When the linearity of reading is broken, when we are startled awake, when the smooth horizontal travel of eye/mind is interrupted, when the connection is broken, there is a kind of orchestral meaning that comes about in the leap. A vertical dimension vibrating with the energy field between the two lines (phrases, sentences), and perhaps the energy of what would have followed/preceded, but is lacking. A meaning that both illuminates the separation and connects across it. A meaning that goes beyond the two elements that border it, as metaphor goes beyond the sum of tenor and vehicle.
Maybe the power of the leap is simply that it cuts out explanation, an essential act of poetry…
Impossible topography of writing. The infinite is both the center we try to encircle with a multitude of words, things, experiences, and is also outside, surrounding us. It is both condition and aim. But where is the infinite unless in our consciousness of possibility?
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2 comments:
Glad you posted these.
I love Rosmarie Waldrop's praxis, her use of juncture and junction, her lost trains.
I wonder how much Berssenbrugge's The Heat Bird (which Burning Deck published) was revelatory for her, because after the publication of that book Waldrop's work is suddenly freed up, finds a way to make philosophical speculation lyric, finds its way towards a stiletto pivot in its grammar.
I hear lines in her landmark The Reproduction of Profiles which seem to be responding to lines in The Heat Bird, and formalistically the works are quite similar.
One difference is that Reproduction's central ghost, genius loci, is Wittgenstein, and his cathartic form of philosophy is invoked passim to embody, disembody, affirm or deny "problems." Berssenbrugge had talked about the influence of Wittgenstein on her work in this period, and it is readable in the poems, but not as close to the surface.
These quotes (esp. the first) brought to mind some Douglas Messerli poems. Here is a poem from Maxims from My Mother's Milk:
In a tale it's impossible that anything's ahead.
________________________________
WAITING FOR THE BALLAD TO BEGIN
Halt sings into lapse
to further the after
shock, laughter
can't erupt until safe has opened
up the inheritance
of what has been, already
slipped upon the finger
of the intended.
But here is the first poem that came into my head as speaking to the first Waldrop quote...
Meaning meets at the weave of word and frays.
_____________________________
ALLER ET RETOUR
Write often the bat insists. It doubles its lips and slips into something said. It can never be
natural to wing a sentence when a word might work for instance, blink and the ball spins into the glove.
For "I wonder how much" read "I wonder to what degree..." Sorry. I'm asleep.
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