1. The world is personal. It is composed of the environment that immediately surrounds us. The Poet may pretend that the world as a whole concerns her, but any and everything that amuses or inspires the Poet can be traced back to the spaces she has temporarily inhabited or continues to inhabit. This is not to say necessarily that the Poet is self-obsessed, only that she writes his spaces most comfortably and accurately. The Poet’s World is not interchangeable with her experiences. All experiences take place in some sort of space, whether that space is physical, metaphorical or figurative, and a Poet’s space is thus her World.
2. A Poet who aspires to be “worldly” (that is, one who consistently chases a profound idea in her own work or who expects to discover infinite horizons in every poem she encounters) is a shallow Poet. By always defaulting to the universal ideal, this sort of Poet doesn’t even manage to scratch the surface; the extent of her poetic aspirations is simply too broad. The successful Poet does not resist her inclination to write about her spaces and thus, she write more genuinely.
3. Poems are eventually suspended among the Poet’s World in pockets. These pockets are invisible and are akin to an isolation of sorts, (an incident, perhaps, but not consistently). Pockets are found everywhere among the Poet’s World, but the Poet’s entire World is not a pocket in and of itself. Pockets are comparable to vacuums, but instead of holding Nothingness, they accommodate a Something. These Somethings can be objects, people, concepts, and events, but they are ultimately limitless. Pockets and the Somethings inside them are always informed by the Poet’s World or atmosphere. Two Poets may inhabit a similar World but the ways in which they navigate and interpret it will always vary.
4. A pocket with a gripping (to the Poet) Something inside is fodder for a Poem. This phenomenon should not be confused with inspiration in the traditional sense of the word. Inspiration is too often associated with the romantic, the positive, the uplifting. The inspiration that is derived from the Something is comparable to a stimulus of some kind. This stimulus is always able to be traced back to the Poet’s World. It is up to the Poet to take the Something and shape it into a Poem in whatever way she sees fit. In this way, the Poet acts as negotiator of the Something. The Poet places her aesthetic upon the Something and readies it for turning back out into her World as a Poem. A Poem is a Something that is manifest, but not fundamentally blatant. A Poem is not always “wordable.” Because Somethings are limitless, it can be assumed that a Poem is not always a word.
5. There is no such thing as a small Poem or a small-minded Poem. No Poet or person otherwise is equipped to judge a Poem as such because they do not have the same knowledge of the author-Poet’s space. Criticism is encouraged when it comes to Poetry, but only if it is acknowledged as basically arbitrary. There is no such thing as a Master Poet in the sense that a Master Poet supposedly masters the entire spectrum of past, present, and future Poetry. A Poet can only master his own Poems and these Poems are forever changing. A Poet’s World is always evolving and not always by the choice of the Poet, particularly when it comes to the mind space. The Poet is hardly in control of the majority of these changes, therefore any Poet’s attempt to guide or influence another Poet’s work will ultimately fall flat or derail the Poet’s work from its natural course. Poetry-writing can be learned, but it is also a natural inclination and a natural process
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Beyond a Poetic Manifesto
To determine what defines one’s poetry is not a simple process. Creating a series of guidelines in which to write is a difficult endeavor. In order to create said set of manifesto ideas it is necessary to question what is important in one’s poetry and from this importance define clear characteristics that are applicable to one’s method of creating poems. As a poet you must go beyond the simple ways in which humanity lives and search for meaning through different mediums and in the world beyond the actual.
My Poetic Manifesto
Appreciate all forms of artistic expression and actively engage yourself in experiencing these forms. Attend plays, view art, listen to music, go to museums, read books and in the end synthesize these experiences and let them affect your life and your poetry.
In all forms of poetry we must push our limits and live artistically to our fullest capability, exploring and realizing every element that we encounter and making use of its’ utility.
All failure in poetry is subjective. Even when one feels that failure is unavoidable, one may have just succeeded at creating something greater than one could have ever have imagined.
Respect all the poets and poetic movements that have come before you, regardless if one feels that the poetry does not warrant high esteem. Learn from previous works; learn from other poets’ mistakes.
Do not be afraid to take risks and chances in your poetry. Write poetry that you don’t know if it will work out in the end. Make mistakes, appreciate the mistakes and then learn from your mistakes.
Everyday try an experiment or attempt to discover something new. Do something you have never done before and let your work reflect the element of discovery.
Question the choices that you make and try to understand why these choices will eventually have a specific impact upon you and your poetry when all is said and done.
View life and your surroundings as if today is your last living day. Breathe your last breath into your poems. Let this outlook consume you and your poetry in a positive manner. Shine your own light into everything that you do.
-Ellison Hitt
My Poetic Manifesto
Appreciate all forms of artistic expression and actively engage yourself in experiencing these forms. Attend plays, view art, listen to music, go to museums, read books and in the end synthesize these experiences and let them affect your life and your poetry.
In all forms of poetry we must push our limits and live artistically to our fullest capability, exploring and realizing every element that we encounter and making use of its’ utility.
All failure in poetry is subjective. Even when one feels that failure is unavoidable, one may have just succeeded at creating something greater than one could have ever have imagined.
