So this is what yesterday we called the future,
We looked forward to this day with so much hope
and trepidation.
What we hoped for didn’t happen.
What we dreaded turned out not too bad.
All in all the future seems pretty ordinary.
Perhaps tomorrow will be better.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Origin of Poetry or Words and Meaning V
The origin of poetry is the love of language, of the sensual body of its rhythms and sounds, first and foremost, and, secondly, with the things it can do: mean, for example. The origin of poetry is the physical desire to dive into language and explore its hidden, its new, its surprising places. The lover's desire for the beloved who believes he will find in the body what no one has found before, pleasures no body has yielded before.
And the frustration. The other side of the origin of poetry is love's frustration, language's no, the endlessly repeated failure to do what it cannot do, wants to do, will not do. What it seems to do.
And the frustration. The other side of the origin of poetry is love's frustration, language's no, the endlessly repeated failure to do what it cannot do, wants to do, will not do. What it seems to do.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Words and Meaning IV
The waitress ends every sentence with "you know what I mean." A useful shorthand. She doesn't have to take the time to say what she means--formulate her meaning in words. She doesn't even have to know what she means; I presume she does not. She launches the opening of meaning like a trained bird which lands like a flock of butterflies or an array of snowflakes, no two the same, on your shoulder.
He launches the possibility of meaning thus in a poem: he launches perhaps meanings which you take meaningfully. Or leave empty.
He launches the possibility of meaning thus in a poem: he launches perhaps meanings which you take meaningfully. Or leave empty.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Only Naked Man in the Room
The Only Naked Man in the Room
danced among the guests to no music in the room.
I am what I am, he laughed.
No one seemed to notice him.
In tiny clusters around the room everyone just kept talking
stirring plastic sticks in their martinis
adjusting their backs when their laugh
joined the laugh of the rest of the coterie
because someone said something
that must have been funny.
The naked man danced
across the big tables
past guacamole and cheese
around the little rubber tree—
he must have taken time from the music
of the spheres—dancing oblivious circles round
lighted sculputary hunks of magma.
The people did not let themselves frown
though he passed himself around like a tray of daiquiris
until the crowd that could not comfortably pretend any longer
to ignore him, nodded and thank-you’d and shook the hosts’ hands
and goodbyed. Even the gentleman who slammed down his drink
and nearly hushed the room when he cried “Put some clothes on dammit”
slouched through the door and was gone just as soon
as the almost halted talk resumed
leaving the naked man to his twists and turns.
The room
thinned
until no other soul remained
but one
fully clothed
who smiled at the smiles of the harmless man
Would she care to join him?
I do enjoy your dancing, she said,
to the naked man who stopped
half hidden
behind the little tree.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
My Sestina
My teacher said when you write a sestina, the
most important thing is to choose the six
ending words carefully. Not any ol’ words
will do. Don’t succumb to the temptation of
a casual series, such as any six words my
mother might randomly utter at lunch. Sestina
’s are serious stuff. To create a masterful sestina
you need to hunt down some protean words; the
y must be able to signify not just verbally, my
goodness, no, but nounally as well. Six times six
times you’ll have to play these words out. Of
tener than would work for form-challenged, mundane words.
Whether for the level or the type of trouble, Words
worth unlike Spencer never that I know of wrote a sestina.
But Auden did and Bishop, and Pound, and Ashbery, but one of
my favorites is the one done by Lloyd Schwarz, the
world’s shortest, the whole thing made of exactly Six
Words: Yes, no, maybe, sometimes always, never. My
own thought on the matter is to forget the attempt. My
sestina is unlikely to compete with such stuff; my words
are mashed potatoes next to the banquet of those six
minds’ astonishing products. And is the sestina
even viable anymore—quaint and ancient vestige of
an age of representational form? Now, when the
ory itself recedes. The
naïvete of any forms’ my
opic vision: wrung words of
uncommitted play: words
of the pretensive sestina
’s re-reign: six
of one half a dozen of the other. How can any six
words make a difference? Still, I cannot just abandon the
form. For one thing, there’s the teacher, and his ignorant sestina
worship. And then there’s the vestige of something in my
self that tells me if I can just find the right six words
and arrange them in the proper places, something of
compensatory beauty will emerge (or the horror of the six
sixty six, perhaps), yes: numbers and words, something of
force if I can just find them: the six words of my sestina.
