Inside Undivided

a series of fragments & notes about chance, fate, context & intention by Dara Wier

[insideundivided]

Inside Undivided, a series of fragments & notes about

                            Chance, Fate, Context & Intention, #32

 from Dara Wier

 Beauty is moss.  Truth is a tomb.  Your name doesn’t matter. Emily Dickinson

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it could be argued

how and when why might be more significant and more usefully pursued than how so,

as in when

when how each and every book serves some purpose

or serves something

maybe as a vitrine-like holding tank,

a suspended area

of indefinite quiet, still-motion, no unfolding, waiting to be engaged by someone or something some how,

maybe for some reason, maybe for some good reason, maybe for no reason at all,

the unread book takes part in a funereal austerity

anyone of us might associate with the repetitive assault of signs and situations in cemeteries,

the ominous silences in funeral parlors,

the mechanical hush of crematoria, the catacombs, skull ossuaries anywhere,  

semi-recent Victorian death obsessions,

our cautious examinations of time past along

with just about anyone’s or everyone’s walking waking fear

of the private property of one’s singular mortality

and that of anyone who matters to anyone

the interior, the very inside silence in and of an unread book, a book that’s waiting to be read

at times that silence inside that book is approaching the famous though little witnessed silence of the tomb

with some exceptions, if amplified, as say maybe the steady infinitesimal

paper gnawing certain paper loving insects make

who was it anyway who

determined without a doubt

the silence of a tomb,  who put the little microphones in there to record, to keep a record of, that silence

what ultra sensitive microphones have been installed to verify

what micro micro micro phonic pick up chips trained on delicately determined micro erosions of little bit by little bit steady on, incremental changing

what little determined avalanches of sound

what galvanizing, could be sometimes aggravating, bits of accumulations

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and what can be felt about sound without sense

and what is sense without consciousness

and what is consciousness without anything at all

_____

My ordinary fondness for cemeteries began as I think many fondnesses and inclinations do for many of us –

---we’re small, we’ve barely been alive for very long though soon all around us evidence of our eventual demise crops up----someone in the family dies, strangers die, pets die, a river dies, a town dies, a friendship ends, disasters come, battles continue, tornadoes and tidal waves end lives, disease does---- we’re small and we take all this in---we take it all in and it stays there---

I like to walk in cemeteries, day or night, rain or shine, I like to sit in them, to stay in them, to read a book there, to have a conversation there.

Unlike most of the day to day places I inhabit cemeteries are quiet and no one there asks anything of anyone. To sometimes feel close to the dead is what I’ve always felt ought to be done, at least by me, and I’m sure by many another. And also by some.

If anyone questions these things, yes, it’s true one can say the relationship isn’t all that fair, the dead and buried aren’t having a lot of say in this, being not in the position to speak much less choose, much less act for themselves.

On the other hand the dead hold their true course with a very steady sure presence that can’t be denied.

Anyone might be forgotten, ignored or gradually dissolve while some what of some something remains and can’t be denied.

Odd and weird and just a little bit off what passes as something to remind us of anyone who’s died-----

some quarried and milled stone, some stacked rocks, some poured concrete, an old iron bedstead in place of a headstone and a footstone, the extravagant statuary certain cemeteries collect----(a good North American example of one of these cemeteries is the Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vermont)

---with or without all that I feel close to the dead----- just as I feel close to the first new life a poem provides when it begins to see the light of day

~~~~~~~~~~

being faithful

to the dead is something sometimes many humans do

when not being afraid

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The culture of dying and death isn’t particularly gruesome or kitschy in my hometown and home base, New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish, Naomi, Belle Chasse, Algiers, La Réussite.

That is the name someone in my past gave to my extended family’s little cemetery, La Réussite in Naomi, Louisiana, on the one road running from New Orleans south to the mouth of the Mississippi on out to the Gulf of Mexico.  

Someone had a kind of a sense of humor then when they named that cemetery Success, similar in insistence, I guess, to all those cemeteries named Hope.

It’s there now in all its small, decrepit crypt-built glory, whitewashed, crumbling below sea level, protected by levees and canals and ditches, and more often most of all by luck, dark in the shadows of mossy oaks and some kind of super sized chemical plant, one in the string of chemical plants the Mississippi seems to have attracted without pause once chemical plants came into being.

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somewhere I read how we no longer have The Muses to support poetry’s cause……I’ve probably read this a thousand times in a hundred different places,

as if it’s something really important to know—

---really?-----why could or how could it be that that is that important-----

are there many of us in danger of keeping faith with Muses on such an active and day to day way as to need to be warned away from that sort of activity

good muses keep to themselves, they have essentially private lives, they’re not all that easy to spot,

they’re not so obvious as to be in need of being judged obsolete

and how can anyone presume to say so-----

as if

as if an idea as clear as what a muse is for

and what constitutes a muse

might be ephemeral

by virtue of its nature it is not possible to turn a muse away

muses never go away

Ever faithful Calliope, deadpan Melpomene, without a doubt Euterpe, careful Thalia, long-suffering Clio, good old Erato, blissful Polyhymnia, watchful Terpsichore, star struck Urania, and so on through the many other muses without names or with pseudonyms or an AKA, an alias, a nickname,

a heteronym when necessary……………………they’re in hiding everywhere.

~~~~~~~~~~

was there someone envious of them who wanted to erase their legacy and lineage and to encourage  disruptions and abandonments of all these things

did someone believe it to be as a favor to someone’s anti sentimentality inclinations

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linearity and the past

linearity in the future

linearity in the present

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being able to see where one is going, as say one does north of Missoula, Montana on the way to

Choteau, Montana-----

----on my last visit there, a friend in the car said, “this is what I like, I like to see where I’m going long before I’m able to get there------maybe 40 miles up ahead, I can see the ridges toward which we’re headed,” not having thought of that before, never having had a thought to put a thought like that into words

-----pretty much just the opposite of what typically a writer will often say, which is:  I never know where I’m headed, I don’t want to know, I need not to know,

I need to just about always be facing having to go around a corner unknowing of what to expect, or take another turn around a bend I’d never been around before----

I appreciated her insight and foresight and pleasure with reading what’s lying in wait right before our eyes, a landscape of a certain kind letting us, in its own way, see far enough into the future.

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Gillian Welch   “Wrecking Ball”

[insideundivided]

[insideundivided]

INSIDE UNDIVIDED (30)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier

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wordless, speechless, without words, no words for it, silent, maintaining radio silence, reduced to silence, noiseless, still, quietude, in secret, undercover, camouflaged

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There is a big difference between having nothing worth saying to say, and not knowing what to say, not saying something, and saying something literally metaphorically.

And all of those differences among all kinds of saying, such as saying nothing and saying too much, saying a little or saying a lot, and being tantalizing and boring someone to death.

And then there is the delight that can come with saying the obvious, what’s obvious, repeatedly.

The phrase hysterical discovery of the obvious does not mean the same thing in different locations.  

Repeatedly I remember someone saying to me, if it had been a snake, and so on.

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INTERLUDE REGARDING EPIGRAPHING

almost no writer I’ve encountered shies away from “meaning” in their choice of epigraphs, for now I’ll stick to books, though poems make use of “meaningful” epigraphs all the time, too----the epigraph page alone, standing alone, usually set off from the book’s beginning, as a kind of gesture of atmospheric definition, or an epigraph introduces almost a host whose presence now accompanies the book into your brain (an epigraph from Wallace Stevens, an epigraph from Simone Weil, from Wittgenstein, from James Baldwin, from Sappho, from ultra classic religious texts we all know, from a song, from a name recognized to be associated with something that will be taken to be relevant to opening

the book to which the epigraph is attached

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When is someone’s secret (secret handshake, secret code, secret hiding place………)

(in some sectors, say, the secret affiliations and co-operations,

language uses to distort or extort or

otherwise unstraightforwardly fool and manipulate)

the secret place (mostly in plain sight) (to protect someone or something)  (to hide someone’s ill-gained booty)

When is it hurtful (and sometimes dangerous) for someone to keep something from you.

When it would, if you knew what it was, figure in to important decisions, significant feelings, steps you would be taking or not taking.

I don’t know if I should be telling you this but.

I should have told you.

I should have warned you.

I don’t know if I should be keeping this from you.

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when lack of self-consciousness keeps a secret about yourself from yourself, for your own sake

when self-consciousness, which we must have, can’t help but have,

must be able to pretend it isn’t a factor,

it is imitating, you find yourself imitating yourself, your self-consciousness

becomes most of what you are

do you lose the factor of being the agent of action or thought

because what takes over during bouts of severe self-consciousness

is the shifting of yourself from agent to audience,

while you are self-consciously choosing to act or think

you are losing the one and only original impetus

as it transforms itself from subjective actor to action

& thought to observing receptor

The terrible frozen panic of:

I see myself thinking in such a way as to be required to decide how I feel about it.

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We’re always being told by so many means the significance of knowing ourselves.  To be seeing ourselves for what we really are.

As if all that what takes is a quick look in a mirror and some minor readjustments taking into account which side of your face is which and what illusions of depth involve

and relative values of exterior surface to interior dimensions, and what else happens to be within the frame of the mirror,  and, by the way, it’s said it’s bad luck for two of us to look into the same mirror at once, and everyone’s so used to idly reading on side rearview mirrors the arresting warning that objects in mirror are closer than they seem to be

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The allure we’ve felt since film’s beginnings, to see ourselves and to understand ourselves as we would be were we in a film, to observe ourselves this way, to add to self-consciousness, film-consciousness, another layer of perceived understanding and existence.

