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.