Déballer la mort visionnaire

Plusieurs semi-manifestes ont été écrits autour de la composition des Apparition Poems en 2009 et 2010. L'auteur a introduit une phrase qui devait porter une résonance signifiante, comme une enseigne, définissant une esthétique, défendant une position et ouvrant une vue sur les deux. ce qui était alors un Zeitgeist contemporain et ce que la création littéraire impliquait en Amérique sous l'égide de ce Zeitgeist - la mort visionnaire . L'expression se centre sur une contradiction dans les termes - que, bien sûr, le visionnaire, à la fois dans le sens large de l'expérience de la conscience visionnaire (c'est-à-dire la conscience non continue, non cohésive, et l'interprétation de ce qui est considéré comme la manifestation de symboles, plutôt que quotidien , matière objective non liée) et le travail tactile consistant à imposer une esthétique d'un nouveau genre, en tant que produit d'une imagination indomptée, est lui-même le produit d'une vie accrue et illuminée, plutôt que de la décomposition, de l'érosion et de la décomposition - perpétuateurs de la matière inerte dissolution. La vanité de l'artiste - atteler par la force les signes avant-coureurs de l'illumination aux signes avant-coureurs du destin - est née de circonstances, à la fois personnelles et impersonnelles, déformées par le sentiment turgescent que les Aughts, dans la ville de Philadelphie, avaient laissé des déchets en excès dans tous les canaux. , qui en 2009-2010 s'érodaient, faisant passer le lieu du dynamisme à la stase.

Comment trouver l'enchantement dans ce sens - du dynamisme à la stase, à la descente - doit s'inscrire comme un appel à l'affectif. Lorsque les émotions sont poussées sur une brochette, par un sentiment de renversements, d'intransigeance et de confusion ontologique (l'être enregistrant son propre sentiment d'être comme bousculé, mélangé ou physiologiquement détruit), ce que l'esprit prend un plaisir cognitif à voir est un la conscience qu'un faible niveau de vérité objective - l'existence et la subsistance d'états de décadence, d'érosion et de décomposition - établit sa propre hégémonie dans le monde des choses qui peuple l'esprit, créant une déformation ou une sensation de déformation par laquelle l'obscurité crée sa propre sens de l'illumination, le chaos crée son propre simulacre d'ordre, et le désespoir crée un mode ou une manière inverse d'exultation. La mort visionnaire décrit ce syndrome ou cette maladie, cette perversion, cette jouissance déformée, et travaille à une définition de ce qu'est le livre Apparition Poems, et de ce qu'il perpétue dans sa totalité. L'enchantement cognitif avec la mort, et ses propres enseignes, suggèrent que l'esprit savoure le jeu ou le défi de transmuter ce qui est mort ou mourant dans la matière vivante d'un art fraîchement créé, et que le jeu ultime qui émerge est simple : souffler. La corne de Gabriel, fait sortir les choses de leur tombe, oblige, par la force, ce qui est mourant à revivre avec vivacité.

Les étirements et les foulures apparaissent dans la mort visionnaire comme un signe esthétique. Ce qui est invoqué d'une tombe - une matière morte et inerte - semble n'avoir aucun attrait, même pour une conscience d'écriture déformée, en particulier celle qui tente de s'accorder aux fréquences philosophiques. La matière morte, inerte, non éclairée par des forces ou des énergies extérieures, est assez terne et morne. Comment, d'une simple pression sur un interrupteur, pouvons-nous rendre acceptable tout l'imbroglio de la mort visionnaire ? Lorsque ce qui est terne et morne (matière morte, inerte) est déplacé de quelques frettes vers une nouvelle tonalité, il cesse d'être terne et morne et est illuminé à la fois par le mysticisme et la mystique de l'horreur, et l'horrible - ce qui pourrait supporter les surnoms étranges, macabres, sinistres, horribles, obsédants. Les apparitions sont souvent nommées ainsi. La matière informant la conscience du poète acquiert ainsi une lueur imaginative. L'appel transmis, à travers le livre, est une mystique de l'imagination, de l'intérieur d'une maison hantée, où la mort possède une patine d'excitation et d'excitation, juste en étant proche d'une ultime suggestion de surface sous la surface, de vie sous la vie. Les mots prennent la matière et la réaniment de force, tout cela fait comme un miroir vers un plan supérieur d'intelligence objective - tout comme les chutes dans la déformation du moribond réinfusent et recertifient le sens du poète du transcendantal (surface sous la surface, vie sous la vie), chute dans la connaissance des failles dans les structures de la réalité et de l'univers qui contient et abrite toute réalité certaine, sont une fuite vers le haut vers (inversement et perversement) une plus grande profondeur et une plus grande conscience, à travers la réification de cette connaissance.

Poèmes d'apparition : Prélude en deux parties : 2013-2022

 

Bien qu'aucun récit soutenu ne le soutienne, Apparition Poems se veut tentaculaire et épique. Une épopée américaine, même légitime au niveau mondial, ne pouvait être qu'une épopée composée de parties disparates, apparemment inconciliables - un tel état de fait étant aussi celui de l'Amérique. Les souches qui s'irritent et se heurtent dans Apparition Poems sont discrètes - poèmes d'amour, poèmes charnels, méta-poèmes, poèmes philosophiques, etc. bâillement barbare ») qui crée un sentiment permanent (pour la durée de l'épopée) de dislocation, de désorientation et d'inconfort. Ceci est renforcé par les nuances des poèmes individuels, qui sont souvent façonnés dans le dialecte de multiples significations et insinuations. Presque tous les signes linguistiques dans Apparition Poems sont bifurqués; soit par le contexte de sa relation avec d'autres signes linguistiques dans les poèmes, soit par sa relation avec l'ensemble épique du livre lui-même. Si Apparition Poems est une épopée, c'est une épopée du langage ; l'aventure combative de multiples significations, de contextes et de perspectives changeants, et le désespoir ultime de l'incommensurabilité de l'expression astucieuse avec la vie pratique à une époque de déclin matériel et spirituel. Il est significatif que les poèmes soient numérotés plutôt que nommés; il met l'accent sur le caractère fragmentaire (ou apparitionnel) de chacun, sa place dans une sorte de mosaïque, plutôt qu'une série d'ensembles soudés ensemble par hasard ou par volonté arbitraire (comme c'est de rigueur pour les textes poétiques).

