Sunday, December 1, 2019

Review of The War on Christmas by Brandon Brown & J. Gordon Faylor [Clara B. Jones]




The War on Christmas
Brandon Brown*, J. Gordon Faylor*
December 2018
Self-published, limited edition pamphlet [Oakland/El Cerrito, California], “...distributed by 'word of mouth'...either given out in person or mailed to friends/family/etc. Something of a nod to Jack Spicer who would never distribute his books outside of the Bay Area...I have a bunch of copies of The War on Christmas and can always make more as needed.” [Communication via email to Clara B. Jones from J. Gordon Faylor, 2/8/2019]
Unpaginated [32 pp]

A book review in innovative sonnet form by Clara B. Jones. Lines of poetry appearing in italics are from The War on Christmas.


What is the relationship of such an 'enigma text' to the poetry of High Modernism?” Marjorie Perloff

1
The War on Christmas, The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, The War on Terror, The War on Pleasure, The War on Childhood, The War on Western Civilization, The War on White Males, The War on War, The War on Modernism, The War on Truth: “The utter tranquility of an abandoned / Wasteland, where even the hawks / Picking apart the rotten carcass of a / Guinea pig bite in quietude.”

2
Brown and Faylor “defamiliarize” Christmas from religious observance, to commodified holiday, to symbolism, to metaphor. Their description of elves is not how we imagine them, though Viktor Shklovsky would enjoy reading this pamphlet.

3
Hard/soft rhyming: “Come here, little winter robin, belly so bright; / sit on Santa's stool and tell me of your world / where kites fly high in the wind / across the fields, gossiping daisies alight....”

4
I wrote about what I didn't see. The experience that eluded me somehow intrigued me more than the one I was having....” John Ashbery

5
Dear J. Gordon Faylor, Dear Brandon / Brown, Dear Comrades: Thanks for / Extinguishing the need for a Christmas. / Now every day is a goddam candy cane. / Cheers to you all. Love, Children.” And no one will find coal and ashes on Christmas morn ever again!

6
I can feel these positive fats / And complex antioxidants fortifying / My body against illness and the sad / Passions of life.” All well and good; but, do we still get to eat plum pudding?

7
The words 'expressionism' and 'expressionist' first cropped up in the art literature around 1911, initially as blanket terms for avant-garde art in Europe around the turn of the century.” Norbert Wolf

8
Whenever life unearths you / ruthless, sparks injury or ill / red devils burgeoning under skin / to try and kill you and your soul, deliver / thyself to the Christmas Hospital.” [Clara vividly recalls the strange feeling in her gut when her father drove her to the Richmond (Va) Children's Hospital on Brook Road on Christmas Eve in 1949 to stare at the building where kids with polio were housed.]

9
Combinations of words and phrases seem to make sense at first; but Brown & Faylor are playing “language games.”

10
La'Toya: What does this stanza make you think about, Jamal?—“The permanent fixture of the sun / permits no life the absence of light / in our world, as you know we scrounge, / and must, like mice for the germ / of a voracious reality.”**—Jamal: 'Honkies' control the banks and the media.

11
Symbolism, a loosely organized literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in the late 19th century, spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and American literatures of the 20th century to varying degrees. [Retrieved from internet, 10/7/19]

12
And what, you asked me, of Christmas angels? / We were sitting in the Plaza de Janeiro / Eating a rol de guyaba, one of the world's crucial / Pastries. Annoying little hairless dogs / Bit at the stone feet of the huge replica of the David / Which rises up from soil in the middle of the park / And bares its head for the shit of birds.” [Poetics is as useful to angels as Ornithology is to birds.]

13
Act so that there is no use in a centre.” Gertrude Stein

14
To maintain the hush of another / Christmas, barreling through the / Long silent night to be born.” And, who doesn't like W.B. Yeats?

And a very Merry Christmas / to all and to all a good night!”


