…the lyric has limitations. I’ve found myself impatient with the lyric form. And that’s the reason I changed my style, a rebellion against the traditional, contemporary, lyric form of, say, William Carlos Williams. I had had it that way. I found my language was responding to the form rather than to my sensibilities. I was getting a little too self-conscious about it. So I decided: Cut loose and give emphasis to the imagination rather than to the line. By “imagination” I mean also the intelligence within the imagination, giving the intelligence its opportunity to explore the imagination as far as it will go. Of course it has a form, but it’s a form that constantly renews itself because the intelligence is restless. Emotions tend to repeat themselves over and over again, whereas the intelligence is constantly renewing itself, recreating itself. Therefore, I feel in the prose poems the emphasis is on the intelligence with an undercurrent of emotion. In the lyric form the emphasis was on the emotion and the intellect was the undercurrent. I’m also following Pound’s rule, that poetry should be as good as good prose. That it’s a vernacular, colloquial thing. And vernacular, the colloquial, doesn’t sing. It talks. If you want to sing, then you write an elevated line, an elevated language. Occasionally, I’ll do that. There are moments. But, on the whole, the contemporary tradition is talking. And if that’s the case, then why not come out and use the prose line?
— David Ignatow, The Art of Poetry No. 23, interviewed by Gerard Malanga
Today I was resolute. I was following Baba Yaga’s advice: (see below) and not choosing between the different callings but listening for which would burn the rest up. And then I read César Vallejo (below), who led me to David Ignatow (above and below).
I began again to doubt the direction I’d given myself in the morning. And so, as if the imagination is a democracy, I’ve decided to put it to the vote. On the evidence you have here, should I:
a) write more of those pieces (for example, here) that in extremity (for example, here) come close to poetry?
b) continue with the letters that started here, the first part reaching its completion one year less one month ago at number 68? (This is what I resolved to do this morning; the second part, about writing, is unfinished business.)
c) write that book proposal for a booklength study drawing out the implications of the ideas developed during the series of lectures about moving image: animation and schematism (lectures 1-5); modulation and screentime (lectures 6-10)?
d) develop the same material as in c) for publication as separate articles in peer-reviewed academic journals?
e) give up writing altogether? It’s flattery to call it writing anyway. What I do is scribblage. After all, when “everybody’s a fucking writer,” there’s already too many.
f) all of the above?
g) Other: suggestions welcome!
How to vote: please use the contact form.
IN A DREAM
a vacuum cleaner held over my head is drawing out my brains through my nostrils, blood running in a column straight up into the vacuum bag whining like a jet engine. I feel my intestines too beginning to move up through my gullet and soon they will be pouring through my nose. My bones quiver in their sockets, my knees are shaking. I sit down, emptiness is becoming me. I can no longer think, I just listen to the sucking vacuum. Here goes my heart, straight up into my throat and choking me, pumping in my throat. It is filling my mouth, it is forcing its way between my teeth. The vacuum roars and my mouth flies open and my heart is gone. How is it I keep writing? The vacuum roars and whines alternately, my ears stick to my head but now my head is rising, a wind is whistling through my skull. My head is being lifted from my neck. Take me altogether, great vacuum: my arms, legs, sex, shoes, clothes, my pen gripped in my whitened hand drained of blood. Take me altogether and I triumph, whirled in the vacuum bag with my satellite heart, brain, bones and blood.
