"The Burning Ship" by Campbell McGrath

No room for regret or self-doubt in art,
doubt but not self-doubt. The ship hauls anchor,
the kerosene lantern flickers and goes out,
voices in the pitch black swell with anger

as shipmates mistake each other for enemies.
The lantern spills, the pilot drops a lit cigar.
Tragedy ensues and engenders more tragedy.
If only the moon could see, if only the stars

had been granted the power of speech.
But the blind remain blind, the voiceless mute.
The burning ship threads its way between reefs
in the darkness. Doubt but not self-doubt.

R*U*S*K*I*N

R*U*S*K*I*N

Event Poster - Martin Kippenberger

Maurice Blanchot by Jean-Luc Nancy

The Infinite Conversation: This title - one of the most striking of all his works - we could take as an emblem of Maurice Blanchot's thinking. Not so much thinking, really, as a stance or gesture: a confidence. Above all, Blanchot has confidence in the possibility of the conversation. What is undertaken in the conversation (with another, with oneself, with the very pursuit of conversation) is the ever-renewed relationship of speech to the infinity of meaning that shapes its truth.

Writing (literature) names this relationship. It does not transcribe a testimony, it does not invent a fiction, it does not deliver a message: it traces the infinite journey of meaning as it absents itself. This absenting is not negative; it shapes the chance and challenge of meaning itself. "To write" means continuously to approach the limit of speech, the limit that speech alone designates, whose designation makes us (speakers) unlimited.

Blanchot was able in this way to recognize the event of modernity: the evaporation of worlds-beyond and, with them, of any secure division between "literature" and experience or truth. He reopens in writing the task of giving a voice to the part of the self that remains silent.

To give such a voice is "to keep watch over absent meaning." Attentive, careful, affectionate vigilance. It wants to take care of these reserves of absence through which truth is given: the experience within us of the infinite outside us.

This experience is possible and necessary when sacred scriptures with their hermeneutics of existence are shut. Literature - or writing - begins with the closing of those books. But literature does not constitute a profane theology. It challenges any theology as well as any atheism: any establishment of a Meaning. "Absence" here is nothing but a movement: an absenting. It's the constant passage to the infinity of all speech. "The prodigious absent, absent from me and from everything, absent also for me" that Thomas the Obscure speaks of is not a being or an authority but the continuous shift of myself outside myself, by means of which there comes, although always pending, the "pure feeling of his existence."

This existence is not life as unmediated fondness for, and perpetuation of, self, nor is it its death. But the "dying" of which Blanchot speaks - and which is not at all to be confused with the cessation of living, but which on the contrary is the living or "sur-viving" named by Derrida so close to Blanchot - shapes the movement of the incessant approach to absenting as true meaning, annulling in it any trace of nihilism.

That is the movement that by being written can "give to nothing, in its form of nothing, the form of something."



Written on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Blanchot. Jean-Luc Nancy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and author, most recently, of Listening, translated by Charlotte Mandell.

Garbage men

Two guys, garbage men, grew tired of the language that they had been taught, and invented a new language. This in itself is unremarkable, and happens frequently. But this language, modeled on the trash compactor, was a compact language, fitting neatly into the spaces of words and letters in the old language. It was a model of efficiency, although it had to be spoken and written along with the old language, being dependent on the spacings. That was it's only flaw, really, if you believe doubling is a flaw. They couldn't think of a catchy name, and it never caught on.

from "Love Poems" by Rod Smith

If a lion could speak, we would not understand him.
—Wittgenstein



Listen to the lion. Like
an owl in the
heaped instant
oil-death craft, my love
my driftwood my
Susquehana deckhand
disturbance, so sad, printed
into everything taken.
That enormous bandaged
boundary behind
the open muffling
Is to be filled rain
envisioned, tall
fear rim peopled &
transmuting different
bunk in us "surrounding
a little bird-buddha"
in an ad for an ad for
Listen to the lion. Biological
crank turned by burned
sausage into the vacuum
of affirmation where my
oft inner floated mesquite
self's Ismene suddness
is known spirals sleep and
clear. No roads can show
the middle eye something
other objects shot into
the sky. When giving.
No tactile surface
is stone moist to the
toned raking Paris
you wish. The sun
has several names, like
Sherman, Tazmo, Bonk,
& Harmine-- it's risen
raves retake Atlanta
from nothing's lost
laundry room key &
we, clean in those
clothes have regone
there, we've done
a hell of a job.
thank you. We've
done exactly what
was expected of
us. & we
are not dead. 6
tabs re-side baste
& coax ton's opera-knuckle
brisket. Pal 1
is the cloned guy, &
loosely they have
or will have nice
copulated currency, as
if a tusk warranted Suzuki,
as if, portly
a re-stained tore heart's
made timing looked
back in tears over this
strange be.

from "Canto I" by Ezra Pound

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.

les choses

"The Not Tale (Funeral)" by Caroline Bergvall.