most important thing is to choose the six
ending words carefully. Not any ol’ words
will do. Don’t succumb to the temptation of
a casual series, such as any six words my
mother might randomly utter at lunch. Sestina
’s are serious stuff. To create a masterful sestina
you need to hunt down some protean words; the
y must be able to signify not just verbally, my
goodness, no, but nounally as well. Six times six
times you’ll have to play these words out. Of
tener than would work for form-challenged, mundane words.
Whether for the level or the type of trouble, Words
worth unlike Spencer never that I know of wrote a sestina.
But Auden did and Bishop, and Pound, and Ashbery, but one of
my favorites is the one done by Lloyd Schwarz, the
world’s shortest, the whole thing made of exactly Six
Words: Yes, no, maybe, sometimes always, never. My
own thought on the matter is to forget the attempt. My
sestina is unlikely to compete with such stuff; my words
are mashed potatoes next to the banquet of those six
minds’ astonishing products. And is the sestina
even viable anymore—quaint and ancient vestige of
an age of representational form? Now, when the
ory itself recedes. The
naïvete of any forms’ my
opic vision: wrung words of
uncommitted play: words
of the pretensive sestina
’s re-reign: six
of one half a dozen of the other. How can any six
words make a difference? Still, I cannot just abandon the
form. For one thing, there’s the teacher, and his ignorant sestina
worship. And then there’s the vestige of something in my
self that tells me if I can just find the right six words
and arrange them in the proper places, something of
compensatory beauty will emerge (or the horror of the six
sixty six, perhaps), yes: numbers and words, something of
force if I can just find them: the six words of my sestina.
My Sestina
My teacher said when you write a sestina, the
most important thing is to choose the six
ending words carefully. Not any ol’ words
will do. Don’t succumb to the temptation of
a casual series, such as any six words my
mother might randomly utter at lunch. Sestina
’s are serious stuff. To create a masterful sestina
you need to hunt down some protean words; the
y must be able to signify not just verbally, my
goodness, no, but nounally as well. Six times six
times you’ll have to play these words out. Of
tener than would work for form-challenged, mundane words.
Whether for the level or the type of trouble, Words
worth unlike Spencer never that I know of wrote a sestina.
But Auden did and Bishop, and Pound, and Ashbery, but one of
my favorites is the one done by Lloyd Schwarz, the
world’s shortest, the whole thing made of exactly Six
Words: Yes, no, maybe, sometimes always, never. My
own thought on the matter is to forget the attempt. My
sestina is unlikely to compete with such stuff; my words
are mashed potatoes next to the banquet of those six
minds’ astonishing products. And is the sestina
even viable anymore—quaint and ancient vestige of
an age of representational form? Now, when the
ory itself recedes. The
naïvete of any forms’ my
opic vision: wrung words of
uncommitted play: words
of the pretensive sestina
’s re-reign: six
of one half a dozen of the other. How can any six
words make a difference? Still, I cannot just abandon the
form. For one thing, there’s the teacher, and his ignorant sestina
worship. And then there’s the vestige of something in my
self that tells me if I can just find the right six words
and arrange them in the proper places, something of
compensatory beauty will emerge (or the horror of the six
sixty six, perhaps), yes: numbers and words, something of
force if I can just find them: the six words of my sestina.
most important thing is to choose the six
ending words carefully. Not any ol’ words
will do. Don’t succumb to the temptation of
a casual series, such as any six words my
mother might randomly utter at lunch. Sestina
’s are serious stuff. To create a masterful sestina
you need to hunt down some protean words; the
y must be able to signify not just verbally, my
goodness, no, but nounally as well. Six times six
times you’ll have to play these words out. Of
tener than would work for form-challenged, mundane words.