C'est la dichotomie des poèmes d'apparition - les épopées, au sens classique, sont censées représenter une action continue et cohérente - la continuité narrative est essentielle. Apparition Poems est une épopée en fragments – chaque poème nous plonge, in medias res, dans un nouveau récit. Si je choisis d'appeler Apparition Poems une épopée, non pas au sens classique (ou miltonien) mais dans un nouveau mode américain (qui maintient néanmoins certaines conventions classiques), c'est parce que les fragments créent ensemble une ampleur qui peut être confortablement appelé épique. L'action représentée dans les poèmes va du sublime au ridicule, de l'héroïque à l'anti-héroïque ; il y a des monologues dramatiques placés au milieu des autres formes, de sorte que le livre ne s'éloigne jamais trop de l'humanisme direct et directement représenté et de l'effort humaniste. Le personnage américain est maussade s'il n'est pas capable de rivaliser - les personnages ici le sont aussi. La vie dégénère en concours et en quête de victoire, même dans des contextes paisibles ou solitaires. Pourtant, si le paysage indigène est étrange et surréaliste, il est difficile de maintenir des attitudes compétitives directes - la conscience doit s'adapter tout en rivalisant, créant un dilemme loin de la singularité effrontée qui a défini le succès et le militarisme Americadans le monde.

Soudain, la conscience américaine est assiégée par des sables mouvants et des significations multiples - une incapacité, non seulement à être singulier mais à percevoir des significations singulières. Même si les multiplications sont résistées, tout se multiplie, et souvent en perte de profit, plutôt qu'en gain de profit. Le récit épique et fragmentaire d'Apparition Poems est un récit tragique et descendant, plutôt qu'une histoire de bravoure ou d'héroïsme. La consolation pour la perte de consonance matérielle est une vision plus réaliste du monde et de la vie humaine - comme un site de/pour le dynamisme, plutôt que la stase, de/pour la multiplicité, plutôt que la singularité. Apparition Poems est une vue sur « multipleAmerica » de Philadelphia, son lieu de naissance , et une ville assiégée également par de multiples visions d'elle-même. Aucune ville American'a autant de poids historique; et aucune ville américaine n'a subi une rétrogradation aussi dure au XXe siècle brutalement matérialiste. Pourtant, comme le suggère Apparition Poems, si une nouveauté Americadoit se manifester au XXIe siècle, autant commencer en Philadelphia. Si l'épopée se concentre sur la perte suivie de plus de perte, plutôt que sur un éventuel triomphe complet, alors qu'il en soit ainsi. Et si Apparition Poems en tant qu'épopée fragmentaire impose une leçon, c'est celle-ci : la poursuite de la singularité dans la vie humaine est un jeu de dupe ; la vérité est presque toujours, et triomphalement, multiple.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Avec douze ans de recul, et avec un sentiment d'affection pour le texte, combiné avec une reconnaissance que je suis en partie archi, il me semble que Apparition Poems s'est imposé comme un livre moins que sain . Le sens, dans le texte, à la fois de la perversité et de la perversion au sens général, créant des angles textuels censés couper ou inciser plutôt que (comme c'est plus habituel en Amérique) caresser, faire une approche de ce texte après toutes ces années ce qui pourrait , éventuellement, être considéré comme superflu. Le problème d'un renvoi brusque, et c'est un problème moins que sain , c'est le recours du livre à la philosophie et à la pensée philosophique, toujours dans les limites de l'esthétisation, comme un voyage atteint ou tenté au-delà de la perversion, ou dans la perversion. transcendentalisé à nouveau en allégorie, métaphore chargée et réinvention formelle. Une fois que la poésie ici a tenté un rapport avec les fréquences supérieures de la pensée discursive, nous en déduisons qu'une interrogation est nécessaire pour savoir si ce rapport est possible, de manière réelle, du tout. Pour répondre à cette question, il faut d'abord s'interroger aussi, même à plus grand air qu'on ne voudrait, quel rapport est possible entre la poésie et la philosophie ; une enquête plus approfondie, lorsque nous comprenons quelles sont les possibilités, si cette forme ou cette manière ou ce rapport est souhaitable ou non.

L'apparition qui hante le livre : un sentiment de profondeur et de solidité, contenu dans une conscience individuelle ; un sentiment de salubrité; conduit le protagoniste au-delà du paysage du charnel et des enquêtes jéjuines sur le langage, qui ne parviennent pas à atteindre plus intellectuellement que la stylisation ou les modes stylisés de disjonction et de déconstruction. Le seul oxygène qui lui parvienne, qui puisse propulser les éclats d'une conscience décimée dans au moins une imagination de la salubrité, est celui fourni par un abandon désespéré à des discours visant plus haut que le langage esthétisé est destiné à atteindre, et aux conditions et termes que offre esthétique généralement. L'image se pose d'une figure de Don Quichotte, arpentant les rues du centre-ville de Philadelphie au milieu de la nuit. Dans l'état de perversité, de perversion et de moins-que-sain dans lequel le livre a été écrit ; une sorte de transe; il n'est jamais venu à l'esprit de l'auteur qu'une dépendance à l'esthétique, et à la stylisation en général, pourrait céder la place à la limpidité si le contrôle était abandonné dans ces espaces discursifs plus limpides. Au contraire, bifurquer le philosophique afin qu'il puisse également remplir les conditions de l'esthétique et de la stylisation, semblait une tactique viable pour donner libre cours à ce sens du fragmenté, du déchiqueté, de l'incisivement pointu, qui animait sa conscience.

