on form: “Remember that there is a difference between form as proceeding, and shape as superinduced: —the latter is either the death or the imprisonment of the thing: —the former is its self-witnessing and self-effected sphere of agency.” (303) (think also of Keats’ negative capability)

The Practice of Everyday Life

Michel de Certeau. I had to OhioLink this book and return it on 5/14, so I didn't get to read all of it, lest the library paper its walls with wanted posters emblazoned with my stupid sophomore MU id picture on them-- so I read as much as I could and then ordered it from Amazon.com because it was awesome! and I love him. I only put two chapters ("Spatial Stories" and "Walking in the City") on my list, which I of course read, but I also read the intro and all of Part I: A Very Ordinary Culture. Says Wikipedia:

The Practice of Everyday Life begins by pointing out that while social science possesses the ability to study the traditions, language, symbols, art and articles of exchange that make up a culture, it lacks a formal means by which to examine the ways in which people reappropriate them in everyday situations.

This is a dangerous omission, Certeau argues, because in the activity of re-use lies an abundance of opportunities for ordinary people to subvert the rituals and representations that institutions seek to impose upon them.

Exactly. Relevant to my project, as I'm interested in appropriation, ritual, and I suppose on some level, consumerism (and anti-)-- so this has been an extremely fun read.

My notes:

(13) on Wittgenstein: reading/doing philosophy: like savages (sic. yes, sick) hearing expressions of civilized men (sigh), putting a false interpretation on what we hear & drawing the queerest conclusions from it." -- no longer position of professionals but rather "...being a foreigner at home, a "savage" in the midst of ordinary culture, lost in the complexity of the common agreement and what goes without saying it. ...Since in short there is no way out, the fact remains that we are foreigners on the inside, but there is no outside. Thus we must constantly "run up against the limits" of ordinary language."

-- this reminds me of Pierre Joris's idea of the poet always outside of language (even mother tongue); though de Certeau seems to purport that this is everyone's position, at least concerning philosophy? (but certainly could be extended to language, as it's infinitely customized/able to suit individual needs/to overcome shortcomings) But are we as poets privileged (if these two ideas can be conflated) because we can see language not only as perplexing but also as malleable? We are outside it (as much as possible) with the inside scoop? (dare I say) benevolently looking in? or violently, maybe-- doesn't poetry reflect/dictate most efficiently the patterns & trends of ordinary language?

(17) Religion & Voodoo-- Brazilian (specifically religious and/or mystical) songs "provide a site that is impregnable, because it exists nowhere, a utopia. They create another space, which coexists with that of an experience deprived of illusions. (emphasis mine)

-- So songs can begin to or do articulate the ineffable? *Songs (and religion, for that matter) are received language (makes me think of Notley's idea of music played v. being the essence of music)-- an imposed system. But what elevates this above any other received liturgy-- or is that the point?

(21) proverbs: "Like tools, provers (and other discourses) are marked by uses; they offer to analysis the imprints of acts or of processes of enunciation; they signify the operations whose object they have been, operations which are relative to situations and which can ben thought of as the conjectural modalizations of statements or of practices; more generally, they thus indicate a social historicity in which systems of representations or processes of fabrication no longer appear only as normative frameworks but also as tools manipulated by users."

la perruque: the wig, obviously, but also: pursuiing one's own ends on company time

la perruque with folk songs/tales: displayed as justification to city folk (implied then that low/high art still ≠ and still relevant terms?

(27) "texts that honor and bury them at the same time"-- texts of miracles, masters, history

(28) manifesto:

"make textual objects that signify an art & solidarities; ...we can exchange gifts... practice an 'ordinary' art, to find oneself in the common situation, & to make a kind of perruque of writing itself."

"Making Do:" superimposes and creates a space where one has no choice but to live & which lays down its law for one, one establishes within it a degree of plurality and creativity

-- use and re-use-- poethics?

"Walking in the City"

City can be viewed from above and by walking (latter "practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen") "A migrational, metaphorical city slips into the clear text of the planned & readable city."

***possible in poetics?

(97) operations of walking (esp. on set "paths") forget the experience itself (window shopping etc.) "the trace left behind is substituted for the practice."

--appropriation, spatial acting-out of the place, implies relations among the differentiated positions.

(98) if a walker actualizes some possibilities of a place (it is a place in which no one can move, a walk prevents further movement) he makes them exist as well as emerge

-- link to Bataille? sacrifice--ritual--signifies emergence (not just participation)?

