Stein - Ashbery - Chiasson

To - from - of

William James described consciousness as the "alternation of flights and perchings," suggesting that we tend to overvalue the "perchings," the nouns or the primary verbs in a sentence that steal the spotlight from the little words, like "in," "and," "but," "or," and "of."

From The New Yorker, Dan Chiasson reviewing poetry by John Ashbery

I find it interesting that the reference to William James is also applicable to Stein. One recalls her many experiments with words like "with" such as "if" and other such words. Take for instance this excerpt from "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" where we have highlighted with

There were some dark and heavy men there then. There were some who were not so heavy and some who were not so dark. Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene sat regularly with them. They sat regularly with the ones who were dark and heavy. They sat regularly with the ones who were not so dark. They sat regularly with the ones that were not so heavy. They sat with them regularly, sat with some of them. They went with them regularly went with them. They were regular then, they were gay then, they were where they wanted to be then where it was gay to be then, they were regularly gay then. There were men there then who were dark and heavy and they sat with them with Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene and they went with them with Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, and they went with the heavy and dark men Miss Furr and Miss Skeene went with them, and they sat with them, Miss Furr and Miss Skeene sat with them, and there were other men, some were not heavy men and they sat with Miss Furr and Miss Skeene and Miss Furr and Miss Skeene sat with them, and there were other men who were not dark men and they sat with Miss Furr and Miss Skeene and Miss Furr and Miss Skeene sat with them. Miss Furr and Miss Skeene went with them and they went with Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, some who were not heavy men, some who were not dark men. Miss Furr and Miss Skeene sat regularly, they sat with some men. Miss Furr and Miss Skeene went and there were some men with them. There were men and Miss Furr and Miss Skeene went with them, went somewhere with them, went with some of them.

Notice just how queer the with-less passage sounds: They were regular then, they were gay then, they were where they wanted to be then where it was gay to be then, they were regularly gay then.

And so for day 1957
22.04.2012

Least Terms

There erupts a passage from Lisa Robertson "The Fountain Transcript"

Nevertheless, flow in itself, with its fatal grandeur, does not interest us: we prefer to describe obstacles to flow, little impediments, affect-mechanisms, miniaturizations of subliminity.

as I am contemplating poems by Sue Sinclair, twice I find myself missing prepositions that aren't there. And the publications are years apart (2001 and 2008).

In a poem describing wolf willow the blooms are personified.

Wolf willow: whistle
and it will not come; its tiny flowers
pretend not to hear; hidden in the cleft
between leaf and branch, they close
their eyes, hoping you will go

For no apparent reason (perhaps however conditioned by the expectation of "tiny" made big by focus), I hear a a ghost-word: "between leaf and branch, they close up / their eyes" begging for an echo of something slightly unidiomatic "close up your eyes". That is indeed the secret — the persistence of the second person singular address meshes via line breaks with the actions of the wolf willow (just who is whistling remains suspended for an instant) — the wolf willow comes to signify you the reader. Notwithstanding the pronouns, the wolf willow flowers are focalized from the narrative position of the reader. Indeed, they are so vividly anthropomorphized that the reader identifies with their expectant position, longing for "the one they want". See

Wolf willow: whistle
and it will not come; its tiny flowers
pretend not to hear; hidden in the cleft
between leaf and branch, they close
their eyes, hoping you will go
so they can go on remembering her,
the one they want,
the one who isn't home yet.

They or you or her all mingle in the pervasive scent of the wolf-willow which is by the way the title of the poem: "The Scent of Wolf Willow".

The next preposition encounter comes for me in the penultimate line of a poem called "Drought" which ironically fills the ears with the sounds of "Bleating crickets. Rustle of dry stalks." before inscribing silence and a description of its action that comes across as stage whisper injunction.

The silence pushes you toward yourself:
it's time to walk deep into the heart of what troubles you.

This time I want "out" to orient the movement of the self: a push out towards oneself. Out into the landscape. Out into the rustling. The silence pushes you out toward yourself deep into the heart of what troubles you. That the preposition is only imagined gives pause.

You are made to want to swerve. Sinclair's anthropomorphism, keen and thrilling, is in the service of the swerving. Consider the car appearing in "March"

in the country. But what are you to do
when even the car remembers the green
sides of the road, the bright air,
how its pistons purred?

The vehicle almost has a mind of its own. It is in its nature to travel. And what is our nature? Perhaps the final lines of a poem devoted to the perennial rain ("St. Phillip's, Rain") explain why motion is often skewed offside in a Sinclair poem. The problem is posed of how to exist without a metaphysics:

the rest of us sick with longing for a god
we no longer believe in, our faces
like spoons, plain and hungry.

I will venture that we hunger for exactly this stark nutrient. We unbelievers have an appetite for beautiful images such as the hungry spoon — such a satisfying morsel.

All this prepositional pecking that I have been at is inspired in part by the emblematic least terns whose shell collecting activities are the subject of another poem which makes of them a kind of dream totem for being at home. And like the birds, I pick up snippets on my own terms.

After Sue Sinclair:

When the sky falls
finally
only the tiniest tern
shell-carrier
remembers
storm-saved
mosaic flower in nest bottom

Lisa Robertson. Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture.
Sue Sinclair. Secrets of Weather & Hope.
Sue Sinclair. Breaker.

And so for day 1029
07.10.2009