Author: Nada Gordon

The totality of a person’s actions
in one of the successive states of his
existence are like large African birds
of prey with a bunch of penlike feathers
sticking out of the from the back of their heads.
That worries me.
Our circular motions against the current
leave semiliquid, greasy secretions
of fatty or waxlike substances,
obliterating memory and moving
irritably sideways, do they not?
Sometimes I feel we are stretched over
a frame of toy musical instruments so
sharp and cutting , like ontology, that we ferment
before we dry. Are not our arias, recitatives,
choruses, duets, trios, etc. left open to
vociferous opacity, even when undergoing
alternation of impurities, as in ferns, eels, etc.?
Any edgeways process involves
a change or transition, refracting light and then reflecting it
in a play of colors, like taxation, or a man’s tall,
collapsible silk hat, but how to twist it more oozily?
Vociferous atomic bikini : soft mud or slime.
Hortatory sumac. Scrumptious scroop.
Gaping, as in astonishment: I have to end this screed now
with a clamorous swollen oomph: Oomph.

You make me tired with your long, silky
reddish brown hair and ironic ideology;
you are a short syllable that should be long,
your stupid plan is “very clever” and your I.Q.
is white, malleable, and ductile, like inflammation
of the eye or Romanian paralysis. OK, so you’re
“heated with radiant energy”; so what?
Might as well be a seaweed dried and bleached
for use as a medicine, or a very large, heavy, powerful
dog with a hard rough coat, formerly used in hunting
a combination of circumstances or a result
that is the opposite of what might be expected or
what might be considered appropriate. A rainbowlike
show or play of colors is a kind of locomotive made of
fool’s gold, implying mental unsoundness and an
utterly illogical nature of that which is directly
contrary to reason, i.e. a round, pigmented membrane formed
of meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and other vegetables.
You are tiresome, troublesome, tedious, quick-tempered,
silver-edged, Maltese, and conspicuous, like the apparent
enlargement of a brightly lighted object seen against
a dark background. Construed as sing, O little stain made
by rust or ink, you’ve got yr Irish up – for what? O Senecans,
Mohawks, Tuscarorans, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onandagas, Cherokees,
feign ignorance of this sinking fireboat, her tubular integers,
her infantile ballistic organization, grey like freshly broken
cast iron irenic muscles, her degenerate method a creeping
plant with showy leaves and trumpet-shaped prosody
enclosing all of the body but the head. Ipsissima verba!

You can look forward, in a couple of months, to hearing me participate with luminaries Charles Bernstein, Al Filreis, and Larry Joseph on a Poem Talk courtesy of Penn Sound. We discussed the poem “Not the Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself,” by Wallace Stevens. I reproduce it here for your consideration:

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow…
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-mache…
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry–It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

At first, I was disappointed that we would be talking about this poem of all of Stevens’ poems, as this one seemed to me so sparse and relatively uninteresting, linguistically, compared to so many of his others. Looking at the poem more closely, I found there was a lot I wanted to say about it, and I was only able to touch on some of the main points during the actual poem talk.

It’s a confusing poem, probably deliberately so, and I felt after reading it and discussing it that it doesn’t transcend its own contradiction: the cry “seem[s] like a sound in [his] mind” but he maintains, in that weird conditional tense (and with a potentially ambiguous pronoun reference) “It would have been outside”. (i.e. if it had indeed been outside!) He echoes that insistence: “The sun was coming from outside.” Three times in the poem he says the sound was coming “from outside.” But I don’t believe him. How can I believe this from a poet whose “actual candle blazed with artifice” and who said, “The false and the true are one.”? Who describes “the poet as /Eternal chef d’orchestre” And in his poem “Theory”: “I am what is around me…./ Women understand this. [!!!] All of these lines give the lie to the notions of outsideness, of things-in-themselves or “things as they are” (that is, not as they are in the mind, or not as one makes them).

I don’t think Stevens was interested in “things as they are,” except as something to be put up with – “the malady of the quotidian” – and transformed into mannered, theatrical/therapeutic material.

This poem thus is some kind of backhanded response to Williams’ “No Ideas but in Things,” which has turned out, finally, to be a very limited and limiting dictum for poetry, slavishly followed by many to the great detriment of the art. I did remark during the Poem Talk that the last line of this poem is utterly disappointing, taking abstraction to the point of dullness, and if I were his creative writing teacher I would have underlined this and asked him to rewrite it!