*Brandon Brown and J. Gordon Faylor are poets and editors living in El Cerrito, and Oakland, California, respectively.
**Italics in original










Sunday, November 3, 2019

this hall of several tortures by Reuben Woolley (Reviewed by Clara B. Jones, 10/2019)


this hall of several tortures
Reuben Woolley
2019
Knives, Forks, and Spoons [KFS] Press, UK
103 pp
10 British Pounds



Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in Entropy, October 2019






“What is the 'right' poetry game to be played today?” Marjorie Perloff



It is 9/26/2019. I am seated at home at my desk, having completed my third reading of a pre-publication document of Reuben Woolley's new poetry collection, this hall of several tortures. Because of the poems' effects on my imagination and thinking, I am compelled to write a review while the compositions are vivid in my memory. Like all of the author's works, these poems can be classified as “innovative” and “experimental,” the latter term notoriously difficult to define. In this review, I follow the Russian Formalist, Viktor Shklovsky, who wrote that experimental poetry “defamiliarizes” common speech or makes it “strange” by way of deploying a variety of “devices” or “techniques” [e.g., collage, erasure, repetition, indeterminance]. In this review, I will reference the poetry critic, Marjorie Perloff's, treatment of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical project, in part, because, Woolley, an Englishman living in Spain and a highly-regarded poet and editor, has studied linguistics and has recommended Perloff''s wide-ranging examination of Wittgenstein [University of Chicago Press, 1996]. this hall of several tortures is dedicated to poets Fran Lock, Antony Owen, and Jerome Rothenberg, and the stunning cover image by Dean Pasch portends a handsomely-produced volume.

The 68 poems in this book represent a cohesively arranged collection since they constitute a plot in the context of a “multiverse,” an “alternate reality” where we follow a young woman's dystopian experiences. As Woolley stated recently on Facebook, the concept of the “multiverse” has been central to much literature, represented in Science Fiction [e.g., Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling], as well as, “straight lit” [e.g., George Orwell, Aldous Huxley]. In the academic literature, this hall of several tortures would be classified as “impossible worlds” writing, exhibiting, in particular, according to the American critic, Marie Laure Ryan, a “dream-like reality” with “fluid images” and “a general lack of ontological stability.” In Woolley's words, “I do not care if [the “multiverse”] actually exists....This [“parallel”] world...is seen by [the young woman] as [a] dystopian planet.... The first person in the poems is not me, the poet, but her. This is fiction based on a frequently unpleasant reality.”

It is important to point out, however, that many poems in this new collection include commentary by a second party situated on the right-hand side of a given page [e.g., “she said”], commentary directed to him, the author—according to Woolley in an interview in The Wombell Rainbow [UK]—situated in a space that is unspecified. This structure is reminiscent of Greek tragedy whereby a character [in this case, the young woman] speaks to a chorus [in this case, Woolley, the poet, himself]; although, in this hall of several tortures, the poet-receiver of the “I” voice does not, apparently, influence, the young woman. That there may be communication between the young woman and the poet, leads one to suggest, however, that the relationship can be interpreted as a form of “doubling” or “twinning” whereby the persona of each performer is difficult to untangle—signaling a type of symbiosis. Following this idea, the reader might wonder whether there is, in fact, any separation at all between speaker and receiver. Are we, possibly, inhabiting a dream generated by the poet's unconscious? Is the book derived from Surrealism and that movement's promulgation of Freudian theory? Even more interesting, perhaps, is the possibility that the psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan's, concept, “mirroring,” describes the relation [literary, figurative] between young woman-speaker and poet-receiver or that each is “Other” to the “Other.” Further, feminist psychoanalyst critics would explore the implied relationship between older male poet and younger female subject [Father? Mentor? Teacher? Lover?]. However the reader decodes or makes sense of Woolley's new compositions—subjectively, textually, or theoretically—the book will prove to be a rich source of interpretive material—bounded only by the collection's plot.