Philosophie, et le discours philosophique, vise, à son paroxysme, la vérité la plus objective. Le langage devient un conduit pour des perspectives ouvertes, censées répondre à des questions auxquelles les quantifications des scientifiques ne peuvent répondre - l'être des êtres, la nature précise de la conscience humaine elle-même. L'objectif du poète est davantage une forme sophistiquée de divertissement - le langage comme conduit pour la poursuite de la somptuosité, l'imagination tendue pour rendre les choses, ou les choses-du-monde, transitives vers d'autres choses (métaphore), ainsi qu'un version compromise de l'objectivité, fonctionnant en équilibre harmonieux avec les impératifs de l'imagination et de la mélopée . L'échange réel possible entre philosophie et poésie est donc un emprunt, par la poésie, d'une lentille plus objective pour regarder les objets traditionnels de la poésie - eros, affectivité, créativité métaphorique. Ce que la philosophie peut reprendre, à son tour, c'est quelque chose d'utile par intermittence au philosophe et à ses discours - une jouissance ou un jeu des sens dans un mode inférieur de discours - des eaux plus chaudes, quoique finalement moins nourrissantes, pour barboter.

L'attribution de désirabilité ou non désirabilité à cet ensemble de circonstances manifeste un sentiment d'ambiguïté, auquel seuls des individus forcés de l'affronter peuvent répondre. Si je continue d'apposer ma propre attribution de moins-que-sain aux poèmes d'apparition, c'est parce que le moment où la philosophie apparaît dans le livre a une charnière avec une esthétique poétique moins que traditionnelle, qui substitue la rancœur, la discorde et une explosivité sémantique/syntaxique, dans plusieurs directions, pour la somptuosité, et des métaphores construites et perpétuées dans un théâtre textuel de la cruauté, pour emprunter à Artaud, qui repoussent toutes les limites de ce qui pourrait être considéré comme divertissant, pour les poursuites conventionnelles de la poésie. Le divertissement qui pourrait alors découler des Apparition Poems serait l'émergence de la philosophie, comme antidote objectif à une subjectivité jaunie par l'immersion dans une jungle de métaphores trop tranchantes et hostiles - ainsi aliénées à la salubrité de l'esthétique conventionnelle.

En tant qu'individu, confronté à un texte, il peut être reconnu ou non que les poèmes d'apparition créent de nouvelles eaux pour que les discours supérieurs jouent dans le jeu, ici, étant une fonction de métaphores-jouets, de paysages esthétiques comme terrains de jeu, de syndromes idiosyncrasiques. comme vecteurs d'une possible universalisation. Le livre, en d'autres termes, ne peut pas se guérir, se rendre sain - bien que, par son sens d'atteindre la philosophie, il essaie - mais la philosophie elle-même, s'engageant ici dans un mode d'investigation (pillant le Théâtre de la Cruauté pour des points d'intérêt) peut faire pour le livre, ce que le livre ne peut pas faire pour lui-même. Si tout cela se passe dans une ambiance de malice, de transgression volontaire, tant mieux.

Cesar Santos (Miami, USA): "First Tattoo"

 

Unpacking Visionary Deadness

A number of semi-manifestos were penned around the composition of Apparition Poems in 2009 and 2010. The author introduced a phrase which was meant to carry signifying resonance, as an ensign, defining an aesthetic, defending a position, and opening a vista onto both what was then a contemporary Zeitgeist and what literary creation entailed in America under the aegis of that Zeitgeist— visionary deadness. The phrase centers itself on a contradiction in terms— that, of course, the visionary, in both the broad sense of experiencing visionary consciousness (i.e. not continuous, not cohesive consciousness, and interpretive of what’s seen as the manifestation of symbols, rather than quotidian, non-relatedly objective matter) and the tactile work of imposing a newfangled aesthetic, as a product of untamed imagination, is itself the product heightened, illuminated life, rather than decay, erosion, and decomposition— perpetuators of inert matter into grounds of permanent dissolution. The artist’s conceit— yoking together by force the harbingers of illumination with harbingers of doom— was born of circumstances, both personal and impersonal, warped by the turgid sense that the Aughts, in the city of Philadelphia, had left excess waste products in all channels, which by 2009-2010 were eroding, moving the locale from dynamism into stasis.

How to find enchantment in this sense— dynamism to stasis, the down-bound— must register as an appeal to the affective. When emotions are thrust onto a skewer, by a sense of reversals, intransigence, and ontological confusion (the being registering his or own sense of being as jostled, shuffled, or physiologically wrecked), what the mind takes cognitive pleasure in seeing is an acknowledged awareness that a low level of objective truth— the existence and subsistence of states of decay, erosion, and decomposition— establishes its own hegemony in the world of things which populates the mind, creating a warp or sense of warpage by which darkness creates its own sense of illumination, chaos creates its own simulacrum of order, and despair creates an inverse mode or manner of exultation. Visionary deadness describes this syndrome or sickness, this perversion, and warped jouissance, and works towards a definition of what the book Apparition Poems is, and what it perpetuates in its totality. The cognitive enchantment with death, and its own ensigns, suggest that the mind relishes the game or challenge of transmuting what is dead or dying into the living matter of freshly created art, and that the ultimate game which emerges is a simple one— to blow Gabriel’s horn, summon things from their grave, compel, by force, what is dying to live vibrantly again.

Stretches and strains appear in visionary deadness as an aesthetic sign. What is summoned from a grave— dead, inert matter— would seem to hold no attraction even to a warped writing consciousness, especially one attempting to attune itself to philosophical frequencies. Dead, inert matter, unilluminated by outside forces or energies, is quite dull and dreary. How, with the flip of a light-switch, do we make the whole imbroglio of visionary deadness palatable? When what is dull and dreary (dead, inert matter) is moved up a few frets to a new key, it ceases to be dull and dreary and is illuminated by both the mysticism and the mystique of horror, and the horrible— what could bear the monikers eerie, macabre, sinister, ghastly, haunting. Apparitions are often named as such. The matter informing the poet’s consciousness, thusly acquires an imaginative glow. The appeal transmitted out, through the book, is a mystique of the imagination, from within a haunted house, where death boasts a patina of excitement and excitation, just by being close to an ultimate suggestion of surface beneath the surface, life beneath life. Words take matter and forcibly reanimate it, all done as a mirror to a higher plane of objective intelligence— just as plummets into the warpage of the moribund reinfuse and recertify the poet’s sense of the transcendental (surface beneath surface, life beneath life), plummets into knowledge of flaws in the structures of both reality and the universe which contains and shelters all certain reality, are a flight upwards into (conversely, and perversely) greater depth, and greater awareness, through the reification of this knowledge.

