Currently reading: On Line (eds. Butler and de Zegher), Madame Bovary (trans. Lydia Davis)

Since the summer too many things to count have come to pass, personal, professional, and otherwise. So first, instead, some things currently cluttering my desk and titillating the mind:

I just received my catalogue for the recent On Line exhibition at the MOMA dedicated to the art of drawing in the 20th Century. Among the artists included were Cecilia Vicuña, whose film Kon Kon was screened as part of the exhibition. Cecilia and I finished our collaboration on the film trailer site, which contains video, still images, and documents to provide context for the film. I'd also recommend the recorded broadcast from PENN's Kelly Writer's House presentation with Cecilia, which contains a full-length airing of the film. In any case, the book for the On Line exhibition is stunning and pleasure for hand and eye. Highly recommended.

This Thursday, Terrance Hayes visits Whitman as part of the Visiting Writers Reading Series. These lines from "Lighthead's Guide to the Galaxy" draw me in especially:

[...] Other times I fall in love with a word
like somberness. Or moonlight juicing naked branches.
All species have a notion of emptiness, and yet
the flowers don't quit opening. I am carrying the whimper
you can hear when the mouth is collapsed, the wisdom

Looking forward to this reading quite a bit...

Currently reading:: Zadie Smith, White Teeth; Rosmarie Waldrop, Driven to Abstraction

At long last I've arrived home in Ithaca, now somewhat recovered from days of lengthy perambulation at this year's AWP conference in Washington, D.C. I hope to report on conference ongoings in greater detail soon, but suffice it to say that I attended a number of excellent panels, dined fiendishly with old friends, and met with four or five of my poetic heroes.

//

As soon as I arrived in Washington, I walked alone to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I'm at a critical point right now in the writing of Immemorial. I needed to be there, body and granite.

Currently (re)reading:: J. R. Lennon, Pieces for the Left Hand; Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies; Elizabeth W. Joyce, "The Small Space of a Pause": Susan Howe's Poetry and the Spaces Between


I still remember Charles Bernstein’s inaugural question to the participants in his Textual Conditions seminar: what was your first textual experience? I am still delighted by the question’s implication that someone’s first experience with language might be a revelation on par with budding sexuality. Bernstein stresses by association the sensory pleasures of the text, the roll of it on the tongue, its sweet or bitter taste, its grit on the hand, or trill in the ear or eye.

I don’t remember how I responded to the question at the time, but when I was very young, my mother found me in the shower alone and singing with abandon, “Diarrhea, diarrhea, diarrhea.” When she asked me about my song, I replied, “Don’t you think it sounds wonderful? Diarrhea.” My reverence was evident, so she shrugged and left me to it. I can’t blame myself now for marveling at the sound of the word, in and of itself. The sound, the visuality, and the texture of a word are not ancillary to its meaning—rather, they are central determinants of linguistic sense, and as such, they must be lived through the body, and not merely entertained in thought.

The other of my earliest memories is not strictly textual. In our house there was an illustrated children’s dictionary with which I used to abscond for hours. Each time, I hid behind a desk or a chair and opened to the entry for “color,” fixating at length not on the word itself or its definition, but on the drawing of a child with a set of watercolor paints. I could taste the pigments, the deep reds and soft oranges, the pale glow of yellow and faint violet. I was so gluttonous, so jealous of the image, that I grew fearful of discovery and went to great lengths not to be seen pouring over the book like the absolute maniac I undoubtedly was, and that I assuredly continue to be.

Currently Reading:: Eudora Welty, Collected Stories


Over the last several months, Cecilia Vicuña and I have been intensely at work on the website for her new film, Kon Kon, which is now up and available at www.konkon.cl. I'm proud of our hard work. But even more importantly, every one who is able should see this film, or at least the trailer and other information available through the website. Kon Kon is really a remarkable film--one that straddles so many different dimensions of the visual and verbal arts, so many different languages, cultures, and perspectives--with absolute grace.

Currently Reading:: Srikanth Reddy, Facts for Visitors


A busy week for poetry, and for me. Spring has begun to sweep through the limbs of the trees here, with the barest of buds so palely green and new. What better time to head south, to Philadelphia, to spend a solid week with the poems of The Midnight, and with the poet, Susan Howe.

On Monday, Howe read from her work at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. I admit it freely: I was overwhelmed by the nostalgia of my own homecoming. I silently rejoiced at the wetness in the air, the sounds of the city and of my own footfall on Locust Walk.

The interior of the Writers House, for those of you who haven't been there, is old Philadelphia—warm and close, with all the energy of a place that is well-lived in and loved. As soon as I walked in, I made my way to the front room, where rows of wooden chairs stood in anticipation of the poet. I put down my bag and set aside my gloves and scarf. The windows to the west were cracked open, and a sweet, wet breeze eased its way in. As I stood there—I just stood and looked—I saw a familiar and well-loved face. After five years, Greg Djanikian looks exactly the same: the same kind, interested eyes, the same wild, fly-away eyebrows. How I used to muse over them during my first poetry workshops as an undergraduate!

Before long, people began filing in, and the rooms were filled to capacity. After introductions by Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis and student Cecilia Corrigan (with particularly wonderful reflections on The Midnight), Susan Howe opened with readings from "Secret History of the Dividing Line" and 'Melville's Marginalia." But at the heart of the reading were two prose segments from The Midnight: "Forest Lawn" and "Pandora." The first segment details the elder years of Howe's uncle, John Manning, her inheritance of his copy of The Master of Ballantrae, and some slant reflections on the interleaf contained in that book between the titlepage and frontispiece. "Pandora" is a long and remarkable passage connecting the manuscript practices of R.W. Emerson with those of her own family. It's one of the most important passages in the book, or so I think, and one of my favorites. I was so moved to hear it read. The reading ended with an excerpt from The Souls of the Labadie Tract, Howe's latest book, though her newest is slated to appear this spring. Like nearly all Writers House events, an online video Howe's reading is available for viewing on the Writers House website.