The thoughtless casual picturing of one’s life on film.

How common is this picturing?  What does it give us?  What does it take away?

Picturing yourself.  You see yourself as what you are, always.

That’s always been so.  It has to be done.  We have to do it.

Our mirror neurons or whatever those bits of brain are that magnetically draw us to imitate something….if not one another……..some thing………

why did the egyptian princess wear the headdress she wore?

then why does monkey see/monkey do feel elementally sorrowful

why do galloping horses share so many principles of locomotion?  does the foal copy its mother?  what would it do without her? it would be fine with its built-in locomotion attributes

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Odeon Redon:  …..once he has established his own idiom…….

once he’s taken from nature the necessary

means of expression, is free, free legitimately free, to borrow

his subjects from history, from the poets, from his own imagination,

from the thousand sources of his fantasy

[once he has established his own idiom]

My whole originality consists in having made

improbable beings

live humanly

according to the laws of the probable

by as far as possible

putting the logic of the visible

at the service of the invisible.

The designation of my drawings by a title is often, so to speak, superfluous.  A title is justified only when it is vague and even aims confusedly at the

equivocal.  My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined.  They determine nothing.  They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the

undetermined.

Odeon Redon

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…..the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing……

Pascal

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A curious HUMAN INCLINATION TO PROGRESS THROUGH ERROR

AND TO DECLARE MOST SIGNIFICANT THAT WHICH IS MOST DETRIMENTAL

DAMAGING, DESTRUCTIVE, DEMEANING

THE HUMAN INCLINATION TO DEFINE ERROR (it’s called fault-finding) (if only it were as funny as its name is)

THE HUMAN INCLINATION TO FIND WHAT IS FALSE (A PACK OF LIES) MOST SIGNIFICANT OF ALL

THE HUMAN INCLINATION TO FIND FAULT FINDING THE MOST

ALLURING

THE HUMAN INCLINATION TO LEAN TOWARDS FAILURE, TO LEAN

TOWARDS FALLING

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people who don't want to be understood don't read poetry do you understand me?

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What do you think that means?”— countered with a “Did you see that?”

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Dara Wier is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and Hat on a Pond. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, theAmerican Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (29)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier

censorship, surveillance, scrutiny & camouflage (cont.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

in memory of Tomaž Šalamun who never diminished anything

"Some sentences walk in the mist, some bend strangely, I like awkwardness, awkwardness is the crucial thing in my writing. Things should not be clear. If clear they’re too domesticated. I dedomesticate, invade the language, delogify." Tomaz Salamun to Brian Henry in an email

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The Right to Be Forgotten

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in increments, moving from shadow to shadow, stepping from corner to corner, moving from tree to tree, staying in the shadows, never stepping out of the shadows

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how many times can you say it without it becoming questionably over-stated?

how what is quantifiable almost, mostly, usually, typically, most of the time

is valued above what can’t be quantified, let me count the ways

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measurably

gives someone the means

to put a value on something

without all those messy and uncomfortable misgivings,

second-thoughts, multiplicities, negative capabilities, ambiguities and immeasurable omnipresent states of being

(though “state” is not what’s experienced in that fleeting sense of omniscience one ever  every now and then sees in little glimpses and can never ever be anything but glancing)

One can only say so many times:  I don’t want to know

what it is

that I want to know

(as if I’m practicing to accept the obvious

which is that mystery

ultimately

is all there is, is all, just is)

(to be sympathetic

when one tries

to behave as though

I’ve got the jump on something,

we’re ahead of the game,

I’m nobody’s fool,

we don’t miss a trick,

our radar is fully functional)

(or less gently, boasting

how much you don’t want to know

(I don’t want to know, what makes you think I want to know)

can be a kind of pretending to know

there is more than what’s obviously

not all that mysterious) (& convoluted)

(and sometimes……more or less equally confusing,

this seems to superstitiously deflect

our very human touchingly needy

and at times desperately in a panic fearful

facing up to oblivion)

it’s both exhilarating and terrifying to come face to face with the immensity of life,

what follows instantaneously

that shrinking down into the essential infinitesimal it might just be me  

that does take your breath away

that is what there is to live for

(when we can’t laugh about it, when even laughter has exhausted itself and turned into something else)  (then comes the cautionary warning:  stop taking yourself so seriously)

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I cannot have something to say, I cringe when someone asks me what’s the point; how come?  I suffer when someone askswhat’s that book about  & why do I do that?

I’m embarrassed, I’m at a loss, I’m used to it.

It’s not good to wreck an illusion, it’s unlucky.

I can’t begin with something I know; I have to know that I don’t know what I want to know----that way of saying that.  That way of admitting one stares off into what’s beyond seeing.  The horizon serves us so many purposes.

One can say something (say what you will, say anything) with variations so many times one begins to suspect something is hiding something, someone is whistling in the dark (which can be a help, a way to be found, or a slantwise comfort)

Or deflecting.  Or refusing.

Who knows, hiding and deflecting and refusing and not seeing have sometimes been life saving.  And why not let that be a knowing just as knowing as any other kind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(as the kind, for just one instance, one is wanting, hoping,

wishing to avoid;

the kind that’s infested

with ignorance,

didacticism, indoctrination, pomposity,

narcissistic self righteousness,

assumptions, presumptions, prejudice,

shallowness, stupidity and a closed mind,

that kind, the kind anyone wants to run from)

(and the kind we fear we most of all have been suffering under, we’ve participated in it)

(for instance, to be stupid is not to be incapable, it is to be by choice uninformed)  (to be stupefied, to be stopped in your tracks, to be dumbfounded, to be speechless)

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obscuring  possibility can be what that is

~~~~~~~~~

just as much as if one were to say: this is what I know and I’m saying it,  here it is, and this is all there is

to say

as if everything about the world is ruined and ruinous

a cheat and a scandal and I will be telling you this in bright colors,

in the bright colors that light up our brains when verbal action is alive there and in brainwork motions of the electrically biological kinds

(and then there’re the times when one is pleased

to have one saying something clearly,

precisely and true to the logic it proposes;

as if sometimes what one wants

is to hear something that sounds sure and certain

in spite of/because of our wanting to remember

how we always go without knowing

how everything goes without saying

~~~~~~~~~

and I know it,  or let’s say someone thinks she knows it:  and so we flinch when we hear anyone say:

and I know it before you know it,

and when this happens

when what happens happens as though one of us knows and the other of us remains unknowing,

this appears to be one of the most terrible of all problems

And that way is dis-spiriting

(not to the me me---to the other me the one who stands in for us ---in a fiction of from time to time)

when it is you (not really you) who condescends to me (not really me) and you are I

in the words previous to these (and it begins to be more trouble than it’s worth)

and you are not you as in someone’s personal self (you can say that)

but you as a useful, a useful you, a you that is useful, a  (convoluted you if ever there was one)

part of speech and way in this case to avoid saying:

and I, the author of this, knows it,  (so why would you have kept it from me for all this time) and I knew it all along (which seems kind of smug), I’ve been knowing it  (which is beginning to be unbelievable)

(maybe this is why it’s bad luck for a writer to over think

what’s going on before hand,

before the doing begins to be being done,

or why it is unlucky if one does think a lot beforehand

to not be very careful to forget all one’s thought;

to at least pretend you know nothing at all

even if you’ve fooled yourself beforehand

into thinking and enjoying it while you’re thinking it,

if enjoying is the right word for that, that you know a little something,

but about what……..what do you know…….

and the author indicates (in so many ways) that she knows it before you know it or what happens when all is good and true and right and holy and infinite:  it dawns on both at the same time (you have to spit on your metaphorical hems, you have to say something to acknowledge your lucky timing, you have to undo, in some places, the so-called jinx of that, you say it is a coincidence, an occasion of synchronicity, simultaneity, you have to buy someone a coke

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I don’t want to know something before anyone else knows it.

And that problem, and artist building into their work the idea that I know it before you know it (and thus I will be telling it to you, or showing you, or even more hideously, I will be forcing you to see) is one of the most limiting of all for art’s expansive indications,

it is doing everything that’s important after the fact, it is a when-all-is-said-and-done time, it is putting the cart before the horse, it is ass-backwards, grotesque and probably (unless you’ve got some great purpose for it) hurtful

I guess there are always going to be those of us, those among us, who are art tricksters and while maybe they aren’t my all time favorites, maybe I like to see how necessary they are to round out any world’s collection of humanity.

There is always someone around to remind me if I’m not being especially amused by being tricked there is always the chance I might be, and I certainly will be tricked.

(don’t the hoaxer hoaxes for many many reasons, one of which is to remind me most of all,  I might be fooling myself) (and maybe that is a necessary reminding I should thank all hoaxers for)

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The idea of forcing, of artists forcing people to see this or understand this or come to find out this (and most usually as if the artist (maybe perpetrator) sincerely (and sincerity is certainly in play) believes that there is a lot we don’t know that he will be taking the time and doing the work to show us or tell us…….the idea of “forcing” not a good one.

(the way a stupid parent will try to force a child to open its mouth to eat)

And who first started saying writers “force” readers to do anything?  And from where does that language come?  And why talk that way?  Is there someone somewhere sometime who believes all authors to be sadistic?  Is there a masochistic reader to be found?

(of course there is, leave them be to their own devices)

There must be.  How could there not be?

Given we are all victims of variety.

Cautions to one another.

Seeing around us what we can’t see within us.

Who’s fooling who and for what?