 

Nettoyer

 

Je me suis fait un lavement l'autre jour,
               pris des antibiotiques.
Pensé à moi-même,
   "C'est vraiment le poète
        place dans le monde—

 pas assis dans un pâturage,
      ne pas fumer dans un bar,
ne pas baiser quelqu'un d'adorable,
      ne pas courtiser les dieux ou Jésus.

                           
                        Non.

               
              La place du poète
                      est à genoux ,
                 nu,
                     avec quelque chose
                ou autre
                     bloqué
               dans son cul,
                     dans un désespoir
               tentative
                      pour obtenir
               nettoyer."

 

Apparition Poem #1613

 

 Suivez Abraham sur la colline :
 dans la mesure où la colline est
 déjà constituée de sortes de
 couteaux, dans quelle mesure un
 homme peut­il monter sur une colline,
 faire paître un fils à sacrifier, pour
 être digne devant un pouvoir tout­
 puissant qui peut ou non avoir eu des
 intentions conscientes
 
 où les collines, les couteaux, les fils
 étaient concernés, mais comment, en
 regardant cela, ne puis­je pas sentir
 qu'Abraham, en bravant les couteaux, n'a
 pas besoin de celui qu'il tient dans ses mains ravies?

 
 

Perfect

A rare honor bequeathed on a relatively new poem: Perfect, from the Nineties section of Something Solid. Perfect is now distinguished by a dual placement: as a discrete file on PennSound, and as part of the issue pdf for Otoliths 65, preserved on Trove (National Library of Australia). Its heels are dug in. Cheers. 

P.S. Perfect is a manifestation of a new literary form: the double sonnet.

 

Where was she?

It's been mentioned that, during the year-long heyday-cum-orgy of the original Philly Free School, Mary H. was mostly missing in action (which Abby was not). Where was she? I have bothered to insinuate, that when Abby and I finally hooked up all the way in early 2005, it was karmically appropriate in relation to Ms. H. This, I still believe to be true; as of early '05, Abby and I both felt betrayed by Mary. The issues around who Mary H was in '04 and '05, and why Abby and I felt betrayed, are delicate ones. Some of it has to do with what was then a newfangled alliance formed between Mary and her family. Her family, who disapproved of her decision to be a painter, and disapproved (of course) of Abby and I. Her family weren't overtly unfriendly to me, in '02 and '03, but the truth emerged in the mid-Aughts. Mary's new hubs guy after me, Abby and I felt, was a cad and a curmudgeon, who also steered her away from painting. And finally, I will have to be inscrutable to once again insinuate something and leave it, out of delicacy, indefinite. To make a few more long stories short, Mary, at the behest of the forces then around her, was willing to fake a bunch of things about herself. Major things, and (suddenly) nose-in-the-air things, too. Was she out of her mind? Abby and I more than half thought so. Sorry to have to leave some of it vague.

As of '06, by which time no one knew what to expect from her, she spun more or less around to where she had been. She'd also added a layer of thinly-submerged upset about my tryst with Abby. Yet she began painting seriously again, and renewed contact with me. Abby, less so. Then, at the end of '06, we began courting again, and we were an item again as of early '07. Yet the demons from the mid-Aughts were constantly hovering around her. I did my best, but it was obvious that the tug of war in her was intense (double Libra....ouch), and my power with her, even as her boyfriend, was limited. That note, of a sense I had of her vacillating constantly, was there for the remainder of the time I knew Mary Evelyn Harju. She was never again as strong as she'd been in the early Aughts. Yet she loved me as much as she could've loved anyone, and the love was reciprocated.   

Be it ever so sloppy...

This is my interpretation of Mary Evelyn Harju, in astrological terms. Occultists will note: this is an "impossible" chart, i.e. one that shows configurations of planets not possible as one would see in an ephemeris. My presupposition is that the 1-24-78 chart was a used one anyway, and this shows you far more about Mary than the bum 1-24-78 one ever could. Astrology, for P.F.S., does not literally work all the time; even as the archetypes are almost always useful ones for breaking people open.  

Hinge Online in Northern Liberties: Spring 2004

 

The story of Hinge is not one I can tell; or, rather, one I can tell conclusively. They were around for a number of years in Philly; their el primo era seems to have been the early Aughts. I published in Hinge several times; they also accepted, eventually, several mp3s from Ardent, the '04 EP I made with Matt Stevenson in South Philly. Hinge for me are made most memorable, other than for their benign online presence, by the Northern Liberties extravaganza they put on in the spring of '04, in the middle of Ardent recording sessions and me finishing at Penn. It was a brilliantly sunny, warm, spring day; we got lucky, especially as the warehouse space where the show was held had a big yard in front where everyone could hang out and imbibe. It was, for the multi-media nature of what was presented (including my reading), and for the general Aughts Philly ambiance of permissive indulgence, as halcyon as it could be. As I watched Lucky Dragons weave a weird sonic web over the crowd and conquer our sense that computer-generated music couldn't have vibe and depth-resonance, I felt a deep sense of euphoria, and knew in the pit of my stomach that this is where the public side of my art had to go. I was thinking, still at the Hinge event, of the London Free School around Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd; that was the cultural reference point which occurred to me in there. Of course, London has few brilliantly sunny days, and what I imagined that Free School, the London one, was like, might or might not "op over" Hinge in Northern Liberties. Still, I wanted to conglomerate Hinge/Northern Liberties with my Swinging London fantasies, and by 7-10-04, was at the Highwire Gallery doing so, thanks to the generosity of Matt Stevenson, who introduced it to us.

Symbolists and Hallucinogenics

Nineties heritage, as it could start from State College, works under the aegis of what was being imbibed by the kiddies— not uppers or downers (that much), but hallucinogenics. Many nights in the mid-to-late Nineties, the Nineties revolution in State College was a revolution-in-consciousness around skewered perspectives and visionary trances. State College was and is serviced, in this respective, by something beneath the surface which illuminates the entirety of Happy Valley— a mystique emanating from Mother Nature herself, around a sense of earth magic resonating from the greener areas in and around State College. Nature breathes there. Hallucinogens heighten the sense of ecstasy and fulsomeness bestowed by greenery on the place.

