Fenollosa

Fenollosa is afraid of dead language seeping into poetics, static language that is no longer capable of indicating process and wholly concerned with expressing contained and complete states of unbecoming: “My subject is poetry, not language, yet the roots of poetry are in language.” He continues to assert by comparing Gray’s line with a Chinese line that poetry is the process contained in a “necessary order” which is permitted by “a regular and flexible sequence, as plastic as thought itself,” of words. This sequence allows “a reproduction of [the transferences of force from agent to object which constitute natural phenomena, occupy time] in the imagination requires the same temporal order.”

Fenollosa recognizes that a transcription of the experience of a process determined spatially and temporally is often at odds with traditional/grammaticized descriptions that follow their own rules divorced from the logic (or lack there of) of material reality and experience. The notion is that the poetical does not appropriate structures that were created for a different and equally individual experiences: content and form are inextricably intertwined in unique and “necessary” combinations. By following this order, Fenollosa expresses belief that the original work done, mimed in the poem, is somehow maintained, that the audience coming across the poetical will experience that same effort of production that stimulates rather than an experience of the static which dulls: “the purpose of poetical translation is the poetry, not the verbal definitions in dictionaries”; “In reading [the poetical] we do not seem to be juggling mental counters, but to be watching things work out their own fate.”

The poetical nature of the Chinese character that is so intriguing to Fenollosa is encompassed in the character’s tendency to express experience through “the meeting points of actions,.. The eye sees noun and verb as one: things in motion, motion in things.” In the examples he presents, the definition is clearly dependent on the particular definitions syntactical functions in/on reality.

This understanding of the poetical, especially the description Fenollosa gives of different understandings of “to shine” on pg 372 espousing the Chinese “sun-and-moon” reminded me of Shelley’s description of the poetical as the apprehension of similitude. When Fenollosa asserts that “languages to-say are thin and cold because we thing less and less into them. We are forced, for the sake of quickness and sharpness, to file down each word to its narrowest edge of meaning” I get the feeling that he is criticizing a trend to pin words down into generalities, dictionary definitions of states, rather than allowing them their “plastic” possibility and widest “edge of meaning” which might be narrowed to the specific context, “order of causation,” by syntax, by the meeting without denying the shadows and wind, which unseen chill the air.

I feel like my highschool english teacher who told us successfull essays came from a dance between the general and the specific. Time to stop.

well it is after now,
the procession to white
all run out, spilled
on concrete at these feet.

hands at the neck
and throttling lilac.
androdgeonous
lain out porceline
in the grass, after touch
finding fingers too rough
or leeching capacity’s pallet,
whored out, it was a struggle
for the window.
tossed out for breath
coming to the concrete,
used petal simulacrum
cut by the window
sieve after touch,
after chaste waif contrast
‘gainst the grass,
finding blades and fallen
sky, in whole reflections
spilt milk’s broken mirror.

but it was after now,
the refuse gone, well
ground in.

boxing bruises like violets in film
well indigo and salt storms
all the mars

and they don’t like us speaking
of that which doesn’t bind us up
of the ways unravelling our lips

flesh bit in exposure
rapture come

the dirt that comes of the turning under

for mother
gumption drawn

some thoughts, redundancies.

not so much blue bonnets
and the grass kept
recognized for pleasure

but the dandelions
coming up against
and despite

and not so much the blue
bonnets or the dandelions

but maybe the stepping
cross acres
through them and past

well still standing
and through all that pollen

it is something
to still be standing

and in the flesh of it






by no light given,
i can force you to
stumble, spend more time
and leave with skinned
knees.

when you go home, it
will be to lover's questions
and you will have to
reckon with me again.

me because those words
are not water, rather
choice.

when you are through with
me, in the window
box, there is time
for you, and he,
and she.




And a word on Hallmark and cliche. If those, sentiments, are the words i need, the very words, i will take them back. I am jealous of people who can speak and use these words without the guilt.

Olson's Space

Yes, Olson is yelling. But it is about the "PROJECTIVE", the "projectile", the "percussive", and the "prospective." He does often say nothing. And when he does say something, he sure goes about it funny. For all his talk of breath and his own hot air, I do still have to appreciate the material points he makes and the discussion he's opened up. I mean, we liked reading O'Hara didn't we.

We all learned from Lear, nothing does yield something. Despite this knowledge, in the day it's often easier to ignore the productive qualities of "empty" space. Olson voices a defense of space, even the "empty," the negative. It seemed to me, he almost feels that by respecting the space of the marked and the "empty" he might not create a transcendent order, but at least create some physical order of meaning that is other than him, larger than him, and with the capability to impinge on him. These poets speaking of channelling words, hoping they are speaking another voice that is greater, they seem to be after this dictate. For all his yelling, he seems to be after humility, even if it must be forced.

I really like the idea that physical space can provide this dictate, the idea that syntax and poems might replicate large forms that we might fling ourselves against and push off of, that space might create an order I can follow. It's an idea I'd like to work with in my chapbook, the notion of bearing witness in a poem. Be it form's witness of content, the poem's witness of the author, the poem's witness of the reader, or the reader's witness of the author.

No Olson Yet

I was house sitting in the hills off the grid.  I dont really want to come back to Ashland yet, or Olson.  Instead:


schizophrenic witness

yellow breasted 
bird Werther
Goetha 
             and you say
of the bird 
flown off the barbed wire

houses without halls
but the walking places
and in theirs

chair architect
adirondack chairs
no
          ajdrionjdrack 

i found something
Ginsberg's sunflower
to put it in my
                  book

grass chimes
how far are you
                     glowing

wind win
       will the leopard cat
wind crossed
here to the clock 
                              fall

wind chiming wire

raw almonds

isn't 
it 
delight
     and full

watch over this
it's empty

i am

and then order
if we could hear 
the cloud massed
memory

mushroom fellow feeling
          the horses are
          having none of it

hmm fallow
follow

watching it
our conversation grow

down the window line

and half is
translating my own script
                                   sands

Semi Trucks

and bison
transport
sheep or
maybe it
was only
wool

the sheep
still run even
if we've made
the pastures
hum mud

the blight