I've been trying to catch up to writing something to/for everyone's stuff so far, and I'm realizing I'm yet to say anything to/about Sean or Jennifer's work. Right now I'm going to talk about Sean, since I saw him read bits of the Clerestory on Tuesday. Then I'm going to reread Jennifer's stuff and maybe have something to say later.
So... On the page I'm always totally caught up in the latinate words you use- they just alarm my eye or something (not sure what to say about it). Hearing them read, especially without the text in front of me, I find they are more seamless. What's interesting about them aurally is the density of syllables (so few written characters per phoneme, as compared to clunky english words like "through") and the way they carry a line, especially a long line. I feel egregiously bad for begging Alyson to slate you early in the reading so that I could hear you before I ran off to play host over at Mama Buzz, because I would have really liked to hear your reading sandwiched in between Reed and Michelle or Michelle and Christine- as a kind of antitode to the very paired-down, American fiction they were writing (I might have brought out more of the occassional poetry Michelle achieved).
The new stuff in the Clerestory Tuesday night was really rivetting. I have the word "night" still ringing in my ears, and actually kind of started to construct a scene, I think cuing from an earlier page about the war correspondent- I kept seeing that night vision green all the streaming footage in the desert has, maybe as another stained-glass window. That was an interesting experience for someone who is really inept with visual language and visual metaphor. The word night is also tied to the place of "the lover" in the piece. The lover seems to come and go in a shroud, disappearing completely after each mention, or just going back out of sight. Taking the lover as muse or as poetry itself, I wonder if it isn't a kind of frustration too. I think if I ever let myself think of writing as a lover, the relationship would get very abusive, very quick.
"my lover stares at cunt
waiting for prophecy"
Should I find that line as funny as I do? The rejoinder "waiting to hurt her" is of course not funny. There is violence brimming in the piece all over, I suppose appropriately unexpectedly. I was reading a review today of the new Viggo Mortessen flick, which I doubt I'll see, and the reviewer has this theory that the film portrays violence as a constantly present force that could actualize at any moment. Hardly that novel a comment in light of Freud's late writing, but I was still sort of struck by it. Is the edging in of war and violence in Sean's piece metaphorical in the relationsip of the lover and prophecy/poetry, or just the actual background noise of history and the contemporary alike?
No answer out of me, bub.
So... On the page I'm always totally caught up in the latinate words you use- they just alarm my eye or something (not sure what to say about it). Hearing them read, especially without the text in front of me, I find they are more seamless. What's interesting about them aurally is the density of syllables (so few written characters per phoneme, as compared to clunky english words like "through") and the way they carry a line, especially a long line. I feel egregiously bad for begging Alyson to slate you early in the reading so that I could hear you before I ran off to play host over at Mama Buzz, because I would have really liked to hear your reading sandwiched in between Reed and Michelle or Michelle and Christine- as a kind of antitode to the very paired-down, American fiction they were writing (I might have brought out more of the occassional poetry Michelle achieved).
The new stuff in the Clerestory Tuesday night was really rivetting. I have the word "night" still ringing in my ears, and actually kind of started to construct a scene, I think cuing from an earlier page about the war correspondent- I kept seeing that night vision green all the streaming footage in the desert has, maybe as another stained-glass window. That was an interesting experience for someone who is really inept with visual language and visual metaphor. The word night is also tied to the place of "the lover" in the piece. The lover seems to come and go in a shroud, disappearing completely after each mention, or just going back out of sight. Taking the lover as muse or as poetry itself, I wonder if it isn't a kind of frustration too. I think if I ever let myself think of writing as a lover, the relationship would get very abusive, very quick.
"my lover stares at cunt
waiting for prophecy"
Should I find that line as funny as I do? The rejoinder "waiting to hurt her" is of course not funny. There is violence brimming in the piece all over, I suppose appropriately unexpectedly. I was reading a review today of the new Viggo Mortessen flick, which I doubt I'll see, and the reviewer has this theory that the film portrays violence as a constantly present force that could actualize at any moment. Hardly that novel a comment in light of Freud's late writing, but I was still sort of struck by it. Is the edging in of war and violence in Sean's piece metaphorical in the relationsip of the lover and prophecy/poetry, or just the actual background noise of history and the contemporary alike?
No answer out of me, bub.
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