She mixes the concrete and the abstract, these meditations concentrated often on the rhetorical-- both the inherent rhetoric in her subjects and the questions that punctuate her poems.
As I Love Artists is a selected works book, I got to see a range of her work; her earlier poems are more concrete, I think, than her later poems, but often end without punctuation at the ends of stanzas/sections/poems. They feel open, waiting for closure (or maybe not seeking it?)
The following passage reminds me of Notley's explication of song in Close to Me & Closer:
In "Empathy:" (50)
In the same way the song must never be allowed to threaten the presentation of what takes place in the song, so that she may try to develop empathy for what she really wants to happen to her, instead of desire being the song.
(Context: "The speaking becomes fixed, although there is no such thing as repetition./ The speaking is a constant notation of parallel streams of thought and observations,/ whose substance is being questioned in a kind of oral thought at once open and precise,/ but with a tension between ideas and her sense of scandal at invoking a real person.")
I think there's an expression in French about thinking by talking-- "la langue pense" maybe? which seems to be what she's considering in the context-- but in the extracted lines about song, it seems to be more concerned with control: song has a purpose, an almost documentary-purpose, (but note that it's focused on the presentation of what takes place in the song-- desire/emotion mustn't overwhelm form-- so that she may try to develop empathy (which I'm reading as a marker of authenticity?) moving on.
concerning borders: (90) "The Doll:" connecting this ideology with de Certeau, look here:
Discourse on death contains a rhetoric of borders./ ...I employ two symbolized realities, so connecting paths traversed by light make an edge./ We're the other for this boundary./ ...I want to locate the ineffable beyond middle ground.
and later, in "Nest" (115)
Speaking, an artifact, creates a loophole for no rapport, no kinship, no education, on a frontier where wild is a margin of style, and rhetoric's outside that."
This poem in particular is also focused on language's alienating properties-- including its limits and borders, but here, she's concerned with loopholes: "Pick one and slip through it, like a girl whose body is changing." This reminds me of de Certeau's ideas of appropriation for practical use, but seems to extend beyond personalization as an end-- Berssenbrugge is concerned with transgressing these boundaries (if possible?)-- at least treading these lines-- for another reason, perhaps found in "Audience" (122)
My story is about the human race in conflict with itself and nature.
...I grapple with theme, again and again.
...When I find a gap, I don't fix it, don't intrude like a violent, stray dog, separating flow and context, to conform what I say to what you see.
This gets back to authenticity, maybe; also in "Audience" (which is a sort of meta-poetry, less ars poetica than an explication of desire?)
I didn't want to use sympathy for others as a way through my problems.
There's a gap between an audience and particulars, but one can be satisfied by particulars, on several levels: social commentary, sleazy fantasy.
...I thought my work should reflect society, like mirrors in a cafe, double-space.
And so she's not pretending a lack of artifice; ventriloquizing her critics:
"'She achieves a personal voice almost autistic in lack of affect, making ambiguous her well-known power to communicate emotion, yet accusing a system that mistakes what she says.'"
But what are the stakes? Social commentary, sure, testing language for its limits in our interactions and comprehension of the world-- but isn't a quest for authenticity in expression a little self-indulgent? For me, this is where the mystic comes in: I don't know that Berssenbrugge is a mystic poet per se, but there seems to be, in addition to the testing of boundaries, a desire to transcend them/achieve transcendence. In "Fog":
The more accurate memories turned out to be white on the outside, but they were unconditioned by the desire to form story out of her memory, continuing story, the way we wish this space and light to continue.
Therefore, we appreciate fog, as the power to make the space continue beyond a single perception in raw material or youth of the body, like a body of light.
...It is not so much the quality or brightness of light, or her understanding of this light, as the number of times she dissolves. The faster she can dissolve into space, the better.
It is almost as if the complete dark would be ideal.
and in "Red Quiet:"
These words are the opposite of verisimilitude.
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