The next morning found me back in the city and at the Writers House again for a public question-and-answer session with the poet. Al Filreis served as a wonderful master of ceremonies, introducing Howe and posing a series of thoughtful questions before opening the interview to questions from the room (and, thanks to some spiffy technology, the world at large). A complete video of the interview is available at the Writers House website.

Howe's reading at Temple on Thursday night, as part of the Poets & Writers Series, had a different feel for me. The reading began with a selection of poems from a student reader, Laura Neuman, whose writing showed a keen wit and humor—slightly at odds with the poems to follow, but a pleasure to hear. I always like when people laugh at a poetry reading—we seem to forget that laughter is indeed a reaction available to us, even in such a solemn and official Affair of Cultural and Artistic Value. Even so, the audience was large, but a little more subdued, and the room felt unmarked and corporate. Rachel Blau DuPlessis offered a lovely introduction, and then Howe began, this time with the title poem from her to-be published collection, That This, forthcoming from New Directions:

That this book is a history of
a shadow that is a shadow of

me mystically one in another
Another another to subserve
     __

Day is a type when visible
objects change then put

on form but the anti-type
That thing not shadowed
     __

Is light anything like this
stray pencil commonplace

copy as to one aberrant
onward-gliding mystery

Brilliant title. What I find here is the beginning of an urgent questioning of writing, its textual condition, against the actuality, the apparent reality of life, the world, and being. The question is—pardon the pun—can the mere shadow of "pencil" hold a candle to the world, "that thing not shadowed"?

Following this poem, Howe returned to a passage from The Europe of Trusts, and then on, again, to The Midnight (this time to a prose segment from "Scare Quotes II" called "Concrete Central"). "Concrete Central" tells the story of one night in Buffalo, when Howe and a number of colleagues took a visiting French poet to descend into the obscurity of the now abandoned industrial district of the city. I could see Charles Bernstein with a wide smile on his face in the front row. Buffalo has become mythic in its own right.

The final poem of the night was drawn from the last section of The Midnight, "Kidnapped," which features descriptions of a Noh play, juxtaposed with descriptions of Howe's mother and the poet's own (and very short-lived) "theatrical" career. The poet's voice was so faint as she read and remembered, and so moving.

*****

There's really too much to say for a week like this last. I have been awed and overcome. And now, it turns out, there is still more to come: Thursday will bring Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez to the Africana Studies & Research Center here at Cornell, and on Friday, I look forward to a reading by Brenda Shaughnessy. As though this weren't enough, Edouard Glissant will be on campus next Thursday for a screening and discussion of the film One World in Relation.

On my own small, personal front, I have been every so slowly recrafting the current chapter of my dissertation, especially now in light of Howe's visit to Philadelphia. When I arrived home in Ithaca—home from my home in Philadelphia—I found a house out of order and a stack of mail. The routine number of rejections from a rough job market, but also some glimmers of hope: a letter informing me that my book was selected as a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry, and David waiting for me out by the Inlet. It is all too much, and I am so grateful.

Currently reading:: "Out of Body" (Jennifer Egan)


Just a quick note to all those interested: in recent weeks, the blog Delirious Hem has been collecting remembrances in honor of the late Lucille Clifton. Contributions are posted or forthcoming from Naomi Shihab Nye, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Evie Shockley, Alicia Ostriker, GE Patterson, Sharon Mesmer, Mairéad Byrne, Mendi Lewis Obadike, Theresa Edwards, Cara Benson, Tara Betts, Kazim Ali, Deborah Poe, Imani Tolliver, and Shanna Compton (who so generously organized). Go check it out!

Currently reading:: The Midnight, Maximum Gaga


This weekend I’m trying to wrap up the final loose ends on the second chapter of my dissertation—a piece on Susan Howe’s The Midnight. When I first discovered it in 2005, The Midnight struck me, and still strikes me now, as a remarkable book. It has all the usual bells and whistles that I like (which is to say that it’s difficult to categorize in terms of genre, and is by turns both abstract and lyric). It appeals so broadly to the sense—an intense pleasure to read. I’m glad for the chance to have my say on it finally.

In recent months, I’ve been pushing myself without rest on applications for fellowships, postdocs, and assistant professorships, and on submissions of poems, essays, and book manuscripts for publication. I’ve been in Ithaca and at Cornell for so long; it is too strange to think of anywhere else. One of the books I’m working on now, May Days, is in part a tribute to Ithaca, and the countless anonymous others who have walked its streets and fields before me. The major strategy in many of the poems is ekphrasis, drawn from local, vintage photographs. This one is titled “C96”:

Shoulders hitched, her frame

hangs in the garden on a mass

of verdigris foliage; her breasts drape

with her dress and jacket (black

with white piping at collar and cuff)—

toes rounded in black patent maryjanes

lift off from the lawn, graze the blades.

The contours of her body grow indecipherable,

dark torso giving way to darkening

leaves, as a figure in a Vuillard

It is her head, three-quarter bust of marbled

white skin and hair pinned in a knot, that emerges,

only the eyes dusked over, trained

on an unknowable other, an otherwise

or elsewhere beyond

the frame.



I originally began these poems as a way of getting to know Ithaca, and already, they have become a form of farewell.


Note to self: read Stevens again.