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Dara Wier is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and Hat on a Pond. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, theAmerican Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (28)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier

censorship, surveillance, scrutiny & camouflage

Censorship and scrutiny (related to scrupulous, maybe, should check, will check) and surveillance, keeping an eye on each other, cautioning, being ultra vigilant (one can hear it, the disembodied voice coming over the universal speakers in the lobbies of the transportation areas).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Censorship, how do we practice it…how is it practiced…..what do we do, what does anyone do, what do they do (what would we say without THEY and how

would we say it)

how does it happen that to stop people from saying what they want to say, and to stop people from being who they want to be happens non stop.  No matter what.  Irregardless.  Drawing that line is one of the hardest lines to draw (having never worked for any organization (e.g. ACLU) but for ones in which it is generally assumed that to speak freely one’s mind and one’s minds speculations is an ordinary, almost unremarkable assumption---though aren’t assumptions always dangerously obscuring) (isn’t assuming disregarding) (all the cracks in everything)

What subtle censorships do we lend one another, knowingly and unknowingly.

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Why it

is that and maybe how novels are so powerful.

They are, for this moment, for right now, undoubtedly,

the best thing in the written world

when it comes to what it comes to concerning the never ending exponentially infinite complications of human nature.

It sets us down in writing all in the prismatic observations (first observe this language we use everyday, then how we observe one another, and what we do with what we observe, how frangible and fragile we are, how easily everything can be broken, how generous true love is, what lasts and what can’t, who keeps who alive, who kills, who steals, who covets, who insults beyond justification, who got hurt, what reverence can never be assailed, who broke in to whose heart and mind, how can this be tangled and untangled, never.

It must be terrifying to choose to be a novelist.

Among other things.

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Why, for instance, a list is such a funny object.  Just about any kind of list.

As if

listing is an act we can enlist to control the out of control thoughts our mind doesn’t stop providing.  A list is a great act of human vanity and/or humor.  It is another as if, as if this could be so.

We are heart-breaking when we number things:  1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  6.  7.  8.  9.

Let’s say that’s the premise and from there let’s add all the reasons

we can think of why this is the case.  Say, we list.

And we careen.

How she fell in love with him is almost bothersome.  How he fell in love with her unfathomable.  And take it from there.

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Each little segment or incident, frame and pixilated scrolling stretch of experience, depending where one encounters it, in front of one’s eyes, on the face of one’s phone (which has tended to make everyone look sometimes as if they are impersonating a 1940s movie star looking into a diamond rimmed compact), close by one’s computer screen (and how big is, the smallest laptop, the broadest table model), in the regulation or small or ultra large pages of a book, or billboard, sign of any kind (all the way in to the secret signs and glances and glimpses we give and take on any given day)----each one amounts to a piece of the (the the plot plot) plot

and with each step (no one can say what a step exactly is

or say much about it’s size)  (or any steps eventual outcome)

the story of our lives comes into being. In increments. In impossibly stoppable (as in stop action) detail.

One appreciates the appreciation of all matters intentional at this time.

Because who

wouldn’t want to emphasize one’s free choice and free will in all times, all times of such regulation, intimidation, homogenization, and confusion.  And who doesn’t love one’s own agency and freedoms, from constraints unbidden.

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and Hat on a Pond. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, theAmerican Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (27)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier

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at the stately pace of a caravan disappearing into an undivided somewhere, all its secrets locked, swaying with the progressive movement toward and away from.  But what is needed is some act other than pressing a button and having it all happen, some way of living into the layers as they occur and not losing momentum in order to………. (Three Poems The New Spirit p. 30 Ecco paper)

by which I mean poems saying as only poems can what can only be contained in what poetry is.  I love the book.  And I benefit endlessly from it.

And I know what follows is not “fair” and one should not be asked to choose, and it must be so that for each one of us at different times and in different circumstances we have variously many various responses to artificially narrow choices such as these---nevertheless for the sake of just making some ways to say some things for a while, here is this:

What affords, promises, delivers, maybe gives us a more sure escape from ourselves:

Reading a book or watching a film, as if I had to choose…….

Which guarantees a greater escape from one’s self (and the claustrophobia of one’s cyclical looping thoughts waiting to jump their tracks………), the book or the film?

Why and how and stories and anecdotes please in words or in pictures.  

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I feel I ought to show my hand and say my peace; for me, it is always a book first though a film can have a lasting effect and cause one to take what one’s come to expect (the look and what the look resonates and suggests, why then, the book; the book, the book and anyway everyone knows no one should feel the need to choose, not in this, no good reason, though since I am thinking about what if I needed to choose, here is why and how I would).

What if one knows reason only in its physical manifestations?

The deaf man skins a squirrel for his supper.  Ten thousand seedlings need to be culled for a hundred to thrive.  Thorns come in all sizes.  Snakes do get angry.  It is possible to tame a raccoon. Bloodhounds howl.  At night knots knot themselves in hair and twine.  They have lives of their own. Sometimes baby owls eat one another.  They eat one another just like Russian dolls do, only in reverse somehow, Russian dolls un-eat one another one at a time.

The girl on the Morton Salt Box holds a box on which she is holding a box which pictures her holding a box which...........and so on and on was imagination asked to minimize the image-chain-link boring through the ordinary visible into the other side of a whole otherwise extraordinary reality.  The salt box sits on the kitchen table where everyone can see it.  In plain view, pointing straight on toward one of life’s mysteries.

I liked to sit on my grandmother's bed which was situated in the middle of her room.  On flanking walls were mirrors above dressers. If you sat on the bed facing either mirror what you were given in return were infinitely smaller images of yourself drilling into the infinitely vast mirror depths.  You could be a torch on a river bank drilling its reflection as far as one can see into a river.

You could go on as far as you were willing to imagine.

During the same time these images and instances were fascinating my days, I was deeply involved in a closet.  In its small, maybe 3 by 5 floor space, I was busy building an altar.  Eventually my private altar mimicked all accoutrement accompanying the public, operative altars I visited with relatives.

A twig here to be a cross, some little wax figurines for saints with various names:  Saint Blessed of the Blue Nets, Saint Bill of the Fancy Shirt, Saint Marie of the Endless Hair, Saint Jerry of the Secrets, Saint Grace of the Terrible Eyes, Saint Claire of Kindness, Saint Green and Gold and Orange and Black, Saint Lynn of the little Brownies, Saint Broadcast of the Midnight Anthems, Saint Scary, Saint Nail, Saint Pitcher, Saint Pot, Saint Sink, Saint Mule, Saint Snakes Be Still, Saint Traintrack, Saint Japonica Seeds, Saint of the Furious River, Saint of Rain, Saint  Queen of Clubs, Saint Singing, Saint Dancing, Saint Sleep.

So much of which seems, then it should be film, this is all something to look at, but it wasn’t it was all in my head, pretty much, most of the time, not always.

About the same time it was as if I saw a poem for the first time.  In fact, I had seen a lot of poems. But these were the poems I really saw, I stared into them, I watched them to see what they would do.  As if I'd never seen one before.  But I had.  I'd seen them in prayer books, on calendars, in greeting cards, on cup towels, in newspapers, and in my father's schoolbooks.

This is dedicated to the WORDS & PICTURES DAY SYMPOSIUM (happening at Flying Object, November 8th, NOON to NINE) HOSTS Laura Warman, Delia Pless, Sarah Nichols, Molly McArdle, Christopher Griggs, Patrick Gaughan, Elmira Elvazova, Max Cohen, Andy Bowers, Colleen Barry

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (26)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier

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“It is an intuitive journey that takes us through the killing of a parakeet with an ax, and the thinking of shrinking something out of existence, and registering pigeons at a hotel, and a dog stuck to the ceiling by its back, not to mention a room overgrown with grass...But these are only stations of the journey. I'm not sure the journey has a psychological end; it probably has only a mortal end.” (a salute to Russell Edson, it's him talking)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

of the many many essential paradoxes poetry lets us live with, is the one that involves the complexities associated with poetry's private and public nature, in public it is the most private, its privacies would not be were they not public

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

as if anything written must or should justly represent, reproduce, reiterate or reenact----- reality.

Though any writer or writing has often been praised most of all for this recreation and reiteration, as if everything needs to be underlined in order to be preserved for all time, or to be understood

while at the same time anything we introduce via combining anything we gather by means of any means becomes and is reality

Which leads to our being so often asked to decide what's real---in surprising ways this underlying broadly articulated notion keeps being asked of anyone who writes (well not everyone, but too many)

what reality anyway......... is this one, that one, another one, some other one..........

which quickly is answered: it depends on who you are

That is, that reality, that reality over there,

the one something written can point toward

or anyone standing can walk over to.

Writing's not ever only just been

or aspired to be just any superficial mirror.

But facing mirrors will land one smack in the middle of the illusion of infinity.

(in the depths of the mirror though.......that will come on as another story altogether) (a traditionally told looking-glass story)

(how our current rearview mirrors come with warnings that objects in mirror are closer than they appear) (and in the convex mirrors, other edges come near to us)

Referring to what in an everyday way, casual way, comes to us with "real" or "reality" attached to it,

things related to that may turn out to be the least things

I've heard how people like to say, as if this is big compliment: she really captured the reality of that

situation.....place......time...woman....man....animal...psychological dynamic.....impossibly vivid situation

As if reality were fugitive, something feral, ever shifting, elusive, maybe illusive-- as in now-you-see-it-now-you-don't

which it is

Still, there can be a case made for it being itself just as it is with no need of capture or reiteration. Who ever says there is THAT need?