Respect all the poets and poetic movements that have come before you, regardless if one feels that the poetry does not warrant high esteem. Learn from previous works; learn from other poets’ mistakes.
Do not be afraid to take risks and chances in your poetry. Write poetry that you don’t know if it will work out in the end. Make mistakes, appreciate the mistakes and then learn from your mistakes.
Everyday try an experiment or attempt to discover something new. Do something you have never done before and let your work reflect the element of discovery.
Question the choices that you make and try to understand why these choices will eventually have a specific impact upon you and your poetry when all is said and done.
View life and your surroundings as if today is your last living day. Breathe your last breath into your poems. Let this outlook consume you and your poetry in a positive manner. Shine your own light into everything that you do.
-Ellison Hitt
The Poem Between World Manifesto!
The Poem Between World Manifesto is a call for poems that revels in their Betweeness! As the World moves ever closer (because time as humans know it is linear) to oblivion, everything in it has been defined to radical poles. Every object and thought has received a name, a place, a symbol, an ideology. The new radical is the space in middle that is at neither end of a pole, but where the poles mingle among each other and are muddled. This is not to say that between poems do not take stances; they do! They take stances that recognize themselves as transitory and without absolutes, except in the fleeting moment. Because as we (the human race) move forward in technology and thinking we somehow only move towards chaos and destruction. The only poetry that makes sense than is the one that captures and exposes this entropic state’s energy.
A Between Poem’s characteristics:
1. It enjoys and plays in liminal spaces. It attempts processes that elicit the liminal and forms that invoke it.
2. A Poem Between World’s medium is language. Language is what resides between the World and the mind. It is one step of removal from the world as object. It is the Meta-World waiting to be heard or read. Because Language is the symbolic system for defining the object-ness of the world it is the perfect medium for Between Art.
3. It exists in middle of the world and attempts to hold the energy of its subject in place with language. The language must demonstrate the energy of the world. The world on the edge of oblivion has a great deal of energy and a long history for the poem to reside in, so it must find a way to jump off the page into an even more Between place.
4. Its favorite subject is anything that may be considered liminal (dream, the apocalypse, dates, time, airports, engagements, pregnancies, walks, conversation, the internet, etcetera).
5. It holds a high regard for conversation. Whether it’s putting several seemingly irrelevant “things” (objects, ideas, subjects, voices, disciplines, or ways of thinking) in conversation with each other, the meeting of voices, or only conversing with itself and its reader—The Between Poem enjoys the exchange of ideas and sentiments. It believes that the exchange and process of the conversation is more important then the results or thought that follow.
6. It is not necessarily polite conversation (Although it does like to talk about the weather). It is preferably anything but polite conversation. It looks to throw completely opposing or unrelated “things” in the ring together to box it out or just stare each other down and surprise the audience.
7. A Between Poem’s purpose is not necessarily a didactic one. The point of the conversation is for it’s own sake. It’s not interested in teaching its reader anything. It’s only interested in the exchange—the moment that the brain begins to process just before it creates reactionary or complacent thought and it’s buzzing with the energy of the poem itself.
A Between Poem’s characteristics:
1. It enjoys and plays in liminal spaces. It attempts processes that elicit the liminal and forms that invoke it.
2. A Poem Between World’s medium is language. Language is what resides between the World and the mind. It is one step of removal from the world as object. It is the Meta-World waiting to be heard or read. Because Language is the symbolic system for defining the object-ness of the world it is the perfect medium for Between Art.
3. It exists in middle of the world and attempts to hold the energy of its subject in place with language. The language must demonstrate the energy of the world. The world on the edge of oblivion has a great deal of energy and a long history for the poem to reside in, so it must find a way to jump off the page into an even more Between place.
4. Its favorite subject is anything that may be considered liminal (dream, the apocalypse, dates, time, airports, engagements, pregnancies, walks, conversation, the internet, etcetera).
5. It holds a high regard for conversation. Whether it’s putting several seemingly irrelevant “things” (objects, ideas, subjects, voices, disciplines, or ways of thinking) in conversation with each other, the meeting of voices, or only conversing with itself and its reader—The Between Poem enjoys the exchange of ideas and sentiments. It believes that the exchange and process of the conversation is more important then the results or thought that follow.
6. It is not necessarily polite conversation (Although it does like to talk about the weather). It is preferably anything but polite conversation. It looks to throw completely opposing or unrelated “things” in the ring together to box it out or just stare each other down and surprise the audience.
7. A Between Poem’s purpose is not necessarily a didactic one. The point of the conversation is for it’s own sake. It’s not interested in teaching its reader anything. It’s only interested in the exchange—the moment that the brain begins to process just before it creates reactionary or complacent thought and it’s buzzing with the energy of the poem itself.
