BERNEVAL

At first I thought there was a missing “d” so strong was the tow of the next line and the speeding eye — an avoidance of where we find ourselves.

as if the thinking could bring me
where death is not an is
instead of where I found myself

I thought that the speaker was trying to negate the condition of death and hope himself to the place where death is not. But there is no accident. “where death is not an is” is not the condition of the dead speaker — he is where death is.

is not and is

Caught in the poetry of Brian Henry and the opening to his Quarantine. Mesmerized by the tension of being and not-being.

And so for day 320
30.10.2007

May Swenson has a line somewhere about “unconceived / fluidities and agitations” which put me in mind of Mary di Michele’s Mimosa and other poems where slight but significant variations take place under the sign of water which is fitting as the poet plays with her name relating it back to its meaning “of the sea”.

“So It Begins” begins identically to a poem that appeared earlier in the book “Full Circle”. Indeed it is only when you get to the last lines does the difference come to the fore and then only if you are diligent and flip back to review what you had read earlier. This ends “So It Begins”

for the greater song of the sea to sing in,
whatever the water gives me, I give back,
with my open and singing mouth.

This is what ended “Full Circle”

for the greater song of the sea to sing in,
whatever the water gave me, I gave back,
with an open and singing mouth.

Slight change in tense and possessive adjective.

It is a similar attention to shifting perspective that animates the title poem which is constructed in three sections: father’s story told in the third person; monologue by one daughter; monologue by the other daughter. Here are the conclusions that offer shifting variations on a picture of family dynamics.

I. Mimosa
[…]
The good life gave him a house and money
in the bank and a retirement plan,
but it didn’t give him fruitful daughters,
his favourite makes herself scarce
and the other looks like her mother.

II. Martha’s Monologue
[…]
Disappointment is the unthinking brush
bloated with chalk dust and the promise of a better life.
I only want my fair share.
I want what’s mine and what Lucia kicks over.
I want father to stop mooning about her
and listen to my rendition of Mimosa.

III Lucia’s Monologue
[…]
I have his face, his eyes, his hands,
his anxious desire to know everything,
to think, to write everything,
his anxious desire to be heard,
and we love each other and say nothing,
we love each other in that country
we couldn’t live in.

Martha’s “want” and Lucia’s “love” come to the reader like small waves. There is no such motion in the third person view of the father. His are not the rhythms of waves but those of a gardener tending a vegetable patch and yielding seasonal offerings of zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, tender peas and Italian parsley. With eye on produce and his concern for fruitfulness, Vito, the father, misses the rhythms of Martha and Lucia, fails to see them moving as persons.

And so for day 318
28.10.2007

It is like a dream journal meets a glossary complete with cross-references and see also suggestions.

After you, dearest language. Marisol Limon Martinez. (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2005)

Let’s take a trip, shall we?

AMERICA: BANDE A PART

A little group distinct in its positioning … and what does “BANDE A PART” reveal?

BANDE A PART: The end of the FILM. No one dies. They drive to SOUTH AMERICA. A RED LINE traces their movement around the WORLD on a GLOBE. The SCREEN reads Fin.

So we have intimations of closure. One more hop through the references.

FILM: [an extensive two and half page entry]

SOUTH AMERICA: BANDE A PART

RED LINE: [no entry for RED LINE but an entry for RED: BANDE A PART, BIRD, BLOOD, BLUE, CARE, CHANDELIER, CLASSROOM, DRESS, FUNERAL, HEXAGON, LAST SUPPER, MADRID, MAKEUP, MAN, MIRROR, PINK, PORNOGRAPHY, SCROLL, STAIRS, STAR, THEATRE, UNDERWEAR and an entry for LINE: BANDE A PART, FUNERAL, METRO, PINK, ROOM, SCROLL, STREET]

WORLD: BANDE A PART

GLOBE: BANDE A PART

SCREEN: BANDE A PART, CHAIR, COSTUME, FILM, HEXAGON, HOUSE, ISLAND, PORNOGRAPHY, SCROLL, VIDEO

Only through FILM and SCREEN and the RED [broken] LINE does the story continue. Otherwise it circles back upon itself. Overdetermination at work.

And so for day 317
27.10.2007

Nicole Brossard has always been a writer … with the erotics of the advent of language and articulations. No less a theme in … “Museum of Bone and Water” in the collection of the same name translated by Robert Majzels and Erín Moure.

What intrigues me is the location of the speaking subject vis-a-vis language. It is not some small little voice at the back of the mind. Its components are out there.

on the line of the horizon as on the screen
we tear the alphabet from dawn’s arms

And further on in a subsequent section we come to a set of phrases that can serve as a pendant to the torn alphabet

a theory of vanishing in mind
in each phrase the background murmur of farewell

It is almost as if mind vanishes. But spacious mind captures the vanishing. Holds it.

And so for day 314
24.10.2007

I have no idea why these lines remind me of the title of the Truffaut film Le Dernier Métro.

There is nothing so homesick-making
as the ecstasy of a fellow transient.

Perhaps it is a hint of locale – Paris – that makes such scenes possible.

“In the Luxembourg Gardens” by Lachlan MacKinnon collected in Montrerey Cypress.

And so for day 313
23.10.2007

These lines on Elizabeth Bishop by poet May Swenson refer no doubt to Bishop’s alcoholism. The poem was never published in Swenson’s lifetime. It appears in the Utah State University Press 2000 publication of Dear Elizabeth: Five Poems & Three Letters to Elisabeth Bishop

Elizabeth’s liver is tattooed
     with the intaglio of an indigo turtle.

The figure is startling and memorable but potentially too flashy and Swenson is at pains to down play the fireworks. She continues

Not emblazoned—
     that would augur prominence
and a definite who’s who-ness
     No-nobodyness is the ultimate
achievement achieved
     secretly, invisibly but indelibly
inside.

The editors have supplied a title that reads like something out of Stein: “Somebody Who’s Somebody”. And to be sure not everybody is a somebody with some body part described by tattoo, intaglio, and indigo turtles.

And so for day 312
22.10.2007