On the other hand, nothing beats saying the obvious when it comes to seeming to say what's marvelous

Another case can be made that what writing should do in fact, for ever for why not----is defy reality, is to transform reality beyond recognition, to disguise reality, to trick it out or make it once again strange

What's the point

of it all (one big huge time capsule----not to knock the concepts time capsules embody) (a good time capsule is such a human thing)

if what's to be found in writing isn't something we find nowhere else?

It's not realistic, there's no evidence in reality, no justification to say we are immortal and yet there are the writers in prose and in poetry, in every kind of mixture.......hinting how after the first death there is no other means nothing if not after the first death there ought to be a clearly marked escape route, or at the very least a very good consolation prize

and there it stands something behind which there is nothing impossible

That writing can act as if we are immortal, or at least let us imagine what forever and timeless infinity seems to be------

that we defy gravity, that time isn't the time that we experience in everyday day to day ways

(and like, the depths of a mirror, the depths of time encompass forever in the here and now) (and in like there is possibly everything) (that mirror)

to not take infinite immortality literally, please as if it could

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

if we lived before----what if we pretend we do, but we don't,

if we could, but we can't,

if we imagine we do, and we can--suppose

we lived before this sentence, not this one, the one coming, had been composed and distributed: --before this sentence (a sentence about how bad its author feels about Karl Ove's popular books):

"The novel strikes me as a giant selfie, a 3,600-page blogologue. Like mumblecore or reality television, it’s premised on the notion that all you need to do is point your camera at the world and shoot." (I think, apologies for not knowing exactly, this was in THE NATION)

What if we lived without/before selfie, blogologue, mumblecore, reality television and without going too much retro math, our camera-- - what would that sentence be saying? What if instead some other things would have to be said? Because all that wasn't available. What might these be?

(aside: the opening 30 or 50 or so pages of Ove's first book of his many booked sequence makes for very very good reading and so it goes, those few pages set a precedent by which all of the books benefit from a boy's imagination, curiosity, nearness to mystery and sensitivity or susceptibilities) (I'm a fan of those books)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When ever I encounter in my mind, or see and understand to be revealed

by the words of another,

how pervasively we can't do without this reminds me of, I worry.

I worry how thoroughly the high speed transformation of one thing into another blurs both (also can highlight commonly embodied or high contrast qualities, yes this same action produces some terribly fine combinations)

Think of how fearfully one hears: you remind me of your________________ (you decide who or what to denigrate in this little verbal equation)........, your work reminds me of ____________________ and there it all disappears in that single minded concoction.......

on the other hand....

(when is it good to recognize how two things, two people resemble one another............) (it feels deep down animal instinct necessary, say before we had names, before we had mug shots, before we had human language, we still needed to recognize what it was we were encountering...........)

if something doesn't yet exist, how foolish is it to speculate about it?

which makes no sense

making no sense, spending time in the zones of so-called meaninglessness

why poets have especially loved how Keats said how negative capability is.........of course.....of course a poem will doubt, will embody uncertainty, will yearn to be near mystery...............it can't do otherwise

without these qualities and be its better self...

it's a poem, for god's sake, it's going to be ornery, perverse, difficult

(as in difficult child not as in difficult class assignment),

impossible to pin down, annoyed by categorizations, willful, dangerous, striking, arresting, purposefully inexplicable, resolutely impossible to pin down, without a point, beyond understanding......

[To be understood......I realized while listening to two painters and one poet adamantly say they do not want to know what is understood

that it was being understood that to understand is a deadend,

is a sign that something, once it is understood, is over and done with

and that is the problem with that, that it is over and done with

it would be better if instead of understanding being involved with an immediate conclusion, it instead referred to an eternal action,

as in, understanding as continuous thinking

immediate conclusions can send any artist running away for another territory....

....because when one is assuming something is settled ----there isn't much to do with it.........that is the conclusion, and not the situation.........

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Dara Wier is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and Hat on a Pond. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, theAmerican Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (25)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier

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Emily Dickinson’s collected poems do not include any words that begin with the letter “X”.

When I ran across the phrase making sense of the world (in a book about indexing no less) I wondered if I'd often, it can't have been ever, had that feeling, and I thought no.

I can't begin to explain why or how I came to be one of those for whom making sense of the world has not seemed an option.

What----I say, what......how can you call yourself a writer and not want to make sense of the world?  I don't know.  The desire to make sense of the immensity, mystery, ever changing, surprising, mind boggling, soul stirring, brain rattling this of this world has never been an option.

I respect most people who try to make sense of this world.  No, maybe what I mean is that I respect that they do try to make sense of this world.  I admire the relentless passion with which humans relentlessly pursue sense.  I do.  I envy some for whom attempts to make sense of this world bring them right up to the brink.

The brink of what?  Not for me to know.  I remember the first time I ran my index finger over the surface of a mobius strip (first named in 1858, upon being discovered simultaneously by several mathematicians) (only one of them got his name afixed to the strip with the half-twist turning it into a so-called non orientable object) over and into an almost universally enjoyed metaphysical party trick.

The ant I felt I was being led to believe I can be, started one place and wound up right back where it started having touched both sides of this paper strip (not once knowing what it was doing).

While I relished the pleasure dimensional defiance seemed to confer, I didn't think I could make sense of the world.

To be real, to make sense.

To say something is real causes confusion.  Say such and such is real

and everyone's sense of reality is shaken

maybe to the core, maybe so quietly and thoroughly it will never be the same again, maybe beyond repair

maybe all for the better, maybe beyond good

To call anything real puts pressure on me

to think that saying one thing is real seems to being saying there is something else

and maybe that something else is not real

confusing

and maybe exhilarating

Is this true----if there's real must there be an unreal?

It's pretty impossible to think that there is anything that is not real.  So it must be some kind of deeply understood figure of speech.  Our deeply loved brain playing with paradox as it often prefers to do.

Who says there has to be a frame of reference?

As if

there could ever not be a frame of reference.  There is always a frame of reference.

Too much narrowed everything and magnified nothing.

To not talk about an idea, is that the same as to not have an idea?

If you can't start anywhere you might as well start somewhere.

Can you make something that serves as, functions as, a conduit that leads to the opposite of the other end of the distant future of something to begin with?  Is this possible?  Is this desirable?  Is this the mobius of logic having its way with my brain?

(confession:  in the flesh I could never execute a somersault or tumbleset or skin the cat, in my brain the feeling does exhilarate and amplify)

Parallax.  A set of instructions to generate........what?

What is your minimum requirement?

What if there is nothing to disrupt?

Okay, beholder.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE MECHANICAL REPITITION OF PREVIOUSLY RECEIVED IDEAS OR IMAGES, WITHOUT TRUE REASONING OR FEELING; REPETITION OF WORDS OR PHRASES PARROT-FASHION; AN INSTANCE OF THIS:  psittacism (like a parrot)

_____________________________

He was always saying he was an open secret, he suffered from collateral damage, there was nothing but unintended consequences.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The hypothesis is

that the gravitational interaction is mediated

by an – as yet undiscovered –

elementary particle, dubbed

graviton

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the idea of returning to a poem or piece of prose again and again is not by repeated encounters will you unlock its secrets, at last, finally, once and for all, it's because with every reading your brain is newly wired, because your ever changing brain will not be still, and your encounters will be shaded by your never static state of mind

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graviton

why words are attracted to one another, how

on account of reading MOBY DICK (in an excellent lab lead by the amazing poet Seth Landman) this happened to me, and I am okay with this:  thinking about gravity and why it always feels the same, and why it doesn't seem to hurt (unless you fall through space without your assent, as you trip or take a fall or crash or succumb to something......)

"fleeting impressions floating on a sea of poorly made waters"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It isn't so much that a so-called mixed metaphor is bad (a mixed metaphor can be a combination of disparity that only reckless genius will conceive (or stumble upon) (and when conceived and executed----- on purpose) (on purpose is a sure story to behold))

Naturally an unmixed metaphorical passage can be satisfying the way following a long wave materialize, move and break can be satisfying.

◊

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Her forthcoming collection You Good Thing will be published by Wave Books this spring. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (24)

a series of fragments & notes about chance, fate, context & intention by Dara Wier  

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and at a particular crossroad I found myself standing before a series of false doors any one could swing open with an almost sudden announcement, or with no warning

at an odd time for no reason,

for no good reason

what for? nothing

nothing so to speak of

nothing

not that it matters only just something to look at to think about as in I thought about the tiny flattened glass urn embedded in the back of a book filled with a big of ash made of some chips of Shelley's skull.