A single poem [p 13], below, serves to illustrate additional “devices” employed by Woolley—conventions readily recognizable throughout his oeuvre:



turn the page over she said

the holes the holes do not come
empty.i dig through a time
a matter coincid
es

& we occupy the room together.who said
she could not fold a world
away & bring another
skin / another tired foundling
in our dark shells &
never speaking.oh the shit
of it all on both our sides

we scratch a putrid sore
in our reflections
& bleed a waiting speech
on the earths of undelight

Several critics have labeled Gertrude Stein's writing, “impressionistic,” a term befitting the poems in the hall of several tortures. Also, similar to Stein and many other “experimental” works, Woolley's poems are, for the most part, “indeterminate” [e.g., imprecise, unfinished, non-committal, “undecidable”] as to meaning, particularly, in their “associative” or “collage” [fractured, assembled, “cut up”] components whereby words or phrases do not necessarily follow grammatically, or logically, from others. Woolley, also, uses frequent hard and soft “stops,” as seen in the poem above—periods or backslashes between words, phrases. In many other poems, “white spaces” are employed. According to Woolley, “The white space is the same as for music: silence. The greater the space, the longer the silence. They also give the reader/listener time to think, rethink and participate creatively.” This explanation applies, as well, to the aforementioned “stops.” Woolley frequently uses words or phrases that are ambiguous and difficult to interpret, possibly, intentionally, and Perloff, following Wittgenstein, suggests that “senselessness” [see, for example, “& bleed a waiting speech” in Woolley's poem above] represents a “combination of words...excluded from the language...” Here, words “excluded from the language” may be understood as words having been erased by the poet, effected, according to Perloff, for a variety of reasons, such as, obfuscation, play, or, possibly, resistance to mainstream literary norms.

Perloff goes on to point out that Wittgenstein was “obsessed not only with the 'power of ordinary words,' but with their strangeness.” One might say the same of Woolley. Throughout the hall of several tortures, the poet frequently begins common words with, “un,” as in “undelight,” in the poem above. Perloff states that Wittgenstein saw no fundamental difference between “ordinary and literary language,” a viewpoint consistent with Woolley's straightforward and unpretentious, though, not simplistic, use of syntax, including, word usage. Perloff , also, discusses Wittgenstein's perspective that “certain things cannot be said, they can only be shown: There is indeed the inexpressible.” Like Woolley's use of the word, “shit” in “turn the page over she said,” the poet often uses taboo words to express emotion in place of using literal language—rather than attempt to describe a state of being or events in the world . These taboo words may, also, symbolize or take the place of thoughts [in the present case, possibly, “I understand.” or “Yes.” or “Really?” or “OK”], in addition to a range of emotions [possibly, contentment, acceptance, protectiveness, or awe]. Importantly, Wittgenstein pointed out that, where words are repeated [repetition characterizing many experimental poems—see, especially, Stein], they must be evaluated in context; thus, the “function” of words is expected to change from location to location in a text.

Like the recently deceased, Steve Dalachinsky, Reuben Woolley might be called a “jazz poet”—influenced by the “free jazz” musical movement, and he has sometimes discussed his poetics in interviews and online. In the online literary journal, The Wombell Rainbow [UK], for example, Woolley stated, “I like to think I write Free Poetry. Any word or image can go anywhere, but only the really good poet can recognise that place and allow the word or image to go there....” Because of this poet's literary, intentional, and contextual skills, this hall of several tortures is a book that will be valuable, not only for its literary and artistic import, but, also, as a text amenable to “close reading” by academics, critics, and other readers valuing music and image combined with rich texture, as well as, innovative, “impressionistic” language and plot. As well, the collection can be entered solely for the pleasure of experiencing compelling “abstract” art —one of Woolley's major influences. His new collection is certain to attract a wide audience—well-deserved attention for a noteworthy practitioner of avant garde poetry.





prior atom by Jukka-Peka Kervinen (Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in Entropy, 7/2019)


prior atom
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
2019
ma press, Finland (lulu.com)
Unpaginated (136 pp)
$5.00

