On the fourth line of Rae Armantrout’s “Buy In”

Yes, we did
ask to be born.

Not all of us, of course,
only the first few.

They must have bought in
to this round robin
duress:

the gasp,

the gnawing hunger,
then the actual gnawing.

Maybe they did it
the way we’d put on

a corset or toe shoes
one night

and feel fabulous.

To be able to repeat themselves
must have seemed

like such a thrill
at first.

But who were they
if not that trick—

that breathless
pirouette?

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New York Review of Books

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Would rather not get stuck in belatedness, but not a line in this would stray should we opt for such a reading. Two of the later questions are (a) did they know what they were getting us into and (b) did they hope we’d somehow make it so they didn’t ruin it for us? Affirmatives would diminish them (shifting the interrogative to the penultimate line). Negatives mean we at least have something they don’t (hope) and so would likewise diminish them though only in the light of us.

Notes on Rae Armantrout’s “The Way”

Card in pew pocket
announces,
“I am here.”

I made only one statement
because of a bad winter.

Grease is the word; grease
is the way

I am feeling.
Real life emergencies or

flubbing behind the scenes.

As a child,
I was abandoned

in a story
made of trees.

Here’s the small
gasp

of this clearing
come “upon” “again”

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A— don't think so. fact is, my reading's prospered now that you brought it up

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D— I made only one statement / because of a bad winter. I remember a point being made before that this statement might be a financial statement of sorts. Bad winter suggests an extremity. One statement could also be refer back to "I'm here" or to this poem which, although perhaps one statement (The Way), is clearly composed of several utterances, places, periods of time, and frames of reference.

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D— A "bank statement," maybe? But maybe the statement here is the aforementioned "I am here." This person has nothing to offer but herself, the winter having perhaps taken everything else away.

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D —I like how you phrased this question. Most readings usually automatically assume that a trail of pebbles ought to lead somewhere, that a thread decides the value of a maze. What if there's a trail but no destiny? A possibility, since the trail alluded to is composed of bread crumbs, the way therefore described (and created) by something both impermanent and important.

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D— Putting it that way, it seems to me now that the vision of "The Way" parallels Paris Spleen.

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D— These notes are precious! Thanks for relaying, sharing. I like your personal touch, your reflection on the process, how even the act of bringing it to us here could be riddled by mis- or missed readings, additions, over-reading. (Considering now if losing the way is, itself, the way.)

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A— "gasp" truly

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D—
ascending the stories
a tree at a time
clearing the
throat for your gasp

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A— happened to me. sounded beautiful and very true to the reader's (and her father's) life, so I said that I want my poem to mean what she meant, and that I'm grateful she had it mean that way

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A— take every poet's explanation of her poem as a performance, an annotative performance. give it some privilege, but not sole authority (even other readings by the self-same poet can be seen as another performance, like being in the theater for the same play but on another night). other readers could "perform" it, in fact every reading, even interior, undisclosed readings are already performances of the poem in the mind, an inescapable process of co-creation. like this one in particular's likable because armantrout explains her poem with little apparent restraint, supplying the sources, offering some interpretation, but never closing the circle. not every poet is capable of that. in her discussion of "I am here," it seems to me that she's also a meticulously selective reader of texts around her. wonder if this process somehow contributes to her generosity

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D— Life is what happens when you are busy making other fun. Go all out!

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D—
or as in Bergv
all, half-Way's
all the Way yo
u'll ever need

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D— Reading "VIA" and "The Way" through you as quests of sorts. And that greasy inferno sounds like a wonderfully slippery slope, not sure if Virgil's got enough virtue to drag Dante away from that eternal spectacle.

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D— Bergvall made a sort of Limbo with "VIA," keeping Dante from fully entering Inferno (but also from fulfilling his maybe self-ordained destiny) through the loop of (the conceit of?) his own translated words. Burn!

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D— Could this also apply to this story made of trees? I hope you see it as a good thing, this openness of the poem.

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A— false perhaps in that sense as you described, but also as a trail that disrupts the "flow" of language or reasoning

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A— we can only wish. as do the kids. but perhaps there's only (greasy) adolescence

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D— That threw me off. How it's framed here, it appears so. Story made of trees, the pulp of trees as paper, or through the hidden word "leaves" or out of identification with Hansel and Gretel. But the aspiration or destination that the story carries (or with which it resonates, that the story also is, how can that be worldly? At most it's (infected with) a hope to be something other than the world. So we go at it again and again, as mantras and chants (maybe Wiccan spells) promise to carry us elsewhere or inward.

