I'm filled with holes.  I used to see spackle in my relationships

with people.  And I still have a hard time holding on.  But really,

there is nothing to be filled in.  Knowing this gives me some com-

fort because it means that I have to live with my losses as one

would live without an arm: being constantly aware of the phan-

tom lim sensation that wants so desperately to connect, to be

filled in, with flesh.  But ultimately, I have to survive by rewriting

the script that assumes the spaces have to be filled in.  They don't

-like the universe, my holes are filled with their own energies,

forces fields, and pulls.  The challenge is to recognize this anti-

matter as some kind of sustenance; to find in holes a certain kind

of completion.

KP

From Kristin Prevallet's I, Afterlife

[Maxim]

Never fall in love with a text that attempts to convince you that you are already dead.

Or that says you are a vampire.

Or that makes you feel distant, aloof, removed from the scene.

Because the crime has already been committed.

You don't need to read about the gory details to know that it was violent.

We were both there, all along.

The only difference is that I see autumn leaves and immediately hear the gunshot.

You just want to see the body and marvel at how it fell forward, and then was left behind.

Some excerpts from "Castration or Decapitation?" - Helen Cixous

She does not hold onto loss, she loses without holding onto loss.  This makes her writing a body that overflows, disgorges, vomits as opposed to masculine incorporation…She loses , and doubtless it would be to the death were it not for the intervention of those basic movements of a feminine unconscious (this is how I would define feminine sublimation)  which provide the capacity of passing above it all by means of a form of oblivion which is not the oblivion of burial or interment but the oblivion of acceptance.  This is taking loss, seizing it, living it.  Leaping.   This goes with not withholding: she does not withhold.  She does not withhold, hence the impression of constant return evoked by this lack of withholding.  It's like a kind of open memory that ceaselessly makes way.  And in the end, she will write this not-withholding, this not-writing: she writes of non-writing, not-happening…She crosses limits: she is neither outside nor in, whereas the masculine would tray to "bring the outside in, if possible."

Let's look not at syntax but at fantasy, at the unconscious: all the feminine texts I've read are very close to the voice, very close to the flesh of language, much more so than masculine texts…perhaps because there's something in them that's freely given, perhaps because they don't rush into meaning, but are straightway at the threshold of feeling.  There's tactility in the feminine text, there's touch, and this touch passes through the ear.  Writing in the feminine is passing on what is cut out by the Symbolic, the voice of the mother, passing on what is most archaic.  The most archaic force that touches a body is one that enters by the ear and reaches the most intimate point.  This innermost touch always echoes in a woman-text.  I see it as an outpouring…which can appear in primitive or elementary texts as a fantasy of blood, of menstrual flow, etc., but I prefer to see as vomiting, as "throwing up," "disgorging," And I'd link this with a basic structure of property relations defined by mourning.

This is how I would define a feminine textual body: as a female libidinal economy, a regime, energies, a system of spending not necessarily carved out by culture.  A feminine textual body is recognized by the fact that it is always endless, without ending: there's no closure, it doesn't stop, and it's this that very often makes the feminine text difficult to read.  For we've learned to read books that basically pose the word "end."  But this one doesn't finish, a feminine text goes on and on and at a certain moment the volume comes to an end but the writing continues and for the reader this means being thrust into the voice.  These are texts that work on the beginning but not on the origin.  The origin is a masculine myth: I always want to know where I come from.  The question "Where do children come from?" is basically a masculine, much more than feminine, question.  The quest for origins, illustrated by Oedipus, doesn't haunt a feminine unconscious.  Rather it's the beginning, or beginnings, the manner of beginning, not promptly with the phallus in order to close with the phallus, but startling on all asides at once, that makes a feminine writing.  A feminine text start on all sides at once starts twenty times, thirty times, over.

Women who write have for the most part until now considered themselves to be writing not as women but as writers.  Such women may declare that sexual difference means nothing, that there's no attributable difference between masculine and feminine writing…What does it mean to "take no position"?  When someone says "I'm not political" we all know what that means!  It's just another way of saying: "My politics are someone else's!"  And it's exactly the case with writing!  Most women are like this: they do someone else's-man's-writing, and in their innocence sustain it and give it voice, and end up producing writing that's in effect masculine.  Great care must be taken in working on feminine writing not to get trapped by names: to be signed with a women's name doesn't necessarily make a piece of writing feminine.  It could quite well be masculine writing, and conversely, the fact that a piece of writing is signed with a man's name does not in itself exclude femininity.  It's rare, but you can sometimes find feminist in writing signed by men: it does happen.