The great labour of appearance
Served the making of the pyre.
But how
Nor how
How also
How they
Shal nat be toold
Shall not be told.
Nor how the gods
Nor how the beestes and the birds
Nor how the ground agast
Nor how the fire
First with straw
And then with drye
And then with grene
And then with gold
And then
Now how a site is laid like this.
Nor what
Nor how
Nor how
Nor what she spak nor what was her desir
Nor what jewels
When the fire
Nor how some threw their
And some their
And their
And cups full of wine and milk
And blood
Into the fyr
Into the fire.
Nor how three times
And three times with
And three times how.
And how that
Nor how
Nor how
Nor how
Nor who
I cannot tell
Nor can I say
But shortly to the point I turn
And make of my tale an ende.



from Shorter Chaucer Tales.

grammantical

"Betwixt" by Mel Nichols.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you get to know your small dog. Your reddish-orange dog.

Dare you go? Need you say this? Ought we go through with this?
How do you know that God didn’t make us evolve?
Nanotubes are created rapidly by squirting a carbon source.

I have a huge collection of frogs, right down to a frog toilet seat in my garden.


a metallic whisper please visit the mirror tortured in the potential space and one heck of a wondertickled verbena smoky sea wrack of excellence and tiger's eye








(look here you! http://thebeginningofbeauty.blogspot.com/)

post

>>>

Pivot

from "Le Sens du Combat" by Michel Houellebecq.

The swallows take their flight, skimming the waves slowly, then fly in a spiral into the warming atmosphere. They do not speak to humans, for the humans remain stuck on the earth.

The swallows are not free. They are conditioned by the geometry of their repeated orbits. They slightly modify the angle of attack of their wings to describe spirals that grow further and further apart in relation to the blueprint of the earth’s surface. In short, there is nothing to be learned from swallows.

Sometimes, we would come back together in the car. Over the immense plain the sunset was enormous and red. Suddenly there was a quick flight of swallows and its surface was sliced. You shuddered, at that moment. Your hands were tight on the snake-skin cover of the wheel. So many things could, at the time, make us part.

from "Platonic False Teeth" by Francis Picabia.

The regime of the photographic radium screen’s wind rests every day in the effluvia of the sublime family of great vices when the pyre laughs at the pirate world. Blushing gets pretty dangerous if paralyzed King lacks a Queen, and Jesus Christ, crazed with the sorrows of a society violated in public hereditary silence, operates early in the intrigues of the seraglio, vizier of heaven’s administration.

"Thing Language" by Jack Spicer

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals, No
One listens to poetry.

1,3,6,7

Mute

Train

Several dark stretches passed on the train before any edges could be seen in the rushing trees. Why did you write this he asked. I am surprised that you think this is an insight.

The Baby

He could not imagine the baby peeing in the mouth. That’s not something I should be thinking, he exclaimed but with a small sound. This exclamation did not adjust the tautness. There was no imagined play at rest here, this was for a real something. It is difficult to see the baby. As a metaphor, he remarked to her, but she was too angry to drop the lip into a new shape.

A Stretch

There she sat beside the cabinet, the tooth angling abruptly. An exclamation or yell built up inside her, but it was unreasonable. However, later there were comments such as: I will not miss this tooth. Her hand touched the humid edge of the furniture while she commented. I am a young woman still, so there is plenty of time for more.

The husband’s dog growled attempting to debone. The dog’s teeth were less yellow than a month ago, as new food had been bought. This had been his surprise plan, to change the food. It was unnerving to come home and find a food that was not the normal food; it was now a food that cleaned gums. The cabinet had also been his, some relative unloading old pieces on us, she had said, as a sort of aside. You’ll come to like it here, he assured her, knowing that was not the case. But what love is toothless or silent?

The Sunset

What was that she was dragging? The pit was too close for anything good. Her black cap was fringed with sweat; the light did not catch it. We followed on her footsteps. On the counter some errant cardboard rested ahead of its use.

Our hands felt groupings of one or the other, as the room was blackened to honor the defeat. We congratulated ourselves on our economy, so unsure up until this moment.

