A gloss/tarnish on the first page of Not-You, improvised from notes I
made yesterday, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Douglas Oliver`s
reading of HWWR.

         The twins blink, hands set to thread out
         a dipper cargo with lithium grease enhanced
         to break under heat stress. Who knows

         what cares arise in double streaks, letting
         the door slip to alternative danny boy in-
         decision. She`ll cut one hand off to whack

         the other same-day retread, leaving its mark
         two transfiguration at femur length. Ahead
         the twins consult, shade over upon shade.


Two related products of a single conception (The twins)
intermittently signal and receive signals (blink), act as
receiver/transmitter (hands(s)et, i.e. mouth-and-earpiece of
telephone, walkie-talkie) in their readiness (set) to pass out, string
along, a content (cargo) that will slip in and out of sight (dipper)
in tandem with elements (lithium, grease) that harden the alloy
(lithium in its role as alloy hardener), the compound produced by the
writing and the experience of the writing (the signalling and
receiving of signals), helped along by (grease) lubricant [this is
most fanciful part of the reading] (enhanced) in order to make it
possible to recover more meaning than could be obtained by normal discursive
means [enhanced oil recovery, look it up], thereby involving or
resulting in transference of energy, a result, if a tense and
tentative one.

(Who knows) what troubles, what attentivenesses will be made manifest
in attention drawn to these doubled characteristics/qualities, given that
means of access (the door), and means of access to critical discourse`s
will-to-decide between competing alternatives (alternative danny -
danny is childish name for `hand`, i.e. on the one hand, on the other
hand) has been let slip, possibility for satisfactory conclusion
indefinitely postponed.

Amputation of other possibilities in order to reach a conclusion
(She`ll cut off one hand...), removal to leave one and one only in
order not to have to go over the same path more than once (same-day
retread), retracing her steps, is lamentable self-injury in order to
keep that lost reading (mark two/transfiguration) at (femur) arm`s
length. It`s what critics do.

Last sentence: Nevertheless, in front of us, as we read the two related
 products of a single conception confer, conspire and refer, in their obscurity as
superimposed spectral meanings, as ghosts of other readings.

Having read the sequence, re-connection to evolving thematics across
work as a whole lifts the first poem out of this self-referential and
already pissed-off caveat-form. Continuing in the same vein,
metaphormosis involving themes of reading and themes of environmental
despoilation, deafforestation, contamination, herbicides,
crop-spraying &c. make them inseparable: co-implication in poem is
co-implication in the world.

I think.

You see where this meets Douglas`s reading?

all best

robin


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