Or a Robert Gluck says it somewhere, and Beverly Dahlen repeats Bob, it is
what happens when we try to speak to 'the guest who never arrives.' Well,
Beckett was well into that quandary, too. Anger, lament, pleas - any
imaginable form of address in that perpetual sense of 'absence' adheres
itself to the circuitry (the poem), one that circles without end, only
variation of form, manner and tone. Ironically we make our critical
responses to each variation in response to a situation that can never
resolve itself (unless it is filled with a belief system that somehow
satiates or salves or replaces the wound). I don't know if anybody is doing
that well, or convincingly, in the context of making poems these days.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
> And the rant parts don't work all that well for me, Janet, but, unlike
> Andrew, I rather like the repetition. On the other hand, I 'hear' a
> Canadian poet's sound in much of this, as she (Gwen MacEwen) was much
> enamoured of the 'unspeakable' as something to try to speak, or speak
> to. But for her it was always a transcendence, & her poetry attempted
> to touch that.
>
> Doug
> On 3-Dec-06, at 12:09 AM, Janet Jackson wrote:
>
>> A bit of a rant, this one
>> Janet
>>
>> Un/speak/able
>>
>> With what's left of my face after you
>> have finished with it, your sun
>> melted it, your shocks and switches
>> scoured and scarified it, your challenges
>> chopped and chiselled it, your licks and lays
>> licked and lavaged it,
>> ravaged it with your un
>> speak
>> able ways
>>
>> with un
>> speak
>> able devotion, un
>> speak
>> able elation, elevation, libation, translation
>>
>> with whatever skin I still have,
>> whatever still works in my eyes,
>> whatever screams I have left,
>> with all my remaining teeth,
>> with a ton of drop-forged belief,
>> with spider veins in my cheeks
>> and enough flesh for one kiss
>> in the thin ghosts of my lips
>> I will finally speak your name.
>>
>> When you can see all of me,
>> when you can hear all of me,
>> when all the red things, sad things,
>> good and bad things inside me
>> no longer divide me from you
>> I will finally, at last, in ecstasy speak
>> your name, your name, your name, your un
>> speak
>> able name.
>>
>> Throw off all fakery and surgery,
>> present your name in the city,
>> howl it in what's left of the country,
>> throw it all over the Net.
>> With every note left in my mouth I will,
>> I will, I will speak
>> your un
>> speak
>> able name.
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
>> Poems at Proximity:
>> http://www.proximity.webhop.net
>>
>> You cannot love alone
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>
> You may allow me moments
> not monuments, I being
> content. It is little,
> but it is little enough.
>
> John Newlove
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