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D—To end up in a place of worship after expecting a place of candy canes and chocolate sprinkles.

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"as soon as" yes
but not one moment before

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A— WORD

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D— Thanks for this exhilarating view of your involvement. I am (for some reason) picturing you as that guy in the courtroom sketching the scene while the judge and the lawyers close read the evidence for the rest of us. Most interesting presence.

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Note on Rae Armantrout's "Transactions"

                1

What do we like best
about ourselves?

Our inability
to be content.

We might see this
restlessness

as a chip
not yet cashed in.

                2

You appear
because you’re lonely

maybe.
You would not say that.

You come to tell me
you’re saving money
by cooking for yourself.

You’ve figured out
what units you’ll need

to exchange for units
if you intend

I know I mustn’t
interrupt

                3

Hectic and flexible,

flames

are ideal

new bodies for us!

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D— Since you marked the medical definition of "intention," let's also note that Red Cross units are units of blood. Not exactly off-topic, since bodies will be mentioned in the third movement.

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Or, Berrigan and the Whale

3 Pages
by Ted Berrigan
for Jack Collom

DE— Let me just say that my heart skipped a beat when Berrigan's list mentioned the Hunt for the Whale. I read Melville in my youth when no teacher required it of me, and it was one of my greatest reading experiences. In fact, when the line struck me, the whole poem was suddenly flooded by the novel's immense waters. Even the title reminded me of Ahab's own 3 "pages," Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, petty officers and middlemen on this the grandest and most foolish of ventures.

AN— the first part of the novel is encyclopedic, a sort of melville's a dummies guide to whales, whaling, and the color white (that last part is my fave). formally, they're essays. if i remember right, there should be a good handful of lists in the pequod: what to do with blubber, what to do with whale parts (look up cassock!) and others, a lot of how-tos here and there. starbuck was the most practical of them, the least metaphysical, and he must be partial to these lists. of course ahab would dash them all and have it his way! he has his own list. and his methods of staking the ship to his own TO-DO, his theatrics, his mythic references, that sinister, inert doubloon!

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AN— schopenhauer sounds right in this case. perhaps not only in our reading of the poem but also in berrigan's writing of it.

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DE— Ahab's mission, and this list of ten things to do. They're a whole universe apart in terms of grandeur and scope and yes time (and diction, as I think you're pointing out too). Though they're both America, that much is true. And maybe I'm forgetting (and you've reminded me) that the creation of this poem is itself the hunt for the whale.

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AN— it could be a key to this, i agree. one among many, i'm sure bec of the nature of the poem, but still, a welcome entrance!

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DE— The last lines after NO HELP WANTED doesn't seem like things you do every day. There's the heart attack, the medal of honor, the house in the country: these are things to aspire to, such that every day builds up to them. I guess in the back of the psyche there's something that gnaws, a less obvious, less acceptable desire, something more Quixotic (forgive the mixed references though I'm fairly certain Melville the sailor was likewise referencing Cervantes the sailor), therefore more grand than any desire. Still, there's that other thing. Ahab was all about revenge. Could this be the hidden motive (motif) of the poem? Berrigan's revenge on US conservatism (prosaic, sorry!), it's pretensions, how if it has any greatness in it, you'll find it solely in the shortcomings? For some deep yearning here is unanswered (WCW on the poem: for lack of which people die miserably every day). Which brings us back to the port of poem as whale as poem.

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AN— and maybe beyond the revenge of the poem is the vindictive life. like Berrigan was saying something like: I won't get with your program folks! my poker, my lunch poems these fly in the face of your congressional medal of honor!

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DE— Forgive the re-post here; I'd like the Mates in my ship as well. I tried to read Berrigan by using the 3 MATES of Ahab (as you suggested). There's something there, though not so clear-cut, but perhaps the others can make more of it.

