Oil

I will not laugh at jokes during class. I will not laugh at jokes during class. Took the eldest almost an hour at the page because her grandmother (my side) insisted on flitting about with clothes and questions, distracting a lesson about not distracting lessons. As a fountain of mercy for us. Letter B, letter B, letter B, O letter B. Speaking with my father’s voice to preserve the moment, eliciting my mother’s bitter apology or maybe not, no way to be sure, for oblivion makes a long song towing sound, way ugly for so studious a thief of how many little snacks. Finding your shoulder more admirable the colder it gets, speaking on behalf of December. On the occasion of finding us here, not valid as a Scrabble word in “A Filipino eating a potato.” What more can be thought of palms rolling no bread? I trust in you.

TAKING FIVES: Fragmentary record of attempts to own "Chronic Meanings"

Read or listen to Bob Perelman's "Chronic Meanings," a poem of 25 quatrains. You might also wish to read here or here for some notes regarding the process.


GE— I'll take "Structure announces structure and takes" off Perelman's poem because of it's metapoetic value (not only for this particular poem, or of his own poetics, but perhaps for all poetry read and written). This line also shows me a body invaded by disease, the immune system overrun, deceived to feed on itself. And that amazing word "takes" that that keeps, that saves, takes away, takes us nowhere, takes us so many places (as this poem does, and life) only to arrive at the period. Would you share your choice?

AN— "Then, having become superfluous, time." Yes indeed. Time, and therefore words. I wonder if he cut this off from somewhere? Nevertheless its perfect (to me) the way it is, placed where it is, after that cutting description of AIDS (and poetry, language) as "Symbiosis of home and prison."

for Lee Hickman

AN— "Rock or ages, a modern." Seems to refer to this poem, the addressee, as well as the "modern" disease, and the "modern" ways of detecting it (and maybe as well: the modern inability to cure it) that makes writing a pre-elegy possible

GE— that's so many ways of reading that rock! all of wc fits, i think. thanks, anon. "symbiosis" still has a sense of "life" in there, in fact at least two lives. it's like the poem itself as an act of preservation

AN— "The sky if anything grew." A longing for the comforts of the myths? Eternal life as well as judgment?

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AN— "dumb/ as old medallions to the thumb" all that's left. if i had a line, that "stopped me cold" it's "Economics was not my strong." I mean, what?! Economics, now, really? And then I thought of the metapoetry, economy of the line so forth. The condensery. But also the budgeting of time that goes into the meditation of mortality. And how it's hard to find strength in that. In the counting of breaths.

GE— i think (and maybe im just over thinking it) that the toaster can be a metaphor for what's going to happen to him: here we have a man living his life, doing his job, and trying to maintain his sanity in this world and then pop, (or is it Ding) here's the news that he'll die of aids. i find the directness of it to be honest and so perfect.

AN— that "ding" or "pop" sounds like the period at the end of the line!

GE— had not thought of that, anon, but it makes sense. silent, almost absent pop, but one that's omnipresent nonetheless

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AN— The 1st line you chose reminded me of Neruda's line in Preguntas which goes: "Is there anything sadder in the world than a train standing in the rain?"

AN— thought too about neruda's train. here it's even more absent, maybe sadder. Milton promises an after-life (very prosaic way of going at it, sorry) but that could be a sort of cruelty, esp with such a turmoil/grand war that the afterlife is painted to be

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AN— in your US sitcoms, "i had better" has a special connotation. esp among girls. don't know if that's activated here. but yes such regret is present there, such sense of loss "no object to which urgency can be applied" doubles the loss somehow (the very act of this poem too)

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AN— this line resonates for me with "The phone is for someone."

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AN— can't even "do"... not even the word for do or whatever else is available, graspable

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AN— out of our hands. and the rest of the sentences as well are out our hands whether writer or reader or addressee.

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AN— "The lesson we can each." has the same feel for me as your first choice, "A story familiar as a." It's yes, that the lesson (or story) doesn't get told in its entirety, if there is an entirety. Or if there's a lesson, that's all the lesson there is in the world: "The lesson we can each" "A story as familiar as a." is all stories, because they all end (as in Atwood's "Happy Endings" story).