I did notice, though, that the last line was echoed in another of his poems, one written much earlier and demonstrating an entirely different poetics, one perhaps more closely aligned to his own innate sense of how to proceed in writing: “The Comedian as the Letter C.” He writes: “The affectionate emigrant found/ A new reality in parrot squawks.” Once again a cry or squawk, a mere little sound, initiates a whole new reality, just like that.

“The Comedian as the Letter C” is, like O’Hara’s “Second Avenue,” Kenneth Koch’s “Ko, or Season on Earth,” or like any of the psychedelic albums issued in 1969/70 by the major British rock bands, voluptuously irrational, out of control, over the top, intricately fashioned, utterly mannered, and totally rococo. These are my favorite sorts of poems, like drug trips. In our poem-talk today, Al remarked that “The Comedian as the Letter C” is a “failed poem” precisely because of its lushness. To me, it is anything but failed, because it inhabits and demonstrates its poetics with absolutely no holds barred. The little poem under discussion seems like it’s trying to come out from under a dominant poetics that would have stifled its energy and wit: “a battered panache” (which I refer to in in the talk as my favorite collocation, certainly the most Stevens-y, in the poem).

I thought also that it was key that it was a sound whose insideness or outsideness is so ambiguous; for one thing, a sound is the least “thing-y” of things, ephemeral and temporal. Sound enters the ear and comes “inside” us physically, even if the source of the sound is outside. Sound prefigures and generates the universe, at least according to some belief systems, like the Sufis’ (does anyone remember how Aslan sang Narnia into being in C.S. Lewis’ books?)… and what of the music of the spheres (“choral rings”?) ? What of the recurring figures in Stevens’ oeuvre who transform sounds, singing beyond the genius of the sea, changing “things as they are” on blue guitars, “sounds blown by a blower into shapes”?

And what of the synaesthetic connection he posits between the cry/the chorister and the sun? They are “part of the colossal sun”, with whom (which?), in another poem, he equates himself, if in the third person:

“His self and the sun were one/And his poems, although makings of his self,/ Were no less makings of the sun.”

The chorister’s C precedes the choir because he is the keynote to which the other singers will tune their voices, and also the “sea”, beyond whose genius he will sing, scrawnily, it’s true, but as a representative of “the colossal sun” which is a stand-in for the big “virile” “man-poet” who willfully fashioned his poems from the inside as manipulatively as he directed his young fiancée to wear a pink ribbon in her hair or a particular pair of slippers – to sustain his particular illusory dioramas: “Messieurs,/ It is an artificial world.” And where a paper moon hangs over a cardboard sea, who cares about rainwater-glazed chickens, broken green bottles, and the like? I don’t think Stevens was so concerned with the sordid if poignant details of “objective” “reality”, although he perhaps felt that he should be, hence his protest, which I don’t believe: “The sun was coming from outside.” Because… what if he’s the sun??? Confusing! We who love to be confused!

At any rate, I could not help but re-write the poem, and I re-post it here (it’s been on the blog before):

Not Ideas About the Bling But the Bling Itself

At the earliest antinomian disaster,
On Mars, a prawn-y guy from outside
Seemed like he had blown his mind.

He knew that he blown it,
A dry curd, under a fluorescent light,
In the early harsh of mellow.

The sun wore purple underwear,
No longer a buttered ganache above dandruff…
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast vacuum cleaner
Of creepy jaded poetics conferences…
The sun was wearing purple underwear inside out.

That brawny gay–It was
A chorine whose c preceded the bleach.
It was part of the giant lox,

Surrounded by its collar rings,
Still barbarous. It was like
A new knowledge of reality shows.

***********************

I should add that I hadn’t really thought about Stevens for a couple of decades, and I was very glad to have the chance to look at his work again. I even mentioned to the fellows today (for yes, I was well aware I was the token dame among the learned men) that I found Stevens to be, in a sense, a kind of “sister-poet.” He irks me at times; he couldn’t quite free his ass and his mind couldn’t entirely follow. The racism and sexism in his poems and biography make me squirm, but perhaps he couldn’t help that, and besides, I’ve got my 21st century glasses on. But there’s something there, some kind of commonality I can’t quite put my finger on, maybe having to do with love of the artificed-theatrical, the desire to create other worlds to inhabit, and the acknowledgment of the primacy of mood, or even (smile) “mood-music”?

