Red, Green & Black

Olivier Cadiot, trans. Charles Bernstein.

Much like Albiach in spatial organization, though perhaps more inventive

retain well this

the how, the when, the where, the why
enough, also, as much, a lot

better 'n' better

regret

adieu! pardon!

AH!
Ha!
Oh!

appear, risk, etc.

I am certain to succeed

A corpse decomposes & a postmortem is peformed through the duration of Red, Green & Black-- this is dealt with clinically and absurdly; the rendering is constantly interrupted by a cacophony of asides, definitions, exclamations. Reading this I feel frantic. Everything's examined: the body, the crime, musings of childhood, verb conjugations, slang. I understand that something is dead and being examined (less for cause of death, I think, than sheer curiosity)-- but what's dead is unclear. If pressed, I'd guess something along the lines of classical form, literature (is the title a play on Stendhal? further, is the whole poem in response to Stendhal?) esp. given the radical form the poem takes on the page.

Rosemarie Waldrop's blurb:

"The game is grammatical, but the arrow hits: a real corpse decomposes. Between repetition, tautology and quotation, falls dead silence. What seems a sort of ready-made language (in which Charles Bernstein's playfulness matches Cadiot's) turns out to be a carnival on top of `catastrophe/catastrophic'. Need I add: a poem for our time?"

Daily Sonnets

Laynie Browne.

These are really lovely, fun to read out loud, deceptively simple and so playful with the sonnet form. Eschewing "conventional" (Shakespearean, Petrarchan, et al) rules: rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter, but keeping others: 14 lines (or an acknowledgement if broken, i.e., "half sonnet" etc.), musicality, and the turn. It's hard to say what fixed forms are, exactly-- they really are so elastic, that it's hard to define their essences-- sometimes it's easiest through negation. "A sonnet's not a sestina," maybe, "a sonnet isn't long." But I think Laynie Browne has really captured the essence of the sonnet in this book-- because I think sonnets are like weight training. I think you have to perform them regularly to be any good, to make them any better, to understand the form and be skilled at performing it-- this is partially why I think the iambic pentameter rule is an optional one; it's just a skill you become adept at with practice. I don't think it's presence is an integral part; musicality is. Specific meter=not. Anyway, these sonnets pick up ideas and examine them, letting in other voices and questions (from, most recognizably, her children), the news, memories. Here's one, 103:

Why Wolves Aren't Famous

It's not an idea (I forgot)

What should the title be?

I'm tired of pure form

Pass me that framework

The knight of the ox is very famous

He destroyed the dragon's cape

All I know about capes is water

Ghost and mud bring it back to life

Now eat your pancakes and stop

dreaming about syrup crystals

The flowers have pink, yellow, purple all I know

You might find a password

in one of them so look carefully

Did you write this in a whispery tone?

This poem is conversational ("what should the title be?") and meditative (I'm tired of pure form"), playful ("all I know about capes is water") and serious ("pass me that framework").

It feels like trying to write a paper or poem or something 'serious' and 'grown-up' while feeding a child breakfast. ("The flowers have pink, yellow, purple all I know/ You might find a password")-- storytelling, invention and fantasy, tools any good babysitter possesses-- but the speaker seems to believe it, too, a bit: "water... Ghost and mud bring it back to life" which does give the poem a more serious underside: these fantasies are not divorced from reality but seem to possess some secrets which color our reality-- the password's in the flowers, the water's brought to life; of course this is not left un-played-with: "Did you write this in a whispery tone?" but the effect isn't undermined, just tickled.

Her writing is quick, witty, loaded and transparent. I love this project and these poems.

A Geometry

Anne-Marie Albiach, trans. Keith & Rosemarie Waldrop.

in 3 sections: Vertical Effort in White, Incantation, and Figures of Memory

VEW:

I like the way this piece moves across the page; italics and quotations used frequently, suggesting multiple voices; they/you relation

"you there

somber"

on the median line, they seek their bodies; "you make gestures of

approach or withdrawal" it is not in your power

to delete the outline

so she seems, like Bergvall, interested in tackling artifice and code in a way that really visibly links "content" with "form"-- not in your power to delete the outline but everything must be? is rendered in language, in a code, in hers vertical:

the law of succession the blankness of symbols

vertebral distance turned

pale and broke this kind of logic

so she asserts that this spatial play, the use of white space is some way to interrupt the code

she abstracts the object; she deflects the gesture that

catches in the gap between, faced with food and its names in

the extreme; a greed for offerings, words of sacrifice

"thus proffered, the telluric image, a disparity"