Whether for the level or the type of trouble, Words
worth unlike Spencer never that I know of wrote a sestina.
But Auden did and Bishop, and Pound, and Ashbery, but one of
my favorites is the one done by Lloyd Schwarz, the
world’s shortest, the whole thing made of exactly Six
Words: Yes, no, maybe, sometimes always, never. My
own thought on the matter is to forget the attempt. My
sestina is unlikely to compete with such stuff; my words
are mashed potatoes next to the banquet of those six
minds’ astonishing products. And is the sestina
even viable anymore—quaint and ancient vestige of
an age of representational form? Now, when the
ory itself recedes. The
naïvete of any forms’ my
opic vision: wrung words of
uncommitted play: words
of the pretensive sestina
’s re-reign: six
of one half a dozen of the other. How can any six
words make a difference? Still, I cannot just abandon the
form. For one thing, there’s the teacher, and his ignorant sestina
worship. And then there’s the vestige of something in my
self that tells me if I can just find the right six words
and arrange them in the proper places, something of
compensatory beauty will emerge (or the horror of the six
sixty six, perhaps), yes: numbers and words, something of
force if I can just find them: the six words of my sestina.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Hey, Batter, Batter
Whatever it takes to write a poem
I don’t have it.
All the editors of America agree.
Nor could I ever hit a baseball well enough
to impress any coach
glancing up from a clipboard.
In the evening this late in the year
the sun presses green and golden through laced leaves
like light through sacred glass.
Lines like that
always kill me—
swing and a miss.
The truth you must not tell:
My poems yawn about the heart
forever wounded.
I am much too old to make the team.
I stand in the cage
humming dollar after dollar through the machine
swinging the lumber.
I don’t have it.
All the editors of America agree.
Nor could I ever hit a baseball well enough
to impress any coach
glancing up from a clipboard.
In the evening this late in the year
the sun presses green and golden through laced leaves
like light through sacred glass.
Lines like that
always kill me—
swing and a miss.
The truth you must not tell:
My poems yawn about the heart
forever wounded.
I am much too old to make the team.
I stand in the cage
humming dollar after dollar through the machine
swinging the lumber.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Private Language
The sender of the list is not the same as the receiver, even
if they bear the same name and are endowed with the identity
of a single ego....
Jacques Derrida
My lists of essential things,
achingly composed,
my dashed off notes,
of what I might forget to do—
all, all for someone
I can’t ever know, someone
whom I cannot meet, however long I pace
the parking lot, something like my dad
who left before my first tooth
and did not report in
until the day he jumped the train
and died. It’s how it is: a shame.
Someone who does not exist
isn’t calling your name.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Conservapedia?
What a web, what a web.
The above named website includes the following "definition" of "Liberal":
"A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing."
If there are creatures on earth with brains sufficient to form sentences of this level of complexity who can, without intending parody, purvey such notions, and if there are creatures on earth with brains enough to decode such sentences and yet take them seriously, as though they were declaring anything supportable by their mere grammatical structure, the species cannot survive. If something so simply, obviously, excruciatingly biased can--without irony--set up shop under the sign of truth or fact, the most fundamental notion of sanity must be dismissed. Lincoln in a clown suit, moments after the battle in which scores of devoted soldiers sacrificed their lives, reciting the Gettysburg Address and expecting--no, and receiving--applause could not be more absurd.
The above named website includes the following "definition" of "Liberal":
"A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing."