I’ll end with a quote from Yahoo Answers, one of my favorite sources for poetic material:

Resolved Question: Is a puppet representative of a thing, or is it the thing itself?

Best answer (chosen by voters 100% 1 vote): It is a toy.

Other answers (1): zzz

Not at the moment dancing in a nightclub ☹
featuring the flamboyant décor
and sonorous, labialized lighting of the cochlear
fenestra of the ear, and emphasizing instead
an intrinsic or essential lack of harmony,
I quarrel with myself,
a round-bodied unsegmented worm or
caged animal, a fish that is neither (sigh) a sport fish
nor an important food for sport fishes ☹.
I bear and distribute this revolving vertical spindle as
a mass choking a passage, a pungent blue cheese
related to the chimpanzee, but less erect
and much larger, weighted and strained at isolated points
and sometimes used disparagingly.
In rough disorderly unrestrained fighting or struggling
against habitual or mechanical performance
of established procedure, I grow gormless, stupefied, stout,
bleached out as Johnny Roustabout, a circus worker
and usually horny and branching axial skeleton
who cleans the nightsoil of alleged tribes
of hairy academic gooseflesh women.
This act or instance of wandering
and superfluity, deprived of courage and capacity
for sovereign thought or action: a bloodcurdling
film of cobwebs floats in the despotic air. Meanwhile
an electric lamp or hybrid lemon forms a large
spreading thorny tree in which discharge of electricity
causes luminosity of a nearly globular acid fruit. Its enclosed vapor
implies a throwing off of something both useless
(a comic routine, a dance routine, a gymnastic routine)
and an encumbering in hopes of a renewal of vitality and luster,
but joined with a slight twist and drawn out into rusty roving gorges.
Having full unimpeded resonance of tone, my sharp
marginal points at the end of a spur are inclined to ramble or stray
in states of wild confusion or disorderly retreat, bellowing loudly
in prolonged bursts (as of applause) pronounced with the lip
rounded. Oh these ugly folk dances in which the gorgons form a ring
and move in straight-legged stiff-legged step
in a prescribed direction like cucumbers, like clamshells,
like chisels, like pumpkins – intermediate between the swans and ducks –
uncouth, barbarous, and goyische.
How like phenolic pigment in an ovary or egg –
all wedged in tiny slits between the rump and lower leg!

Poets display aggression for many reasons. They can feel threatened when someone challenges their social status, when they are afraid and when they feel territorial or protective. Poets display aggression by baring their teeth, snarling, barking or sometimes biting. While some poets give ample warning before biting, the escalation of aggression occurs more quickly in others. You must curb this behavior swiftly to prevent injury.

Step One

When poets lived freely, aggression was an important characteristic. Poets needed to have an aggressive attitude to protect themselves, their territory, their food, and their families. That is why to this day, some poets still display those innate characteristics. In today’s world, however, excessive aggression, like biting, snarling, growling, and showing of the teeth, can be dangerous to other poets, people, and even the aggressor himself.

There are many reasons poets can be aggressive. How the poet grew up is one of the determining factors. A poet that’s been abused is more likely to run his temper on others, as well as a poet that was raised by their owners to play rough, could also land his teeth on an innocent arm. Most importantly, socialization of other poets and people play an important role in how a poet will act toward others. If a poet has a lot of fear, or untrustworthiness of strangers or new situations, then they are more prone to act out. What to remember is though, all of the aggressive habits can be fixed. Some problems take longer then others to fix, but ultimately a poet wants to be happy, relaxed and friendly, and will choose to do so once he feels safe.

Step Two

Game Plan…

Remind him who’s boss. Sometimes in order to start working on aggressive behavioral training, it’s good to review basic training to whip that poet into shape again. An obedient poet to his master is much more willing to learn, and therefore more able to trust your disciplinary actions. After that, the next time your poet growls, spits, or bites, give him a firm “No!” You want the poet to stop what he’s doing and show submission. This way he’ll think twice before doing it again. The trick is to be firm, but not terrifying. You don’t want to scare the daylight out of him. But if you think your voice just isn’t doing the trick, try to…
Shake him up. Poets don’t like loud noises, so the next time you poet gets aggressive, take him down a notch by rattling a “shake can”. You can make your own by getting an empty, clean can (soda can or soup can), and fill it with pennies or small pebbles. Then take the top securely so nothing can fly out. When you poet acts out, firmly say “No!”, while shaking the can in his face. The load noise will then be associated with the “No!” and remind him that he is getting out of line.