I heard myself ask myself so what good is poetry if inside it you think no differently than when you are elsewhere?

then it happens to be that one realizes that it's not that simple, you can think the same way in a poem's territory but because it is in a poem's place it will be thought of differently, it will be thought of as what is in a poem's place comes to be thought of, it is not the same as in prose, it is not the same, it is something else because it is elsewhere, it is somewhere other than in prose or for that matter, anywhere else

and I felt myself think so what then are you going to do?

~~~~~~~~~

what is called realistic behavior when talking about a fictional character could be called unbelievable, unreal for a person with a life on the other side of the cover of a book

you pointed at me and because the front of me is always one side of the moon or the other

you said how romantic are the chemicals of which we are made

he was an ancient Marxist baby, he ate anteaters with triceps they were bophospherous and gusty you could see what made him quiver you could see his tiny antennae twitch, you could fathom some of the rationalizations

who told me to picture  fish rising up out of a deeper darker pool to snatch a nibble furtively then race away

to turn the pages of a book, from opening its cover to closing it on its final page, but not to read a word of it..........

"The first step, using a virus to gain entry, is to infect a specific group of brain cells with a protein that makes them sensitive to light.  Then a wire optic cable is implanted next to the cells, to beam in photons.  Turning on the light activates the cells, while neighboring cells are unaffected---a feat of spatial and temporal precision impossible to achieve with drugs or electrical stimulation."    (The Body Electric, Kim Tingley, New Yorker, p. 84, Nov. 25, 2013)

first of all the language of this:  pieces of the language of narrative: first, then, first, then and then and then and then

non-narrative? as hard to come by as something meaningless is hard to come by

how to find narrative momentum in an abstract theme, it happens all the time

wind rain in weather

to begin something, to find a way in and to look for a way out, to leave it

basing anything on an approximation of anything that someone has only glimpsed only from a distance

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

my friend, a live one, says she likes her best friends to be alive in books, she says those friends stay on the page, never change even as they change, never say to her.......I'm not who you thought I am, thought I was, thought I was going to be

a little Roland Barthes making useful sense in readerly writing

writing that makes no requirement of the reader to produce meaning, reader locates "ready-made" meaning.......

e.g. words presented within "the principle of non-contradiction" --no disturbing "common sense,"---they work "like a cupboard where meanings are shelved, stacked, [and] safeguarded"

writing about a writerly piece of writing: writing ... to make of a reader "no longer a consumer but a producer"---interaction with culture and its texts.,"---ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized   reducing the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages"---so Barthes wants of reading not something merely [he is emphasizing this] parasitical but complementary and  a "form of work"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ♠

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, Context & Intention by Dara Wier ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Does it qualify as experimental if one doesn't know what one is doing when one is doing it? There have to be other ways to talk about controlled situations within laboratories in which, say, a vacuum is needed for experimental purposes, let's say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First I heard someone say of the place where they were: there's nothing happening here, then I heard oh there is so much going on around here, then I heard there is too much happening here. I'm wondering exactly where is here since there is no where I'm understanding it is. All right then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wonder if sometimes a poet is sparing us from something. You know, instead of thinking, oh that poet, that poet's got nothing to say to me, maybe sometimes certain poets are sparing us some things we could barely bear, or maybe don't want to hear or see or know about. I think that's admirable and kind-hearted and possible.

And then there is a poet, or person, who seems to feel that telling the truth (the unadorned truth it can be but not always) (stating the fact) (that is) obviates responsibility for whatever the truth means to those involved. The plain fact of telling the truth over-rides any damage the truth might do. That can't be always so. Too dangerous.

Some things are not meant to be put into words; that is, they are no longer what they are once words are attached to them, as if they best and truly exist in a place without light and attaching words to them would be as creepy as attaching shadows to things in the middle of a featureless, absolute dark, a place with no light (I think of shadows inside my head when I close my eyes; I've never seen a shadow in there).

(of course moon shadows can be gorgeous and that's another story)

What I'd worked around to saying many times before is that there are some things I can say I care about, now that I think of it, now that it comes to me, and one of them is that it matters to me when I'm hearing or reading a poem to wonder: what does this poet think about poetry---what is poetry to this poet, what does this poet do with poetry---anyone of us will feel this whether we put that in words or not.

(If I get up and go read Keats' THIS LIVING HAND, I think I know what Keats thinks about poetry, for one quick instance)

And another thing is what does the poet whose poem I happen to be reading seem to think about me (not me personally, just me any stranger, invisible reading person, unnamed, unknown, reading anyone's poem anytime anyplace for any reason or no reason)

What does this poet want from me---possibly nothing at all---how involved does this poet want me to be---maybe a lot, maybe a little---in what ways does this poet want me to be actively a part of this poem---infinite ways, uncountable speculations

what does this poet want me to do with this poem

what does this poem want to do with me

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In order in New Orleans from near downtown & the financial district crossing St. Charles Avenue toward Uptown, streets named:

Calliope, epic poetry & poetry as commonly held repository, epic epic

Clio, history and narrative, nostalgia and adventure

Erato, lyric poetry, love & erotics, longing & despair,

Thalia, comedy and absurdity, a stance & a defense system

Melpomene, tragedy and damage, heartbreak & mortality

Terpsichore, dance and motion

Euterpe, music, rhyme and rhythms, beats & eternal return

Polymnia, choral poetry, hymns and sacred songs

Urania, astronomy, infinity, maps, fate & the future

~~~~~~ a great aunt of mine lived on Melpomene and she did have fake frogs in her clam shell white hot garden along with fake fairies and fake birds and fake snakes and fake mushrooms and fake fish and I loved them all, they were city creatures, they were almost animated................ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is probably a good idea to have a muse. To have one but not tell anyone you have one. Possibly. To have a muse so as to be able to tell yourself with certainty, I am not doing this alone. I did not do this by myself.

To be able to say I don't do any of this by myself, there is my muse there all the time at my side, in my head, holding on to my heart, infusing and enlivening my soul. To be able to say we don't do this by ourselves.

We don't compose alone. Poetry itself keeps us company.

(true no matter how alone one might be, or feel, or understand one's self to be)

To have some kind of necessary partner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

why poetry, why poetry and not something else and why a muse

a beloved, someone one writes everything for, someone, please let me have a good muse, a muse who is truly on my side, please, don't let me have settled on the wrong muse........

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This constitute some of the combinations, as given to me----

the streets of New Orleans serve divine inspiration is divine intervention comes Theresa of Avila says Mother Superior Made Me Do It! hearing voices receiving dictation as Yeats did and John Clare did and Christopher Smart did what are my talismans and superstitions what are the habits I can't break from where comes agency for instance

---the real underneath of it all

why any writer feels the need to share responsibility (an angel guided my hand, not me!)

rather than take it on herself.....of course shared responsibility definitely has its advantages......

literary history, antecedent, ancestors, etc........that for many would be the true muse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I asked so then what happens in a poem that happens there better than anywhere else?

Is there anything that happens in a poem that can only happen there?

Well, could be that answers itself as in anything can only happen where it happens when it happens and if it happens to happen in a place called a poem it can not have happened anywhere else, yes?

that who ever encounters it there will say that it is acting in a poem either as expected or as I expect it to act, as in

I am reading what is known as a poem now and because I am I am reading it in some ways not the same as when I am reading

say, a parking ticket, or an eviction notice, or a memo concerning my job, that what anyone might do to make a living

What can be said about a poem that can't be said about anything else? If at all.

Is there anything?

And so, of course there has to be, how could there not be, everything that is anything we call something (almost, much of the time) anything we call something is always happening, in time and in space, and is changed by what and how we call it

and what we say about it, and it is

so if I say that, that is a poem

then it is not anything else

at least not particularly in any useful way at least and especially not as it's first encountered

and so what does go on in a poem that isn't likely to go on elsewhere

turns out to be that what goes on in a poem isn't likely to go on anywhere else------and what happens in a poem is not going to happen in what is not a poem

and just about leave it at that

If I say poetry is indispensable..........

Or I say I will stand forever in front of this false door and wait there....... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ♠

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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INSIDE UNDIVIDED (22)

a series of fragments & notes about chance, fate, context & intention by Dara Wier

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Pulling the legs off spiders is not something anyone should be doing.  There are some things people do to poems that are that painful and damaging and useless and wrong.

I don't like to see anyone doing something like that.

Meaning?

I used to always like to say how a simile would be something like communion in the Episcopal Church, something like or representing or standing in for:  the body of a god. And that metaphor was communion in the Catholic Church, via transubstantiation, the literal transformation of one material into another material, in this case, the body of god. Ready to be eaten.

And I pretty much always left it at that.

Until recently when I wanted to think about how these ideas must have felt in the mind of a child.  One who believed in these things at one time.

Sitting in an oak pew, maybe 11 rows back, waiting for one's turn to go up to receive or take communion, people tookcommunion too, but more often they received communion: along with thinking about all the scary things that went along with that, there were so many rituals to consider...........did I truly confess........was I really sorry.......was it okay for me to take communion this morning after last night........

along with the gothic gory whatever you do don't chew it

(let it dissolve, almost as if dissolving would be more like disappearing, more like seeping in, like ground water, everyone knows dissolving is better)

essentially a mechanical chemical action; less like cannibalism, which of course I thought about all the time......why wasn't it cannibalism..... or maybe......yes, it's cannibalism all right and so certain kinds of cannibalism must be more than acceptable...........in fact sacramental

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

and what about what there is there is that is never intended to be described?

the something that can't be described is one thing the something that should never be described is another something that sometimes can be and sometimes can't, a little trickier

some things indescribable and undescribable (too often described, described too much, painfully described, unnecessarily described) by virtue of what they are if they were describable they could not be what they are

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maybe because all the truly huge, devastating things we do and that happen pretty much alll around

birth, falling in love, being betrayed, having children, fearing for their lives, desiring all

for them, finding resources, being rejected, damaged, treated with cruelty, (having your legs pulled off) with savage intentions

being praised, finding meaning, witnessing harm

accidents

most are all things common to us

and that, our common commonality seems to be exactly why we need to remain individuals, to treat ourselves as if we are

original (anyway, how original are we--- we are as ourselves) (when we feel that way, when felling alone say for instance is original) (how frangible)

not "the first of its kind" not the originating agent or provider or provision...........but as symbols and instances

a simulacrum, a prototype, templates......

