#threshold songs

[goingattractions]

[thelonguepuree]

Peter Gizzi, "True Discourse on Power"

When I say the ghost has begun you understand what is being said. That time is not how we keep it        or measure first there was then wasn’t… It twitters and swerves like        the evening news. Now outside is 3D. Inside non-        representational space. Every law has an outside       and inside I have witnessed cruelty break and gulp and sweat then        punch out a smile. To be awake. This talking in space. To be absorbed in the ongoing. Belief’s a shadow to be looked into        and into until relief is gone. The dark triangle settled in the midst of        traffic is on us. Time comes in adverbial bursts, a glass of beer, a smoke… The evening air refreshes, startles, and the questions grow deeper like         shadows across storefronts. A forsythia ticking against        the dirty pane. This was time. Up. Down. Up. And you were a part of it. If I say it can you feel it now? Imagine. Lightning strikes. Rain        falls and drives. Clouds pass. Night clarified. Stars. In silent pictures the tree falls        in the optic nerve. The sound is chemistry. There’s no getting to it or if        getting to it feels like the actual sound        is that silence? Alone here with my shadows        drawn… So what’s this about? A horse and a castle, a tree        and its leaving? What’s this about in solitary        splendor? The undertow and its threshold, a door and the opening sky? Or because a play of reflection        lit up my bumper and caught my eyes I saw the shadow of a falcon. Because a sound a poor man        uttered reached my ear I fell into song. If the syntax of loyalty is not tragic        then what is the wager? If there were time, would it be ours?

[bostonreview]

Natural Experiments

One way to get a handle on experimental poetry is not to think of experiment as shorthand for difficulty or opacity but instead to take on good faith the word’s origin in scientific method. Consider the poetic experiment as akin to the scientific one, designed to discover and literally sound new knowledge about the world, its mysteries, its injustices.

From Christopher Schmidt's review of Peter Gizzi's Threshold Songs. (Boston Review March/April 2012)