Robust Struggles

It is perhaps not particularly fair to pull out this fighting-words excerpt from one of Christopher Norris's lectures (the Bucknell Lectures in Literary Theory published under the title Spinoza & the Origins of Modern Critical Theory) — but while you read just keep in mind that the springboard for the remarks is the Rushdie case:

On the one side are those who advocate an allegiance to truths beyond reach of critical assessment or reasoned debate. On the other are those — admittedly in a state of some confusion at present — whose appeal (or whose best possible ground of appeal) is to the interests of open discussion and enquiry into the values that sustain both their own and their opponents' argumentative positions. Any hint of ethnocentric smugness here should be amply dispelled by the occasional reminder — such as Empson provides — of just how long it took for courageous free-thinkers like Erasmus, Montaigne, Spinoza, or Voltaire to knock Christianity into some kind of civilized shape.

I am very taken by the image of being knocked into some kind of civilized shape. Not a parenting style presently favoured. Still, given the context, pretty mild medicine.

And so for day 677
20.10.2008

Small Furniture Big Imaginations

For some reason, it is the mention of the furnishings of the library that capture my attention in an article about the institutional recognition of children's literature (Beverly Lyon Clark, "Kiddie Lit in Academe" in Profession 1996 published by the Modern Language Association)

As early as 1877 Minerva L. Saunders — perhaps the first librarian to allow children under twelve to use public library books — set aside a corner of the Pawtucket, Rhode Island, library for children, even providing special small chairs for them.

And this provokes the memory of being a small child in a big big armchair next to an adult as I plodded through the words beneath a set of illustrations. And at times the reading would break off into an explication of the events unfolding in the pictures and their continuation in the mind at play.

And so for day 676
19.10.2008

Ballot Bullets

Steve McCaffery in "Bill Bissett: A Writing Outside Writing" collected in North of Intention: Critical Writings 1973-1986 advocates a type of anti-reading that emphasizes concentration on the graphic and sonic elements of a poem, that is attention to the materiality of the materials. He writes: "Which is to suggest that Bissett's anti-inscriptional strategies are matchable by the reader's own anti-reading that would affirm a motion, not comprehend a sense." Instead of seeking an example in Bissett's oeuvre, allow me to draw attention to Colin Morton "Election Day Ballet" from The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems where the concrete poem progressively deforms/reforms the word "ballot" into a line of bullets, to end with this:

bulletbulletbulletbullet  bulletbulletbullet

It is not quite accurate to say that the poem deforms/reforms the words. The words appear as in a ballet. They dance in various slots and positions. It is only the last line that trips up the usual spacing between words. Nevertheless, the overall impression is one of movement from "ballot" to "bullet". However the poem can be read from bottom-up and the movement from rat-tat-tat of bullets to the measured incidence of ballots. The anti-reading is in a sense antiphonal: it turns the other way. And along the way discovers other senses.

And so for day 675

18.10.2008

Hum Along

Speaking to oneself is cured by singing
As if the sad soul were stammering ...

Found in a notebook entry dated October 16, 2004, an entry on interior monologue (its displacement by "vocalization of a mesmerizing tune"). And a year later (2005) there is this thought

Time in its rhythmic dimension is a way of parsing experience to manage having the desired actions match the desired space. Time as duration and time as punctuation.

Synchronization seems to be psychological in nature — its fitness is marked by an interior justness.

And so for day 674
17.10.2008

Sneeze Response

Louis Zukofsky honours the atheist's heart with a poem entitled "To Friends, for Good Health" collected in selected poems edited by Charles Bernstein. There is a wonderful play between "best" and "blest". It reads "And the / best / To / you / too". And its display on the page captures nicely the explosive return of a sneeze. See

And so for day 673
16.10.2008

The Further Adventures of e

Lola Lemire Tostevin in an essay on Canadian poet bp Nichol ("Is This Where the Poem Begins?" collected in Subject to Criticism: Essays) suggests that "[w]hat bp Nichol wrote of Marshall McLuhan could easily apply to his own writing:"

There is a lightness of touch to McLuhan's writing, an airiness, that has often been mistaken for a lack of depth. But the wonderful thing in reading McLuhan is precisely that he was using language to take off, using it to soar free of an artificial notion of what constitutes profound thinking, utilizing instead the mind's ability to leap, to follow fictional highways to real destinations ...

