Commentaries - April 2017

Ariel Resnikoff: New translingual poems from 'Lick and Spit' with a note by the author

[Author’s note: The poems in this suite (cor)respond to a group of ancient Akkadian exorcism incantations, several of which I first discovered in the form of Jewish-Aramaic adaptations in the Babylonian Talmud. I read the radical hybridity of the Talmudic discourse here as both precedent for, & invitation to, my own contemporary translinguistic praxis, one which engages writing as a mode of perpetual displacement — translating languages in wide spirals outward, to the farthest edges of the sonic/semantic divide — while gleaning materials for poetics from even the most minute residues left behind. I’ve begun, in these terms, to compose & transpose from homophonic transliterations, as well as Aramaic & Hebrew translations, of the Akkadian spells, stitching together poems from the translingual dregs between the gaps of the adapted texts.

The phrase “Lick and Spit” I take from the Ashkenazi-Jewish folkloric expectoration ritual of licking a person’s forehead three times, spitting between each lick — a physical gesture I associate most closely with the act of sucking venom from a snake bite — in order to excise the “evil eye” from the body. I continue here then my ongoing inquiry into the tense & intensive micro-socio-poetic ritual relations between translingual utterance, psycholinguistic stigma, & the preliterary Jewish curse. —AR] 

Princeton acquires Granary Books Language Poetry collection

Princeton University Library has aquired Granary Books’s collection related to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E:

“The Language Writing Collection comprises approximately 1,200 items including books, pamphlets, magazines, broadsides, manuscripts, letters, and ephemera, presenting a rigorous and comprehensive survey of the most influential American avant-­garde literary development of the last 50 years. The Collection chronicles the group’s inception in the seventies, maturation in the eighties, and influence through the nineties and beyond, and provides the basis for in-­depth scholarly research in recent experimental poetry and poetics; literary production and community; and independent small press publishing. The work of nearly 50 poets central to Language Writing has been collected along with more than 50 runs of little magazines associated with the movement.” — from the Granary Books Prospectus.

The lives of the experimental poets 10-12

Stewart, Farrell, Breeze

10. Amanda Stewart 

          unsaidfieldsresonancesnotationsdistinctionsgapsabsencesdisjunctionsbetween

                                                                                         (“vice versa” I/T, p. 23)

In the voiceover to the 1991 film Eclipse of the Man-Made Sun, a film about the “language of the user” of atomic bombs and nuclear energy in times of proliferation, directed by Amanda Stewart and Nicolette Freeman, Stewart exposes the language of nuclear weapons. This is a film attentive to cinematic language and its particular modes of invention. Letters crop up red across the screen with the acronyms (Permissive Action Link [PAL]). So the language tells us, they’re your “pal”: the weapons are humanized, the victims, dehumanized. Later on, the documentary enters into increasing levels of abstraction — some might see a resemblance to the “Star Gate” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey — but it’s that abstraction that becomes the critique. The saturated color breaks away from the cinematic citation of advertisements and clips from mid-century Australian propagandizing around atomic energy and the use of uranium.*

Rose Drachler: Three poems with numbers and letters

[Originally published in Burrowing In, Digging Out (1974) and The Choice (1977), both from David Meltzer’s Tree Books. See also the note at bottom of this posting & the essay on Drachler’s work by Christine Meilicke, which appeared as the posting on Poems and Poetics for April 19, 2017.]

 

THE COUNTING MADE THE CORNERS RIGHT

 

The counting made

The corners

Of the building

True

 

One

One and one

Two

Two and one

 

Four horns

Corners

One and seven he counted

One and six

 

The goat stayed fluid

It steamed

Yellow eyes, square pupils

Fringes of flesh at its throat

 

They beat him with sticks

They threw stones at him

They sent him away

The goats were a gift

Both goats

One to die and one to drive away

 

One

One and one

Two

Two and one

 

The counting was washing

It was clean

It was for the building

Poetry across language

Julia Dasbach's letter to Anna

As part of the Poetry Across Languages event organized by Nick Martinez Defina, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach shared an excerpt from a series exploring language and the meaning of home and reflecting on her own Ukrainian heritage. Held at the Kelly Writers House on April 6, 2017, this event explored translation, language, and identity across borders.