PoemUnderWorld: The Death of Poetry and Its ReBirth
The Poem is dead! And so are its Poets. The great historical promenade that has overshadowed to overtake us is no more. Poets turned mythic by time, that great alchemizer, who created once-fresh, once-new works are gone! But still we are haunted by them. We are told to marvel at their works, cadaverous poems propped up in rotting anthologies and musty journals, untouchable & immutable in their agedness to the pedestrian reader—we are told. After a poem is born, if it ages well, it is killed by the Academy of Undertakers, plucked & stuffed, then displayed in the Graveyard of the Canon. They stare at us with glazes from gassy eyes, the life sucked out of them, taken down sometimes to be dusted off then beaten senseless with questions: What did you mean when you said—Who are your accomplices—Explain yourself!
A curious thing, admiration; a curiouser thing, vengeance: for those who can’t do punish those who did. The time has come to off them all. The Poems, the Poems, in musty old tomes, we’ve come to settle the score. No—we’ve come to kill you once more. No! We’ve come to feed on your gore. The Poems are dead, but there’s life in them still—it is our job to give them the proper burial and let their bodies decay into the soil to be sucked up into budding new life that gives birth to new poems. Do we embalm our ancestors and esteem their tombs more highly than our children’s houses? No! We pay tribute to them by living and (pro)creating—therefore we will acknowledge from whence and from whom we came and birth new children that may resemble them (a nose here, the curve of the lip, unfortunate ears) but they will be of our own creation.
But we will not merely wait for the soil to suck nutrients from their decayed corpses to feed the Poetic Rhizome, we will suck the flesh from the fingers themselves. Chop old Poems, stripped of their fat, and bake them into new poem pies, splatter their blood on the walls and eat their hearts and intestines. We must be irreverent! For this is the reverence they demand. Rotting in the realm of High Art is no tribute, and coffins of books are no Afterlife. For life is cyclical, and the death of a poem is not to be mourned but celebrated, for new life will spring from it!
We must remember that a poem is true as a life is true—it is part artifice, part reality, and at its best, true to itself. Perhaps in its later incarnations, a poem will come closer to Truth, though surely the Truth it seeks will be different. The form it takes will be different, as well—it might be found useful to mimic the earlier forms, but newly birthed poetry will not be bound by form or genre. The birthright of this new poetry is all genres, all forms, the past and present, looking to the future—for we will not cannibalize old meat exclusively. The poem will be fed from many sources—namely new sources unavailable to our predecessors; we will mine everything from the quotidian to the most advanced technology, and create life from death before we become shadows ourselves!
A curious thing, admiration; a curiouser thing, vengeance: for those who can’t do punish those who did. The time has come to off them all. The Poems, the Poems, in musty old tomes, we’ve come to settle the score. No—we’ve come to kill you once more. No! We’ve come to feed on your gore. The Poems are dead, but there’s life in them still—it is our job to give them the proper burial and let their bodies decay into the soil to be sucked up into budding new life that gives birth to new poems. Do we embalm our ancestors and esteem their tombs more highly than our children’s houses? No! We pay tribute to them by living and (pro)creating—therefore we will acknowledge from whence and from whom we came and birth new children that may resemble them (a nose here, the curve of the lip, unfortunate ears) but they will be of our own creation.
But we will not merely wait for the soil to suck nutrients from their decayed corpses to feed the Poetic Rhizome, we will suck the flesh from the fingers themselves. Chop old Poems, stripped of their fat, and bake them into new poem pies, splatter their blood on the walls and eat their hearts and intestines. We must be irreverent! For this is the reverence they demand. Rotting in the realm of High Art is no tribute, and coffins of books are no Afterlife. For life is cyclical, and the death of a poem is not to be mourned but celebrated, for new life will spring from it!
We must remember that a poem is true as a life is true—it is part artifice, part reality, and at its best, true to itself. Perhaps in its later incarnations, a poem will come closer to Truth, though surely the Truth it seeks will be different. The form it takes will be different, as well—it might be found useful to mimic the earlier forms, but newly birthed poetry will not be bound by form or genre. The birthright of this new poetry is all genres, all forms, the past and present, looking to the future—for we will not cannibalize old meat exclusively. The poem will be fed from many sources—namely new sources unavailable to our predecessors; we will mine everything from the quotidian to the most advanced technology, and create life from death before we become shadows ourselves!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Jade Hudson's Review
"Collapsible Poetics Theatre"
Rodrigo Toscano
To say that Toscano’s “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is a mere reflection on what has become an all-consuming Globalism (in poetry, art, industry, and the society mirrored by the interconnectivity of these arenas) would be a vast understating of what appears to be the book’s objective. Instead of mere polarization into rejection of what is (for an acceptance of what can be) or an acceptance of what is and a satire of where we seek to change, Toscano’s work is a marked attempt at defining the inner relationship driving our decision either way. While there is a concentrated aim to modern art, which results from the experience of the past, Toscano means to create a counter institution or counter ground. The “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is a theatre/poetry anti-school-conversation, a side-perspective from which we can see all sides tugging and how we have been tugged.
Toscano opens his book with an interesting statement: “Alienable Dividuals. Entities. Seek a freedom in, not from.” As suggested by “Alienable Dividuals” Toscano is toying with the idea that we are portions of a whole acting in (an almost geometrical) relationship with each other:
(1) How’s it that we’re four distinct entities here?