If there are creatures on earth with brains sufficient to form sentences of this level of complexity who can, without intending parody, purvey such notions, and if there are creatures on earth with brains enough to decode such sentences and yet take them seriously, as though they were declaring anything supportable by their mere grammatical structure, the species cannot survive. If something so simply, obviously, excruciatingly biased can--without irony--set up shop under the sign of truth or fact, the most fundamental notion of sanity must be dismissed. Lincoln in a clown suit, moments after the battle in which scores of devoted soldiers sacrificed their lives, reciting the Gettysburg Address and expecting--no, and receiving--applause could not be more absurd.
Shit Passes
On sunny days we chased the furniture around the room.
For God’s funeral, we donated food and scooped a contribution from the plate.
The bumper sticker provides us with a useful lesson.
When we found the lost child we gave it back.
Our neighbor keeps offering us the use of his tools.
We can’t help suspecting the last was at least as good as the next.
When they talked about our life, we knew it was our life, they used our names.
For God’s funeral, we donated food and scooped a contribution from the plate.
The bumper sticker provides us with a useful lesson.
When we found the lost child we gave it back.
Our neighbor keeps offering us the use of his tools.
We can’t help suspecting the last was at least as good as the next.
When they talked about our life, we knew it was our life, they used our names.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Art Without Essence
Art without essence
Art abstracts; art supplements. These are the two operations of art.
They are the operations of language and all representation which has as its object that which lies outside the representation.
The question in any work of art: story, painting, poem, is What is it representing? What is it supplementing?
A photograph; a painting; a sculpture—whether or not its subject is “drawn from life.” The art takes into it self elements of the subject: color, texture, depth, appearance. The art supplements with what is not there: paint for cloth for example, marble for flesh, flatness for depth, ideality of expression (dealing with so called representational art); color for emotion (in so-called nonrepresentational art, which is symbolic (metaphoric or metonymic) but still representational if that word means anything).
Everything accurately captured by the art is represented; everything else is supplemented. In fact the difference is not simply categoric. The plaster is always utterly representational and supplemental depending on the point of seeing of the observer—artist and spectator equally are observers. Representation says Derrida always fails because presence itself always fails. But we are not representing things in themselves but ideas of things, taking things and our ideas about things and putting them together. So what we are representing is itself always a supplement. But there is still always ineluctably an element of representation. Our ideas and feelings about what we are representing are themselves being represented at the same time that they are supplements to the object. (How odd that we can use “subject” and “object” interchangeably here.)
When one posits essence, one can say it is the task of art to “capture the essence of the object.” What is not captured in this case, what is left out, is superfluous or otherwise inessential. We paint the president and project his essential commander-in-chiefness; we ignore his playfulness, his sense of humor. These are not his essence. We paint the nude. We display her essential sexuality, her essential humanity. We exclude her inessential pettiness etc.
When we no longer believe in essences we paint situationally, historically, in the moment, for the purpose, for what needs to be said now and to a given audience, ourselves, or viewers. “I want to understand the thing,” the nude body. But there is no understanding the thing in itself since nothing exists in itself.
What needs to be said now does not need to be said eternally, but only now. What needs to be said now will get us back, however, ineluctably, to essences. What is the need of now if not an essential need? We need to stop global warming, governmental corruption because survival is good, justice is good essentially. Or even if only useful, they are useful for an end declared as good.
No. We can declare these “goods” as provisional essences, predicates of “if” clauses: If we agree that global survival is good, then corruption and global warming should be kept in check. Survival is a provisional good for humans. Yet it is not certain we can abandon the notion of essence.
What about beauty? Aesthetics? Beauty entices us, crudely, the bikini in the tool ad, subtly, the colors in a Monet. We discover the beauty in an object through art. We bring out the beauty in an object; we supplement the object with beauty. The question is then whose interest does the beauty serve? The art object. Beauty has many functions. We send the bimbo to the gambler to distract him so we can steal his money. We send the Monet to the art collector—so we can steal his money in the form of payment. He buys a painting. He buys prestige, honor, position, envy in the form of a Monet. The whole socio-political structure stands.
Art abstracts; art supplements. These are the two operations of art.
They are the operations of language and all representation which has as its object that which lies outside the representation.