(98) created discreteness: choices made/ "the user of a city picks out certain fragments of the statement in order to actualize them in secret"-- makes choices among the signifiers of spatial "language" or by displacing them through the use he makes of them

(99) here & there imply an "I" and introduce possibilities of an "other" in relation to this "I" thus establishing a conjunctive and disjunctive articulation of places

synecdoche: makes more from less; fragment to whole (frag represents whole)

asyndeton: suppression of linking words such as adverbs and conjunctions either within a sentence or between sentences. cuts out; creates a "less" via elision; opens gaps in spatial continuum; undoes continuity; undercuts its plausibility

(103) "to walk is to lack a place"

(103-4) le sens des mots & le sens de la marche: external factors/ordering of space (the City, for instance) watches/keeps its gaze on us; the proper names give/offer familiarity-- they "make sense"-- we both recognize them & they give us direction

--more than an idea: "the magical powers proper names enjoy"-- their power over us, to control (positively or negatively) our actions

(106) other than home (marked, opened up by a memory or a story signed by something/one else) in City there are only "places in which one can no longer believe in anything."

(107) To tell oneself legends = to invent spaces. makeshift things.

fort/da principle (fort= over there, gone, no more; da= to be other and to move toward the other)

(110) to practice space... it is, in a place, to be other and to move toward the other

"Spatial Stories": admittedly, I didn't enjoy this chapter as much as the others, perhaps because by the time I re-read it, I was reading it from my course pack from 740, with all of my notes from "Rhetoric of Song"-- which made this reading a bit difficult, as I kept relating de Certeau's ideas back to song. But a few notes:

(117) "In short, space is a practiced place." Place v. Space seems to = Static v. Mobile

(120) idea of the tour v. the map seems to be the difference between the 2nd person POV ("on the right, you see a low door") and the 3rd ("the girls' room is next to the kitchen"). Interestingly, the "tour" (2nd person POV) is the overwhelmingly popular method. I'm pretty sure that I give directions in this way; I think it's because I'm trying to orient myself in this "story"-- and so to put you there, I put myself there. Says de Certeau: "Everyday stories tell us what one can do in it and make out of it. They are treatments of space." (122)

Purposes of stories:

1) Creating a theater of actions, to authorize, to found. "It 'provides space' for the actions that will be undertaken; it 'creates a field' which serves as their 'base' and their 'theater.'" (124) It is fragmented, miniaturized, and polyvalent: "Fragmented and disseminated, it is continually concerned with marking out boundaries." (125)

2) Frontiers and bridges, representing the relationship between the frontier and the bridge, a legitimate space and its exteriority. This space is created by that interaction: "And also that the determination of space is dual and operational, and, in a problematics of enunciation, related to an 'interlocutory' process." (126)

Again, "Limits are drawn by the points at which the progressive appropriations (the acquisitions of predicates in the course of the story) and the successive displacements (internal or external movements) of the acting subjects meet... Thus, in the obscurity of their unlimitedness, bodies can be distinguished only where the "contacts" (touches) of amorous or hostile struggles are inscribed on them. This is a paradox of the frontier: created by contacts, the points of differentiation between two bodies are also their common points. Conjuction and disjunction are inseparable in them. Of two bodies in contact, which one possesses the frontier that distinguishes them? Neither. Does that amount to saying: No one?" (126-7)

Theoretical problem: the border makes the frontier such-- so to whom does it belong? The mouthpiece of the limit "creates communication as well as separation" and establishes the border only by "saying what crosses it, having come from the other side."

Specifically, bridges: "As a transgression of the limit... it represents a departure, an attack on a sate, the ambition of a conquering power, or the flight of an exile; in any case, the 'betrayal' of an order." (128) It facilitates departure, offers an other option

and it all comes back to space being a practiced place.

Theory of Religion

Georges Bataille. I only put "Sacrifice, the Festival, and the Principles of the Sacred World" on my list, but decided to read the preface, intro, and all of Part One, "The Basic Data." So glad I did-- this was really interesting and generated useful thoughts and notes to approach de Certeau (go figure). Here are my notes:

all action is "negating"

(21) "...In that poetry describes nothing that does not slip toward the unknowable." ...but he's more interested (or seems to be, at this point) in what "appears distinctly and clearly."

(28) language: tool (utilitarian) subordinate-- if we think of it as an object: "has meaning that breaks the undifferentiated continuity-- stands opposed to immanence/flow of all that is-- which transcends. It's the subject's property, the subject's [self's] thing, but is nonetheless impervious to the subject."

quickly: a tool = manufactured object on same plane. "THe only means of freeing the manufactured object from the servility of the tool is art, understood as a true end." Though even art doesn't guarantee un-usefulness. water in water.

divine=sacred. profane v. holy & mythical

We refuse to make the human body an object-- we won't eat humans, will not make man (sic) a thing-- unlike animals. Though man can and does make himself a tool/thing (a farmer is a tool [as plow or grain] to the eater of bread).

Moving on: "Sacrifice, the Festival, the Sacred World:"

Sacrifice removes object (my word) plant/animal from world of things-- purpose is to destroy the thing in the victim, destroy the object's realities of subordination. Draws the victim out of the world of utility and restores it to unintelligible caprice.

Sacrifice restores thing to intimacy but turns its back on real relations (it must, as it goes against its own nature).

(46) Death = great affirmer of life

Sacrifice functions like death as it restores a lost value through a relinquishment of that value. Sacrifice is not to kill but to relinquish and give.