(4) How’s it that we’re singular and one-at-a-time ?
(2) How’s it that we’re each one quarter of a whole?
(3) How’s it that we’re each four times more than the other
For an explanation to why we are in Geometry with one another, according to Toscano, one need only look as far as our unconscious, daily activity. As Toscano opens “TRUAX INIMICAL,” there is a distinct mechanization in what seems to be our computer usury:
(1) Scrolling
(4) Pointing
(2) Clicking
(3) Selecting
The poem builds upon this concept. These options/ anti-options become more overwhelmingly inclusive of personalities and people. Until, in eventuality, externally, we see this mechanical structure to represent ourselves and what we expect out of art.
The ways in which Toscano means to reveal the mechanical mold of the modern artist are perhaps even more clear in (within the context of “Eco-Strato-Static”) needing to read “Group B” and “Dance” “In the approximate rhythm of their twinkling” or by drawing out a “spokesperson” (accomplished through dangling “…a giant mic from a giant crane” [as though fishing out the means to stardom by hooking others on the self]). Indeed, the creation of this counter or perhaps actual reality is reflective of the poets plight, that he/she must sell himself/herself (at times, regardless of worth).
In general, worth or the attaining of this worth is something pivotal in “Collapsible Poetics Theatre,” as in every differing piece the poetic voices are unnamed. While they are referred to in the introductory piece as numbers (which almost makes them seem like mechanical components), they are later referred to as equally ambiguous “players” (as though they are simple components of a mathematical calculation). Additionally, different characters are indicated by left alignment or right alignment (which in the case of “Eco-Strato-Static” may signify a mirroring artistic leniency) and Bold, Italic, or normal text (which might again be a signal to archetype). The relationship between voices and their ambiguity (the created space) become a yearning for identity that often reinforces their ambiguity (as well as greater points about it [another alternate area of discussion]).
While this worth is something that Toscano is directly concerned with, he is also content to point out the function of modern art. In “BALM TO BILK,” voice 1 counters counter voice 2 “you can’t… ‘blick’ that.” Mainly, this is because
“…any formula
based purely on affect
outside the realm of
objects, object’s origins, relations
logic, counter-logics
nth degree determinations of—” [cannot be regarded as poetry]
Voice one additionally asks “where are the imbedded social demands; in this stuff.” Yet, down the page, voice 1 begins to speak with the terms of voice 2 (as voice 2 speaks to the logical yearnings of voice 1). What results is a counter artistic ground where one can see both functional sides of the artistic self. The reader is led to think about themselves as one voice or the other and (upon re-examination) to think about themselves completely differently.
There are more overt ways that Toscano seeks to create a combined alternate ground. In certain portions, differing voices depend upon each other to syntactically construct the meaning of the whole:
(1-2) I
(3-4)Fly
(1-2)In
(3-4)The
(1-2) Deep
(3-4) Of
(1-2)The
(3-4) Night
In other cases, the voices interact with the perceptions of one another. “Eco-Strato-Static” is a poem where a voice mentally drives the actions of the different voice, as though one voice is the process of thought and the other the externalization of that thought. This internal relationship gets cloudy, as at one point there is a complete disconnection:
Start acting like you have an innovative product.
Okay.
What’s happening?
I’m acting like I have an innovative product.
It seems that even the disconnection of one aspect of a person to another creates a complete counter conversation. After losing track of the mental portion, the previously quoted poem regains its bearings and argues with itself.
As the continual creation of a counter-ground, Toscano’s “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is just that. It continually stresses its own demands and then demands more. Theatrical components of “Clock, Deck, and Movement” become a purposely over-demanding poetry of direction. Where directions might previously be conceptualized as simply inclinations, exhibited in performance, it seems Toscano means for the performance to exhibit the intricacy of the cues. Moreover, Toscano means to create additional counter-ground in how we are meant to take this predestinated material and construct the play on the page.
Eventually, what results in the “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is a collapse of the known world into itself (much like a curtain [surrounding us at all times] bunching up as it streams to the ground). A vision is made available through newly gained perceptional ground. We see things about culture, politics, society, economy, and identity we’ve never seen (or have, in hopes of retaining certain delusions, refused to see).
Rodrigo Toscano
To say that Toscano’s “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is a mere reflection on what has become an all-consuming Globalism (in poetry, art, industry, and the society mirrored by the interconnectivity of these arenas) would be a vast understating of what appears to be the book’s objective. Instead of mere polarization into rejection of what is (for an acceptance of what can be) or an acceptance of what is and a satire of where we seek to change, Toscano’s work is a marked attempt at defining the inner relationship driving our decision either way. While there is a concentrated aim to modern art, which results from the experience of the past, Toscano means to create a counter institution or counter ground. The “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is a theatre/poetry anti-school-conversation, a side-perspective from which we can see all sides tugging and how we have been tugged.
Toscano opens his book with an interesting statement: “Alienable Dividuals. Entities. Seek a freedom in, not from.” As suggested by “Alienable Dividuals” Toscano is toying with the idea that we are portions of a whole acting in (an almost geometrical) relationship with each other:
(1) How’s it that we’re four distinct entities here?