Now, I think that what women will have to do and what they will do, right from the moment they venture to speak what they have to say will of necessity bring about a shift in metalanguage.  And I think we're completely crushed, especially in places like universities, by the highly repressive operations of metalanguage, the operations, that is, of the commentary on the commentary, the code, the operation that sees to it that the moment women open their mouths-women more often than men-they are immediately asked in whose name and from what theoretical standpoint they are speaking, who is their master and where they are coming from: they have, in short, to salute…and show their identity papers.  There's work to be done against class, against categorization, against classification-classes.  "Doing classes" in France means doing military service.  There's work to be done against military service, against all schools, against the pervasive masculine urge to judge, diagnose, digest, name…not so much in the sense of the loving precision of poetic naming as in that of the repressive censorship of philosophical nomination/conceptualization.

Women would then have to start by resisting the movement of re-appropriation that rules the whole economy, by being party no longer to the masculine return, but by proposing instead a desire no longer caught up in the death struggle, no longer implicated in the reservation and reckoning of the masculine economy, but breaking with the reckoning that "I never lose anything except to win a bit more"…so as to put aside all negativeness and bring out a positivness which might be called the living other, the rescued other, the other unthreatened by destruction.   Women have it in them to organize this regeneration, this vitalization of the other, of otherness in its entirety.  They have it in them to affirm the different, their difference, such that nothing can destroy that difference, rather that it might be affirmed, affirmed to the point of strangeness.  So much so that when sexual difference, is touched on, the whole problem of destroying the strange, destroying all the forms of racism, all the exclusions, all of those instances of outlaw and genocide that recur through History, is also touched on.  If women were to set themselves to transform History, it can safely be said that every aspect of History would be completely altered.  Instead of being made by man, History's task would be to make woman, to produce her.  And it's at this point that work by women themselves on women might be brought into play, which would benefit not only women but all humanity.

57+12+3 - Anne Tardos

Prostitution candy wrap gallivanting sweetie

Blues donkey, Jew's monkey, everlasting news junkie

Lavender elephant

Piggly Wiggly evidence

Grange wool simulacrum eigen perseverance

Gangliated fitz-koh macafee connection, matz-koh

Eagan again.

A baby gorilla mistook his hat for his gingiva.  No shame, Sir. Your

hair is not my hair.  No shame.  Semiramis hubbub and a charivari

collarbone.

Fuck you, Semiramis.  Macafee fromage desiration frock-coat.

I gladly form English sentences.

Iffy nanny incantations.

Five and seven make twelve.

The law says it all.

Maybe.

Steadfast kitchen drainage erosion darling.

V-neck validation negligently critical.

What's my story?

Fifty-seven people were killed in the 1994 earthquake in Lost Angeles.

Words no longer pronounced the letter l are walk, talk, folk,

yolk, palm, salmon, half, calm, almond, and a few others.

Vaccination metaphysics Iris Murdoch never mind.

Episodic nifty ginger.

Slide 57 shows an example of Acne Vulgaris.  Ingenuity.

Case Fifty Seven - Synovial Carcinoma.

Primitive simplicity.

Election enigma academic epidemic

Naphtalene gossamer bioremediation.

some criteria of poetic analysis suggested by Lyn Hejinian

• a poem is not an isolated autonomous rarified aesthetic object
• a person (a poet) has no irreducible ahistorical, unmediated, singular, kernel identity
• language is a preeminently social medium
• the structures of language are social structure sin which meanings and intentions are already in place
• institutionalized stupidity and entrenched hypocrisy are monstrous and should be attacked (Professor Cynthia Huff particularly loves this one)
• racism, sexism, and classism are repulsive
• prose is not necessarily not poetry
• theory and practice are not antithetical
• it is not surrealism to compare apples to oranges
• intelligence is romantic (The Language of Inquiry)

my poem of protection

Poem of Protection

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Protect Jenna Lynn Goldsmith, my rainbow, queen dyke, mullet walker, scholar of English studies and feminism, writer of beautiful words, intensely secular jew-ish, silhouette of androgyny reading Sexton, Whitman, Tennyson, driver of a bumper of social issues for peace and equality, wearer of hemp, burner of jasmine, drinker of soy milks, nosher of toast, sporter of numerous high fashion hoodies and blue bandannas

Shield her from all forms of water falling from the sky
acids rains, slight drizzles, snow pellets, hail storms, summer monsoons, wet socks, cold jeans, frizzy hair, the mist off Lake Summerfest
use uninvertible umbrellas, silver awnings, hoods of faux fur, petition to the rain gods! such as Cocijo of Mexico, Mulungu of Africa, Tawhaki of the South Pacific, Lei Gong of East Asia and Thor of the Marvel Comics

