Sunday, September 30, 2012

Voces paginarum/ Shouting words



Voces paginarum*

The words speak

to me
they leap

up and dance and
then

so do I.

SIT DOWN!
the teacher says.
READ SILENTLY:
DON’T MOVE YOUR LIPS.
READ TO YOURSELF.

(Shouting words,
but

Not for us

a loud clamour and
exclamation
no declamation
no exultation
nor excessive
incantation vocal
ornamentation
no

voices in the head
no

voices not your
own may pass
your
            lips

no


)

KEEP your voice DOWN
(a lady does not shout nor
a gentleman)

(then why when I look
do I see so many
shouting?)

We are not like them those others
who tooth and taste their words
or yours

KEEP your WORDS in your mouth.
KEEP them scrubbed.
Don’t meddle or mix
promiscuously
with other idioms
(lenguas, langues, zungas)
KEEP YOUR TONGUE IN
YOUR MOUTH
lest those others
(les infectes)       you

Stray not with
strange sounds and scents or
savours

Neither dance nor sing nor
poietes be;
don’t
heap up your words:
cinoti,
(I dare you
read that word
quickly
aloud)
in Sanskrit or
any other spraak of
taal


(LEAVE SOME SPACE
lest

MARK MY WORDS
YOU)

not without a little red*

can
never get
clene
again.




Notes on words
*voces paginarum (Latin: voices of the page, or reading (calling out) as it was practiced, for example, in the early middle ages in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  For Augustine, for example, a text was meant to be followed with the lips, as much as with the eyes. In reading (from Middle English reden and Old High German rattan, to advise), one literally delivers or gives voice to and performs the assemblies noted in the text.  Or as Tim Ingold puts it, “the poetic text is…at once script and score” (Lines, 12).  But today, in school, we are taught that reading thus is bad form; unless we are performing or reading aloud to others to whisper or mouth the words we sight when we “read to ourselves” isn’t done.  The contemporary rule is clear: “read with your eyes, not your mouth”; shut up those words inside yourself, don’t mix insides and outsides; don’t get confused.

Lengua (Spanish: tongue, language)
Langue (French: tongue, language)
Zumba (Old High German: tongue)

Les infectes (French: infected persons; detritus; those who don’t count)

Cinoti from the Sanskrit, meaning to heap up; thought to be related to the Greek verb. poiein, to make, produce or create (poetry and other works of art). 

Poietes (Ancient Greek: poet, maker, creator)

spraak of taal (Dutch: speech (tongue) or tongue (speech))

* “not without a little red” Artaud, writing of the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, argues that poiesis does not happen without “a little red blood.”  Here he is making a playful—poetic—link between the expediture of a life lived for poetry and a blood price—poine in ancient Greek, poena in Latin.  The difference one letter makes is at once nothing and everything.

Clene is middle English for what is free from dirt or pollution (but the word clean, in English ultimately comes to us from the Old High German kleini, delicate, dainty, which is thought to be derived from the Greek glainoi, ornaments. Clean is thus never quite properly purged of elements not itself, never unadulterated; never pure.)

Notes on photographs
I took these photos of intertidal creatures in August 2012 on Hakai Beach, on the west coast of Calvert Island, in Central British Columbia.  
The purple and orange starfish are variants of the species Piaster ochraceus, a keystone species on the northwest coast of the Americas.  Predators of common mussels, they prevent overgrowth in mussel beds, and thus help to maintain species diversification on northwest Pacific shores.  
The green tubes are a species of anenome known as aggregating or clonal anenomes.  These creatures may reproduce sexually (two gametes fuse in the water and then settle on a rock) or asexually, by fission, which permits the anenomes to form vast clonal carpets consisting of a single genetic variant that lives as a colony, and is hostile to other colonies. The green colour of these anenomes is supplied by symbiotic algae that live within the cells of the host animal, and contribute to the primary productivity of the intertidal zone. The lessons of such visually noisy interdependence shouldn't be lost on us.


Friday, September 21, 2012

How to See in the Dark




Exercise: to see in the dark

Name some of the tongues that lick your ear
what the glass would see if it had eyes


where the flame leaps when it gutters
how the shadow lingers, draws a line


Note
See what the glass would see if it had eyes is a poetic imperative, a mode of thinking posed by George Oppen, who was a 20th century American poet, anti-militarist, sailor and, for a time, a cabinet-maker and expatriate in Mexico, where, as a one-time member of the Communist Party, he'd fled from persecution from the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. He returned to the US and poetry later in his life; he maintained that writing poetry was a particularly acute form of phenomenological investigation.
A biography and links to some essays and poems may be found here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-oppen#poet

See too, Forrest Gander, "Finding the Phenomenal Oppen."
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20761
and Peter Nicholls, "George Oppen in Exile: Mexico and Maritain." http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=6&fid=317818&jid=&volumeId=&issueId=01&aid=291582