(4) How’s it that we’re singular and one-at-a-time ?
(2) How’s it that we’re each one quarter of a whole?
(3) How’s it that we’re each four times more than the other
For an explanation to why we are in Geometry with one another, according to Toscano, one need only look as far as our unconscious, daily activity. As Toscano opens “TRUAX INIMICAL,” there is a distinct mechanization in what seems to be our computer usury:
(1) Scrolling
(4) Pointing
(2) Clicking
(3) Selecting
The poem builds upon this concept. These options/ anti-options become more overwhelmingly inclusive of personalities and people. Until, in eventuality, externally, we see this mechanical structure to represent ourselves and what we expect out of art.
The ways in which Toscano means to reveal the mechanical mold of the modern artist are perhaps even more clear in (within the context of “Eco-Strato-Static”) needing to read “Group B” and “Dance” “In the approximate rhythm of their twinkling” or by drawing out a “spokesperson” (accomplished through dangling “…a giant mic from a giant crane” [as though fishing out the means to stardom by hooking others on the self]). Indeed, the creation of this counter or perhaps actual reality is reflective of the poets plight, that he/she must sell himself/herself (at times, regardless of worth).
In general, worth or the attaining of this worth is something pivotal in “Collapsible Poetics Theatre,” as in every differing piece the poetic voices are unnamed. While they are referred to in the introductory piece as numbers (which almost makes them seem like mechanical components), they are later referred to as equally ambiguous “players” (as though they are simple components of a mathematical calculation). Additionally, different characters are indicated by left alignment or right alignment (which in the case of “Eco-Strato-Static” may signify a mirroring artistic leniency) and Bold, Italic, or normal text (which might again be a signal to archetype). The relationship between voices and their ambiguity (the created space) become a yearning for identity that often reinforces their ambiguity (as well as greater points about it [another alternate area of discussion]).
While this worth is something that Toscano is directly concerned with, he is also content to point out the function of modern art. In “BALM TO BILK,” voice 1 counters counter voice 2 “you can’t… ‘blick’ that.” Mainly, this is because
“…any formula
based purely on affect
outside the realm of
objects, object’s origins, relations
logic, counter-logics
nth degree determinations of—” [cannot be regarded as poetry]
Voice one additionally asks “where are the imbedded social demands; in this stuff.” Yet, down the page, voice 1 begins to speak with the terms of voice 2 (as voice 2 speaks to the logical yearnings of voice 1). What results is a counter artistic ground where one can see both functional sides of the artistic self. The reader is led to think about themselves as one voice or the other and (upon re-examination) to think about themselves completely differently.
There are more overt ways that Toscano seeks to create a combined alternate ground. In certain portions, differing voices depend upon each other to syntactically construct the meaning of the whole:
(1-2) I
(3-4)Fly
(1-2)In
(3-4)The
(1-2) Deep
(3-4) Of
(1-2)The
(3-4) Night
In other cases, the voices interact with the perceptions of one another. “Eco-Strato-Static” is a poem where a voice mentally drives the actions of the different voice, as though one voice is the process of thought and the other the externalization of that thought. This internal relationship gets cloudy, as at one point there is a complete disconnection:
Start acting like you have an innovative product.
Okay.
What’s happening?
I’m acting like I have an innovative product.
It seems that even the disconnection of one aspect of a person to another creates a complete counter conversation. After losing track of the mental portion, the previously quoted poem regains its bearings and argues with itself.
As the continual creation of a counter-ground, Toscano’s “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is just that. It continually stresses its own demands and then demands more. Theatrical components of “Clock, Deck, and Movement” become a purposely over-demanding poetry of direction. Where directions might previously be conceptualized as simply inclinations, exhibited in performance, it seems Toscano means for the performance to exhibit the intricacy of the cues. Moreover, Toscano means to create additional counter-ground in how we are meant to take this predestinated material and construct the play on the page.
Eventually, what results in the “Collapsible Poetics Theatre” is a collapse of the known world into itself (much like a curtain [surrounding us at all times] bunching up as it streams to the ground). A vision is made available through newly gained perceptional ground. We see things about culture, politics, society, economy, and identity we’ve never seen (or have, in hopes of retaining certain delusions, refused to see).
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully
Jenny Boully’s The Body: An Essay is an exercise in the stripped-down economics of the page and the poem: filled with mostly-blank pages, the only text present appears in the form of footnotes. Annotating a nonexistent text, The Body’s form immediately disarms the reader: with no “body” to speak of, the narrative happens solely in the non-sequential asides at the bottom of the page. Boully leads us, blindfolded, through the underbelly of the poem; sensing our unease, she responds, “2. Let it exist this way, concealed; let me always be embarrassed, knowing that you know that I know but pretend not to know.”