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in Entropy, July 2019

Where technology leads, Art follows.” Kenneth Goldsmith

The broad categories of digital poetry and electronic writing are sub-genres of experimental literature which the Russian Formalist, Viktor Shklovsky, defined as “extreme deviation from that which is familiar.” In his view, experimental writing is “strange”—“defamiliarizing” what we think of as the conventional, particularly, the lyrical, emotional, representational, or meaningful. Writing in the early 20th century, Shklovsky could not have had the electronic methods of Jukka-Pekka Kervinen in mind, but both artists' visions embody the spirit of disruption of and resistance to the status quo.

prior atom, in its author's words, is a “procedural/visual text” of computer-generated compositions arranged on the page in a form approximating traditional poems. Each mélange of words, some overlapping, is presented with frequent white spaces, a presentation highlighting every element as a unit capable of standing on it's own from which meaning may or may not be derived. Though it is not easy or necessary to categorize the compositions, they may be understood in the context of “collage” writing, a Modernist conception with origins in Cubist visual art (e.g., Picasso), as well as, in Dadaism and Surrealism. The Dadaist poet and performance artist, Tristan Tzara, for example, advocated, in the mid-20th century, a “cut-up” method of composition, and, in the late 1990s, the poetry critic, Marjorie Perloff, stated, “Each element in the collage has a kind of double function: it refers to an external reality even as it's compositional thrust is to undercut the very referentiality it seems to assert.” Collage poetry, then, is characterized by a juxtaposition of opposing elements—the a word's definition and a composition's formal radicalism. An example of one of Kervinen's compositions, included in prior atom, follows:

[insert jpeg composition here]


Jukka-Pekka Kervinen is a Finnish composer, producer, writer, visual artist, and publisher [ma press] focused mainly on algorithmic processes, computer-assisted composition, and various other methods based on cybernetics, chaotic dynamics, and stochastic systems, among others. I asked him, via Facebook, to describe his creative methods, curious, especially, about whether the formatting of his compositions was intentional or randomly-generated. In his own words, the author informed me that the layout was “computer-generated” but that he wrote the programs by himself, using the computer as an “extended pen, meaning that I have very exact image of what I want to do. Instead of making them 'traditional' way by writing/typing/etc, I write a program or programs to make and generate certain decisions and other structures/forms.For 'prior atom' I wrote only one, longer program which generates whole book, vocabulary is mine, i.e., I have maintained and edited this same word selection ca. 15 years, it is very specific for me, and still constantly edited.... All layouts of the pages and choice of words and their placements are generated by my program, under constraints I make beforehand running it, and the program makes finished PDF....”

Kervinen's methods have historical roots in the textual and visual forms of the OuLiPo movement's systematic, self-restricting means of making texts, as well as, similarities to “asemic” writing's textual and visual forms [“vispo”] having no necessary or specific semantic content. Certainly, the author's procedures constitute “word play,” yielding a type of “word salad” or coded mixture. The compositions in prior atom are intended to be seen in a manner similar to the visualization of Gertrude Stein's writing discussed by the Stein scholar, Ulla Dydo.

Though Kervinen's compositions resist interpretation and lack formal or logical structure, a “reader” may impose meaning or significance where these are not necessarily intended. A maxim of Postmodernism is that interpretation is in the mind of the “reader”—or, visualizer, in this case, and the human brain is designed to seek order within actual or apparent disorder. Thus, some persons accessing these constructs may discover that certain “devices” [Shklovsky] unify the book. For example, references to animals occur throughout—rodent, ferret, lynx, walleye, hen, emu, to name a few, and it might occur to a poetically-inclined visualizer that a list poem could be created from these, or other, repetitions. Similarly, each composition's makeup lends itself to combination and re-combination of words [e.g., “doable taxonomy,” “rainy forest”] that might be employed as prompts or could be incorporated into verse. While playing with a few of the compositions as if they were databases, I created an original haiku without much effort [“Homicide casework, / forbid unjustly person, / dread stalwart, indeed.”]. Many other potential significations and associations are latent in the text.