Breadth

This part has no one object to its own. This other has a cat, warm and full of imagined feeling. We say ‘imagined’ for the sake of our futures.

So how small could this part make itself, he thought. There was an unconscious person laying there who could tell some things about the way it was made, although they were also barely there. There was, in fact, a fake part to him, more than one even. This part was not broken, but was gilt. Well, in his head it was.

The other woman walked onto the scene and took stock. There were so many parts that she was unable to count them all, although some were sure to prove unreal. The varied pieces came together in an instant. There she heard some sound like pouncing. Oh! How that could be! Which part was it moving with its paw?

"White" by Charles Simic.

In the inky forest,
In its maziest,

Murkiest scribble
Of words

And wordless cries,
I went for a glimpse

Of the blossomlike
White erasure

Over a huge,
Furiously crossed-out something.

diagonal

There is more complicated
time unspooling in three hours than
most here are willing to admit.

Who is not surprised to
find themselves among 'most'?

But you shift in your chair
unalarmed, so I suppose
I should shift similarly.

My tongue, which I had not
often thought of as clumsy,
or indignant,
thinks out loud of your mouth,
although it -
your mouth -
pursed.

Some mysterious sentence
makes its way onto the table:
What a thing that would be:
to extend that "he" or "she"
to some pronoun more familiar
to us both.

Funny thing
that I remember the diagonal
of your eyelids
equal to
the diagonal of your hips.

from "The Last Man" by Maurice Blanchot

Oh, if it is true that we were alive together—and, really, you were
already a thought—if it is possible that these words flowing between us tell
us something that comes to us from us, at an earlier time wasn’t I always,
near you, this light, avid, insatiable desire to see you and yet, once you were
visible, to transform you further, into something more visible, to draw you,
slowly and darkly, into that point where you couldn’t any longer be anything
but seen, where your face became the nakedness of a face and your mouth
metamorphosed into a mouth? Wasn’t there a moment when you said to me:
“I have the feeling that when you die, I will become completely visible, more
visible than is possible and to the point that I won’t be able to endure it.”
Strange, strange speech. Is it now that you say this? Could it be that he is
dying at this moment? Is it you who always die in him, near him? Could it
be that he wasn’t dead enough, calm enough, strange enough, does he have
to carry desire, memory even further, is that the extremely fine and amazingly
distant point that always slips away and by which, slowly, with authority,
you draw him, you push him back into forgetfulness?

Thought, infinitesimal thought, calm thought, pain.

Later, he asked himself how he had entered the calm. He couldn’t
talk about it with himself. Only joy at feeling he was in harmony with the
words: “Later, he . . .”

02.26

I was unsure what the light
would look like when I arrived
here.

Here, it severed a leg.
There, another head,
run through by
a bright shard.

I watched it
collect against my hand
as a warm volume,
remembering
your cupped palm,
folded and flickering
like a surprising
bird.

02.08

DEAR DRAWING:
So. The world expires at your touch. The touch, cut up, some Burroughs thing - what was it? “I shine at the moment I’m cut.” I’m brought close to something I remember from a past, brushing against my shoulder.
Was that music?
Was that the throne of heaven?

I know for sure that we are, ourselves, against continents. On this island, I’ve found some clunked out landing gear, the throne of heaven’s sound, landing on the top of the palace. The king, sucking his wife’s last breast, the other, a dry scar. Amputated in her body’s war against itself.
Continents are languages. Wholeness at war with parts. Human shields, the light shining through from shrapnel.

There were years when I was not myself, when a double found me, and walked off with my bags. He smelled of potatoes.

There is a machine with me that describes the surface of the vapor-world in ways that I can’t describe to you. The general invisibility of things we love.

One thing is increasingly clear:
I have learned how to hate the non-existent.

H.M.

Today I Wrote Nothing

02.03

Beating hearts
sometimes
beaten,
or beaten back,
hurled at one another
from hands
that became wrenched
in the works
while raising the
theater curtain.

"A Poem Without a Single Bird in It" by Jack Spicer.

What can I say to you, darling,
When you ask me for help?
I do not even know the future
Or even what poetry
We are going to write.
Commit suicide. Go mad. Better people
Than either of us have tried it.
I loved you once but
I do not know the future.
I only know that I love strength in my friends
And greatness
And hate the way their bodies crack when they die
And are eaten by images.
The fun’s over. The picnic’s over.
Go mad. Commit suicide. There will be nothing left
After you die or go mad,
But the calmness of poetry.