Okay, but what can we know? Certainly that this is pushing genre boundaries to their breaking point: like Thalia Field’s Point and Line, Boully’s Body incorporates the song and the stage, the privacy of internal monologue and the clamor of polyvocalism; like Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies, Boully empties the book and the narrative of all convention, yet manages still to paint pretty pictures and make them dance; like Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the dominant narrative happens, however disjointedly, in the annotation; and yet, in the wake of all of these tricks, Boully manages to perform one final sleight of hand—the “actual” text has disappeared, and the reader is left, somehow, to identify her narrative card in the footnotes. It’s worth speculating, however briefly, what the invisible text might look like—a text footnoted with stage directions and personal anecdotes, snatches of journal entries and brusque editorial remarks—for what such text could feasibly exist? But the daydream is mostly folly; Boully is not concerned with what the text might be doing, but what it is doing.
Boully’s footnotes shift in and out of first and third person, nearly always focusing on a woman—easily read and often directly referenced as Boully herself. (“14. Ms. Boully must have been confused, as it was actually_______, not _______, who uttered ‘_______’.” or, “33. All the same, how sad and strange that I, Jenny Boully, should be the sign and signifier of a sign, more-over, the sign of a signifier searching for the signified.”) Spliced with quotes from Joyce, Derrida, and Dante, Boully guides us through the hell of the loss of a lover (“35. I was the lonely tripod. I was the cup of tea left behind”) down the right road lost to memory’s gaps and conscious erasure.
In Boully’s under-text world, everything’s gone awry: “100.n. In the morning, the doves cooed their fuck-yous. And she departed, taking the wrong baggage, the wrong flight of stairs. Over the fire escape, the dress fluttered in the misdirected wind. Because he never said the word, the bits and pieces of her: lipstick and rose petals, sugar-spoons and pink envelopes, ended up in the wrong pockets. And damn-it-all-to-hell if someone didn’t, overnight, uproot and replant the road signs in all the most-traveled but wrong intersections.” Another character in the notes, Tristam, tries to orient himself in these accounts, “…curious as to which papers the footnotes corresponded” and discovers that “…the ‘footnotes’ were actually daily journals of the author’s dream” (143). Boully adds, “143.z. Dreams themselves are footnotes. But not footnote to life. Some other transactions they are so busy annotating all night long.” But these notes are not just a recording of fantasies, for dream, like its twin, memory, is a meaning-maker, and although she’s not left with much, Boully usurps control: “106. After all, in the editing room, the editor often wields greater control than the director.” For it is Boully herself who has been left on the periphery: perhaps writing there, then, “will provide something explanatory for later, while gaps of time when one failed to write would mean that one had no record of the affair—love with no proof of purchase, and therefore, no hopes of redemptions or exchanges” (94); perhaps she is embodying the residue like Alice Notley’s lonely protagonist of In the Pines, living in “grief stripped to shape alone.” Regardless, this distillation is given on her terms, to her end.
Though clearly preoccupied with its protagonist’s own loss and subsequent erasure, The Body is also playing a seductive withholding game in its relationship with the reader: a fissure exists between what Boully knows/is and what she’s revealed to us in the text. Boully is herself the departed lover, stringing us along with just enough of the right words to keep us baited. This coyness often feels delightfully earned: “98. ‘You will never find the life for which you are searching.’ 99. Except, perhaps, for poets and prostitutes”; other instances are simply cloying: “87. To properly protect one’s hard drive, one should take great care not to open attachments (k) from unknown users. k. Consider love here.” These moments, well-executed or less-than, salvage the poem from the graveyard of elegy and propel the reader through the fragmented text.
Which isn’t to say that The Body isn’t elegiac; however, though it mourns a death, it offers hope: “115. Everything I do, I do because I know I am dying…Poetry is an instant, an instant in which transcendence is achieved, where a miracle occurs and all of one’s knowledge, experiences, memories, etc. are obliterated into awe. Is anything I say real? And by real, I mean sincere—or is everything an attempt to procure love? I know now why the line breaks: it is because something dies, and elsewhere, is born again…” Perhaps here lie the answers—the only meaning to be made isn’t meaning at all, but awe; the experiences must be suffered to be transcended after in poetry. The Body delivers: in its resurrection of the dead, it transcends mere annotation to take its place on the page and in the mounting number of provocative new voices.
Okay, but what can we know? Certainly that this is pushing genre boundaries to their breaking point: like Thalia Field’s Point and Line, Boully’s Body incorporates the song and the stage, the privacy of internal monologue and the clamor of polyvocalism; like Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies, Boully empties the book and the narrative of all convention, yet manages still to paint pretty pictures and make them dance; like Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the dominant narrative happens, however disjointedly, in the annotation; and yet, in the wake of all of these tricks, Boully manages to perform one final sleight of hand—the “actual” text has disappeared, and the reader is left, somehow, to identify her narrative card in the footnotes. It’s worth speculating, however briefly, what the invisible text might look like—a text footnoted with stage directions and personal anecdotes, snatches of journal entries and brusque editorial remarks—for what such text could feasibly exist? But the daydream is mostly folly; Boully is not concerned with what the text might be doing, but what it is doing.