Block her irrational fear of hoo-ved animals especially those of North America who may attack like the White-tail deer, the Mule deer, the Sitka deer the Elk and the albino deer that roam Argonne National Laboratory with a vengeance, that are especially
ferocious

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Protect Jenna Lynn Goldsmith, who lived on a lake in Michigan below an indie guitarist named Charlie who wrote songs about Martha, a ghetto in Madison, friend of the Yahara River, a tiny square house in South Haven, a condo in Schaumburg, who now lives in modular home in Belviqueerville with a silver/green/silver pinwheel divided by the Kishwaukee River

Guard her weakened immune system from allergens and allergy-induced asthma, sinus infections, packets of nasal phlegm, cat dander, dust, pollen, mold, feathers and leppits with hypoallergenic breeds, air purifiers, nose spritzers, Zyrtec, Allegra D, forget Claritin, soap scum remover and featherless dusters

Hold her during the death of her mother, Martha Ann Trowe, who hugged me first and knew me later, lover of Door County coffee, teacher of giving, expert photographer of the Sycamore, the Pin Oak, the Buttonbush and the Sweet gum but who also has an office and a desk as a carpenter contractor, lover of Jenna so much

Hold her during the death of her Grandmother, Haroldine Bernadette Sorensen who married Herbert Trowe, divorced Herbert Trowe, married Herbert Trowe, divorced Herber Trowe, then partnered a woman named Caroline, fellow English professor, who she walked with on the beaches but could not hold her hand, lover of Jenna so much


Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Find Jenna Lynn Goldsmith who spent her summers as manager of guest services, author of term papers, on Rape and Sexual power, the Stigmatization of AIDS, speaker of Spanish II, proof reader of my abominable prose, runner of town errands, genius conversationalist, maker of eye contact and mixtapes

Deflect her from my mother, Maria Anne Mazzola Coyle, who is trying
who knew me as girl scout, bride, boy crazy, Catholic school girl, soccer player, only daughter, virgin, Nicholas Sparks, honor student, sound breeder, big sister, collector of marbles, volunteer, teacher, her sweet Melissa she should have put in more dresses, bought more Barbies thought less of the saber-tooth, read more Babysitter’s Club, watched less Star Wars, planted a rose not dug up a worm
who forgot misprint on the upper middle class nuclear family, poet, vegetarian, bundle of social issues, queer, secret from Grandma, novus scholar of post-modern, traveler of the world, lover, idealist, foolish

Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Adore Jenna Lynn Goldsmith who even before we met I longed for her thorax, hinge joints, carpals, fibula, the dear roof of her mouth and other obscure parts, who has her very own handwriting, a nose ring, two tattoos but wants another, fake poet glasses, a turtle named Buddy who is twenty-five years old, reminiscent of the Archelon ischyros, who likes ketchup but also chocolate chip pancakes

Protect her from mundane living circumstances
let her love her coffee every day, give her Sunday mornings with perfect toast, a bookshelf so collected, sun sliding in envelopes, an endless lover, real flowers, smile at bad drivers, let her notice every building on the way to work, find the curious intellect of every student, let the weather take her back with old feelings, have every lovely piece of word move her, have mercy on the kingdom of insects

Protect her from the story of us
mornings like yesterday
graduate schools and their state flowers

at Las Vegas the sagebrush
at Philadelphia the mountain laurel
at New Orleans the magnolia
at Notre Dame the peony
at Normal the purple violet
at Champaign-Urbana the purple violet
at San Francisco the poppy
at Chicago the purple violet
if we succeed there or there, future girlfriends who are not me, the drawer of poems we filled, the classes we skipped, hugs of absolute unselfishness, how I laid about you like a sponge, engrossed in identical breathes, that one time I took her to get sushi and let me pay, or that other time I showed her my bedroom and all my things, the other time we ordered pizza and wrote a poem together, or tripped to Northern Illinois under the siege of a snowstorm only to eat wheatbagels and drink coffee, or the last time we talked, when she showed me her bedroom and all of her things


Isis, agape theon
lover of lilacs and bronze!