Perhaps, it can be suggested, that the best way to approach prior atom is to allow the collection's layout, arrangement, literary style, and format to speak for themselves. As such, each composition has what the Formalist poetry critic, Helen Vendler, calls, “interpretive power” with the potential to produce verbal, visual, and “psychological transformations.” The consumer of literature is fortunate that.Jukka-Pekka Kervinen continues to create experimental writing producing unique formulations and theories of reality and composition, emanating, as a case in point, from this collection that can be “taken at face value,” as well as, richly interpreted. prior atom is necessary reading for anyone interested in cutting-edge innovative writing at its best.






Do Your Own Damn Laundry (Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in The Fanzine, 9/'19)


Do Your Own Damn Laundry
Suzanne Stein, Steve Benson
2019
Gauss PDF (free); lulu.com (paper: $10.00)
301 pp

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in The Fanzine, September 2019

“Even the innocuous news reports and weather are loaded with fact, fear, and emotion, making us aware that language is never simply an innocent carrier of meaning but is widely variable depending upon context and framing.” Poetry Magazine (Endnote, July/August 2009)

“Since spoken language contains no punctuation, what choices go into the act of transcription?” Kenneth Goldsmith (2010)

Do Your Own Damn Laundry [hereafter, DYODL] is an inspired hybrid project formulated by Suzanne Stein and Steve Benson [the “actors”]. Both artists are widely-known and highly-regarded in avant garde circles in the U.S. Stein is a publisher, editor, poet, performer, and curator in California, while Benson is a poet, performance artist, and clinical psychologist in Maine. On her webpage, Stein says that the actors' theatrical performance, DYODL, delivered in book form by GaussPDF and lulu.com, “documents the improvisational dialogues we performed together between 2011 and 2012” [for a total of 36 “chats”]. In what must have been a monumental and time-consuming organizational and strategic effort, Stein and Benson “chose CoveritLive—a social media tool typically used for informal sportscasting and business-to-business conferencing. This platform would allow us to perform a textual dialogue live to an online audience, share administrative management of the account, and archive the results, with each entry date-, and time-stamped. We embedded the CiL platform on a page in Suzanne's blog, where readers could read and watch the performances as they happened or scroll at their own pace through the archive.” [DYODL, p 299]. The project, then, was presented to two audiences: readers, as well as, reader-viewers—the latter mode, presumably, having an auditory component, also.

In a literary sense, and like a theatrical drama, DYODL displays discursive tension of an interpersonal nature as each author exerts their identity and agency in a process moving from relative strangers to, more or less, intimate partners. The text is divided into four sections, each section sub-divided into sessions of varying length that increases, on average, over time. Italics distinguish Stein's words from Benson's, and the performance's impact is enhanced by the uniqueness, as well as, the complementarity of the actors' “voices” and personalities. Throughout this review I will emphasize the ways that Stein's and Benson's personas evolve throughout the process of familiarization that highlights the identity-based nature of language—having the potential to reflect both positive and negative aspects and functions of personality. When reading the “script,” I became, particularly, interested in the heteronormative* features of interactions, as well as, how these features might have related to power relations between the actors. As Ferdinand de Saussure argued, identity is relational in ways that modify the personal via interactions with an “other,” in this case, interactions between Stein and Benson.

Section One comprises a single, brief session on 5/8/2011 initiating the actors' intermittent conversations that would be recorded until the final session of the whole performance on 8/10/2012 in Section Four. A definition of effective communication employed by linguists is termed, “active listening”—a technique requiring the listener to fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said [definition via google.com]. Initially, when reading the script, it was not clear to me that Benson was listening to Stein. Attempting to document my impression, I counted the number of times each speaker used the word, “I.” The results clearly showed that, in this initial performance, Benson was seemingly self-centered, using “I” 71% of the time out of all utterances of “I” [N= 91 total “I”s in Section One]. Indeed, in this section, Stein [in italics throughout the book] assumed a supportive role as if she detected Benson's possible discomfort, anxiety, hesitance, or insecurity [“Queasy is a wonderful way to be. At first when I read it here I thought you had misspelled it. So I think my own inner unacknowledged queasiness misspelled it for me, at first...Have I lost the thread? No / we're both here. / I'm still here...” [pp 8-9]. Though one cannot be certain, it might be argued that Stein and Benson are adopting traditional sex roles throughout this and following sections—the male relying on the female to do “emotional work” [note, for example, Stein's use of the inclusive, “we” and her provision of calming support—“we're both here”]. It might, also, be suggested that Benson's overwhelming use of “I” represents his attempt to assert power during the discourse; but, other explanations cannot be discounted (e.g., anxiety, insecurity, ambivalence, etc.). Additional patterns from section to section, as the interactions proceeded, need to be evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively.