Boully’s footnotes shift in and out of first and third person, nearly always focusing on a woman—easily read and often directly referenced as Boully herself. (“14. Ms. Boully must have been confused, as it was actually_______, not _______, who uttered ‘_______’.” or, “33. All the same, how sad and strange that I, Jenny Boully, should be the sign and signifier of a sign, more-over, the sign of a signifier searching for the signified.”) Spliced with quotes from Joyce, Derrida, and Dante, Boully guides us through the hell of the loss of a lover (“35. I was the lonely tripod. I was the cup of tea left behind”) down the right road lost to memory’s gaps and conscious erasure.
In Boully’s under-text world, everything’s gone awry: “100.n. In the morning, the doves cooed their fuck-yous. And she departed, taking the wrong baggage, the wrong flight of stairs. Over the fire escape, the dress fluttered in the misdirected wind. Because he never said the word, the bits and pieces of her: lipstick and rose petals, sugar-spoons and pink envelopes, ended up in the wrong pockets. And damn-it-all-to-hell if someone didn’t, overnight, uproot and replant the road signs in all the most-traveled but wrong intersections.” Another character in the notes, Tristam, tries to orient himself in these accounts, “…curious as to which papers the footnotes corresponded” and discovers that “…the ‘footnotes’ were actually daily journals of the author’s dream” (143). Boully adds, “143.z. Dreams themselves are footnotes. But not footnote to life. Some other transactions they are so busy annotating all night long.” But these notes are not just a recording of fantasies, for dream, like its twin, memory, is a meaning-maker, and although she’s not left with much, Boully usurps control: “106. After all, in the editing room, the editor often wields greater control than the director.” For it is Boully herself who has been left on the periphery: perhaps writing there, then, “will provide something explanatory for later, while gaps of time when one failed to write would mean that one had no record of the affair—love with no proof of purchase, and therefore, no hopes of redemptions or exchanges” (94); perhaps she is embodying the residue like Alice Notley’s lonely protagonist of In the Pines, living in “grief stripped to shape alone.” Regardless, this distillation is given on her terms, to her end.
Though clearly preoccupied with its protagonist’s own loss and subsequent erasure, The Body is also playing a seductive withholding game in its relationship with the reader: a fissure exists between what Boully knows/is and what she’s revealed to us in the text. Boully is herself the departed lover, stringing us along with just enough of the right words to keep us baited. This coyness often feels delightfully earned: “98. ‘You will never find the life for which you are searching.’ 99. Except, perhaps, for poets and prostitutes”; other instances are simply cloying: “87. To properly protect one’s hard drive, one should take great care not to open attachments (k) from unknown users. k. Consider love here.” These moments, well-executed or less-than, salvage the poem from the graveyard of elegy and propel the reader through the fragmented text.
Which isn’t to say that The Body isn’t elegiac; however, though it mourns a death, it offers hope: “115. Everything I do, I do because I know I am dying…Poetry is an instant, an instant in which transcendence is achieved, where a miracle occurs and all of one’s knowledge, experiences, memories, etc. are obliterated into awe. Is anything I say real? And by real, I mean sincere—or is everything an attempt to procure love? I know now why the line breaks: it is because something dies, and elsewhere, is born again…” Perhaps here lie the answers—the only meaning to be made isn’t meaning at all, but awe; the experiences must be suffered to be transcended after in poetry. The Body delivers: in its resurrection of the dead, it transcends mere annotation to take its place on the page and in the mounting number of provocative new voices.
Monica de la Torre between "Public Domain
Monica de la Torre’s book, Public Domain, is a crowded express train ride where only the most important stops are made and viewed momentarily before the individual is propelled into the next shared space with new riders. While on the train ride that is Public Domain the reader enjoys the narrative voice’s unique perspective and wit on her personal life while throttling toward the larger public space. Like a public transit ride the reader encounters many voices with different destinations. The voices are in many forms, they are multi-lingual, and have various agendas while simultaneously funneled through De La Torre’s unique perspective and wandering eye.
The opening poem, “Is to Travel Getting to or Being in a Destination,” establishes the books as a liminal space. De la Torre throws us in the mix with a captivating opening line “the next poem was inspired by something I overheard” (7). Through the line she immediately establishes the players as an individual entangled in a world of others where everything is open to the possibilities of poem. The poem “travels” by stating what “the next poem” is “called” or “about” and then moves to the speaker’s observations of others while side stepping the poem’s self-proclaimed subject matter.
The rest of the book chugs along by shifting gears into different poetic forms yet continuing to explore the space where identity is caught between the individual and public realm. The next long piece, “The facts”, plays in prose and lyric, the space of the page, and bilingualism to establish the speaker as an ironic Confessionalist through her admittance of being told by her “therapist” that if she “could only put down her obsession” in her work she would “be much happier” (13). One of the speakers “obsessions” is of her “crush on a musician” known as “Blank” (15). Through “The facts”, De La Torre continues to examine the theme of people as public objects in list poems. The speaker plots ways in which to discover more and more out about her crush, Blank. As a celebrity, Blank becomes an object subject to the public domain. Meanwhile, at the bottom of each page the reader finds more out about the speaker’s obsession with “lists”. De La Torre is allowing the speaker to have a kind of identity crises on the page as her opinion on lists changes and seems to suggest the poem as another kind of “list”.