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AN— this particular Atwood story is very short. I remember reading it in two anthologies, one of which is Sudden Fiction International. Here's the link to "Happy Endings"

GE— thanks for piquing my interest (once more) with that line!will have to listen in again on perelman.

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AN— Truly! The power and creativity of a poet's intention. I liked your take on these two lines, thanks.

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GE— The cutting of each line too, maybe. Something that couldn't be helped.

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AN— nothing left in, nothing left out, nothing left.

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AN— the way you put it gets me to thinking now about the way back is totally indivisible in "In a Restless World Like This Is"

AN— "There are a number of." But a number of what, right? Options, debts, friends, ideas, projects, toys in the attic, words? Whatever it is, they're not yours anymore, they're out of your sight, the world recedes.

AN— There you have it, co-Anon. "Words" definitely. And in the following line. Only one. Only one word, one life, on you?

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AN— what pain to see these aspirations dashed, cut short

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AN— "Characters in the withering capital." Sounds like the beginning of a Russian novel,a winter serial. But it's also about characters, Hickman, Perelman, us. Also about words, AIDS in particular. With its small letters hidden from view, superfluous little terrors. Unnecessary

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GE— and maybe not enough of now either. thanks for weighing in!

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AN— we end at I. the noun, the self hanging there...

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AN— and now our own time ebbs

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Timing

"I’m going to set my timer. It's not rhyming words at the end of a line. It's not form. It's not structure. It's not loneliness. It's not location. It's not the sky. It's not love. It's not the color. It's not the feeling. It's not the meter. It's not the place. It's not the intention. It's not the desire. It's not the weather. It's not the hope. It's not the subject matter. It's not the death. It's not the birth. It's not the trees. It's not the words. It's not the things between the words. It's not the meter.

(timer beeping)

It's the timing."

—Charles Bernstein's 60-second lecture on "What Makes a Poem?"

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GE— Timing is the comedian's property, his element. Timing is everything, else the punchline is wasted, the joke, the whole life of the hours of preparation flows out of your hands. Perhaps for the "new" poet as well, this is the case? Timing might mean you sing when relevant the relevant song.

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AN— Mean Time, don't be so thrifty, so cruel

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AN— haha, well you did make it in time anyway

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AN— Time asks: Is there more to be sad? We answer: In tune.

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AN— the motions. the hesitations where we reveal ourselves best as nothing.

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AN— Dance operations.

GE— the tiny motions of the every day mind, tiny notions of the every day hand. / we dance best when we don't know it, the earth spins beneath so we seem to be moving. / seem: to whom? and why?

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AN— yes, those syllables are drumming =)

GE— the hay came to pay its respects to a dead horse. / the dog said the horse died of hunger. / the hay cried itself into a forest, choking the dog.

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AN— precipitate, also. then rain. sink to the occasion.

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GE— Bow before audience so you don't have to look it in the face when you're laughing.

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AN— except the outside shattered like so seem so inside, somehow

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AN— Readiness yes. Enough patience to hold your tongue. Come the moment: speak!

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DE— Touch the moment and moment flies away. Do not touch the moment and your hand flies away.

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AN— useful directions (also) for rowing a boat, sitting up or down a tree. Would make for an interesting shower.

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AN— reColding | deColding

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AN— no breath to waste!

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GE— Remember Orpheus. Who, in song, had perfect timing, had the Furies crying, drenching their wretched hair with tears. But come the last moment of patience, when he was moments away from freeing his Eurydice, his doubts overtook him, he turned (a moment too soon!) and lost his meaning forever.

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AN— your eurydice reminds me of kafka (coming from Dickinson's alternative house of "Prose," hope you won't mind): "There are two cardinal sins from which all the others derive: impatience and laziness. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of laziness that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return."

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AN— patience was not asking for one more day yesterday

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AN— a haste of lime

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AN— let's stalk in staccato, yes!

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DE— In Time, a classic revenge is being taken upon France.

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AN— laissez le bon temps rouler, louisiana! france has left the building

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DE— Superfluous time. Withered characters of the capital. There is only one——what?——moment to lose.

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DE— Diamond is only so much coal that had to endure and wait and hide until it has forgotten what black ever meant. I can see glitters in the soot...

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DE— The hour the clock skipped and never remembered

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