Here it goes. Melville's Pequod is a ship of symbols (although it can be read as a driven narrative even without any eye for allegory, we thus have movies of it here and there) and as such is a very symmetrical construct. The 3 MATES can be read as the stages of the human brain: 1st mate STARBUCK is the voice of reason, the schooled one, a pragmatist at heart. 2nd mate STUBB is much less refined, but in moments of clarity he embodies a folk sort of wisdom. Nevertheless, he's more Gung-Ho and is thus more open to the seductions of Ahab. But 3rd mate Flask has practically sold his soul to Ahab even without him asking for it, and since it's clear we're moving down the brain here, Flask is more bile and vengeance; he really takes the whales personally.

Beer? Jack off? Curse? Probably Flask. hunker down, quite merrily, life goes by: We could probably get a whiff of Stubb's pipe here (though he seems to be smoking with Flask in the earlier parts too). Which means that the last, where happiness is not happiness but something negotiated with weather (sails?), that could be Starbuck there, the only dissenting voice when the ship went mad with Ahab's bloodlust. He's the one with his eye still on Mary, his wife, their "house in the country," their nameless son.

But all of their tempers and powers taken singly or together: NOT ENOUGH

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DE— Others in the forum say that it's part of the incompleteness, the "NOT ENOUGH"

Poem says that it's a list of 10, but it doesn't always add up (though it depends on who's counting), almost always amounting to but nine items. In the anthology, it physically takes 2 pages, though it says three. So 3 pages follows that logic. (An aside, Calvino's "Six Memos" contains only five, suggesting we write the last one, perhaps that's the case here too? Add your page. Or add your thing-to-do?)

The others cut the poem into three, following the sectioning suggested by those phrases with purely capitalized letters. What do you think? Perhaps there's an important 3-page document somewhere in American history we should know about?

Anyway, I'm glad to have to think on it/ of it. Hope this helps.

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DE— Hi! It's an idea I got from your 3 ages thread. I hope I didn't misquote you. But yes, put like that I see that it somehow not only "clusters" but "furthers" all the cutting that's already been done in/by the poem.

AN— a very good idea. the more you read it that way, the more the 3 "sets" or "pages" distinguish themselves from each other

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DE— True and tragic, how the persona "can't even find that wholeness in the lifestyle of other Americans." He lists everything that everyone else is about but comes out empty-handed. Even with fame and security thrown in at the last breath.

AN— perhaps because fame and security was offered in the list? maybe that made it worse somehow?

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DE— It's hard (for me) to put the whiteness of the whale out of the picture when inside North Am Lit, but because Berrigan does it in cuts he could evade full reference (as an epigram wouldn't, or a direct quote) and that sometimes makes for more richness, a more textured reading. Perhaps the "paging" I did with the mates was a stretch as well. But it was such fun doing it.

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AN— the openness of a cropped line is interesting. that's probably why I loved not only following Tzara's instructions but reading the works of people who did. and now that Berrigan gives us a project like this, it's wonderful to welcome all associations in the tapestry of meaning

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DE— Ishmael as the sailor behind (or grafted into) Berrigan's persona, that's promising. What a bummer to miss this, so: thanks! Ishmael's more laissez faire, a down and out man, going where the wind would take him. Melville must have been trying his damnedest to draw a blank of a character, someone who'd soak in the whole Pequod, all its men and methods then live to tell the tale. Ishmael is a survivor (the survivor) of the mad quest, and his presence could change the motif from revenge to just pure survival, openness, going at it one day at a time.

AN— she is on to something. Pip also is mad(dened) enough to deserve a second look as an intertext of this poem

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AN— hegemonic parameters of quality? are you saying they are the gold standard of poets of the time? and that they are oppressive somehow as influence goes? if i hear from you, thanks

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DE— I do love Berrigan too. He and Corman and Armantout, they're great "finds" for me, and only made possible by "This".

AN— perelman too now, and bernstein and hejinian

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DE— I saw this a bit late, here's the summary of some hypotheses offered earlier:

1) NOT ENOUGH. 3 Pages makes you look for a page that isn't there (the poem takes up only two in a book), the texts and contexts from which these lines have been cut. It highlights the insufficiency of the list, perhaps also of listing, maybe of poetry.

2) 3 SECTIONS. Some believe that lines such as "BY THE WATERS OF MANHATTAN" cut the poem physically into three.

3) That the title refers to 3 PAGES known only to Berrigan (and other such "hidden" readings).

AN— or there are (at least) 3 ways of looking at everything here. maybe read/ lunch/ poems are three pages more than enough!

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DE— Thanks!

