And finally…poems
I recognize that I hunger for poetry – periodically I canvas new poetry books and the old on my shelves to be STRUCK – to be wakened – charged – re-membered – into some leaping alive sensibility awareness delight sorrow grief ecstasy – that the vividness and risk of well-made poems incite…
for me, anyway.
Thus, the Bolano. Β A beginning.
Thus, returning to Nooteboom, a certainty.
Thus, the new arrivals shelf – Wichita Public Library.
and then…today…BOOM.
Bob Hicok, tested favorite,Β “new arrival,”Β Elegy Owed
the jump-start.
the activation.
something likeΒ recognitionΒ andΒ instigation at once.
what poetry does.
and having no idea where to begin to share it with you
to recommend
to commend to you
I’ll just offer the opening poem:
and the closer…
Good-bye
and to tell you that everything in between is every bit as good
and some even better….
Good-bye
Β
Small white church at the edge of my yard.
A bell will ring in a few hours.
People who believe in eternity will sing.
Iβll hear an emotion resembling the sea from over a hill.
One time I sat with my back to the church to give their singing
to my spine, thereβs a brown llama you can watch
while you do this in a field if youβd like to try.
I donβt think even calendars believe in eternity.
Beyond the church is a trail that leads to a bassinet in a tree.
Someone put it there when the oak and sky were young.
Iβm afraid to climb the tree.
That Iβll find bones inside.
That theyβll be mine.
I want to be withΒ my wife forever but not as we are.
Sheβll become a bear, I a season: Kodiak, spring.
Part of loving bagpipes haunting the gloaming is knowing
the bloodsinging will stop.
Beyond the church I pulled a hammer from the river.
What were you building, I asked its rust, from water and without nails?
This is where I get self-conscious about language,
words are love affairs or sΓ©ances or harpoons, there isnβt a sentence
that isnβt a plea.
This is where I donβt care that Iβm half wrong when I say everything
is made entirely of light.
This is where my wife and I hold hands.
Over there is where our shadows do a better job.
– Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed
Anticipating Leaving the Sea
As with bated breath I anticipate the January 7 release of Ben Marcus’ newest collection of stories…I sate myself with these two complex tidbits of his alchemical languaging talents, and invite you to swim in them as well…
Ben_Marcus_Notes from the Hospital
and
click images for full texts
New Arrivals, with poetry and music
Submerged in due dates.
Here’s what’s arrived in the center of (my) radar:
and then, from Roberto Bolano
DON’T WRITE POEMS BUT SENTENCES
Write prayers that you will whisper
before writing those poems
you will think you never wrote
Strange gratuitous occupationΒ Β Β To go losing your hair
and your teethΒ Β Β Β The ancient ways of being educated
Odd complacencyΒ Β Β Β (The poet doesnβt wish to be greater
than others)Β Β Β Β Not wealth or fame or even just
poetryΒ Β Β Β Maybe this is the only way
to avoid fearΒ Β Β Β Settle into fear
like one inhabiting slowness
Ghosts we all possessΒ Β Β Simply
waiting for someone or something in the ruins
and finally,
MY LITERARY CAREER
Rejections from Anagrama, Grijalbo, Planeta, certainly also
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β from Alfaguara,
Mondadori. A no from Muchnik, Seix Barral, Destino⦠All
           the publishers⦠All the readers
All the sales managersβ¦
Under the bridge, while it rains, a golden opportunity
to take a look at myself:
like a snake in the North Pole, but writing.
Writing poetry in the land of idiots.
Writing with my son on my knee.
Writing until night falls
with the thunder of a thousand demons.
The demons who will carry me to hell,
but writing.
all poem like creatures – Roberto Bolano
What Follows
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the notebook I grabbed in case of moments of free creative scribbling contained prior forgotten reflections that carried me into further reflections…recorded below:
The wonderful thing…
The wonderful thing about writing…
The wonderful thing about writing is that you can always begin. Β You always face opportunity. Β BEGIN.
In addition to that…”in other words”…
In other words, you can always start over.
Begin. Β Start over. Β Begin. Β Start over.
It’s a wonderful thing.
Language. Β like moving your body, there’s a kind of body to inhabit. Β A world. Β A way of being. Β You wake. Β You move. Β You remember…by dis-membering.
