Syntactics

Posted on October 11, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Every object and phenomenon can be read as or through a syntagm.

Iain Chambers. Border Dialogues: Journeys in Postmodernity (Routledge, 1990). Captures my heart with this description of Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986).

This is hardly parody or pastiche but rather an intelligent seizure of the traces of the past that flare up in the present.

And my mind was caught by the suggestion that image culture involves a mode of perceiving that relies on making sense of sequences…

Inaugurated by the modern impact of photography and cinema, we are today in the midst of a radical permutation in our sense of vision. It involves a modification that may turn out to be a significant for how we understand the world as the introduction of geometrical perspective during the Renaissance. […] This particular organization of matter, this sense of perspective (and position), has increasingly been supplemented and then radically modified by techniques, which are never merely “technical,” in which the languages of representation are themselves increasingly foregrounded. In this marriage of technique and logos it is increasingly the syntax of such languages, rather than their referentiality, that proposes a further mutation in perspective.

One can read this as anticipation of database narrative à la Lev Manovich. It is the parenthetical “position” and the emphasis on syntax that bring to mind for me the Lyotard of The Differend and there among the examples we read of the necessity of enchaînement, linking, and phrasing.

136. Enchaîner est nécessaire, un enchaînement ne l’est pas.

All traces that flare up in some sense belong to a regime of discourse. They may of course travel and be taken up in some other regime. Parody and pastiche may under a specific regime become intelligent seizure.

What I carry away from all this is the attention to syntax allows for constant interrogation of context since all is removable and thus branchable.

And so for day 301
11.10.2007

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Tears Provoked

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Grief. One gets it. When one writes one gets grief.

One of its sources is teachers.

Take “Anecdotal Evidence” by Daryl Hine in A Reliquary and Other Poems. The anecdote in question is set up by reflection upon the nature of sleep and secret keeping.

[…]
Night after night a horrible hiatus,
Unfathomably deep and dreamless sleep
Seals secrets it hardly seemed worthwhile to keep
[…]
Some even greater than, at least as great as
This. One time I was upbraided by
Mr. Sweet in Social Studies Class—
That prudish prick, that homophobic ass!—
For writing a poem to another guy.
My indignation then did not surpass
My shame today that he could make me cry.

This is vivid for me since when I was an adolescent, I too experienced an adult reducing me to tears. I went to high school in Kapuskasing. I loved writing. I was very proud when the April 1978 Poetry Toronto Newsletter published a villanelle that I had composed. The poem was dedicated to my English teacher Mrs. Sadie Keyes. I of course gave her a copy. She showed it to colleagues in the staff room. The vice-principal thought the piece was horrible in the treatment of its subject and called me in for a stiff redressing (I ended up in tears but had the presence of mind to go directly to Mrs. Keyes herself to ascertain her reaction). She was pleased with my effort and during the course of our conversation provided me with great advice: “Don’t let Life get in the way.” Which meant for me permission to dedicate myself to writing (and to use what may come my way in the effort). The incident in retrospect captures what the poem called “Old Women and Her Creation” was meant to show: her creation is the dreaming of a writer [She had told a class that she once wanted to be a writer and still did; the poem builds upon the expression of the wish and envisions a new torch bearer to the dream]. Of course after the vice-principal’s interpretation I bent to revising the poem. Here are the two endings:

Frustrated dreamer,
older, lonelier
cold in her winter,

she has lost laughter
there remains no myth.
She dreamt a writer
cold in her winter
1978

She fosters a dreamer,
whiter, lonelier
cold in her winter,

She has last laughter:
there remains no myth.
Some scribbler dreams her
warm in his winter
1980

A few words — a different temperature. Revisited thanks to another’s memories of crying.

And so for day 300
10.10.2007

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Humbling Exercise

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Peter Jay in the introduction to The Greek Anthology and Other Ancient Greek Epigrams gives pause — English has not always been spoken everywhere.