The Forever Hiccups of "I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed"

A toast to summer with a poem by Emily Dickinson. By all means stop at her signature, but you are welcome to join me for a further reading. The poem:

I taste a liquor never brewed —
From Tankards scooped in Pearl —
Not all the Vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air — am I —
And Debauchee of Dew —
Reeling — thro endless summer days —
From inns of Molten Blue —

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door —
When Butterflies — renounce their "drams" —
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats —
And Saints — to windows run —
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the — Sun —

At once, the first line short-circuits the mind. It's almost impossible to move beyond that conceit: how can anyone drink liquor never brewed? How can it be considered liquor in the first place? How are we sure the liquor exists? Or, by association, the "I" of this poem?

It's akin to dwelling in Possibility. We normal folk reside in fact, in the "is" and not the perhapses of numerous windows. Likewise, we can only drink normal brewed alcohol. Dickinson's liquor did not go through this earthy process. On top of this, there's the added distinction of being "scooped in Pearl." In this line, we have a clash of registers. As cups go, "Tankards" are base things, cheap, a matter of pubs. "Pearl" connotes the finest of the fine. It carries the sea inside it, along with the sense that it was once hidden in a shell. Yet Dickinson commingles them (and stirs them in together with those r sounds), as if distinctions between high and low, between public and private have all but become irrelevant—that is, at least, in terms of this blurry-eyed drunkard and her fantastical liquor.

In "Not all the Vats upon the Rhine" we get the idea (especially with that exclamatory Alcohol) that this is a superior drink, better than any in the world. I hear, again, soundings of "I dwell in Possibility". If we have those narrow hands in the last stanza of that House, in this Tankard we have throat and tongue. If "Alcohol" is an equivalent of "Possibility," maybe we can extend this to signal a poem about poetry. To test this claim, let us follow the tongue...

In the second stanza, we rise from water. "Inebriate of Air—am I—"

Drunk with breath, with life? Much more! Our poet here is intoxicated with the taste of air, that plaything of the tongue, the spring of all words. The poem is distilled of speech, the more meaningful array of sounds, the supreme use of air. The dashes in this line (and in the whole poem, especially in the last line) not only make the poem sound drunk. They also embody the drunk state. They sound like the drunkard's hiccups here, air trapped and released, something that's never "under control". Because the poem is drunk, the metaphors sway to and fro. From the brewed wine of the first stanza, we have shifted to the juice of nature.

Then comes my favorite line: "And Debauchee of Dew—" which is again a marriage of the filthy and excessive with the pristine and minuscule (recall Tankard and Pearl). "Reeling—" in pain? No, more in keeping: in ecstasy, all throughout the "endless summer days". The frenzied whirling reiterates this endlessness. It's the drunkard's excess, the loss of a stable but pedestrian sense of time. "Reeling" is a stationary type of perpetuity in the sense that the poet is whirling in place. Again, there's the feeling here of being housed and condensed in finitude ("inns"). It's non-linear (which is the sense I get from the narrow hands in "I dwell in Possibility," how they trace lines upward to Paradise and thus somehow approximate it, then "gather" it). Here, it's circular. Like the Mobius strip, it's infinite not because of an endless number of points (or days, as in eternal life) but because it can turn and return upon itself within a finite set of points. Assume, for example, that the poet has but 64 summer days. These become endless because she visits them again and again through means of memory or art. Or maybe the poet has a finite set of themes, but through craft and insight, she can release the spirit of one poem to populate other poems/possibilities.

This infinity inside finitude is one of the greatest humanist compliments that can be paid to us creatures who have to suffer not only mortality but also the awareness of mortality.

After Dickinson's "endless summer days" we find an equivalent expansion of space when we hear "inns of Molten Blue". This line is reminiscent of the gambrels of the sky, Dickinson's grand domestic restructuring of the oppressive "dome of the sky" of the ancients. "Molten" is truly interesting (and looks like a Dali painting to me) maybe because it subtly prefigures a deluge. The previous line was about infinity, but in this one, the sky is falling.

Still in keeping with the manner of a true drunkard, the poem slurs toward another set of metaphors. Loosely from the dew (but greatly interrupted by summer days and those curious inns) we turn toward insect life. But who are the "Landlords" here? A story that says fairies inhabited these flowers. Or are they gods, are they foxes? What turns the poor bee out? If it's a glove, perhaps those are fingers (human fingers or the hand of God?) that shoo away the bee. As for the butterflies, what "drams" are they renouncing? Cocoons? Flowers? In the first, we have the meaning of new life, in the second, death.

