John Ashbery, “Resisting Arrest”
A year and a day later the wolf stopped
by as planned. He made conversation
about this and that but you could tell
from the way he favored his gums that all was
not well. Later the driving pool shifted.
I had no idea that you were planning
to stage an operation but it’s all right
this time. Then I read your account and
was dully impressed, right at the edge
of the sea where the land asserts itself.
He told a cheering crowd the infighting was over
at least for that day. They had more affairs
to remember than just that one time. Why,
he went over it and that was that. Plethoras
to be announced, etc. You’re telling me.
Warming to his theme he brought us in
as though we belonged. Ma and I
decided to wait it out but here again
he was unyielding, hoping to lure a big-name
retailer on the strength of our fevered gain
over the past months of quasi-activity,
dark with relative distress. That proved uncertain
and doesn’t smash it all. They liked what they heard.
No one wanted to shoulder responsibility
for the times and to slog off to uncertain
destinies in fiberglass pilot houses.
I had no idea that you meant it to be early.
The fatal tarnish of the everyday
groans and incites mobs to splendor
and wrongdoing as though a tissue of sleeping cars
were to upbraid dawn. They asked me to read
off a result or temper a calamity like I was involved
in the unfolding reaction with everything
else, they wanted me to reside at 478 Pavilion Avenue
and the story would resolve itself munificently.
Not in my receding horsepital. I paid
my dues to the city and look
how out on a limb I am and you could guess
this too, you could plan more strategically.
That’s all for now kid. Drop me a line sometime,
seriously.
(Source: newyorker.com)
This is “Wait,” a paratactic mediation on war by the late Adrienne Rich. Rich wrote the poem in anticipation of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Consider alongside George Oppen’s “Myth of the Blaze.”
"so many of the best days seem minor forms of nearness
that easily fall among the dropseed: a rind, a left-behind"
D.A. Powell, “no picnic,” Chronic
Derrida
While I was out
Derrida put a snake in my gym bag.
It stirred when I lifted it;
I saw its long tubules. Perhaps
it was Biblical? But Derrida
laughed at this: “Nice.”
The snake stretched itself, white-scaled
and muscular, probably blind.
“I am seeped full of plenty,”
he smiled as he told me. “Oh
I used to be simple but those times
are goners, I swallowed them whole
mushed their entrails
to brine silky brine, it’s why
I’m so milky!” He said this
with glee, like a traffic light
out in the wind. I was tongueless,
he stole it, and Derrida
laughed at me newly: “Ha! Ha!
Oh, that’s nice.” I was starting to think
he lives far out, too far; his face
may be flirty but his words
they don’t shine. “Erase me,”
the snake said, “erase me, untrace me,
yes I am your concubine
brainy bright fodder.” That snake,
he untwirled and was gone
in himself, meanwhile Derrida
flattened, collapsed into screens.
Now I show my friends pictures
and say, “He’s a silver fox, isn’t he?”
"
What do we flee when we retreat into metaphor? What scares us about the ‘primary noon’ of our existence? Milan Kundera claims that ‘kitsch moves us to tears for ourselves, for the banality of what we think and feel,’ and I think our fixation with complication and opaque figuration has something to do with an abiding sense of this banality, creeping constantly around the edges of our lives and language. Perhaps if we say it straight, we suspect, if we express our sentiments too excessively or too directly, we’ll find that we are nothing but banal.
There are several fears inscribed in this: The fear of interior simplicity, the fear of melodramatic actuality, and—perhaps most deeply felt—the fear of commonality: That our feelings will resemble everyone else’s. This is why we want to dismiss sentimentality, to assert that our emotional responses are more sophisticated than ‘other people’s,’ that our aesthetic sensibilities testify—iceberg style—to an entire landscape of interior depth.
"Leslie Jamison, “In Defense of Saccharin(e)”
(Source: webdelsol.com)
"Alcanzó a cerrar otra vez los pápados, aunque ahora sabía que no iba a despertarse, que estaba despierto, que el sueño maravilloso había sido el otro, absurdo como todos los sueños; un sueño en el que había andado por extrañas avenidas de una ciudad asombrosa, con luces verdes y rojas que ardían sin llama ni humo…"
Julio Cortázar, La noche boca arriba
"The peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not yet able to write a love letter."
Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
"Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin."
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”