"she engendered her son in stubborn silence or generating

a stylistic figure" and a memory likely to come undone at

the slightest change of a vowel, an abstraction of origins; her

face reflected the homonym of an earlier loss the cues

this archaic episode carries consequence

the abstract is connected to-- defines-- experience; memory is reforged when language is lost or changed (but what about images-- not sure if the point holds); language is used almost reverently, 'words for sacrifice' paving the way for the next section, Incantation

quickly, my favorite part of this poem:

nevertheless she recalled fabrics, scents,

chains--there where the night birds broadcast

their cries dangerous to ignore:

how they exacerbate the place

(gorgeous)

Incantation:

actually more of an engendering; something is being birthed, feels like text

She

impregnates my face

...On every side strokes appear, whence a voice approaching incantation.

Three outlines and a pallid erudition. She gives birth in the

lineage of chance; premonition of data: night annihilates

objects o an incantatory solitude, thinned by sleep

"this excitement of the first days"

...I dressed this unprecedented wound in its last stage. The

night was gasping and its fruits even to oblivion. A sketch on

the bosom, this color cast anew on the earth: heat suddenly

in the margins. Repetition of absences

"this complicity

to the point of injury"

what 'happens' in these poems seems to be both a deliberate creation and a product of chance-- informed by data but trying to break the coding, the system.

FM:

this poem is much sparser-- lots more white space. Again involving a relationship, this time him/her/them

the term specifies movement

...they spring up

...confined at the boundary

outside implied a prohibition

the notch scans

the same alliteration

...from the liquid element the myth sprang up

"mouth open beyond the bruises"

subjected to this elucidation

their word

alternative

"sleep

where the censor menaces"

not sure about the 'liquid element'-- mercury? or the liquid among the 4 elements, water?-- but again, this poem does its work inside a 'boundary', always aware of the boundary, not even escaped in sleep; but growth and movement happens nonetheless and words determine creation and reality itself

I'm unsure of the title-- A Geometry-- it seems less about relationships between things and more about creation/control and language... but perhaps it refers more to the limits, confines, only so many things are possible in geometry...?

Éclat

Caroline Bergvall, I love you.

I read Éclat a few years ago, and I remembered liking it-- as well as the visual/formal aspects, which I also liked-- but couldn't remember what it was "about." It was a pleasure to revisit, and I love Caroline Bergvall and everything she does.

The form of the book (should probably mention I read it downloaded as a pdf on my laptop, though it was originally presented as a guided tour then published in book form but is now available to the masses on ubuweb) is beautiful-- nearly each page (save only the penultimate, I think) operates within, transgresses, subverts, distorts, etc. the space of a box-- literally, a square box drawn on the page. This is a really beautiful move to express the limits of the page-- the confines she's already sort of working in (though I suppose if these were originally projection, perhaps they were serving then to mimic the page, but again, same idea)-- anyway, drawing attention to the form, to the artifice, to the constraints we take for granted. The colors are simple: mostly white (page) black or occasionally grey typography, yellow accents. I would decorate my house with these colors, speaking of: much of the first part of Éclat describes a house, the progression through a house, the spatial relationships w/in (another gorgeous choice, where content and form seem to determine each other).

She also plays with language, jamming words together to make new words (below, water rare let us move back ... I LOVE her bilingual wordplay)

Andbreakingwateràreculons&asthoughwewerent

And in other instances, she removes letters (but often leaves a period in the place of the stricken letter, so you know she's doing "found" or erasure)--

WELL is an occupation COME to the foreign guided a short round of observations. now you s.. now y.. don'

Which reminds me a bit of the beginning of her "Say: Parsley," though in Say: Parsley the goal seems to be to render the English language (mother tongue to a lot of her audience) foreign, other, or to distort it, make you stumble over it-- which ties in nicely to the theme and context of the poem. Here, it seems that she wants us to recognize the pieces of language she's picked up and repurposed-- inside this box, these are the tools she has and we see but she's made them say something different.