No joke that, on the syllabus for true Nineties State College hipsters, a place was made for the French Symbolist poets of the nineteenth century— Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine. Hipsterism, in an era of turmoil, balanced imperatives other than just popular music and parties— reading culture in State College wasn't nothing. Other than the philosophy texts I was studying, up to and including Kant and over to the Deconstructionists (philosophy was my major at PSU, and my philosophy credits did transfer over to Penn), the heaviest lit in my brain were the Symbolists, who took all of our sense of being on trips and navigating mind-scapes and articulated what we couldn't, yet.

So, the lot of us had not just a sense of a soundtrack for our adventures— we had texts which meant something to us, which were also conduits to our personal (and collective) revolutions. The poem from Something Solid, Season in Hell: White Candle takes, and places this set of circumstances on the table for all to see. Rimbaud, in his masterwork, enacts an interior process in text of complete personal revision and revolution of self. This poem takes what was already transformative and makes it do double-time, enumerating not only a personal revolution but a revolution pertaining to the rigors of early marriage. Marriage and Rimbaud are not naturally simpatico; but the Nineties sense of unlikely juxtapositions (including State College's game of class-confounding) take, and make the contingencies which serve the poem resonate to a Symbolistic frequency. Such is one pertinent manifestation of Nineties-ism. 

....................................................................................................................

On a more practical note: State College in the 90s was very strange. It should've been that, being an artist and coming from a background steeped in the arts, I would feel uncomfortable and disoriented there. After all, people associate State College and Penn State with football, Joe Paterno, and little else. Granted, PSU State College is a high-ranking school with several outstanding departments (including continental philosophy, which was my major), but its image or "face to the world" is all about athletics. It's just that I didn't find State College that limiting. There was an active underground scene in the arts in the 90s which gave the place some real vitality.

I moved to State College in '94 without formalizing any plans to do theater or anything theater related. I had spent the summer of '92 at Carnegie Mellon doing pre-college for acting, but it hadn't led anywhere. What theater at PSU had going that I was intrigued with was a weekly series of plays, written by students and graduate students and produced by them too. Outlaw Playwrights. By the spring of '95, I was actively writing plays, because the outlet to have them produced was there. By the the spring of '99 (I had left a script in late '98 once I'd moved to NYC), I'd had four one-acts produced.

State College had an active indie rock scene, too. Summer in State College in the 90s can't have been that much different than Athens, Georgia in the early 80s. The whole town was slowed down. Everyone involved in State College indie lived in a room in a house and there were house parties all the time. What State College needed, but never got, was an R.E.M., to be a flagship bearer from State College to the world. There were candidates; the best and most popular candidate was a band of which every member was a local icon. They were musically great and very muscular (and as classicist about musical quality as early R.E.M.) but no one in the band could sing. If this band had had a Michael Stipe, the whole movement in State College would've come to the surface much faster.

People were fucking. To the extent that some arts scenes in America (particularly ones started and maintained by rich kids and trust funders, who tend towards frigidity and impotence) have problems with this, State College didn't. The sexual mores were pretty blase about faithfulness and seriousness too. This extended even to life on campus; North Halls was considered the "artsy" set of dorms, and I lived there for a long time. The idea of doing pick-up routines, hanging around playing music and smoking pot, and grooving on what you were going to do in the arts when you grew up was de rigueur. What was important was that you could live on campus if you were an artist and still not starve to death spiritually. We all absorbed the 90s ethos, which amounted to a more tortured and world-weary version of the 60s. And most of us listened to the same music. Nirvana weren't too big in State College: Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Guided by Voices, the Flaming Lips were all massive. I got into Nick Drake and Big Star on the side. Brit-Pop, particularly Blur, was around.

How did we relate to the football shenanigans? We didn't. We simply acted as if they weren't happening. In North Halls, on South Atherton Street, on West College, you could get away from that crap, and really do it, and mean it. Although visiting East Halls was always a fun education on what it meant to live on the dark side of things.

I liked my philosophy classes, and did well in them. They were a handful of other courses I liked. If I flaked out on Gen Ed requirements, it's because I was a flake in many ways in those days. Philosophy engaged me; other than that, my mind was possessed by the arts. Or  intoxicants. By 1997, they were coffeeshops in State College where, if you knew the right people, you could buy gooballs over the counter. Or smoke a joint openly sitting out in the cafe. Bohemia, and the scandals in it.

Of all the places I've spent a big chunk of time, Cheltenham High is the only place I have no fond memories of. The last six months I spent in State College in '98 were the happiest. It was a bacchanal to match anything in Philly, Chicago, NYC or DC. And if no one in the wider world knew or cared that it was happening, we were too young to notice or fret that this was the case.

 

A Note Part 3: Siren's Silence

Important to note: the Nineties revolutionary energy I noticed, seemed to manifest in spasms, and sporadically. For instance, with the time I spent in Manhattan in the late Nineties, I didn't sense that dynamism, that tempestuousness there. Center City Philly, in the Nineties, seemed to be in and out of the game. One manifestation which had to be noticeable to me, who was also active about doing Center City on my semester breaks, was the literary journal Siren's Silence. Siren's Silence was oriented around South Philadelphia, with a perma-hinge to South Street. I wandered into a Siren's Silence reading at Philly Java Company, which was then on 4th Street between South and Lombard, in 1997, and struck up a relationship.

Siren's Silence poetry editor, and flagship poet, Vlad(len) Pogorelov, was then churning out a brand of Bukowski-ish street poetry, tinged with an unexpected lyricism, which to me typifies Center City in the Nineties. This ferment pushed Philly into a place where poetry could be more real, more raw, more visceral, than it had been in America for some time. It paved the way for what I did in the Aughts, even as the Center City music scene remained relatively stagnant, as did theater (not unusual in Philly). Siren's Silence also exemplified the idea of multi-media—  like Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum was doing in Manayunk, visual art (like the Brian Willette you see on the cover here) was included in a package deal more well-rounded than what had come before, and revolutionary for Philly. 

