The aesthetic stridency of modernism was frequently accompanied by strong political stances, often with disastrous results. Among the innovative writers who managed to navigate the twentieth century without becoming entangled in its worst excesses was Francophone Egyptian poet Edmond Jabès (1912–1991). Did Jabès’s attitude toward language offer some degree of immunity from totalitarian attitudes?
The aesthetic stridency of modernism was frequently accompanied by strong political stances, often with disastrous results. Among the innovative writers who managed to navigate the twentieth century without becoming entangled in its worst excesses was Francophone Egyptian poet Edmond Jabès (1912–1991). Did Jabès’s attitude toward language offer some degree of immunity from totalitarian attitudes?
I like sweeping. Ironing clothes. Tasks that mainly utilize repetitive motions, like digging or sawing with hand tools. Tasks that make my body present in their repetitions. Then, little by little, like drops of water, waterless and soundless, recollections appear one by one, to join in the celebration of the event of sweeping that I’m currently performing. The tools I use don’t represent (are not a representation of) my body or vice versa.
Translator’s note: Italicized words in “Strolling around in language” appear as italicized, English-language words in the original.
Bernadette Mayer visiting the Kelly Writers House on March 26, 2018, for a Fellows reading. Photo by Kelly Writers House staff.
In the reflections that follow, I refer to media-archaeological reassessments of psychoanalytic theory as a way of opening American poet Bernadette Mayer’s Studying Hunger Journals (1972–1975)to new readings. If, as argued by the likes of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Kittler, among others, psychoanalytic models of the human mind, from the “psychic apparatus” of Sigmund Freud to the schema of Jacques Lacan, are in fact underwritten by the media-technical conditions of their respective historical eras, then how might this insight shift perspectives on Mayer’s book, a project undertaken not only as an aid to psychoanalysis, but also at the dawn of the so-called Information Age?
Jacques (Lacan) has wise words 4 me, it’s 2 good to B true, you’re 2 good to B’dette. —Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger Journals[1]
Saying it all is literally impossible. — Jacques Lacan, Television[2]
Yo busco nuestra gente en las luces brillosas de un Google Search. Encuentro luminaries like Julia Álvarez, Isabel Allende, y Esmeralda Santiago. Más chingonxs surface on the screen: García Márquez, Neruda. But as I keep scrolling, it dawns on me that almost all are either fiction authors or from the Latin American continent. Their works are written in a language most of us learned orally from our parents, that we stumbled through in parties and visiting relatives.
Ni de aquí, ni de allá: The US Latinx poet as overlooked
Photo of Seidman courtesy of Spuyten Duyvil/Dispatches Editions.
In old age, many a poet ought to think twice before putting that last book together for public consumption. Easy enough to say — often the late work, when the poet had once published truly compelling, arguably great poetry, disappoints. I was in conversation with an elderly poet recently, someone who’s now in the eighth decade of life (as am I). We found we were harboring the same fear — we didn’t want to be repeating ourselves. We pictured rereading our late work and not seeing enough in it to warrant sharing it with the public.
In old age, many a poet ought to think twice before putting that last book together for public consumption. Easy enough to say — often the late work, when the poet had once published truly compelling, arguably great poetry, disappoints. I was in conversation with an elderly poet recently, someone who’s now in the eighth decade of life (as am I). We found we were harboring the same fear — we didn’t want to be repeating ourselves. We pictured rereading our late work and not seeing enough in it to warrant sharing it with the public.