…
— David Ignatow, May 1973
…
Stumble Between Two Stars | Traspié entre dos estrellas
There are people so wretched, they don’t even have a body, their hair quantitative, their wise grief, low, in inches; their manner, high; don’t look for me, the oblivion molar, they seem to come out of the air, to add up sighs mentally, to hear bright smacks on their palates! They leave their skin, scratching the sarcophagus in which they are born and climb through their death hour after hour and fall, the length of their frozen alphabet, to the ground. Pity for so much! pity for so little! pity for them! Pity in my room, hearing them with glasses on! Pity in my thorax, when they are buying suits! Pity for my white filth, in their combined scum! Beloved be the sanchez ears, beloved the people who sit down, beloved the unknown man and his wife, my fellow man, with sleeves, neck and eyes! Beloved be the one with bedbugs, the one who wears a torn shoe in the rain, the one who wakes the corpse of a bread with two tapers, the one who catches a finger in the door, the one who has no birthdays, the one who lost his shadow in a fire, the animal, the one who looks like a parrot, the one who looks like a man, the rich poor man, the extremely miserable man, the poorest poor man! Beloved be the one who is hungry or thirsty, but has no hunger with which to satiate all his hungers! Beloved be the one who works by the day, by the month, by the hour, the one who sweats out of pain or out of shame, the person who goes, at the order of his hands, to the movies. the one who pays with what he does not have, the one who sleeps on his back, the one who no longer remembers his childhood, beloved be the bald man without hat, the thief without roses, the one who wears a watch and has seen God, the one who has honour and does not die! Beloved be the child who falls and still cries and the man who has fallen and no longer cries! Pity for so much! pity for so little! pity for them! _____________ ¡Hay gentes tan desgraciadas, que ni siquiera tienen cuerpo; cuantitativo el pelo, baja, en pulgadas, la genial pesadumbre; el modo, arriba; no me busques, la muela del olvido, parecen salir del aire, sumar suspiros mentalmente, oír claros azotes en sus paladares! Vanse de su piel, rascándose el sarcófago en que nacen y suben por su muerte de hora en hora y caen, a lo largo de su alfabeto gélido, hasta el suelo. ¡Ay de tánto! ¡ay de tan poco! ¡ay de ellas! ¡Ay en mi cuarto, oyéndolas con lentes! ¡Ay en mi tórax, cuando compran trajes! ¡Ay de mi mugre blanca, en su hez mancomunada! ¡Amadas sean las orejas sánchez, amadas las personas que se sientan, amado el desconocido y su señora, el prójimo con mangas, cuello y ojos! ¡Amado sea aquel que tiene chinches, el que lleva zapato roto bajo la lluvia, el que vela el cadáver de un pan con dos cerillas, el que se coge un dedo en una puerta, el que no tiene cumpleaños, el que perdió su sombra en un incendio, el animal, el que parece un loro, el que parece un hombre, el pobre rico, el puro miserable, el pobre pobre! ¡Amado sea el que tiene hambre o sed, pero no tiene hambre con qué saciar toda su sed, ni sed con qué saciar todas sus hambres! ¡Amado sea el que trabaja al día, al mes, a la hora, el que suda de pena o de vergüenza, aquel que va, ñpor orden de sus manos, al cinema, el que paga con lo que le falta, el que duerme de espaldas, el que ya no recuerda su niñez; amado sea el calvo sin sombrero, el justo sin espinas, el ladrón sin rosas, el que lleva reloj y ha visto a Dios, el que tiene un honor y no fallece! ¡Amado sea el niño, que cae y aún llora y el hombre que ha caído y ya no llora! ¡Ay de tánto! ¡Ay de tan poco! ¡Ay de ellos!
…
— César Vallejo, October 1937 (translated by Clayton Eshleman)
…
WHERE SHOULD I PUT MY ENERGY?
Dear Baba Yaga,
I am blessed with many interests, talents, and
desires. They pull me in different directions,
thereby ensuring that movement is forever lateral
and never forward. How do I determine which of
these fires to stoke?
BABA YAGA:
Whether or not you may say so, there is always ;
one fire louder than the others, more consuming. ,
Who knows why–maybe the twigs it devours are aged
best, maybe the wind is stillest around it. It is
not for you to think on. Let this fire get too ;
big. Let it threaten the forest. Let it eat the
other fires around it, until they are living in it.
You will see ; abandonment of yr smaller flames is
not needed to grow yr wildest, most dangerous one.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
— Taisia Kitaiskaia, ASK BABA YAGA: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles, (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017), 139.