Whatever they are, our poet/drunkard and her brew surpasses them. She exceeds these creatures who drink to survive (Niedecker's "Grandfather advised me" has the word "trade" for this). To reference another Dickinson favorite, the poet "comprehends" the nectar even more than the butterfly. Maybe she wants it more precisely because it's beyond reach, for how can the dew satisfy her who hungers so mightily for it? And how can anyone drink this brew of the "Possible"? This poem attempts to do just that—I believe, it succeeds.

Here we have the last stanza. The drunkard, the metaphor, the poet has taken flight to the extreme.

As with Butterflies and "drams," Debauchee and Dew, and Tankard and Pearl, "Seraphs" and "Snowy Hats" also makes (divine) use of the clash of registers that are commingled in terms of sound linkages and the sense of drunkenness  There's swinging too, for good measure, as if displacing the halos just wasn't drunk enough (or do these gestures hint at the rebel boiling inside the angels?). It's another shift in metaphor, but there's always a sense of movement (as in "The Brain, within its Groove") that keeps us in step with the poem, or at least in step with the drunkard in the/that is the poem. For example, the Bee and Butterfly's flight leads to the Seraphs and Saints above. It's possible that these Seraphs and Saints are parallel to the "Landlords" that could turn away all sorts of creatures (or sentence them). Anyone, that is, except for the poet who is locked in an impervious thrall, drinking "the more," "Reeling" well beyond her earthly limits.

Has the poet cheated death here, leaning as she does against "the—Sun"? With only that telling dash, the poet/"Tippler" comes closest to the Sun than all the others. While she is "leaning against" it, the Seraphs have need of hats, the Saints have need of windows. But what is "the—Sun"? Is it illumination? Death? Perhaps it is the wisdom that comes from the drunk striving of the poet, she who is most intimate with finitude.

Just now I realized that Dickinson's endless summer days must somehow extend the "summer's day" of Shakespeare's similar conceit ("when in eternal lines to time thou grow'st"). She places herself as the hiccup in Shakespeare, in the poetic tradition of the English language (as she is also perhaps the splinter in "The Brain, within its Groove"). Whatever Dickinson has begun, it shows no signs of relenting. For here we are, aren't we—dear reader—our minds reeling (happily, I hope!), these summer days of our brilliant dead yet carousing inside us, drinking in us, drinking of us, and with us—this Alcohol of the Ages. Cheers!

On Dante's Inferno and Bergvall's "VIA"

Read or listen to Caroline Bergvall's "VIA (48 Dante Variations)"


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DE— But to be now the pop culture cultist (remember SpongeBob!), Bergvall reminds me of a scene in Nightmare on Elm St where the kids in the car wish to escape but find out through landmarks (statues, so forth, but in Bergvall, the words, the woods) that they're going on and on in circles. What's a lovely part of this scene is when a kid suggests that they refer to a road map. Clever kid, so one pulls out a road map and he/she unfolds it and it unfolds some more and there's no end to unfolding it, soon it swamps the passenger seat, threatening the driver's view. It's another Sisyphus thing, like Bergvall condemned the Dante persona to Hell even before he enters Limbo.

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DE— It could be cyclical too, perhaps? Like we find/create a groove (settling in with a person or an ideology or an aesthetic, finding yourself in religion, or in the faithful exercise of civic or filial duties) only to find yourself on the road again, the splinter of the brain tearing past the old comfort zone only to create new ones later.  In a larger view though, that's where you might find your "self" in VIA, in endless transition, staying and going, going to stay, staying to go, one liminal encounter after another, but always bound within the pages of your book. The more things change . . .

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DE— I remember your work on the timing thread, and I think this fits! Dante also tried to figure himself here as in the midpoint of his life-span and at the mid-point of the cosmic life-span (if I remember correctly, which I doubt, his journey was taken halfway between creation and apocalypse or something).