The entire time I was reading the beginning of Éclat, I kept thinking, there's something really sexual about this, am I really pervy? she's talking about a house and language and there's so much great play with language and space etc. Then it starts to become more apparent-- she's playing with ideas of 'normativity' and what was starting to feel like a guided tour of a vagina explodes into a scene where a gay son is bargained for a daughter then masturbation then sex ('was a sist a mist' echoes as a refrain through these scenes) which climaxes in prayer liturgy

You fill your throat and think of Mary immaculate Your saintly unvaginal envelope bless me the saintly silence of blessed be as I traverse bless me the saintly bloodless of Your bless me Your saintly lipless lopsided you fill your bless me Mary throat Your saintly vacated throat saintly vacated occupancy bless me bless me I move to bless me occupy some profound Mary occupation Mary she un fuck fuck she un she un she unpacks Your saintl I Marymary slitless I discharge charge banged across the plastered all over the banged across the throb from every piece of banged all over her banged all over her beat into her all over her bang bang bang what bliss what splendid c.... I say blast what splendid cunts Mary saintl never let it be never let it be said are inward inwarded so bless me bless me Mary pleine de grâce for to extend inout one’s outsides out

then ends with this:

Your

skin

pops

back

to its

curr

ent

conv

entio

nal

dime

nsio

ns

with

a

shlu

rpy

soun

d

(next page):

schlurp

(final page):

In the landfill of your fr... the landfill of your frock there is occupation which in the landfill of your frock there is occupation which occupies occupies there is occupation which occupies. And the sight of no pussy cat is so diff e rent that a tobacco zone is white and cream.

A thinker once said girls make a gorgeous margin, did you believe that, crmonies of sweat ‘n .isibility. I did. (But really). Behavioural accumulation. Adjectival distentions pooled into spectacles recombinant, now that’s what I’d call morphing. What I’d call. Morphing. And a sightly occupation at that.

Mobility of Light

Nicole Brossard.

This felt like time wasted, perhaps because of the TERRIBLE translations alongside the originals. Atrocious; luckily this wasn't only a book of translations, so I could read the originals. These poems are trying to be very dramatic, wistful, erotic-- and operating on the side of ambiguity that's more 'vagueness' or 'imprecision' than slippery du or + plicity. They feel amateur, and the work says its invested in contemplations of form and artifice, but... it's mostly taking both for granted. I flagged 3 poems that were more interesting:

entre code et code l'espace est illusoire

point de lieu propre à la dénonciation

la terminologie modifie

le code s'infiltre

la moindre tentative finit par rompre

désormais le sens en a deux

un de trop

l'artifice est inévitable

voilà comment

(the code filters in, the slightest attempt ends by breaking [down], from here sense has two, one of many, artifice is inevitable, here's how)

ce sont toujours les mêmes mots

grands objets de paroles

lumière nuit ou silence

les mêmes oiseaux l'après-midi

le bruit de l'automne un autre

paragraphe en deça des mots

quand je respire

la résponse qui fuit

always the same words, great objects of words, light, night or silence, the same birds the afternoon the noise of autumn an other, paragraph on this side of words when I breathe, the response that flees

--interesting, esp. 'le paragraphe en deça des mots/ quand je respire'-- seems to be addressing the wariness of language-- the thingness, the banality, the code we can't escape-- can't signify without, it names our everything-- but the other, more intimate side of words, almost the ineffable side? that holds for a moment, fleeting?

Suggestions le coeur serré

1.

l'idée de se balancer au bout d'un je

suspendu

aux joies fiévreuses de juillet

ou salivant devant l'obscur

d'un présent rempli de

pourquoi qui ruissellent dans les pensées

2.

alors fais-moi le plaisir

de tracer des mots impossibles à trouer

remonte le cours du temps

entre les dialogues ne vacille pas

...4.

une idée absolu

emportée d'un mot d'un coup

par le vent

pose ta question

do me the pleasure of tracing words impossible to perforate, go back through the course of time, between dialogues don't waver

--words impossible to perforate? isn't that our job? to perforate them?

an Absolute idea, brought from a word from a blow from the wind, ask your question

Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes.

