I will make no sound like
Ruin--
Like ruin I will make
No sound in, above, beside, like--
This is (Greek) for in
No namable preposition;
Combine them (Latin? German?)
I do not know what they mean:
Night jasmine
State room
Star connection
Jungle gym
Night jasmine
Air conditioner
Honey mouse
Visualization
Floor sample
My voice is a crepuscule unfinished--
Things said only to be seen,
Deaf night coming
nothing formed,
nothing important.
These things, something (like)
a full table, the feathers without the bird,
soundless
content.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Palinode 5
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3 comments:
I love the rhythm of the list. My mind keeps wanting to make a connection between the lines - night jasmine in a state room? A visualization of a floor sample? - but it doesn't quite bridge the gap. It makes the reader reach constantly for something placed just a little too high: extremely tantalizing. I hate the word tantalizing, but that's the best I can think of.
I supplied some advice on spacing in your last poem, but by some accident I posted anonymously. I hope it helped.
I was wondering about your use of the word 'ruin'. And the sound of 'ruin'. Are you thinking of the sound of the word itself, the explosive noise of something in the midst of being ruined (if it's a building, I guess), or the silence that follows? I can't think of ruin in a poem without going to those overblown romantic images you find in Shelly. I also thought of Shelly because you mention crepuscule; his favourite time of day was the mirror opposite of twilight, the period that just precedes dawn.
I think he was interested in the way that things take on form as the sun rises, and that uncertain state when objects are part shadow, and the imagination is free to reshape them. Your piece seems to capture that process, but in reverse, all uncertainty, as forms pass out of imagination into darkness.
Okay, I'm going to go away and stop channeling the ghost of a first-year English major.
Glad to have you identified here, Palinode. Your blog comes up in all my web searches with the word 'palinode,' and it's good to be introduced.
I see on your blog that your first incounter with the word itself comes from Matei Calinescu's "Five Faces of Modernity." I have not read it, but will add it to the list.
For me, this blog was sparked by a silly word-of-the-day email themed around poetry. I'd been meaning to have a blog for my writing for some time and poof--palinode it is.
It's exciting and enabling in a way I didn't quite expect, but that's it's own conversation, apart from this one.
Now to the word 'ruin.' I cannot tell you WHY, I suppose because I don't know why I write much of anything. But still, there is purpose in it. I have been using Alice Notley's new collected poems and sections of the New York Times to create a loose word bank--also, the Crepuscule with Nellie was the Thelonius Monk that was playing at the time. Does it make sense to explain these things? I'm not sure. Still, 'ruin' seems to have less literal meaning (read, less spelled out, less countable), and more pathos--which makes it a word similar to something sound based--plop--it is less content, more form...or is it the other way around? Virginia Woolf made me confused about the content/form divide.
As for whether I'm thinking of 'ruin' in terms of sound or silence, I suppose both. Or the movement between them--yes, that is it, ruin suggests movement, that is why it is there. At least, that is how i remember it.
I appreciate your comments. Can I link you to my blog?
hailey
Link away, by all means. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I particularly like the notion that you have source materials for your work.
Okay, that sounded ridiculous. Who doesn't have source materials? But you know what I mean.
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