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AN— also: humans are always by definition works in progress. always crossing bridges, climbing up ladders, all fields attest to the human drive to escape its own bounds. whose grasp exceeds whose reach

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DE— I love this delicate fan notion of yours. What a lovely way of putting it but, yes, that's how it seems to me now, after you've said it this way. I thought at first that this image clashes with my own reading, one that hinges (perhaps loosely) around the idea of counsel in Dante. In this opening to the cantos, Dante had yet to find Virgil, his guide, and so it seems to me through Bergvall now how multiple and wasteful his steps are, how shadowy and treacherous (as translations so famously are) indeed these woods. Translations betray, we've so been often told, and translators make poor advisers, and it is of great significance to me that the main sin in Dante's Inferno is False Witness, the crime that makes a Satan of Lucifer, that feeds Brutus and Cassius and Judas (the most vile of counselors in his book) eternally into and out of the three mouths of this Satan

AN— this "fan" of translations could be damning us, if we read it now, again, through (whatever we believe of) dante

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AN— i believe so too. but i've been toying around with the idea that VIA could likewise be a display of the super-adequacy of language, how something so remote and distant can be brought at the threshold of our thoughts in so many ways, perhaps always missing dante's idea, but also never losing sight of its shadowy shape, across the seven centuries

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DE— I'm looking forward to the time comes when I can jog again, because I will seriously put Bergvall's audio on loop.

AN— bergvall's also among my great finds. i know most people want to see old favorites, but me, if they've got more armantrouts and perelmans, baums and bergvalls up their sleeves, I'd really really love to read them!

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AN— thank you for this thread, and for the many worthy, engaging readings already found here.

DE— My own pet intertext would be Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote," a fiction written in a shape of a review where the reviewer lists the accomplishments of this man of letters, Menard, up until he writes his opus, Don Quixote, which he doesn't translate but rewrites line per line by thoroughly immersing himself in the novel and in the life of Cervantes. There's an idea here which I will represent without the power of a Bergvall or Calvino or Borges: that sometimes, when we read, what we're doing is writing the novel or epic again in our mind. So that even something we're reading in the language of our birth is actually being translated by us right into our own psychologies, over our own situations, dreads and desires, which are almost never akin to the stirrings of the "originary" writer.

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AN— gosh, indeed! these are the kinds of threads I wish to read. bergvall's sense of being in the same place and being all over the place is brilliant. borges, who was mentioned above, would have enjoyed VIA immensely, and I would not be surprised if he'd go so far as to envy it

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AN— another thing i've thought to bring to this thread was something from kung fu tze: "“It's better to read one book a hundred times, than a hundred books one time." deftly rewritten by bruce lee: "I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once. but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times." fear bergvall, indeed!

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AN— haunting. yes, that fits. that's the word i'm looking for. that's how it has been for me listening to this, reading it, then reciting it myself

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DE— This pilgrim of a poem leads me back to Dante Alighieri's Comedy, to his desire there for guidance, not only from Virgil, but also from Marsyas and Apollo, from Beatrice herself. He was himself acting as a guide, showing his poetry as a reliable compass of the cosmos. Almost every other critter and demon and character likewise try to instruct Dante (often within the limitations of their damnation), for example his old mentor attends him, as does Ulysses. As it happens, some of these guides are proven false. Here comes Bergvall. She cuts Dante off at the first stanza. He can't get to any of the guides, his first step shown to be multiple, endless, like the line in Eleatic paradoxes where any given point cannot be defined and therefore cannot be traversed (and thus the idea that we are moving at all is an illusion, and in this first step, Dante has taken 700 years and still his foot has yet to fall). Maybe Bergvall undermines Dante by short-circuiting him, reciting him back to himself (an Echo upon a Narcissus), sealing him within his first stanza before he could summon any guide, before he could himself "counsel" any reader. In this sense perhaps, VIA is a critique of Dante and other poets or philosophers (or poetic systems) with such clear and solid ideas of how life must be led, how thought ought be formed and expressed.

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DE— Maybe among those cute guys is a Dante in search of Beatrice? Haha, and scholars, indeed should be able to laugh together. Dante generates lots of differences, heated arguments, scholastic cold shoulders, and it's amazing how Bergvall could put a word in without putting any of her own words in! Shared laughter, of the non-ridicule, non-sarcastic variety, should be very welcome.