(6) the photo is always invisible-- it's not what we see (framing device is invisible)

(13) Riley/Dickinson: anxiety at sight of 'self' on piece of paper

(14) moment when subject feels he's becoming an object-- being photographed-- "I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object"

(21) wound sentiment-- I see, feel, hence I notice, observe, think

2 things photo must contain:

1) participate in something or other (not banality)

2) affect- affective intentionality

2 elements of the rule

1) has the extension of a field (perceived as consequence of knowledge, culture)

can be stylized, more or less successful, refers to a classical body of info

2) average affect-- studium-- application to a thing without special acuity

punctum-- element that pierces, pricks, mark made by a pointed instrument; usually accidental/chance but poignant

studium-- the order of liking, not loving; a half desire, "all right"

functions of a photograph-- to inform, represent, surprise, cause to signify, to provoke desire

in a photo, always something that is represented

(28) contrary to sentence-- can shift from description to reflection

Daguerre-- running a panorama theater animated by light shows (photo more closely tied to theater than painting)

(31) theater and cult of the Dead: simultaneously living and dead

(34) photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs

(34) every photo is contingent (and thereby outside meaning)/ photography can't signify (aim at a generality) except by assuming a mask

(38) the object speaks and induces us to think-- risks being perceived as dangerous

(36) Brecht-- hostile to photography because of its weakness of critical power and no critique except among those who are already capable of criticism

(42) detail that detracts (in 'unary' or 'unity-ed' photo) is the punctum

(55) punctum adds what is nonetheless already there

(53) revealed after the fact ('what sticks out') -- affect

Personal Writing

Johanna Drucker. Figuring the Word

Collection of talks and essays about her own, personal experience with language and writing.

"For in the making of the thing, the object, language itself-- as writing-- became objectifiable and thus discoverable and recoverable as something not invented but inventing, bearing, writing, living to insure my own sense of it for its own sake, to be reviewed as an exercise in which the acting out and through makes, by that pattern and patterning, the very shape it mimics in its form." (243)

"Is there an essence of things? Beyond representability? Or is there only meaning in materiality? Is meaning death-- or is on-meaning a condition of complete destruction? Neither, but resolution into any closed sign is a kind of death, as the static representation of desire is a death." (247)

from "Other than Linear:"

"While many of these works push aggressively against the limits of language as a conventional system of communication and by so doing begin to break down linearity in terms of the possibility of achieving the closure inherent in the process of signification, the mechanics the operate through and against are not, in fact, structurally different from those of so-called 'normal' language.... Works which compose themselves as a field, without an apparent sequence, and spatialist compositions which literally hang suspended or displayed so that the relations among the elements shift constantly and change, also pose extreme disruptions to the norm of communicative language. Whatever they may achieve in terms of disintegrating the linear authority of language seems minor compared to the degree to which they undermine control over their own authority as texts in so doing." (249)

Not sure I agree with her here-- what 'control over their own authority as texts' should they be maintaining? It's not that these texts are illegible; they're just challenging-- or interrogating-- the system within which they, too, are still working.

Her talk, though, is more about "women's writing"; she poses the Q:

"Is it possible for the Other who is woman to occupy a position which is not defined through opposition? To what extent can the concept of complicity be drawn into this discussion in a positive way, rather than a pejorative one, so that women's use of normative language can be demonstrated to make use of the destabilizing effects of non-linearity from within that language rather than being required to position themselves outside of it?"

("...in addition,... women's Otherness, is a part of the Whole of language, is in fact the Other which makes the Whole appear to be so.")

--ties directly into Glissant then; a bit of a narrow view, though, that women are the Other-- as in only?

"the phrase 'Other than' implies that representation always implies an Other, and that Otherness is always in relation, though not necessarily oppositional." (252)

-- interesting because it seems to oppose Glissant there; I think he would suggest that Otherness is oppositional and rhetorically it's a trick of understanding; this is hot because it's not cold, high because it's not low, etc.; I'm not sure I agree with the model (or idealize it) but JD also seems to be contradicting herself-- if Otherness is always in relation but not opposition (necessarily) then there could be more than one Other-- which she doesn't ever address

A to the Q: "It is instead by showing the already present Otherness within Linear forms and the complex authority and power structures already extant which permits the reworking of these relations between form, language, and power." (253)

I should mention: she doesn't really provide a model (or any examples) of what this might look like, save a few excerpts from crappy novels she wrote aged 12-- one, for instance, written in letters, a blow she tries to soften by calling them 'let-hers;' ouch. She does show a lot of beautiful typography/design prints-- but since she's so invested in language, I'm not sure why there aren't more text examples.