(where one can get into a whole lot of trouble happens when one is trying too much to think that to know what someone else is thinking and feeling, in any exact kind of way is possible, that's what's dangerous, empathy is good, without it we are monsters and yet an overly active empathetic synthesizing device will overwhelm anyone's sense of self) (there's a Star Trek episode in which a woman's empathy is literal; she can lay her hands on someone's shoulders in order to absorb all their pain, anxiety, fear, terror, leaving her visibly in misery and them pain free))

(somehow how and why fiction is fiercely needed, to pretend there is and there is, at least in the book, something that is exact and true and in and of itself evidence of itself, how in the book, what's what can be all there is) (how in the book, nothing has to be held to the standards of evidential existing we encounter outside of the book)

(in the book, outside of the book)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

pulling the legs off spiders will involve exactly the opposite of empathy, having negative empathy for the spider is possibly the most fascinating motive for the action (sad for the spider, sad for the poem, sad for anyone subjected to that)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maggie Nelson in a jubilat interview, on narrowing:

Each narrowing of what contemporary poetry is supposed to do bears with it an equivalent narrowing in the definition of a human being.  --Douglas Oliver

I stand in fervent opposition to such narrowing. - Maggie Nelson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

empathy requires glancing away beyond conformity

what if you're supposed to deal with someone who has an inclination

to impose conformity

for its own sake (or for the sake of a very private kind of peace of mind)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Iceland: Where one in 10 people will publish a book

By Rosie Goldsmith BBC News, Reykjavik

Untitled1

Iceland is experiencing a book boom. This island nation of just over 300,000 people has more writers, more books published and more books read, per head, than anywhere else in the world.

There is a phrase in Icelandic, "ad ganga med bok I maganum", everyone gives birth to a book. Literally, everyone "has a book in their stomach". One in 10 Icelanders will publish one.

"Does it get rather competitive?" I ask the young novelist, Kristin Eirikskdottir. "Yes. Especially as I live with my mother and partner, who are also full-time writers. But we try to publish in alternate years so we do not compete too much."

Untitled2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ♠

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Richard Misrach, On the Beach

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

the cure for loneliness is solitude —Marianne Moore

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

books and film regarding all of the complexities of art forgery (here and now, back then, before it was called that, why now, fascinating.......) I guess some of a background re such could be: well then, art as reality, art is reality, art imitates reality, art adds to reality, art suffers reality, art belies reality, art ignores reality, art considers reality, art eats reality, art suffers reality, art implies reality, art succumbs to reality, art compounds reality, art visits reality, art evaluates reality, art improves reality, art recycles reality, art does no harm to reality, art surprises reality, art loves reality, art charms reality, art disconcerts reality, art tricks reality, art expands reality, art comforts reality, art extends reality, art anesthetizes reality, art destroys reality, art does not do that, and so on while switching that up some might help a little: reality is art, reality imitates art, reality adds to art, reality suffers art, reality implies art, reality succumbs to art, reality compounds art, reality visits art, reality evaluates art, reality improves art, reality recycles art, reality does no harm to art, reality surprises art, reality loves art, reality charms art, reality disconcerts art, reality tricks art, reality expands art, reality comforts art, reality extends art, reality anesthetizes art, reality destroys art, which neither does that do

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here're a couple of sentences from a novel I just finished, though these aren't from near its end:

He didn't feel connected by a traceable series of linked events to a source that had purposefully conveyed him, from elsewhere, into this world. He felt like a digression that had forgotten from what it digressed and was continuing ahead............... (from Tao Lin's TAIPEI)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

does an end (not a conclusion, not necessarily a final note, not a door or window closing, not necessarily a closing, more often an exit, a fire exit, a routine exit, an opening, an abrupt shift, a station, a stop, a fare-the-well, an exhaustion, an extremity, a barely perceptible adjustment, a part on the opposite side of a beginning, a pause, an arbitrary stasis, an irreversible action) —does one need to be a few notches higher, a little torqued, twisted more than previous lines or very terrifyingly quiet quiet almost inaudible, close to invisible, almost

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it's passing strange when someone says or writes that epiphanies are passe, how can this be possible—

a realization as interior condensation, that ancient action sometimes called dew on the soul. (see Emily Dickinson's "debauche of dew" in a poem sometimes known as #214))

I do like to think about resisting epiphany. Of refusing to feel one's brain's impulses shattered into something one hadn't thought before. That seems to take some effort. Of some kind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is the somewhat surprising end of Wallace Stevens' HIBISCUS ON THE SLEEPING SHORES: ..........................................................red as red As the flag above the old cafe--- And roamed there all the stupid afternoon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

why comparative ways can predetermine how one will by necessity demean in order to justify fault-finding in order to prop up one's preferences, this requires a touching sequence of hesitations and qualifications and mis-steps something as sorry as a friend's choosing to withhold what used to be freely given sympathy when one's need for sympathy is huge

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

how it is unusual to imagine no memory concerning odd bits such as "a grisly experiment in which heads of guillotined criminals were allegedly questioned for several minutes, responding to questions by blinking their eyelids" which I'd recalled knowing as a girl, wondering never once from where I'd pulled this bit of story......finding it again quoted in a review of a book about Samuel Beckett by John Calder (who published Beckett, Burroughs, Nabokov, Genet, others), and only then, finding it again, do I wonder where I ran into the first time------this is a kind of reading deja vu

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Transcription: verbatim copying------------ (as I guess sometimes happened in any so-called sacred scriptorium) as I had to do sometimes all the day long, depending on which sister's lot it was to see to our industrious never-ending edification favorite transcription sessions, overseen not by an official sister but by Miss Burris the Magnificent; Miss Burris insisted we use ink pens, that we make not one error, that we write for hours on end. I think I know just a few phrases of some of our Constitutional Amendments because I've copied them several times over. Our ink pens could not be filled with ink cartridges; they had to be filled at the ink well, I love the little contraptions that worked to suction up ink into our pretty little pens. I liked that we had blotting paper. I liked how old fashioned this made me feel. I think of transcription as a very old-fashioned method of killing time. And not necessarily an awful one, depending on what's being copies and for what purposes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I felt fortuitously fortunate to have stumbled upon reading Tao Lin's TAIPEI and Fyodor Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND back to back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"giving the thing a name that belongs to something else" Aristotle in 1475b

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wondered about what can go on in a poem that's not so likely to go on elsewhere. I wondered if in a poem there is something happening that can't be happening otherwise or elsewhere. My sense of this is that there must be. There must be something that happens inside a poem that doesn't happen elsewhere.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She asked me, to what do you attribute your particular kind of imagination? Unequivocally to endless hours spent sitting watching a river pass by

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jurua-River-From-Space

♠

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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secrets and related matters

when you have a secret, when you keep it, when you tell it

when you tell your secret to someone else you tell it in order for someone else to be keeping it, too

keeping a secret together, keeping it between you

when someone says to you, I have a secret to tell you

when someone indicates you will have a secret together

when you know something about someone else, something that will have a crucial effect in someone else’s life, and you know this other person is clueless, what determines when and if you tell them what you know, or not

secret societies secret handshakes passwords, slang, vocabularies, signs & codes secret weapons secret recipes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ the artist who described herself as subtle, as preferring subtlety saying so in a quiet voice, almost under her breath

almost a stage whisper what are the consequences of that completely shocking (not subtle) and dissonate thought for us when we’ve just seen samples that are many things and subtle is not one of them (American history’s small pox delivery system, the unsubtle nature of an arbitrary border; social commentary, satire, satire which can be subtle but is most often not so subtle) (subtle satire? is this possible, recommended, is it advisable?)

and what is so good about subtle anyway it seems as if subtle is one of those things we are always led to believe is to desired

which leads to someone saying something is subtle when it is not when it is anything but

subtle sometimes feels as if someone is saying to us mind your manners, as if so-called polite society doesn’t want to hear what isn’t subtle

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ the big deal we always make about art being ambiguous, art being whatever one makes it (well, obviously, who can argue with that, it might look as if this is arguable in the circumscribed (& small) context of a test answer but that is so arbitrary is it worth bothering about?)

what’s not ambiguous, what’s not

it’s not that we’re looking at (reading) different things (though we are) it’s that we’re encountering exactly the same, maybe powerful, distinctively itself, and unique (isn’t everything basically unique) thing

Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection is itself, it is exactly one thing, and when I am standing by it with a friend and we are looking at it together we are looking at the same painting together and though……. we all know our minds tend to go their separate ways

To argue that being unique ourselves we are bound to have uniquely our own individual, egocentric, indiosyncratic experience with the painting, is, well, unnecessary. We know this.

(see Frank O’Hara writing in “Having a Coke with You” taking or not yet having taken his friend to The Frick to stand together in front of a Bellini)

(St. Francis, where a couple of weeks ago I stood thinking hmmmm, I wonder if I can stand in the same space in the empty air where long ago Frank O’Hara once stood and gazed (well, maybe not gazed, who knows how his look looked) (and the subject of gaze could get to be a distraction, but not at this time) at St. Francis. I even fantasize briefly about adopting an imagined posture, as if where O’Hara stood could be outlined like the template for a piece of a 3-D puzzle (or an image of a hologram) and we could take turns stepping into that space. Why, because sometimes we need to be a visitor, someone who imagines one feels exactly the way someone else might feel, because we’re mostly on our own and often enough like to be with someone other than ourselves. To have a secret together.