The question in any work of art: story, painting, poem, is What is it representing? What is it supplementing?
A photograph; a painting; a sculpture—whether or not its subject is “drawn from life.” The art takes into it self elements of the subject: color, texture, depth, appearance. The art supplements with what is not there: paint for cloth for example, marble for flesh, flatness for depth, ideality of expression (dealing with so called representational art); color for emotion (in so-called nonrepresentational art, which is symbolic (metaphoric or metonymic) but still representational if that word means anything).
Everything accurately captured by the art is represented; everything else is supplemented. In fact the difference is not simply categoric. The plaster is always utterly representational and supplemental depending on the point of seeing of the observer—artist and spectator equally are observers. Representation says Derrida always fails because presence itself always fails. But we are not representing things in themselves but ideas of things, taking things and our ideas about things and putting them together. So what we are representing is itself always a supplement. But there is still always ineluctably an element of representation. Our ideas and feelings about what we are representing are themselves being represented at the same time that they are supplements to the object. (How odd that we can use “subject” and “object” interchangeably here.)
When one posits essence, one can say it is the task of art to “capture the essence of the object.” What is not captured in this case, what is left out, is superfluous or otherwise inessential. We paint the president and project his essential commander-in-chiefness; we ignore his playfulness, his sense of humor. These are not his essence. We paint the nude. We display her essential sexuality, her essential humanity. We exclude her inessential pettiness etc.
When we no longer believe in essences we paint situationally, historically, in the moment, for the purpose, for what needs to be said now and to a given audience, ourselves, or viewers. “I want to understand the thing,” the nude body. But there is no understanding the thing in itself since nothing exists in itself.
What needs to be said now does not need to be said eternally, but only now. What needs to be said now will get us back, however, ineluctably, to essences. What is the need of now if not an essential need? We need to stop global warming, governmental corruption because survival is good, justice is good essentially. Or even if only useful, they are useful for an end declared as good.
No. We can declare these “goods” as provisional essences, predicates of “if” clauses: If we agree that global survival is good, then corruption and global warming should be kept in check. Survival is a provisional good for humans. Yet it is not certain we can abandon the notion of essence.
What about beauty? Aesthetics? Beauty entices us, crudely, the bikini in the tool ad, subtly, the colors in a Monet. We discover the beauty in an object through art. We bring out the beauty in an object; we supplement the object with beauty. The question is then whose interest does the beauty serve? The art object. Beauty has many functions. We send the bimbo to the gambler to distract him so we can steal his money. We send the Monet to the art collector—so we can steal his money in the form of payment. He buys a painting. He buys prestige, honor, position, envy in the form of a Monet. The whole socio-political structure stands.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Words and Meaning III
The analogy to time. Not long ago the world took exactly 24 hours to spin on its axis. The time it took to spin was always exactly, to the millisecond, 24 hours, not because the amount of time it took the world to spin was precisely equal every day (it has never been) because the day was defined by the spin and divided into 24 equal units of one hour. Variations were too minute for the technology of the day to perceive. The world spun on and on. Technology climbed steady up the hill of precision. A day came--we could name it, but I don't know its name--when the technology of the ruler exceeded the standard. There was a great divorce. Time became the standard by which the rotation of the earth was measured: the rotation no longer measured time. Slave became master then. The clock on which the ants live measured too erratically to be of use. Time measures only itself. It is without object or referrent--unless, at a moment, for a reason, someone chooses, temporarily, to give it one.
Words effected the same divorce, and at approximately the same time.
Words effected the same divorce, and at approximately the same time.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Merrimack, NH
What, when I return,
as I did today, to the place
where I was raised, am I—
knowing that I will never find it—
looking for?
And why,
as I move through charged space, marking
all that has changed, holding
out for something
recognizable,
am I reporting all I see
and all I miss
to you,
invisible beside me?
