“— I took several steps to the right, and saw / Kennedy was paper-thin,” Frank Bidart
flow of creative shackles one purpose, but
upon its existence
a machine of possibility of language man in a language making
toward liberty, free of language freedom and confidence
a machine of creation
untethethered of creation untethetic, made
with speed and confidence
a machine of possibility of language man in a language
man in a language man in a language free of fairings man in a
language free of language
on one purpose, but upon its existence
a machine of creative shackles
one imagines one imagines one imagines one
imagines one purpose, but
upon existence its existence a machine of language
man is a language man is an essence on two wheels in a language
man of one purpose, upon existence its existence a machine of language
man in a language making love toward the wheel this
is the liberty, freedom and confidence
of language machines
these two orchard thieves
a series and a brother the spirit seems somehow yet
feminine oily laughs when campfire staircases rise
up like milk our bodies sculpt a cheap iron colocynth
breaks our ranks touch again
doves watercourses a campfire
family laughter incorporating me
as simple as poetry
is a series and brother the black brawl
breathing cannibal horse
“I should like all artists to sell their fingerprints, or else stage competitions to see who can draw the longest line or sell their shit in tins. The fingerprint is the only sign of the personality that can be accepted: if collectors want something intimate, really personal to the artist, there’s the artist’s own shit, that is really his.” Piero Manzoni
Oh, honey… Who can deprive a word of its meaning? Do you claim the words when you arrange them? Do you borrow them? Lease them? Leash them? How do you own them, particularly?
You are a vector. That’s all. I am a vector, too. The second you say something is beautiful, or a poem, or art, it becomes that. It’s that simple. Anything else is violent colonialism. Stricture.
This is what post-modernism is about. And by post-modernism, I just mean a movement projected forever forward into space. Like a light never dying. Sure, you’ll stop perceiving it at some point, but your explication of your perception is just limiting the reality of that object. Those words ever only meant anything to you. What happens to them as they super-ball around the room is exactly as irrelevant and as cosmically important as the words (objectively) and you (also objectively.)
I poop on a plate and present it proudly as art, it’s art. I put your words in a grinder and call it a poem, it’s a poem. Nowadays, it’s all just a matter of will, marketing and polish. Meaning is expressed by how words relate to each other in the reader’s mind, not in the poet’s mind.
We’ve (I’ve) been doing this for years (times infinity) does the practice (product) gain meaning because it’s remembered? Remembered to what extent? To what ends? Because one can quote it? Because it has generational weight? Because it effects policy change? Because it puts one smile on one face for one fleeting moment? Because it locks one professor into her peach tenure track?
Ever wonder why Wittgenstein ended up designing doorknobs?
(I love you, btw, as a person who is interested in poetry. I’m not grumbling here, just twisting my own nipples to get a bit of magma flowing.)
to rescue to operate on
the marks of infinity to be
transcended against one's will
time rubbed into lather
for your opponent every deck
underhanded or made gape
i'm less
jorie grammatically
buys a vowel
your immediate opportunity tomorrow
fidget spinner i promise
it's not you it's me this working problem has
your poem
wants to be bleach with its brief
heavy handed whitening as declension
suicide i'm still
novice be let bezos-loose
keep it just write deep mystery
new tooth shapes become octuplets
holding hands ripe bipedal feelings
unbruised "skin the concerned"-essential
is this how surprise
tastes? great
all my new deepstate teeth
shaping edits
a poem but
it has a point: threatening
your own image/experience of the stuff
and when i wouldn't make your art form
how weird
to be bleached
on the castle keep
for posterity
“If it can be safely assumed that all things are equal, separate, and unrelated, we are obliged to concede that they (things) can be named and described but never defined or explained. If, furthermore, we bracket-out all questions which, due to the nature of language, are undiscussible (such as why did this or that come to exist or what does it mean) it will then be possible to say that the entire being of an object, in this case an art object, is in its appearance. Things being whatever it is they happen to be, all we can know about them is derived directly from how they appear.” Mel Bochner, 1967
an object
use of a material object
not a thing
in this
or explained
or explained if
furthermore we are undiscussible
(such as
degree or extent in addition
forth comparative suffix -eron -uron
which to say that we can all be
nature of an object like (simile
in things being
of language are equal
separate an object in this or
explained or that all questions which
fourteenth century utterance not requiry
examining doubt past participle stem of action
due to them is in this
or explained or explained
or explained or all that they
appearance things being
as here a qui the face form shape or
in french to make into or face out of
language of language
of words what is said of conversation talk
manner of dialect merci mannerism
are equal but separate an object in this
explained or explained or explained
or all questions which due to their
appearance things being of
an object in this or that
all we bracket-out all we can know
about that
dark enveloped in darkness
original sense blindman's holiday
“6. Greek mathematicians did not think one was a number because the concept one did not involve number. To them, two was the first number. And the hybrid marriage of one, which was not a number, and two, which was, begot three, the second number. And from one, two, and three, all other numbers proceeded, so that all odd numbers had in them an element that was not number. This is why Plato said that the leap from one to two was the leap to rationality.
Leonard Bernstein, speaking of music, said that two was a rhythm of the body and three was a rhythm of the mind. This has been contested by people who say that three is a rhythm of the body and two a rhythm of the mind. Not everyone has weighed in on this subject. But it seems intuitively right, doesn’t it? To say that there is a groundedness in the symmetry of twos, off which threes seem to play, seem airier.”
“The sentence imitates insight. … The sentence is being, enjambment is excess of being, or being in process, reaching toward itself. … The sentence moves and it arrests movement.” Robert Hass
Charles Bernstein,
Here is my litany,
How does it compare
To yours? Not a thing,
But an original tense,
Unknown to word, sound
Or light—the carefully pent
Birthday present
Approximately the size of a bowling ball
And the weight of a human heart
As you remember it—
Bowed and hysterical, still
Forever and unobserved.