Step Three

Stop him in the act. This may seem obvious, but it is extremely important to discipline a poet’s behavior right when he’s doing it, or directly after. This will lead to better reinforcement. Many times poets will try and be sneaky or act badly when you not looking (yes- they are that smart!), so it’s imperative that you keep a close eye on your poet when he is liable to do an aggressive act.

Try a time out. Poets don’t like to be alone. One of the best ways to show them that you don’t like their aggressive behavior is to separate him from what he loves best – you. Shut him in another room alone for five minutes, and then let him out. Repeat as needed, but you must do it immediately after the action and only for five minutes so they can associate the discipline with the behavior.

It’s a funky brown day on the grand karoo,
the Sabbath, literally bitter, and disputed,
determined by a priori categories of the mind
whose nut or kernel is a massive (Hottentot?)
that conceals the innermost part or central fort
of a medieval castle. Literally, I am going down
in your esteem by chopping blows delivered
with the side of an open hand, like an assembly
of beams or girders or ridgelike part that scolds
or rebukes harshly as a lock nut or disputed clasp.
There between Novaya Zemlya and western Siberia,
in a dry silk-cotton desert near the Chinese border,
wander all the little karakuls, a sheep of central Asia
whose newborn lambs exude a wool, loosely curled
and usually black, also called karakul – a cousin, one
would guess, of astrakhan. I wander lonely like
a karakul, or any of several large green tree insects
who make shrill, male green sounds despite
their feminine names, which are the Maori for bitter,
and fall over suddenly, without dipping to either side,
feeling like nothing more than a small tube containing
a membrane that vibrates when one hums into the tube,
however cruelly, despondent, outcast, or autonomous.
Held in custody, held back, restrained, like a kea,
the large green parrots that kill lambs (whose wool
is loosely curled and usually black) by tearing
at their backs to eat the flesh there., I am stirred
well or poorly by these metal plates fastened over
and over, and poked with cathodes in the strongest
innermost part.

Endurance, as of a headache. Your continued disdain
as increased reptile life affecting every part, penetrating
as water through blotting paper, grayish blue and Persian,
like liver extracts. Evil, criminal, white, cup-shaped, the
persistence of vision causes visual impressions to continue
upon the retina for some time, as pain and offense are
a kind of perpetual hybrid rose whose fruit is sour
and astringent when green but sweet and edible when ripe.
You would have me be characterized by vertical lines in tracery,
or as some device used to mark a vertical line from any point,
afflicted or harassed constantly so as to injure or distressed, as in
persecuted by mosquitoes returning from a ruined city
in southern Iran. You make it intricate or complicated,
confusing, hard to understand, entangled, confused, involved.
PLEXUS: to twist or plait… for an unlimited time or legally
specified period, enduring forever, eternal, permanent,
unceasing, or for any rate blooming continuously
throughout the persecution season for Persian lambs,
its black, gray, or brown curly fleece used for fur coats,
etc.

Like a desmid, a one celled fresh-water algae sometimes
found in chainlike groups, I give up hope. Your contemptuous
scorn is the fruits, pudding, pie, ice cream served at the end of a meal
and the place toward which something is sent in complete
and passionate aloofness. It foams and cleans like soap
and makes worse, lowers in quality, depreciates the
lonely or desolate uninhabited deserted lonely grief and misery
of microscopic despumate, thrown off as froth, insult, injury,
malice, spite. And I, a mole-like, insect-eating, aquatic mammal
of Russia and the Pyrenees, with webbed feet and a long, flexible
snout like a ligament of fibrous texture, as certain tumors,
do lay waste and recklessly wretched wander in defiant air.

These parasites enter into
pretzels, etc. and
are real John Lennon,
the malfunctioning
of best thing that you long
because they are and explains all of
pastries. By visiting Paris. Personally,
I when you feel bloated iconic
landmarks such as impaired,
affecting the overall general.
What I really of Paris.
Other world every single time.
That slowly you eat,
the John Lennontimes feeling sad
and likely you are to
take tough road for Toys
experienced before the menstrual.
The right decision, s/he’ll
the whole world. Take culprit
behind many common: your dog
is always Kamau Austin is
a World’s Biggest Toy is
a special interest in raw or boiled.
Avoid eating a lot of John Lennon
like, such as the robotic ebook.
Granted, it’s not can only be seen
hieratically!