Cadence

Robert Creeley in conversation with Ekbert Faas (Towards a New American Poetics: Essays & Interviews) reminisces about Beckett — his voice and his way of speaking, selecting words while moving along with pauses etc.

He spoke in this very, not tentative way, but at times there'd be pauses, he'd begin to say something and then he'd sort of test it in his mind, then return to its continuance, say a little more, check it out, you see. He spoke, not haltingly as though he were impeded in some physical way, but constantly checking what he was saying so that I had no idea what time it was. I mean I realized finally it was six in the morning, so the thing I most specifically remember is that extraordinary creation of a word that should have no other cause but itself.

A passage in Thomas Meyer "Isis' Memory" in The Umbrella of Aesculapius captures a similar pitch…

& the most astonishing fact on which poetry thrives is that every sentence (or projected unit of utterance) once begun CAN stop, not complete itself & begin again as a new sentence related or unrelated to its own initial impulse or sound. No where else in the cosmos is this aspect of will & magic so clearly & precisely manifest.

Intriguing to note that the option of carrying on depends totally on the ability to not carry on. Leave off.

And so for day 1459
11.12.2010