Translation is an art of fiction. There is the fiction of the translator, who pretends to be another poet at another time, writing in a language that men had not yet begun to speak. And there is the fiction demanded of the reader, who must believe that the poem he is reading is at the same time an ancient poem and a modern one. When translation is successful, the translator and the reader conspire to have their cake and eat it.

I like this image of the inexhaustible consumption of goods. There is an almost Alice in Wonderland aspect — never knowing if one’s self will grow large with an expanded view (eat me) or one’s self will diminish in a tide of temporal relocations (drink me) like the reading a language that men have not yet begun to speak.

And so for day 299
09.10.2007

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Zooming Past Theory

Posted on October 8, 2007 by Francois Lachance

At first I thought it was a screed against jargon. Then I approached it as a defense of narrative in cognitive activity. None of this satisfied me. I am a believer in the big word for the big occasion and a true sport when it comes to tracing the narration (the manner in which a story is conveyed) as much as outlining the narrative (the story). So I looked again at where my resistance was ringing out clearly.

Oratory, on the other hand, is unambiguous in its meaning. Oratory: place of prayer, to persuade.

The author that I am reading thus begins her second paragraph after having contextualized the practice of theory as one of argumentation and one that implies that which cannot be shown cannot be known. Argument, demonstration, testimony, evidence. It is all a circle for her. It is ironic that that positioning “on the other hand” set up a circular argument, one based on would be exclusive binaries. There is theory there and oratory here.

But for me, theory is a way of looking, from the Greek theoria view, speculation from theoreein look at. And as such is close to one of the meanings of “prayer” that is overlooked. Prayer as persuasion is of course the situation of petition. One is asking some more powerful being for intercession in one’s affairs. But prayer according to Funk and Wagnalls International Edition (1958, 1959, 1960) has a number of synonyms including: adoration, devotion, invocation, litany, orison, petition, request, suit, supplication. So yes there is asking for a favour but there is also respecting and honouring.

And so I return to theory making as a type of reverence for the object that is being speculated about. There is in looking upon a bestowing of honour. It is worth my while to think about this in whatever set of words may be appropriate. And then later there may be storytelling and imparting of wisdom. The magic and the show & tell are distinct and are not opposed but complementary. Especially for those who do not see it as a worthwhile project to hang on to a “sacred self”. Sometimes the sacred is best approached by letting go in a pure act of speculation.

It is from such a space that I resist Lee Maracle. Oratory: Coming to Theory (1990) and am not with her except in the resistance to victimization.

I want to know who is going to be there with me, resisting victimization — peacefully or otherwise, but always stubbornly and doggedly struggling to re-claim and hang on to my sacred self.

I resist. I am stubborn. I struggle doggedly. I will not bark out my prayer. I will not pray. But I will reverence and soar on speculation. I am born to the camp of theory makers.

And so for day 298
08.10.2007

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Hanging Out With the Kids

Posted on October 7, 2007 by Francois Lachance

In the one interview collected in Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions Toni Cade Bambara offers up a wonderful portrait of Langston Hughes and his “violations” of the rules at the library. First he wouldn’t take off his hat and he had nice hats. Second he would come into the children’s section and third he would actually engage the children. All very unusual. She remembers:

As you know, in those days age borders were very strict and they were heavily patrolled. […] It was the same thing with the library. So, Mr. Langdon (as we thought he was called) would come into the children’s library, would stroll along the windowsill; looking at the sweet potato plants stuck with toothpicks hanging in the wide-mouth amber jars, and he would comment on them. We would always be looking at him thinking, Is he the stranger our parents always warned us against? Was he the pervert we had to watch out for? What was he doing in the children’s library? Then he would come and sit down with us and spread out his work. He was always very careful about space. If his book hit yours, he would say “Excuse me.” I can’t tell you how rare that was in those days. Nobody had respect for children or their sense of space. Well, he would be writing, reading, and pondering, and then he would look up and break the third rule — he would talk. He would ask us what we’re doing. What kind of homework we have. Do we think it is intelligent homework? What was on our minds? The man was a knockout!