And suddenly I see the weirdly modern drainage device coming out of bedrock in the bottom left-hand corner of that painting—–shocking, I’d never noticed the drainage before, never, and now, suddenly, it is the central most significant detail in the painting, how did this happen—–) ~~~~~~~~~ “being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers”. —quoting myself quoting someone else in IU 19, and of relevance at this time because of several conversations I’ve been having with others interested in seeing from where gaze takes on its newer more regulated more narrowly confined meaning: as in any kind of participation in anything in which surveillance comes into play: the ___________gaze, as brought to you by several among whom Michel Foucault comes to enlist these 3 areas of interest: biopower, power/knowledge, panopticism, for which the 3rd on account of its more exotic collection of syllables gets my attention: panopticon induced

~~~~~~~~~~ it’s relevant how often what we know obscures what we don’t know, how frequently knowledge gets in the way of finding out about something else ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“the absurdity of the story rested in the immaturity of the attitude combined with the sophisticated method of its narration.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

♠

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a problem with having a problem with what is called linear

once something has happened

then and maybe only then

is it possible for a human mental experience to be, to become non-linear

before that it was linear all right

which would relegate ideas of non-linearity to what’s over, or as they say, consign it to the past which maybe is why so much talk about non-linearity seems ultra sentimental, ultra nostalgic, ultra regretful, though it is like so many justifications for why art acts one way or another: rationalization based on past observation combined with vast generalization of so-called Reality

to once upon a time to once upon a time which turns out to always be about time that is over

to when it is over

for when it is no longer needed by time

for time to have something to hold onto

for time to have something to do with

then it is no longer linear

which may mean everything over’s non-linearity sometimes will at times make some kind of sense

~~~~~~~~~~~~ the relief one feels when making sense makes no sense at all when one can enjoy the luxury of that, when one can live with that, when that gives way to no next steps

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ stairway to Charter House at Wells Cathedral

a sea of steps

wondrous as it fulfills a terror-inducing vertigo’s fantasy fulfilled in a good solid beautiful sensible way

this has no possible linear interpretation, nothing otherwise than a time/space vortex conspiring

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Artemidorous’ Oneirocritica (Oxford U. Press) Daniel E. Harris-McCoy

Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece (Harvard U. Press) Charles Stewart ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello, Apophenia,

You have saved my life more times, on more occasions, than I can count or name.

You have offered me Sense of a kind I can’t (don’t want) to conjure or contrive.

(why I don’t want to do this, why should I do this when it is done relentlessly without me, without my interference, with no doing on my part, the role one assumes or accepts, say for instance, being in a conventional audience, another story, a story for another time)

Someone somewhere at some time said the word “Apophänie” in order to say that there are characteristics at the onset of delusional thinking, that at the onset we don’t offset and are not off put or otherwise unsusceptible.

apophany from apo + phaenein

there is the opportunity to:

Experience delusion as Revelation.[4]

As opposed to epiphany which is somehow supposed to be not delusional, rather it is supposed to be: delusional’s partner:

apophany does not provide insight or interconnectedness, sadly this is what is said about apophany

it’s more apt to monotonously cause one to think one is experiencing Meaning

which it is said can be self-referential, solipsistic, paranoid:

“being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers”.[5]

A common example of perceived but non-existent patterns are paranormal sightings, including sightings of ghosts, Unidentified Flying Objects, cryptozoology, etc.

See divination See gambling See religious experience See synchronicity See conspiracy theory

See pareidolia See put it in writing See better not waste one’s time See what a surprise See a sudden awakening unaccountably everywhere at once (in which actually appears two times) (which is actually where and when everything actually is) See

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ sensation one’s brain is having when one is reading something or listening to something one knows is standing in for something else when one thing is said in order to avoid saying something else it depends so much on one’s tone in the prose or poetry whether or not doing this substituting is a powerful, fearful, I dare not say this, this is too much to say, I have to say something else that will instead having been said make room for what I’ve avoided saying this is not the same sensation as having no words for something

art-making of a so-called outsider has often been attributed to, said to be a consequence of isolation when it’s equally plausible that isolation is a result of art making which isn’t necessarily a bad thing ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joan Jett The Runaways Cherry Bomb for #19

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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a chameleon has a master who places it on plaid.  It is first frenzied, and then it dies of fatigue

(Jean Cocteau in an interview for PARIS REVIEW)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had a friend one time who told me she and a friend would be having tea, something they did once a year, always on the same day, I wish I could remember the day’s significance, if it had any significance in particular, it probably did.  During the tea it was their habit to introduce to one another beta they bought for the occasion, to watch them fight to the death as any self-respecting beta will do if given half the chance.

My friend seemed to be telling me this to convince me that she was a very interesting person, who did significant things, who could report on these things to others, who didn’t have ordinary feelings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

who hasn’t been mesmerized by a murmuration of birds–what with their scale-free correlationwith no, almost no, degradation as information moves through the flockwith the newest supposition or guess that they co-ordinate with their 7 nearest neighbors

This scale-free correlation allows birds to greatly enhance what the researchers call “effective perceptive range,” which is another way of saying that a bird on one side of a flock can respond to what other birds are sensing all the way across the flock—on the flock’s other side–away from where–

this is how thinking of words in motion in multiple uncountable and when truly active unpredictable combinations and meetings, ship-in-the-night slips, gives poems their kinetic and otherwise uncanny and mysterious ways

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Theoretically the person who’s reading a book or pages in a journal or this, is invisible to the one who’s responsible for the book or pages, the words.  Theoretically the meeting between reader and what’s read is anonymous, invisible, unquantifiable, (e.g.

when where why howhow longwhat speedwhat intentionwhat circumstanceswhere does it matterhow sowhat for

reading alone, one never seems alone when one is reading

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Naomi, Louisiana  1950s/1960s

Where we had a pet alligator

we kept an alligator penned up & prisoner

it lived pitifully in a pit by the corner of a barn

We threw it leftovers and fish and animal insides

we cleaned out for cooking

It hissed at us when we came near

The most horrendous, possibly traumatic, I would say so, yes,  memory associated with this:  my cousins and uncles clubbed a hundred or so domestic rabbits one morning; cleaned them, threw their skins and insides to the alligator, sold the rabbit meat from our roadside stand and set the alligator loose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Animal Club

a small club, an exclusive membership, my father, my mother and me, based on my love of animals and animal spotting, I was between 4 and 8 then

my father was president, mother secretary, me treasurer, presumably because our club was without funds

the club was my parents attempt to convince me that we were a family, we had a purpose

but we did have funds and eventually I stole them to use for a purpose I believed amounted to something

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

talking English with and otherwise communicating with animals

~~~~~~~

becoming a panther

this I had to do when it was called for to protect my children

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

this bears on why we might put more pressure on, have more attention for, attribute more purpose to,  etc., one word more than we might multiple words

Marilynne Robinson’s idea:

The Bible is terse, the Gospels are brief, and the result is that every moment and detail merits pondering and can always appear in a richer light——-we can bring our own feelings to bear in the reading of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s not the end of the world to say, Maybe I don’t like what I’m doing all that much but I have to keep doing something until I start doing something else, with perhaps the result I will like it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m thinking it is really necessary to determine not so much the nature of things but the nature of one’s relationship to things.  Is one also a thing?  Yes.  Living, moving things, “breathing” things, yes.  And one’s relationship to our perceived nature of time.  Time may be most flexible and inflexible, ineffable, so strict, unforgiving, completely a figment, it is maybe the mystery underlying all mysteries, very likely.

~~~~~~~~

on p 73 in The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt:

Others suggested that if you could perceive the smallest particle of a man, you would find an infinitesimally tiny man; and similarly for a horse, a droplet of water, or a blade of grass.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I guess it’s inevitable one thinks of Frankenstein’s nameless creature

(I am thy creature, I ought to have been thine Adam, instead I am your fallen angel whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed)

when one thinks about collage, assemblage, cut-up, mash-up, juxtaposing, and puzzling combinations of…………

one thinks of creation

one thinks of what comes into being

Impossible not to pity the creature

whose whole complete being

comes from something we recognize,

something in itself something,

something already a lot like something

we are making something out of and

we are making something into.

Other things as well.

How something comes into being.  Why someone feels as if owning up to source material is imperative or leastways interesting.  That.

Interesting.  Why so interesting, why so documentary, why so time laden and burdened, why so earnest and hard-working in time, why so accountable, why so singular, why so obsessive, why so narrowed, why so analytical, why so self-conscious, why so difficult, why so impossible.

QuirkClassic

cut-ups and cut-up collections

and this song:

◊

________________________________________________

Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing (now available from Wave Books). She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

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HOW DOES THIS SAY WHAT?

~~~~~~~~~

so someone says:   that painter doesn’t achieve perspective by the usual means, no lines of perspective to be seen; that painter achieves perspective by juxtaposition

you take this and you think that’s not so difficult to move into another setting, to imagine, to believe, a sentence might be thought of as a line of perspective

or

a sequence of words might be achieving depth by means of being next to one another

by being together so closely so that no light can get through between them

~~~~~~~

Thus begins the era of verbal narrative.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As in to imagine is to pretend to believe.

(to imagine to imagine to believe)

~~~

what it must take to say one has faith in X, in ________, in anything

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What’s thoroughly enticing about saying one’s stealing.  Writers are always saying they’re stealing.  Fine.  Steal all you want.  No one really cares if you steal or not, not ultimately.

Not eternally.  Meanwhile

you are involved in moving things around.

I Covet. I Envy. I love Forbidden things.

Why has it always been that what one’s stolen seems somehow more wonderful than something one’s not stolen.  

I wonder if the motivation to steal is at least as important as what’s stolen.  

What’s stolen as in a stolen kiss, what’s so sweet about that, it is, stolen kiss is possibly revered beyond given or earned kisses, and two who kiss forbiddenly steal the kiss (the literal kiss that could have been, they together steal it from someone else), they have a conspiracy of kiss stealing in action, it is very ordinarily very exciting, it is often fairly dangerous

what can be stolen as in intrigue, a heist, a caper, a hidden love, the dark end of the street, forbidden love, etc.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a category:  books one feels as if one’s read but most likely haven’t

     I feel as if I’ve read GULLIVER’S TRAVELS.  