Siren's Silence allowed me, in 1997 and 1998, to do State College-Philly— not an unusual route, to be sure, but explored here from a position of literary publication and dissemination. The dark side of Nineties revolution emerges— Jeremy Eric Tenebaum and the 'd' crew disliked Siren's Silence intensely, and the animosity was mutual. This is one reason Nineties Philly cannot get comfortable wearing a revolution banner— Philly then was notorious for generating cultural activity which could not form a harmonious whole. The cliche: Philly artists can't work together, so the city culturally is stunted, cannot fire away on all cylinders or get off the ground. Jeremy and Vlad should've been friends.

So: Nineties Philly is a half-inclusion. With what happened in Philly in the Aughts (which now appears to have been sui generis in Philly), it is unlikely that Jeremy or Vlad will be forgotten. Yet, as a signpost in State College that I could be a literary presence in Philly, Siren's Silence gave me, personally, something that was invaluable. Manhattan failed to do a similar trick. Nineties ferment may go down in history as just that— something very real, but something patchy, too. Cultural maps may later show in greater detail how this worked, and what the true damages were.

A Note Part 2: Jeremy in the Nineties

 Amidst all the revolutionary energy of the Nineties, the soul's journey of one Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum is one which needs to be, as the saying goes, explicated. Jeremy grew up in the South Jersey Philly 'burbs, and graduated from high school in '92. He then found himself at Villanova University, also in the Philly 'burbs, not far from where I am now in Plymouth Meeting. While attending Villanova, Jeremy attracted a coterie of other students as acolytes, as he went about doing tasks related to both poetry and film. The tip-off came towards the middle of the 90s for this group; Manayunk, a neighborhood in Philly not far from Villanova (and Conshy and Plymouth Meeting), had a lot of hot cultural action going on, and would be an appropriate locale for Jeremy and his group to cut their teeth on.

The history of Jeremy in Manayunk, which continues all through the Aughts (Jeremy's a Cancer, folks, and when he finds a home, he finds a home), starts there, but the Nineties version is special, with Jeremy carving an interesting cultural path from Villanova to Manayunk (never any prominent connection before or since) and back. Villanova-Manayunk is not as drastic as Cheltenham-Abington, but still something which could only happen the right way in an epoch of restlessness and ferment. Also worth noting that an apropos nest was waiting for Mr. Tenenbaum in Manayunk— the coffee-shop La Tazza, on Cotton Street, and its proprietors, Frank & Tammy, made it their business to give Jeremy a suitable base of operations.

Jeremy's essential activity along his Nineties circuit was the creation and dissemination of the literary magazine 'd'. Over several years, 'd' became popular and successful enough that I knew about it in State College (having done Manayunk on semester breaks). I submitted to 'd'...and was rejected! Yet 'd' enjoyed a wide reputation among younger poets on the East Coast then, and the ricochet from Manayunk-Villanova was a loud one. All the while, Jeremy was churning out serious poems...which are, as I have also explicated, difficult to find. Yet the essential Nineties fact remains— the welding together of disparate and unlikely places, in a spirit or Zeitgeist mood of revolution and change, was a widespread phenomenon. Jeremy's Nineties journey, like mine, is a representative one. This, even as, as we see in PICC (A Poet in Center City), the journey confounded the Aughts, and P.F.S., for him.

A Note on the Nineties

About the Nineties: specifically, about the Nineties section of Something Solid. Important for me to make even more explicit, what the book is attempting to explicate: the Nineties were a time of social revolution and turmoil. Many of the facets of media mythology and narratives often applied to the Sixties apply to the Nineties, too. I can’t fit everything into the book; one of the pieces left missing (implicit in Cheltenham) is that the wall dividing two neighboring, rival communities, Cheltenham and Abington, fell for a number of years, creating a raucous sense of controversy and unease in the two locales. I managed, through social connections, to remain on the crest of this wave for a number of years in the Nineties (esp. semester breaks, first in Gulph Mills, then back in Glenside). The Zeitgeist dictated that what was wrapped tight loosened, and the sense of euphoria and exuberance on Cheltenham-Abington nights, for those of us engaged, was marked. The euphoria of finding alternatives to the mainstream— socially, creatively, sexually, and every other way— was the up side to Nineties Zeitgeist energy.

Outlaw Playwrights, as it operated in State College in the Nineties, was similarly a maverick enterprise. The heat of it— a black box theater filled to capacity every Thursday night at 11:15 pm, for student, graduate student-penned work— was euphoric, for those who wanted to write for the theater, as I did. Outlaw Playwrights did, in fact, continue past the Nineties, but its el primo time to be radical, the right way, revolutionary, was the Nineties, when boundaries loosened and meant that the crest of the Outlaws wave meant real action.

The way Something Solid deals with my relationship to Jennifer Strawser starts from a premise related to these issues. The premise is what I’m explicating here— the revolutionary Nineties created an atmosphere or context in whish unlikely relationships (marriages or not) could be consummated, including ones which bothered to cross class boundaries. Jennifer’s home was a poor suburb of Harrisburg— Liverpool, Pa. Her family was settled in a trailer. I grew up amid comparative affluence (Abington, btw, is slightly less affluent than Cheltenham, but same general range). But we fell in love, and what happened, happened. A couple of Zeitgeist kiddies we were in State College (and Liverpool and Gulph Mills), acting out a scenario which certainly did engender controversy and unease, but which also innovated against the normative for PSU (and CHS) students. Emily, from Perfect, Lisa, Maria, and all the other townie girls were also up for the game of class-confounding.

The problem then arises, in writing Something Solid— how to express specifically these things, without sermonizing or engaging in sentimentality. The Nineties section of the book, like Equations before I imposed a dialectical structure on it overtly, is tricky to navigate, if a general sense of the Nineties Zeitgeist is not imposed on the book, and thus the book’s readers. This, I have no idea yet how to surmount. Letting histories, mythologies, and narratives arrange themselves around the Nineties through media influence, I cannot trust (the same way I tend not to trust accounts of the revolutionary Sixties). If there could be one poem which creates a mise en scene for the rest of the Nineties section, that might work. If not, a preface…again!