In other words.
You sleep. Β As you cease to sleep, you remember. Β You remember by feeling your limbs, your breath, by seeing, by feeling things (Dismembering). Β As you dismember (stuffy nose, neck-ache, coffee smell, pain behind the eyes, the need to potty, and so on…) – you also re-member (stitch together, sew, seam, canvas, invent) and become (again). Β Writing is like this.
Language. Β A body dismembered – waiting for membering (memory, membership) – invention, use. Β Beginning. Β Again.
In other words, like organs instructured in-skinned, awaiting awareness, the fabric of socio-cultural symbology (languaging) lies: Β in wait: Β to be animated, enlivened, embodied: Β woke up.
The substance, the atoms and organs – await. Β Circulation, enervation, emergence – to live – animate –
to be possible
And become.
In other words, to create, to move, to motivate.
There is no such thing as starting from scratch.
But a scratch is a beginning.
In our bodies, within matter,
in the world – moving gauze, filling quilts,
sensing flesh, donning clothes, filling whispers…
I’m alive. Β I begin.
The wonderful thing about writing…
…to awake into a way of being.
p.s… i’m thinking that each begin includes a hope to mean
Found Thoughts
As I snatched books and items to head to a weekend class I grabbed an old partially used notebook just in case I’d sneak a moment or two to scribble my thoughts. Β I did, but I also found the following past set of jottings that I catapulted off of for what I wrote next…
They felt like found thoughts that found me again…so I thought I’d share…
From Old Notebooks
I get a little weary of philosophy. Β It fascinates and intrigues, has its spectacular, glittering moments – like architecture, hard sciences, and fiction – but with each human activity there can be too much of a good thing. Β Perhaps it’s the fantasies involved in abstraction, in the “feeling” of figuring things out, or of “making sense” (instead of sensing) – our human super-additives to experience that are also experience themselves – that I, at times, weary of. Β That eminently falsifiable intuition thatΒ everything is made up.
It can be hard work to keep a worldview active. Β They involve such complexities and details, layer upon layer of biological and logical, illogical and irrational, intuitive – ologies and descriptions, manipulated perceptions and interpretations re-interpreted re-interpreted without ceasing, that a being grows tired. Β Can grow tired.
Those same realities, capacities, activities are also exponentially inspiring, enervating, exciting – those behaviors of creativity, imagination, and survival – and our weird confounding capacity to think we can observe our perceptions make for a very strange frenzy of energy and productivity…
…our infinitely (perhaps?!) webbed interdependence with our surround provides for mysterious and copious possibilities of activity (material)…all bewildering. Β Chaos can be so generative. Β Chaos – so stultifying.
WhatΒ might weΒ know?
That we are organisms within systems? Β How would weΒ know that, from within systems?
That we are dynamic organism enmeshed with other dynamic forms of matter and energy, waves and particles, movements? Β Seems to be our sense of it.
So what?
Alongside and within – in order toΒ be – there is NO way to exist detached or without: to imagine distance, objectivity without imagination capacity of fantasy, illusion, for purposes like logic, mathematics, narratives and codes –Β DElusion in order to play the games with delusional sincerity – effectively. Β The delusionsΒ are effective, often pragmatic, evolving, so theyΒ must also be part ofΒ being with/in a myriad of dynamics…
One would hypothesize. Β Or suppose. Β Infer, as in fantasize.
All enabled by immersion in symbols, languages, stipulated relations…
…which is what I had set out to consider – immersion in symbols –
the wonder of it
the delusion…
…to follow…
Surround
recent posts and discussions with brilliant co-bloggers (e.g. multi-sense realism,Β Anacephalaeosis, unwanted advice, tocksinΒ and others) have reminded me how woven, interactive and co-constructed we are with our environment… which sounds something like this (the awareness and attention and presence of it) to me:
“In short – who will archive cultures in the future – the state, corporations, or the public?”
This article both combines and extends some of my favorite things to mull….
Archiving cultures – Mike Featherstone
coupled to concepts found in such texts as these:
“The archive fever is to attempt to return to the lived origin, the everyday experience, which is the source of the imperfect and distorted memories which are our archives and whose transience and forgetting makes us uncomfortable”
-Jacques derrida-
All my Words are Silent 