~~~~

Referenced in a footnote in MANY SUBTLE CHANNELS (Dana Levin Becker, HUP, 2012), (See Part III, Chapter 5 in a certain edition of GULLIVER’S)

Becker mentions “die-sized blocks of wood that contain all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions, but without any order”.

This, I would say, definitely produces good feeling.  Satisfactory feeling. Acceptable. To imagine all the words on blocks of wood, thrown about, waiting to be used for building.

However, it could be otherwise; anyone might feel anxiety over not knowing what one’s read or not.

And not in any way enjoy the instability of this quasi-knowledge.  

Or reading that might have been done.  

Or possible books

which have possibly been read

by people who are possibly alive

or possibly sometime to be born

(one reason it is admirable when one keeps track, typically in a notebook’s listing, of every book one has read) (truly or by means of wishful thinking) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home…. Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

—Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

THE POETICS OF SPACE, in which Gaston Bachelard goes deeply into what space can do for intimacy.  He is always wanting to know (and us to know) what sort of immensity will become of intimacy.  As a paradoxical combination (immensity/intimacy) potentially will do,

Bachelard’s investigations serve their purposes)

The drawer next to a bed.  Someone’s lingerie drawer. A sock drawer.

Someone’s empty suitcase (or is it empty, is it).  Someone’s briefcase.  Someone’s satchel. Someone’s catch-all kitchen drawer.  The space (or drawer) that lures you over and over again to examine its contents.  To get on intimate terms with it.  To discover what intimacy feels like by means of it.  (he also likes attics, hallways, corners, he also gravitates toward other small spaces, you can imagine)

Intimacy, which Bachelard continues to explore in his POETICS OF REVERIE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~

when you see or sense a sonnet’s end coming your brain shifts gears and just as leaving anywhere anytime requires an endless variety of shiftings, when you know the end is coming or you’re walking out a door or the proceedings are obviously concluding……some of us are very good at saying good bye, others of us complete failures, certain circumstances produce easy clear simple conclusions others complexities unending

~~~~~~

related to paralyzing self-consciousness:

Auden:  The girl whose boy-friend starts writing her love poems should be on her guard,” (1948) perhaps he really does love her, but one thing is certain:  while he was writing his poems he was not thinking of her but of his own feelings about her.

~~~~~~~

while self-consciousness is well tended in William James’s VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

~~~~~~

and similarly:

Auden quoting St. Augustine: I would rather be deprived of my friend than of my grief.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

writing a review, Maureen Bell, of GROSSLY MATERIAL THINGS (WOMEN AND BOOK PRODUCTION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND)  OXFORD U. PRESS, 254pp, 2012

includes:

We are reminded that early modern printing houses and bookshops coexisted within the master’s household.  The necessary everyday work encompassed both housewifery (food, lodging and laundry for family and apprentices) and business (minding the shop, keeping accounts, taking in and distributing copy, dealing with customers).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Le Lionais:  (translated by George Agoston and Pauline Bentley-Koffler, found in MANY SUBTLE CHANNELS)

I have never turned on a light switch in a darkened room without the sudden flood of light releasing in me an undeniable emotion, the impression almost of having witnessed a miracle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are Harry Mathews and John Ashbery talking (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 7.3, 1987; reprinted by Dalkey Archive, for CONTEXT, Dalkey Archive website)

HM: I think that’s what’s hard to . . . Readers get worried about reading something right or wrong, they don’t trust themselves in the act of reading, and so they don’t let that process work for them. They try to piece together a sense by taking out the elements that are used in . . .

JA: That’s certainly particularly true of poetry, where people will go to any lengths rather than actually read the poem, such as read a thick book about it. What’s the position of Oulipo in France? How’s it regarded by writers in general?

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Here comes Allen Ginsberg talking about writing:

The problem is then to reach the different parts of the mind, which are existing simultaneously, the different associations which are going on simultaneously, choosing elements from both, like: jazz, jukebox, and all that, and we get the jukebox from that; politics, hydrogen bomb, and we have the hydrogen of that, you see “hydrogen jukebox.”  And that actually compresses in one instant like a whole series of things.  Or the end of “Sun-flower” with “cunts of wheelbarrows,” whatever that all meant, or “rubber dollar bills” —”skin of machinery”; see, and actually in the moment of composition I don’t necessarily know what it means, but it comes to mean something later, after a year or two, I realize that it meant something, clear, unconsciously…. Because we’re not really conscious of the entire depths of our minds—in other words, we just know a lot more than we’re able to be aware of, normally—though at moments we’re completely aware, I guess.

and earlier he’d said:  Usually during the composition, step by step, word by word and adjective by adjective, if it’s all spontaneous, I don’t know whether it even makes sense sometimes.  Sometimes I do know it makes complete sense, and I start crying…..

Because I realize I am hitting some area which is absolutely true.  And in that sense applicable universally, or understandable universally.  In that sense able to survive through time–in that sense to be read by somebody and wept to,

maybe, centuries later.  In that sense prophecy……

(excerpts from 1967 interview reprinted in WRITERS AT WORK, PARIS REVIEW series)

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Dara Wier is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and You Good Thing. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Her forthcoming collection You Good Thing will be published by Wave Books this spring. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.

[insideundivided]

INSIDE UNDIVIDED (16)

a series of fragments & notes about Chance, Fate, and Context by Dara Wier ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something we tend to do a lot of–experience apophenia– and it seems the only questions might involve when is too much apophenia too much–can there be too many connections or too much meaningfulness–ever——and what is “abnormal” meaningfulness—-ever——–

apophenia comes around: the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”

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Preface (from THE LOST WORLD, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE)

Professor Summerlee gave a snort of impatience. “We have spent two long days in exploration, ” said he, “and we are no wiser as to the actual geography of the place than when we started. It is clear that it is all thickly wooded, and it would take months to penetrate it and to learn the relations of one part to another. If there were some central peak it would be different, but it all slopes downwards, so far as we can see. The farther we go the less likely it is that we will get any general view…You area all turning your brains towards getting into this country. I say we should be scheming how to get out of it.” “I am surprised, sir,” boomed Challenger, stroking his majestic beard, “that any man of science should commit himself to so ignoble a sentiment….I absolutely refuse to leave until we are able to take back with us something in the nature of a chart.

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This is the epigraph that sits on top of the FOREWORD for Alberto Manguel’s and Gianni Guadalupi’s THE DICTIONARY OF IMAGINARY PLACES (1999).

______________ aside: irregardless of THE DICTIONARY OF IMAGINARY PLACES:

where apophenia comes around: the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness” is the world we inhabit, when someone connects and means, especially when these return the thrill of an essential experience of presence, I am glad, grateful, curious, something has registered: alive ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is the first entry in THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY PLACES:

A

ABATON (from the Greek a, not; banino, I go), a town of changing location. Though not inaccessible, no one has ever reached it and visitors headed for Abaton have been known to wander for many years without even catching a glimpse of the town. Certain travellers, however, have seen it rising slightly above the horizon, especially at dusk. While to some the sight has caused great rejoicing, others have been moved to terrible sorrow without any certain cause. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

& emulous: eager to imitate, equal, or to surpass another. ~~~~~~~~~

HERE IS VLADIMIR NABOKOV WRITING IN speak, memory: (he’s writing about writing his first poem)

………A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky. Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could pick out brightly stained structural details of celestial organisms, or glowing slits in dark banks, or flat, ethereal beaches that looked like mirages of desert islands.

[and here is the part that astonished most of all:]

I did not know then (as I know perfectly well now) what to do with such things — how to get rid of them, how to transform them into something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver — and this inability enhanced my oppression.

[and he continues, atmospherically accurately:]

A colossal shadow would begin to invade the fields, and the telegraph poles hummed in the stillness, and the night-feeders ascended the stems of their plants. Nibble, nibble, nibble — went a handsome striped caterpillar….as he clung to a campanula stalk, working down with his mandibles along the edge of the nearest leaf out of which he was eating a leisurely hemicircle, then again extending his neck, and again bending it gradually, as he deepened the neat concave.

(p. 165, SPEAK, MEMORY, Everyman’s Library, first included in Everyman’s in 1999)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a little bit about irony: how it accounts for us our reduced appreciation of what we, in our overly rational mind activity, call “opposites” –irony lets us appreciate these not as opposites but as unalike parallel states of being, e.g. let’s you look at both of them without being blinded by either (when often, when irony is worth the bother, one should be blinded by each) (when one is bothering about or concerned with giant things (death, murder, envy, damage, love, lost love, power, betrayal, truth, beauty, lies, value, etc.) is a resort to irony necessary)

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~when a story in a book takes a turn

when circumstances make for anxious emotions

when one foresees what has to come or has to happen

when one wishes it were otherwise or accepts it (as fate? yes, fate of the fictional kind, the metaphorical sort) (the might as well be kind)

this constitutes a story

because one feels as if it matters

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Dara Wier is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Selected Poems, Remnants of Hannah, Reverse Rapture, and Hat on a Pond. She teaches in the University of Massachusetts MFA Program for Poets and Writers. Her awards include the Poetry Center and Archives Book of the Year Award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Poetry Review’s Jerome Shestack Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She edits Factory Hollow Press. Her forthcoming collection You Good Thing will be published by Wave Books this spring. Visit her author page at Wave Books or read an interview.