Nosing among new-named streets,
blank buildings whose histories confront me
with aimless urgency
old spots among the smear of the new:
the restaurant where I used to work,
the house of Nicky’s parents
with his name still on the mailbox,
the spot where Sandy,
on the day before we all left for college,
knowing she was the one in the world
I most wanted to love
leaned in at my window
and made an offering of goodbye, and
the place I last saw Kathy
before she died.
I know that here is where the text of whatever it is
I go back to read
must be read. But I don’t know why,
before I set my eyes on how little
of all I remember remains,
before I gave over the questions again,
I was already writing these words,
to you.
as I did today, to the place
where I was raised, am I—
knowing that I will never find it—
looking for?
And why,
as I move through charged space, marking
all that has changed, holding
out for something
recognizable,
am I reporting all I see
and all I miss
to you,
invisible beside me?
Nosing among new-named streets,
blank buildings whose histories confront me
with aimless urgency
old spots among the smear of the new:
the restaurant where I used to work,
the house of Nicky’s parents
with his name still on the mailbox,
the spot where Sandy,
on the day before we all left for college,
knowing she was the one in the world
I most wanted to love
leaned in at my window
and made an offering of goodbye, and
the place I last saw Kathy
before she died.
I know that here is where the text of whatever it is
I go back to read
must be read. But I don’t know why,
before I set my eyes on how little
of all I remember remains,
before I gave over the questions again,
I was already writing these words,
to you.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
A System of Differences
"Language is a system of differences without positive terms." This is the first salvo in the closing off of the operation of language from reference--meaning. It almost works. Grammar requires that each word in a sentence have a function--a function in that sentence. It does require that any part of that sentence have a meaning, a referent, real or imaginary. It does not require that the sentence have any intent or function either of expression or of communication.
This matters, it seems to me, a lot and a little. A lot because language can be divorced absolutely from any of its assumed functions--conceived as as proper or ancillary; little because nonetheless this substance of neutral, naked, empty signifiers can be used for all of the functions for which it is used. We can, it seems to me, communicate and express by means of language most effectively. We can do this things outside of language, so called, as well--often better. The question must be turned around: it is not "what is language for? What does language do?" But rather "what do we do with language?" "What do we use it for?"
What becomes possible because we use it? (What do we use it for and nothing else?) What would be possible without it? What would not be possible without it? (Meaning could be created and conveyed, but how precisely?) Where are its borders? Where are its centers?
Why is all meaning metaphored in notions of carrying: metaphor, convey, communicate? But that's another matter.
This matters, it seems to me, a lot and a little. A lot because language can be divorced absolutely from any of its assumed functions--conceived as as proper or ancillary; little because nonetheless this substance of neutral, naked, empty signifiers can be used for all of the functions for which it is used. We can, it seems to me, communicate and express by means of language most effectively. We can do this things outside of language, so called, as well--often better. The question must be turned around: it is not "what is language for? What does language do?" But rather "what do we do with language?" "What do we use it for?"
What becomes possible because we use it? (What do we use it for and nothing else?) What would be possible without it? What would not be possible without it? (Meaning could be created and conveyed, but how precisely?) Where are its borders? Where are its centers?
Why is all meaning metaphored in notions of carrying: metaphor, convey, communicate? But that's another matter.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Borges Bakhtin and the OED
If Jorge and Mikhail had their way the OED would not merely cite every representative use of a word throughout history; it would cite every actual iteration, showing the differing nuances of meaning that emerge and accrue (or diminish or turn aside) a necessary correlate of the absolute uniqueness, the unrepeatability, of every moment. It would also there cite every quotation of every iteration, every undergraduate's particular reading and reciting of Hamlet, excluding only misuses, misunderstandings and misreadings but including the use of every word in a definition in the OED.
If you add Derrida to the dictionary you'd have to include in the already infinite book every misreadings and every misspeaking as well.
If you add Derrida to the dictionary you'd have to include in the already infinite book every misreadings and every misspeaking as well.
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