 

 

Elegy 702 and Form

Form, in the Cheltenham Elegies series, is meant to elongate an impression of plasticity. Form itself is, at its most congenial, a mode of implied Inter-Dialogism with an assumed audience. When the brain registers that a formal gambit has been made, the elegy (or any piece of writing which might be formal) at hand becomes something beyond a series of thematic gestures, meant to evoke sorrow, pity, and compassion; it becomes a way or manner of expressing that the elegy is being used as a mode of possible innovation, pushed into the front-lines or avant-garde, as the elegy has not very much been pushed before. In 702, an implied palimpsest over Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats puts the emphasis on a tone that mixes the normal elegiac imperative with archness. The apostate figure in the poem, who is obviously meant to be construed as a writer himself, casts a spell over the elegy, employing Keats’ formal parameters in a way that conflates Keats own melopoeiac imperative with a nod to both Modernist fracturing techniques and post-modern irony. The form becomes a tribute to the apostate’s vision, as channeled through a Keats lens, and also an implied jest at his youthfulness, and youthful sense of exultation in the Romantic. The form itself is fractured lens, because seeing through it as we do a succession of scenes which we are unlikely to find in Keats or Wordsworth, it manages to ironize itself:                                       

 

His heart ached within a drowsy, numbed trance.
     Cameras panned to him pacing the black-top, even
blacker at 3 am, which opens out on the expanse
      of Mill Road, down the hill, past the school. Night deepened,
he was lonely enough to cry, heartsick for being
      the only one of a scabrous tribe gutsy enough to say the name
           which even then had rent Cheltenham, riddled
with bullets like a dog’s corpse, assassins fleeing
     the site of the hit, where the one kid, bound for fame,
          did for himself the trick of ditching a tepid middle.

 He levitates past himself, flies with bugs into crevices,
       is the pilot of the few airplanes wafting by, Pegasus-like
for a mind intent on flight, meeting divinity, heaven’s bliss
       from a cockpit. Myers’ schoolyard glistens like spikes.
She knew him then, at her end— saw how the spine
    imposed truth on empty gesture, feeling on pretense,
       vital life on the living death of their shared enterprise.
This, he could never know; yet without knowing how, why,
    he strode past her emptied house that night, tense,
        sweating in summer’s stew, pallid in cold surprise.

 The apostate flies around a small room, piles of books,
    papers scattered, forests of drafts, faintly heard bird-song.
Verdurous plains suggest themselves; moss-softened nooks;
   just out of time, to a mind o’er spelled by word-song.
He can only fly as he reads, over & over, the lays
      already fastened to moss & flower, secured above
          shallow stream. His friend waits, in stealth. 
The early morning ride he caught then, from love
     given, wasn’t her— she had gone the way
         there is no coming back— yet he slept himself back to health.  
   

The topos which is mixed into the Cheltenham Elegies series— a community maintaining a shared fixation on ostracizing a threatening or menacing individual— takes flight here, into a sense that the characters most prized by the series are the ones who hold out against this impulse, towards a stance of entrenched rebellion and non-conformity. John Keats, as a poet, is not a Byronic outcast or a Shelleyan pariah— he tends to present himself as middle-grounder. Yet, the co-opting of his form to perform a literary task which raises this topos puts Nightingale in a new space, where Keats is emphasized as something with, potentially, an explosive sense of rebellion and non-conformity built into him, beginning with the odal form, invented by Keats himself. Keats is unwitting here, but everything about the poem leans on the odal form to make its own obstinate statement of the individual’s triumph over a community, and the sense of embracing a writerly identity built into the form itself, which Keats may or may not have intended (but one which one thinks Byron or Shelley would have smiled on, satanically). Co-opting the individuals who have supported him into the matrix of the poem, with form embraced as  a mode of punkish rebellion, so destabilizes the Keatsian impulse, perhaps even deranges it, that the palimpsest over Nightingale makes an awkward fit with the original model, towards a recognition that the usage of Keats, or at least a portion of it, leans towards instrumentality. Yet, ultimately, and oddly, the poem is about love— individuals rising up with certain integrity to defend the innocent. Because this is the truth, the betrayal of John Keats is not a complete one. Even if love here is more beleaguered by worldly concern than is usually found in Keats.   

  

 

Elegy 427 & the Self-Posited

 

The tensions inherent in Meta-Dialogism— competing voices vying for a place in a single consciousness— are re-explored in Elegy 427. Here, self-consciousness fights back against its own power to discern, and the battle is seen to be a losing one. The drama which attends 427 as a construct is itself attendant on an edifice erected by an individual, for the edification of an individual— a self-posited, self-sustaining pact with a place (Glenside, a borough of Cheltenham Township, and the borough which has the most claim to reality as an autonomous locale in and of itself), which becomes a rampart employed by consciousness against a sense of uselessness in the world:

When she starts at Rizzo’s, winds her way around
to Easton Road on Saturday night, it's with full
control, absolute mastery— here’s where Glenside
stands, where it’s going, here’s why. The game
continues over to Limekiln Pike— Wawa, Tail
of the Whale. Not just the surface, but who’s
hiding where, with what, & again why. Yet deep
in her heart, the ultimate why, life or death in
a sense of purpose, remains barren. The spider
in the glass case, frozen in the Humphrey’s
Pest Control window, is to the point— Humphrey’s
never answers anyway— the spider tells her
where the real action is. Then the beauty of it—
her sacrifice to/for Glenside— becomes just another
heist in the world. Limekiln Pike is too steep to climb.

This individual desires that the voice of the self-sustained, self-posited pact should subsist as something dominant in her consciousness. The drama of fluctuations and oscillations, wherein the pact is either workable or nullified by both the corruptions inherent in Glenside and in the human race in general, enacts itself in Meta-Dialogic acknowledgements, an array of voices which command the narrative sense built into her brain. When what speaks most eloquently refutes the possibility of the pact (or, as in the poem, sacrifice), and affirms the reality (or spider) of an anti-idealistic world, predicated on the prevalence of killing, massacre, destruction, the interior voice which knocks the pact from its perch is about futility, and the impossibility of sustaining an ideal in the face of spider-webbed realities. The mimetic process, for the reader, involves itself building up a rampart, wherein this character (heroine) is someone we can believe in and take seriously, against the impinging sense of doubt and disbelief that she can be dismissed as impractical or romantic, or both.

