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...