(49) Sacrifice (with death) reinforces life-- underscores it, brings out/back intimacy, Sacrificing to a deity, whose sacred essence is comparable to a fire, is fueled by sacrifice (spirit fueling spirit) as coal into furnace, but whereas coal is subordinated to furnace, in sacrifice, the offering is rescued from all utility.

Useful things, not luxury items, are sacrificed, as useful things were not destroyed beforehand (and therefore are only sacrificed once).

What is intimate: what has the passion of an absence of individuality, but also: violence and destruction. Animals have an unconscious intimacy.

(56) Basic problem of religion is given in the fatal misunderstanding of sacrifice: "Man is the being that has lost-- even rejected, that which he obscurely is, a vague intimacy--"

(Slavery, then, reduces human to thing-ness; human sacrifice: what is useful. [I have no idea, think I was just jotting down concepts from the text.])

***Connection to language: sacrifice of what's useful? Chant? Attempted use to highlight essence of a thing, to regain lost intimacy?

Close to Me & Closer... (The Language of Heaven)

Alice Notley. As with any Notley book, the form is integral to/shaped by/helps determine the content of the poem. I can get used to what she's doing, but it never disappears, and just as I become comfortable with the device(s), they're conflated, blurred, complicated-- so that form is always apparent and pressurized. It's always at work. In Close to Me & Closer... (The Language of Heaven), a poem in two voices-- her dead father's and her own-- the form changes depending on the speaker. In the Preface, she describes each; his: "he stumbled toward the true definition of measure: 'what is measured.'" and hers: "blurty and jazzy and discontinuous." His are prose-poem-like, with phrases fragmented by ellipses and words occasionally underlined-- not always the "clincher" word or even the entirety of a word. Seems to indicate inflection? Hers are lineated, left-justified, with occasional capitalization mid-line to indicate "a new line or a sub-line" (Notley). The voices begin to merge toward the latter half of the book (though the speaker is still indicated) as his ellipses and underscored language seeps into her lineated-- then even prose-like--responses.

Their dialogue addresses language (specifically, words)

"Words fill... god...heaven. They are... exactly right. They aren't... a language. They are... being... coming out" (23)

As words, language, and the creation process occur and service both the living and the dead:

[Note: as it appears that I cannot underline text in this post, I've bolded the underscored words to try to convey a sense of the original text]

"To make a thing-- you hear the thought, to do... whatever, next, as you make it. [...] Well actually-- we're both listening. The truth comes. Reality... comes. You don't think, tinker with it till it is, what you want" (9).

This reminds me of Blaser and Spicer-- which I'm reading today, so more later on them-- but mainly, the concept of listening (which this book is chiefly concerned with, though Notley does respond, as well)-- but an important concept, esp. for mystic writing.

On poetry:

This... is a poem... because

the landscape... is both

the same & different than...

it was...

[...]... This poem means...

The dead still... love

the world... But they get...

to have... it different. (31)

and (34):

"I think a better poetry... comes if you... step into a better light. It's a step." (Again, Blaser/Spicer/Martians/building blocks.)

Meditations on what is, what "is" is-- if it's god(?) always seems to be the question arrived at-- and yes/no is the answer. "There isn't more, or less of... is." (41)

Gorgeous meditations on existence, consciousness, linear/chronological time progression; the difference between "think" and "know"-- "think" for memories, "know" as embodiment of an experience or thing, as in:

"You don't always think 'I'll get up'... before you get up-- that's like heaven." (44)

Here (heaven, then) feels like-- to be it, to be music-- no question of who writes it (essence of thing, no ownership [authorship?]) That's my note, to explain: difference of being on earth v. heaven: to play music is to get lost in it, perhaps, to feel something outside yourself (earth) but heaven is to be the music itself, unconstrained-- not lost in someone else's creation, but to be the essence yourself.

Continual exploration of "in"-- what we're inside of, what comes inside us-- like something that keeps turning inside out/itself (I'm thinking of a pillowcase?)

(51) "...Or...there must be, something else. I think I want to... give it... to you so...I can go. But first... I have to... figure out... what it ... is ...What to do... about time... in poems... I guess."

Interestingly, poetry comes forth as the solution for this problem, for poetry, as heaven, can hold "in the all-at-once way... that we know it."

The issue then is one of measure: "you have to find your measure... by magic, or in... magic." (56) (wasn't in time, not in time)

But what is words and where do they come from? Magic, our senses. The words at hand, writing themselves (what it's like to be dead) dreaming too (see earlier).

[...] Is that one's life

or one? god's existence or god...

a thing

or its ness*? (64)

*ness is a number signified on the page by a scribble-- but this could also possibly referring to a thing's "thingness"

stum-bled

'this is my sacred body'

it is measure & word

Beautiful (bled, sacred body and blood as measure & word-- lovely) lastly:

I am all poet, not speaking

You are all poet, speaking...

You can be

heaven on earth...