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DE— I think VIA could handle both and many other readings, could be a critique when viewed from one aspect, homage in another, and definitely as metapoetry. The woods, yes, (like the story-trees of Armantrout's own VIA) a horrible or delightful place to get lost in, or find the self. Bergvall was remarkably silent here, and I think this silence enables us to look at VIA every which way. Even her arrangement was a surrender of her poetic ego: she alphabetized! Maybe she's counterpoising her circularity to Dante's quest, her surrender of ego to his embrace of ego. Maybe it's like Dickinson's Sicily poem. You may proceed up that mountain Dante, the first (half-)step is enough of a cosmos, "infinity in a grain of sand," says Blake, "eternity in an hour." VIA could be seen as condemning us readers and translators to hell (or "saying" it was Dante who condemned us there) of reading and re-reading without coming any closer to seeing the Beatific Face. Perhaps VIA also condemns poets (Dante and others like him) who dwell in their configurations exactly because these would not exist apart from their craft, or belief. Or maybe it's a tribute to Dante's 700 years, and at heart, VIA celebrates the inherent capacity of poets/ poetry to survive, to reproduce and remain.

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DE— Thank you. Despite the "darkling woods," and the "damning" repetition, I still would like to believe the celebratory aspect of this Bergvall piece. As has been mentioned before, the poet also "finds himself" in the process.

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AN— i did not know eliot had those lines, but yes they are very fitting for VIA. i like how this poem brings us to the multiple, protean quality of language

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DE— Yes. I believe that losing your bearings, while almost never a pleasant experience, can be counted on to expand our horizons—though your third sentence here is more eloquent on this point. I love this lesson on "re-viewing," revisiting, on dwelling again and again (via VIA). If this has taught me anything, it's how to enjoy getting lost in poetry, losing yourself in multiple possibilities, in a renewed sense of vastness.

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DE— Thank you. It was a perfect convergence of material and technique, in my view. That's possibly why this "darkling wood" has become so fertile for questions and ideas.

Scavenger Poetics of "The Way"

The first time I heard Armantrout read this, I thought that a case could be made for her "The Way" as a poem about poverty.

In the first stanza, we are set in a place of worship. But why are we not facing the altar? Instead, we see "Card in pew pocket" and learn that a possible divine "I" resides in that pocket. There's the word pocket, of course, but in the church of my youth, what you find in the pew pocket is the Misalette (a pamphlet-type guide to the Mass) and envelopes with words of green ink asking for donations. So, why is the divine located here? Also—if after the multiple "I" we are still allowed to assume a persona behind this poem—why is she looking at the pew pocket instead of the altar?

The second stanza is strong enough by now to support many other readings, especially that word "statement," which could be read alternatively as a financial accounting, a spare one at that, because of the "bad winter".

What's the way out? Grease! That is, a surplus of resources. You've got so much of the stuff that your car can't take any more so you put it on hair, hair that's too big for your head. The movie also features these kids wrestling with issues of conformity, rites of passage and so forth, but we must remember how rich they are with their shoes and their engines, their races and dances and what they've come to call problems. Imagine how these images must seem to a kid or adult with "real life emergencies"—ought she aspire for grease? Must s/he look away?

Why do these images take precedence over the speaker's life? Now, "behind the scenes," that's where all the errors are, in real life, where someone also resides, but is unmarked by "I". But this is the subjectivity that perceives the pew pocket "I" and the teen movie "I," that sees in them possible paths. But perhaps these "ways" are closed of to him or her by virtue of "bad winter" and "real life emergencies".

The I's present is less clear to her than her past. She was abandoned to fiction. Agreed, the best place to get lost in. But why was she abandoned in the first place? Mother and father looking for money? When I was a grader I had to stay two hours at the library after class after all the other boys have gone on home because my father was working extra hours. That's good abandonment, yes—and I remain grateful not only to my parents but also to our circumstances—but it's still abandonment and the cause was clear to the child: time, work = pay. But minus child. Therefore, even as a child, she also had to pay the price.

But look, she was given fiction, fairy tales, "story/ made of trees". And when she grew up, what did she pour forth? "A small/ gasp." Poetry! (against "Prose" in Dickinson's "I dwell in Possibility," perhaps?) And it's this type of poetry, one that consists of scraps, that insists on one incomplete I after another, that moves from one fragment of dream after the next.

Viewed in this manner, "The Way" traces an ars poetica, a demonstrative manifesto of how to piece together beauty from the leavings of spare life.