I particularly like in this portrait how the the respect for space serves as a prelude to meaningful engagement.

And so for day 297
07.10.2007

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Crumbs of Fire

Posted on October 6, 2007 by Francois Lachance

In a prose poem from The Whole Night, Coming Home Roo Borson offers a set of sentences that remind one of the ghazal form. The sentence clusters hang separately like couplets and they resonate — there is some inkling of a reason for their proximity even if one cannot quite express the creative tension they embody.

A paper kite, mauve in the light that has already forgotten us, still tugs at its string, attached to the earth somewhere.

This is when it is first detected, not as a thought, but because of the surprise. When the smell of the fuchsias comes tolling.

These are the concluding sentences of “Fuchsias”. The colour mauve is of course an element that ties together the kite in flight and the tolling of scent. And in the hands of such an accomplished poet, the very description of these flowers as “crumbs of fire” floats in the mind like, well, as she calls them, “crumbs of fire”.

And so for day 296
06.10.2007

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Rise Up Rhythm

Posted on October 5, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Seen on a T-shirt.

DIG
DA
RID
EM

It took a double take to capture the essence. And when I did, I really dug the link between the power of chant or drum and the casting out of the undesirable: rhythm to be rid of them. If only change in the world were a matter of incantation… necessary but not sufficient. I fondly remember the goddess chant of the Radical Faeries. Charlie Murphy’s “Burning Times” incorporates the chant by Deena Metzger: Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna. And it was through the Faeries that I first heard a rendition of the inspiring “Brother Warrior” by Kate Woolf. Insufficient but necessary.

And so for day 295
05.10.2007

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Careful Hanging Careless

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Francois Lachance

You may not care for the spot she is heading for but you must admire the route she takes. This is the conclusion to a poem:

In the sun’s wake I almost succeeded in becoming
a boy, fastening myself to a tree limb, then to solitude
then to loneliness, then to nothing at all.

It is from “The Woman Question” in All-American Girl by Robin Becker. What is gripping is of course the progression of the tricolon. And what is haunting is that the ending picks up the image of boy and tree which earlier in the poem was the object of envy: “When I was a child, I wanted to be the boy across the street / who hung upside down from a tree and didn’t care / that his shirt fluttered over his bare chest.” The memory makes the intimations of mortality all the more poignant. And recollected in a reversal the nothingness, the loneliness, the solitude becomes grounded in a fastening, a clinging to not just memory but to a desire to inhabit the body without inhibition, to be free.

And so for day 294
04.10.2007

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Honour Roll

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Poets mentioned by Richard Howard in Paris Review (Spring 2004, No. 169) interview.

Muriel Rukeyser
Amy Clampitt
May Swenson
Marie Ponsot
Jane Cooper
Mona Van Duyn
Pattiann Rogers
Madeleine Defrees

The listing itself appears almost as a Homeric catalogue of heroes.

And so for day 293
03.10.2007

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Etiquette for Book Lovers and Others

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Three things you should say to a writer:

  1. Thank you (for reading this evening, for producing this book)
  2. It made me think. (It moved me). [NOT it reminded me of my own memory or experience.]
  3. All the best with your next project.

Simple tripartite structure available to any well-bred guest. An acknowledgement that someone took pains to produce and present something; some nominal statement endorsing the worth of what was produced; good wishes for the future. It is as formulaic as the greetings of hello and good-bye and every bit as effective because it is formulaic. It is a structure with countless variations and practice makes perfect, so…

Rita, thank you for assembling these fascinating photos; I was particularly moved by the images of the women in the asylum; and I look forward to the results of your next project — safe travels.

Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson, Rita Leistner.

And so for day 292
02.10.2007

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