Odd, when I find myself reading the twists and turns of the oeuvre of bp Nichol I am more inclined to plunk myself down and mine the text rather than soar (i.e. use the text as a springboard). Recall my being caught up in cogitating about the spacing "no is e" culled from "Coda: Mid-Initial Sequence" from The Martyrology: Book III reprinted in As Elected. I plod along sensitive to the sense making machinery. Later in that particular sequence one comes across the following line:

i (n) am e

The poetic subject "names" and negates. And the non-soaring reader is attentive to the echo with the earlier line "no is e". On offer is the negation of an "h".

11 years since i first conceived myself a writer
took up the task to earn the name
& now i see
i (n) am e

Now it is possible to also read, slowly, a different parsing "in am e". I see the enemy. And 'e is us. Or not entirely since the slow reader can resist easy identification with the shifter "i". I guess I am a sore reader prone to scratching...

And so for day 672
15.10.2008

Shine

Robert Haas ends "Songs to Survive the Summer" which itself ends Praise with the following set of verses:

all things lustered
by the steady thoughtlessness
of human use.

Through the polish of use the objects in our daily lives develop a patina. Repetition adds a depth and a charm to the objects.

The process can also apply to the tales we tell and the lines of poetry we read. In the re-telling and the re-reading the objects not only furnish our minds but also acquire a lustre. Hass himself might include in "all things lustered" the passages in his poem about the making of onion soup (simply sumptuous from the cutting of the onions to the ladling and eating) or those about the grandfather-carved wooden nickel.

Of course there is a place in human experience for the enjoyment of the fresh and the new — the before-patina effects.

And so for day 671
14.10.2008

Together Alone

John Bayley in his memoir about life with Iris Murdoch, Elegy for Iris provides remarks on "the best part of love and marriage" and exemplifies for us the kind appreciation for the partner's distinction that is a hallmark of affection.

We were together because we were comforted and reassured by the solitariness each saw and was aware of in the other.

That these remarks are to be found in a chapter devoted in large part to recounting the viewing of pictures and the impact of specific paintings gives an aesthetic dimension to these existentialist ponderings. There is something about picture viewing that suits the sentiment being expressed and becomes a fine figure to carry over into quotidian experience. And so the chapter ends with these musings:

So married life began. And the joys of solitude. No contradiction was involved. The one went perfectly with with the other. To feel oneself held and cherished and accompanied, and yet to be alone. To be closely and physically entwined, and yet feel solitude's friendly presence, as warm and undesolating as contiguity itself.

And it is only in the slowed down reading accompanying the transcription that I realize that he wrote "contiguity" and not "contingency".

And so for day 670
13.10.2008

Proportions and Centuries

From an email signature block in use in 2001

20th : Machine Age :: 21st : Era of Reparation

Long views help us act locally; global perspectives help us act again and again.

And so for day 669
12.10.2008

No Easy Noise

In a poetic sequence playing with the negation by spacing and elimination (a "now" becomes a "no w here" and simply a "no") [though not presented explicitly as such in the text nor in this particular order], one is immersed in a text of phantom letters and sounds. And so one comes across this configuration:

no  is
      e
against the silent sleep

bp Nichol from The Martyrology: Book III as collected in As Elected (Talonbooks, 1980).

Of course there is the evident play with "noise" by introducing some noise in the usual linguistic processing. What is perhaps not so evident is the echo of the Macintosh "eep" — the sign under the classic operating system that indicates error or a "no, no". bp Nichol worked on the Macintosh and I believe his machine is housed at Simon Fraser University. [I know computer disks form part of the bp Nichol fonds ] It is likely the verbal echo crept into the poem through the reader's anachronistic interpretation — the piece is dated 1971-1973 a little before the entry of the Macintosh onto the market. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984. Eep! eep!

Interesting that in Morse code the letter "e" is represented by a single dot.

Interested parties with a mathematical inclination may want to look up the history and applications of the number e. One of my favourite pieces of information about the number e — Leonhard Euler started to use the letter e for the constant in 1727 or 1728, in an unpublished paper on explosive forces in cannons. Bang!

And so for day 668
11.10.2008