 

Feel 1 & 2: Seventeen Weeks

On the brink of autumn and winter, things are still heating up here, as Feel 2 secures six weeks at #1 on the Soundclick Minimal Electronic chart.

Between Feel 1 and Feel 2, we have a total of seventeen weeks spent in a #1 position on a Soundclick chart. Feel itself is, lookin' real good, like Natalie Wood.

Feel (I saw) remix: The Labyrinth Continues

Continuing to map the Eris Temple: at the top of the stairs from the studio/DIY performance space, where Feel was recorded, turn due left and this large front room space is what you will see, which can also be used as a performance space, and where the two Apparition Poems videos were shot, in 2010 and 2011, respectively. The window facade at the end faces out into 52nd Street. The neighborhood is a racy, or spicy one, giving the whole enterprise of the Temple a sort of rogue, maverick tinge. As you will see, turn due right from the studio and more steps lead up to a living room space, followed by a kitchen.   

P.S. Something worth saying about Acid Dropping, Mixter Riders, and the singles.

Feel (I saw) remix: public debut of Feel

The first time I ever read Feel aloud was here: Molly Russakoff's bookstore in the Italian Market in South Philly. This was in the spring of 2005, and under the aegis of the Philly Free School. It was April, I recall, and a rainy night, and it was mostly just us: myself, Hannah Miller, Nick Gruberg, Mike Land, and Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum. The poem wasn't finished yet, but I read what I had. 

Feel 2: Living in Stereo

 

For the ultimate nerve-shattering experience, try listening to Feel 2 on good headphones, preferably from a hard drive. Connoisseurs will see what's of interest instantly: it was recorded in stereo. Thus, the ricochet effect of tracks back and forth, and the physiological experience they create for the listener, become an experience beyond the standard listen. CC Mixter manages to take us fifty years into the future (2072) and fifty into the past (1972) simultaneously. Kudos. 

Feel (I saw) remix: Square Space

 

Matt Stevenson's recording of Feel, as read by me, was made at Eris Temple, at 52nd and Cedar in North-West Philadelphia, in the August aughts of 2006. I've already shown some of what the Eris Temple studio looked like. In these two shots, you can see two halves of the square space where I actually sat, reading the poem. The square space, as is evident, was also used as a DIY performance area, while the crowd usually lingered in what doubled as a control room space, a few steps below, and where Matt mixed what I had done. 

Cheltenham Elegy #702 in Argotist Online Poetry

 

Argotist Online editor Jeffrey Side is up and running again with a poetry section for AO. Here, in the refurbished AO poetry site, is Cheltenham Elegy #702. Thanks again to Jeff. 

Feel (I saw) remix: Two #1s

As of today, the Feel (I saw) remix series produced its second #1. Feel (I saw) remix 2: vocal montage landed at #1 on the Soundclick Minimal Electronic sub-generic chart. Cheers!

P.S. Also worth noting: as of 9-9, Feel 2 landed at #18 on the Electronic Overall chart, too. 

Readings from P.F.S. Post (EP)

 

Selections from P.F.S. Post, taken from its seventeen year life online, read by me. EP length (17 minutes).

Track Listing:

Vlad Pogorelov: No. 32

Christopher Goodrich: Upon Hearing that She and the Man with whom She Cheated are getting Married;

Drinking Together, Li Po and I admire Wang's Garden

Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum: dear gr

Steve Halle: supermarket tabloid tableau

Nick Moudry: High Noon

Chris McCabe: from The True History of the Working Class (March 26, 2008)

Cheers!

Feel (I saw) remix: Matt Stevenson

And here's a picture of Matt Stevenson, in all his resplendent glory, though not at Eris Temple. This shot of Matt was taken during his tenure at Webster Street Studios, on Webster Street in South Philadelphia, which directly preceded his tenure at Eris Temple in North/West Philly, which began in 2005. 

Feel (I saw) remix: Eris Temple

What you see in this picture: me and two cohorts sitting in front of what functioned, for Matt Stevenson, as a console/mixing board at Eris Temple, at 52nd and Cedar in North/West Philly, as of 2006. With the success online of Feel (I saw) remix, I thought seeing this might be of some interest. Up the two steps to my right, in the picture, was a large, carpeted square space, with lines running to Matt, where I sat on the day in early August 2006 when Feel in its entirety was recorded, and did my thing. To our left: another odd rectangle of grungy basement space, leading to a staircase up to the Temple's first floor. Eris Temple Studio was a walk-down model studio, even as the carpeted space had a high window, level with street level, so that claustrophobia wasn't much of an issue. Thanks again, Matt.  

The Fall by Mary Evelyn Harju (post-Impressionized)

 

Logan Square Flat

At the risk of being exhaustive, here is the Logan Square flat mentioned in Undulant: apartment 2A at 154 North 21st Street, on the second floor, where I lived from 1999 to 2008. As of '08, I moved to Westminster Arch, around the corner from this, at 23rd and Arch, and was there until 2012. 

P.S. Worth noting that this neighborhood can bear the name Logan Square, or can remain nameless; i.e., its not completely a commonplace to call it Logan Square. Some people do, some don't. 

Bar Noir

More Undulant incidental stuff: this is how Bar Noir looked during its heyday in the Aughts. Bar Noir was a "walk-down" on 18th Street, between Walnut and Chestnut in Center City Philly, right off of Rittenhouse Square. During the Free School era, we used it frequently, though not as frequently as we did McGlinchey's and Dirty Frank's. It was a hierarchy of bars, folks, for a bunch of hard-drinking weirdos... 

In Bloom

Undulant's doing pretty well in the world now. Worth noting: I had a few memorable nights at that time with the party in question, but the night in Undulant, in which the Mahopac lamp got smashed, was June 16, 2005: Bloomsday. Bloomsday is huge in Philly, largely because the Rosenbach Museum, in Center City, holds a plentitude of original Joyce manuscripts pertaining to Ulysses. Was Ulysses Undulant? My itinerary for that day included: festive, drunken celebration at the Rosenbach (which included out into the streets and the blocks around the museum) to Bar Noir, and then back to Logan Square with...would she mind, in this context, being called Molly? I doubt it.