Introduction for hassen @ The bowery Poetry Club, 10/30/04

Hassen’s work initially caught my attention with its deft dramatic remixes of patriarchal histories like the Salem witch trials, the story of Genesis, and the life of the 18th century naturalist explorer and systematizer Joseph Banks.

In August of 2001, Hassen began to “keep a journal related to [her] transformation and the sky’s” which resulted in her 2003 chapbook, sky journal: from land. It is an intricate and enigmatic work that juxtaposes, sometimes paralogically, degrees of solidity, qualities of light and color, and spectra of emotion. In it, there are “hundreds of miles of solid sky,” “phosphorous things” and “succulent thought,” “ethereal invertebrates,” and “a rock I’ve loved” not too far from an “anemone.” In it, “crystal dendrites prepare to melt.” It calls stars both “breathing holes” and “branding irons.” It calls into being “particles reflecting the senses maybe dark matter also…”

I daresay it’s a work of physics.

In an article entitled THE SCIENTIFIC PANACEA OF LUMINIFEROUS AETHER,

(which I found on the web this morning)

Robert A. Kerr, unknowingly describing hassen’s process, writes that

Light is a digital phenomenon.

It penetrates matter and exerts pressure on constituent electrons.

Electromagnetic radiation pressure is the initial source of all energy.

Cosmic bodies of significant size are all spherical.

Spherical formation results from the exertion of external fluid impulse acting on collective mass and confining it to minimum volume.

A body immersed in a gaseous fluid interferes with the motion of the fluid particles.

The interference concentrates the surrounding fluid particles increasing pressure and organizing random fluid energy.

A field around a body is formed from concentric isobaric spheres.

The surface pressure of each sphere is constant and decreases radially outward in accordance with logarithmic square law.

In earth’s atmospheric field the outward molecular pressure equals the inward confinement impulse of aethereal fluid.

The pressure balance establishes a stable essentially steady state field.

The formation of a field by geometric concentration organizes random particulate action and increases available energy levels.

Effectively the immersed body focuses fluid energy like a three dimensional magnifying glass.

Listeners, please welcome the intensely focused fluid energy and three dimensional perspicacious magnifying glass that is Hassen.