on Jacob Eichert’s gang of 5.
Collective comments on the rule of dis/engagement: what do Jack Kerouac, Margaret Mitchell, Philippe Diolé, Margaret Mead and Walt Whitman have in common, and/or how does the poet Eichert relate to them?
There is the typical process of choosing published authors and their text and then responding to them with text. There is also that process of using that previously published text as title and as epigraph. But from class discussion the first was not the case. The poet’s text was produced and the previously published authors and their text were matched.
I was engaged by how Eichert responded to his culling of fragments from the above writers. These fragments are documents or artifacts, and therefore the poetry that was paired to them are and are not articles or commentary. That’s the tension of my reading—trying to find logic between the selective process, the pairing, the intention (the intension). Added to the tension is how the previously published material are given priority—as titles/epigraphs—as if to say the Eichert text is subsidiary to the found text and was composed in homage to the found text, when in fact it was the reverse. Could not the Eichert text stand by themselves? At least Eichert did not title his poems “After Jack Kerouac,” “After Margaret Mitchell,” “After Philippe Diolé,” “After Margaret Mead,” “After Walt Whitman.” And I am thinking of many poets famous and underserved who have done this, and the homage seems more of a disservice,--and I am thinking of Ann Lauterbach’s “After Mahler,”—who describe her relationship to the composer: “Gustav Mahler...represents for me a number of complex engagements with modernity in relation to lyricism, where lyricism is not simply a poetic mode, but a sign of linguistic specificity.” Now do I expect Eichert to make a similar claim—perhaps in the conclusion of the 20 interlocking pieces, of which I have read the 5? So back to the question can the Eichert text stand by themselves? Perhaps not if one theme is historical. Perhaps historical is not the correct word. An example is the word “wave.” “[A] lot of waves” is Kerouac’s definition for the universe. Eichert employs “wave” in his Kerouac (“the wave is really a lip, a moon, eclipse, ellipse of roofs, changing in shape and / volume / ....”), and Whitman (“casts of waves as keys / castaway...”) poems, and hints at them elsewhere in Mitchell (“jet stream”) and in Diolé (the title: “...sea water...”). So how is this historical? Perhaps tectonic or climatic? History is authoritative—rather whomever writes history often has authority and is written by those in power/empowered with language and the permission to write---history does not have to be factual. On the page, the “found” titles of aforementioned 5 authors appear to shift or even grate against the Eichert text. Perhaps they are rubbing against each other tectonically causing some rupture between title and Eichert text. How does one see or read that rupture. There is no text, and the subtext is in the supposed relationship between Eichert and the gang of 5. Does the Eichert text appear to assume its own kind of authority? Likewise climatically (as there is a slough of climatic themes, weather themes, microclimate themes that I can go into detail), the text on the page appear as weather fronts, and as we know when two come together or confront each other---storm, hurricane, rain, fog, etc. So what does this suggest of the space between Eichert and the gang 5. That interpretative or relational space is so consuming as to create rupture and storm? So before I forget—in the Diolé poem, Eichert renders microclimates or “closed ecosystems” as Tupperware, as songs, as the storm cellar (although these three are conflated as one), as a head, as a tear, as a pomegranate seed (although these two are conflated as one). There is this possibility of questioning and interpretation similar to Kerouac’s definition of the universe. Eichert’s employs the wave, but one has to reread it as a stand in for Kerouac’s universe. Likewise, the microclimates suggested in the 5 poems can be reread as Tupperware or seed. Somewhere Emily Dickinson sticks her head out—rather her mind out. How large is the sky? No larger than the mind and its possibilities. How often when we (re)package leftovers, do we stop and ponder the possibilities of Tupperware, the life of Tupperware, the space occupying Tupperware—that Tupperware occupies space inside a kitchen drawer as well occupies space when its lid is applied. Ironically deep. Now there is the relationship between the Kerouac (“air-stream / constricted to produce fiction.”) and the Mitchell (“Healthy friction of contrails skywriting....) and. Fiction = Friction. Is this Eichert’s proof. Why he is a poet? Fiction is not grounded or lofty—as ephemeral and tenuous as skywriting—is not as lasting and documentary—although the fragments drawn from the novelists suggest otherwise. Yes the tension asks much! Or is the text after the epigraph—epigram? Speak class. Hmmmm...I didn’t quite explain dis/engagement---shucks.