Face her to hatred
who replaced the human with dyke, faggot, rugmuncher, homosexual, feminazi, catlapper, butch, kike
forgetter of Jenna Lynn Goldsmith, who looked past the stares of hatred to the soft retina of face into the flubbery lobe behind
who taught me to make human humans, make them people to the point of their sleeping breaths in steady rhythms, be love in their dreams, blanket their distant hearts, see them in the kitchen plucking unwanted hairs, riding the elevator to the 42nd floor, vomiting bile, surfing porn, loading the dishwasher, pinching their fat, wiping their glasses, inserting enemas, praying to the sky, tripping up curbs, flicking their boogers, kissing their mothers, holding on to each other

from Juliana Spahr's Response

VIII

an attempt to speak to the human moment will occur

in these moments someone touches someone

someone claims to love someone

someone moves closer to someone in prelude to a proposition

someone waits outside for someone to come by

someone becomes unable to live his/her life and succumbs

this is information that might be left out of witness

yet it has a bearing that is all the more strong

it speaks to the safety of immunity that does not exist

to the various other kinds of immunity that do exist

such as an emotional immunity to the world

a quarantine of engagement

a feeling of safety

which one do you believe?

some words to live by from Lyn Hejinian's My Life

So that if I tell you my intentions, I force myself to maintain those intentions.

I found myself dependent on a pause, a rose, something on paper.  It is a way of saying, I want you, too, to have this experience, so that we are more alike, so that we are closer, bound together, sharing a point of view--so that we are "coming from the same place."

If I couldn't be a cowboy, I wanted to be a sailor.

Now that I was "old enough to make my own decisions," I dressed like everyone else.  People must flatter their own eyes with their pathetic lives.

When you've exhausted setting, topic, or tone, begin a new paragraph.  The refrigerator makes a sound I can't spell.

from Juliana Spahr's The Transformation

So there was a certain emotion in the air.  This emotion was

trivial.  It was not an emotion that would last.  It was a passing

emotion.  It was the emotion commonly experiences around

brushes with disaster and the awareness of having been spared.

The after a hurricane, after a black out after a tornado, after

an earthquake emotion.  All of this gave the small parts of their

lives the same intensity with which they listened to poetry.

One night, standing in the cold out on the sidewalk looking at

the towers-of-light while waiting for friends to come out of the

bar, they realized that while the collapsing buildings did not

cause them to fall in love, make babies, give rings to one anoth

er, settle down finally after years of having trouble with com-

mittments, it did change the way they read poetry, the way they

looked at art, the way they thought about ideas.  Even before 

the buildings fell down, they had gone to many poetry read-

ings.  They went to poetry readings where poems that used frag-

mentation, quotation, disruption, disjunction, agrammatical

syntax, and so on were read.  On the odd occasion where the 

poets used complete sentences, they were usually used ironi-

cally.  The fragmentation felt reassuring to them.  Felt like a

trance-induced chant.  Like a philosophy of connection.  Like

a model of intimacy that was full of acquaintances and publics

that recognized not only points of contact and mixing, but also

relationship difficulties, cultural and linguistic difference.  And so

they often wondered in this time if perhaps all those who 

claimed that poetry was a comfort were right.  Even those

who claimed this were usually talking about lyric poetry and

not poetry that used fragmentation, quotation, disruption, dis-

junction, agrammatical syntax, and so on.  They had noticed

before that they felt writing in their body.  That they felt those 

certain sensations, those sensations of interested calmness that

happened when their mind and their breath were working

together, that pleasant boredom.  And they began at this time

to think of the poetry that used fragmentation, quotation, dis-

ruption, disjunction, agrammatical syntax, and so on not as a 

radical avant-garde break but as the warm hand of someone

they loved stroking their head, helping them to relax the mus-

cles in their head and inviting them to just close their eyes and

relax for a second with the words of someone else.  This feeling 

somewhat answered that constant question of about the use of 

the avant-garde in a time like this.

from Juliana Spahr's The Transformation

Because the town was dirty, whenever they read poems about 

the beauty of the countryside or the rich, dark woods of the

eastern part of the continent or of the other continent, and

islands across the Atlantic, which was all they knew about

poetry because the only poems they read in school were about

stuff like this, poetry made little sense to them.  So then they

found this writing of fragmentation, quotation, disruption, dis-

junction, agrammatical syntax, and so on in an anthology.

This writing was at the time over sixty years old and mainly

written on the continent and the islands across the Atlantic

and yet it felt completely fresh and new and because they were

looking for something that was not a weird environmental lie,

and because this writing of fragmentation, quotation, disrup-

tion, disjunciton, agrammatical syntax, and so on was so weird

it at least didn't seem to be lying in the usual ways and they

clung to it and they felt it was a part of them.

Really what it was was that they felt this writing in their body.

They felt certain sensations, the sensations of interested calm-

ness that happened when their mind and their breath were

working together.  This sensation of interested calmness might

also be called pleasant boredom. There was something about 

the artfully vague repetition of this writing from afar that

pleased them.  It pleased them slightly but not too much and

from this mild stimulation certain thoughts formed in their

head and they felt they could pay attention to these thoughts

and their emerging symbols as much or as little as they wanted.