The book continues along its path from the public to private sector and begins to pull out all the formal stops. De La Torre examines erasure as a vehicle in which political information is withheld from the public. And for this non-Spanish reader, even the language becomes a gap in understanding between members of the public space. Her multi-voiced piece, “The March Papers”, begins to turn the power back over to the individual while also keeping the reins on it through editing. Voices gathered from the editorial sections of The New York Times merge together while De La Torre tells the reader “texts can be read in any order” and “circular reading and repetition is encouraged” (45). Of course much erasure was performed while treating the texts, but De La Torre has left the rest of the performance up to the reader, allowing for his or her own bit of agency while en route.
Finally, De La Torre steers the reader to the more familiar but liminal space of the World Wide Web. Here identity is up for grabs in the form of an email conversation between many Monica de la Torres and at selfhood.com. In “selfhood.com”, De La Torres pokes fun at poorly written websites and the self-help culture. By continuingly repeating the word “self” in the piece, De La Torre suggest the lack of meaning in the word and possibly in identity itself. In “Doubles”, one woman’s attempt to understand herself better through a lost mother (Monica de la Torre once of Argentina) is the catalyst for an email correspondence. Thus each new Monica de la Torre contacted is left to disclose her identity aside from her name and stake claim in her identity.
Of course by arriving at the end of the book with “Doubles” the reader is left to ponder who is Monica de la Torre? The author of Public Domain is a witty poet invested allowing the self to conflict with the public sphere and the other individuals contained there. She has the irony and play of any New York school poet but carries whole bag of new tricks. She’s invested in the additional layer the forms she chooses add to each poem but largely the writing holds up on its own with a playful but sharp voice. The writing is conscious of it’s poetic state at many times suggesting that one way to find the space where identity may reside in flux among an ever-growing public sphere is to poem it out.
The opening poem, “Is to Travel Getting to or Being in a Destination,” establishes the books as a liminal space. De la Torre throws us in the mix with a captivating opening line “the next poem was inspired by something I overheard” (7). Through the line she immediately establishes the players as an individual entangled in a world of others where everything is open to the possibilities of poem. The poem “travels” by stating what “the next poem” is “called” or “about” and then moves to the speaker’s observations of others while side stepping the poem’s self-proclaimed subject matter.
The rest of the book chugs along by shifting gears into different poetic forms yet continuing to explore the space where identity is caught between the individual and public realm. The next long piece, “The facts”, plays in prose and lyric, the space of the page, and bilingualism to establish the speaker as an ironic Confessionalist through her admittance of being told by her “therapist” that if she “could only put down her obsession” in her work she would “be much happier” (13). One of the speakers “obsessions” is of her “crush on a musician” known as “Blank” (15). Through “The facts”, De La Torre continues to examine the theme of people as public objects in list poems. The speaker plots ways in which to discover more and more out about her crush, Blank. As a celebrity, Blank becomes an object subject to the public domain. Meanwhile, at the bottom of each page the reader finds more out about the speaker’s obsession with “lists”. De La Torre is allowing the speaker to have a kind of identity crises on the page as her opinion on lists changes and seems to suggest the poem as another kind of “list”.
The book continues along its path from the public to private sector and begins to pull out all the formal stops. De La Torre examines erasure as a vehicle in which political information is withheld from the public. And for this non-Spanish reader, even the language becomes a gap in understanding between members of the public space. Her multi-voiced piece, “The March Papers”, begins to turn the power back over to the individual while also keeping the reins on it through editing. Voices gathered from the editorial sections of The New York Times merge together while De La Torre tells the reader “texts can be read in any order” and “circular reading and repetition is encouraged” (45). Of course much erasure was performed while treating the texts, but De La Torre has left the rest of the performance up to the reader, allowing for his or her own bit of agency while en route.
Finally, De La Torre steers the reader to the more familiar but liminal space of the World Wide Web. Here identity is up for grabs in the form of an email conversation between many Monica de la Torres and at selfhood.com. In “selfhood.com”, De La Torres pokes fun at poorly written websites and the self-help culture. By continuingly repeating the word “self” in the piece, De La Torre suggest the lack of meaning in the word and possibly in identity itself. In “Doubles”, one woman’s attempt to understand herself better through a lost mother (Monica de la Torre once of Argentina) is the catalyst for an email correspondence. Thus each new Monica de la Torre contacted is left to disclose her identity aside from her name and stake claim in her identity.
Of course by arriving at the end of the book with “Doubles” the reader is left to ponder who is Monica de la Torre? The author of Public Domain is a witty poet invested allowing the self to conflict with the public sphere and the other individuals contained there. She has the irony and play of any New York school poet but carries whole bag of new tricks. She’s invested in the additional layer the forms she chooses add to each poem but largely the writing holds up on its own with a playful but sharp voice. The writing is conscious of it’s poetic state at many times suggesting that one way to find the space where identity may reside in flux among an ever-growing public sphere is to poem it out.
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