Collective comments on the rule of dis/engagement: what do Jack Kerouac, Margaret Mitchell, Philippe Diolé, Margaret Mead and Walt Whitman have in common, and/or how does the poet Eichert relate to them?
There is the typical process of choosing published authors and their text and then responding to them with text. There is also that process of using that previously published text as title and as epigraph. But from class discussion the first was not the case. The poet’s text was produced and the previously published authors and their text were matched.
I was engaged by how Eichert responded to his culling of fragments from the above writers. These fragments are documents or artifacts, and therefore the poetry that was paired to them are and are not articles or commentary. That’s the tension of my reading—trying to find logic between the selective process, the pairing, the intention (the intension). Added to the tension is how the previously published material are given priority—as titles/epigraphs—as if to say the Eichert text is subsidiary to the found text and was composed in homage to the found text, when in fact it was the reverse. Could not the Eichert text stand by themselves? At least Eichert did not title his poems “After Jack Kerouac,” “After Margaret Mitchell,” “After Philippe Diolé,” “After Margaret Mead,” “After Walt Whitman.” And I am thinking of many poets famous and underserved who have done this, and the homage seems more of a disservice,--and I am thinking of Ann Lauterbach’s “After Mahler,”—who describe her relationship to the composer: “Gustav Mahler...represents for me a number of complex engagements with modernity in relation to lyricism, where lyricism is not simply a poetic mode, but a sign of linguistic specificity.” Now do I expect Eichert to make a similar claim—perhaps in the conclusion of the 20 interlocking pieces, of which I have read the 5? So back to the question can the Eichert text stand by themselves? Perhaps not if one theme is historical. Perhaps historical is not the correct word. An example is the word “wave.” “[A] lot of waves” is Kerouac’s definition for the universe. Eichert employs “wave” in his Kerouac (“the wave is really a lip, a moon, eclipse, ellipse of roofs, changing in shape and / volume / ....”), and Whitman (“casts of waves as keys / castaway...”) poems, and hints at them elsewhere in Mitchell (“jet stream”) and in Diolé (the title: “...sea water...”). So how is this historical? Perhaps tectonic or climatic? History is authoritative—rather whomever writes history often has authority and is written by those in power/empowered with language and the permission to write---history does not have to be factual. On the page, the “found” titles of aforementioned 5 authors appear to shift or even grate against the Eichert text. Perhaps they are rubbing against each other tectonically causing some rupture between title and Eichert text. How does one see or read that rupture. There is no text, and the subtext is in the supposed relationship between Eichert and the gang of 5. Does the Eichert text appear to assume its own kind of authority? Likewise climatically (as there is a slough of climatic themes, weather themes, microclimate themes that I can go into detail), the text on the page appear as weather fronts, and as we know when two come together or confront each other---storm, hurricane, rain, fog, etc. So what does this suggest of the space between Eichert and the gang 5. That interpretative or relational space is so consuming as to create rupture and storm? So before I forget—in the Diolé poem, Eichert renders microclimates or “closed ecosystems” as Tupperware, as songs, as the storm cellar (although these three are conflated as one), as a head, as a tear, as a pomegranate seed (although these two are conflated as one). There is this possibility of questioning and interpretation similar to Kerouac’s definition of the universe. Eichert’s employs the wave, but one has to reread it as a stand in for Kerouac’s universe. Likewise, the microclimates suggested in the 5 poems can be reread as Tupperware or seed. Somewhere Emily Dickinson sticks her head out—rather her mind out. How large is the sky? No larger than the mind and its possibilities. How often when we (re)package leftovers, do we stop and ponder the possibilities of Tupperware, the life of Tupperware, the space occupying Tupperware—that Tupperware occupies space inside a kitchen drawer as well occupies space when its lid is applied. Ironically deep. Now there is the relationship between the Kerouac (“air-stream / constricted to produce fiction.”) and the Mitchell (“Healthy friction of contrails skywriting....) and. Fiction = Friction. Is this Eichert’s proof. Why he is a poet? Fiction is not grounded or lofty—as ephemeral and tenuous as skywriting—is not as lasting and documentary—although the fragments drawn from the novelists suggest otherwise. Yes the tension asks much! Or is the text after the epigraph—epigram? Speak class. Hmmmm...I didn’t quite explain dis/engagement---shucks.
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