In Section Two [5/16 – 8/29/2011], the rudiments of “active listening” are apparent, though it is important to note that the actors communicated with each other between sections and, presumably, sessions [sub-sections]—no doubt enhancing mutual familiarity and coordination. As in Section One, Stein and Benson are given to speaking over each other [a type of erasure and, with pauses, a type of “white space”], suggesting that concentration is less than optimal. Indeed, throughout all four sections of the composed performance, Benson seems to be frequently distracted, as in this exchange on p 19 [recall that Stein's words appear in italics throughout the book]:


“When we are about to start the screen goes /
white, but also there is this message, /
prompting us to begin to 'provide content.' /

As it turns out, I don't mind 'anticipation' /

I feel like I am in another world. Is this the /
future? We can't pretend it is not us. We expect /
to be living in the future, and suddenly we are. /

the screen hesitates, suggesting 'the writer' /
will provide content


Although Benson may still be seeking support from Stein, it is, nevertheless, evident in this exchange and many others throughout the transcription, that both actors are poets, and, on p 286, Benson makes direct reference to the genre: “Dogs are scavengers. / Poets are scavengers, too. / Dogs are mere pets. / 'Pets' is in 'Poets.'” Kenneth Goldsmith, Benjamin Zephaniah, Nikita Gill, and others, have asked, “What does it take to be a poet in the internet age?” Using modern technology, Stein and Benson transcribe and broadcast conversations into verse, including, meter, rhythm, and play, and, like many examples of Modernist and Post-modernist innovative poetry, repetition is employed to unify the text from what may appear to be disparate elements from section to section [e.g., in the present case, references to swimming, diving, weather, illness, as well as, physical and psychic well-being].

Section Three [10/10/2011 – 2/6/2012] reveals that “active listening” is well-developed, evinced by coordinated and correlated “cutting off,” suggesting that actors are responding to each other intentionally. Also, Stein and Benson sometimes finish each others' sentences—indicating familiarity [“I'm sorry, that gave me pause. / uncertainty / I heard the sound of breaking glass. / attention to the / light shining on a shattering mirror. / sound listing in the direction / aimless listening.” [p 162]. Despite disjunct elements, this section includes examples of true conversations, reflection, and lengthy statements [e.g., pp 123-124], and empathy is apparent as a signature of the actors' interactions, suggesting, burgeoning intimacy [e.g., p 156]. By Section Three of the performance, Stein and Benson have a functioning relationship—even demonstrating signs of vulnerability and attraction, as in these exchanges:


i'm not well-rested and keeping making an /
error. /
And keep making mistakes. /
That's okay with me. It doesn't to me come /
between us. /
Nothing to you comes between us.” [p 136]

***

We're already working together. /
Or so it seemed. /
It seems so now, more than ever, to me. /
I was working hard to get to this sense, of /
working together. /
I could sense that.” [p 140]


“Active listening” is fully developed by the long Section Four [12/1 – 10/2012], and extended passages occur without including the self-directed pronoun “I” [pp 217, 231-236, 291]. Remarkably, in this final section, compared to Section One, Stein and Benson use “I” in statistically equal proportions [Stein, 49%; Benson, 51%: 894 total “I”s in this section], showing that the relationship, over time, has become less one-sided. Nonetheless, it appears that, in this and other parts of the text, Stein sometimes uses “one” in place of the less formal and less direct, “I,” supporting a notion that females, at least, heterosexual females, may be more behaviorally and verbally deferential compared to males—a stereotype open to empirical investigation. As an aside, DYODL could be used as a valuable research document by linguists using “textual analysis” to analyze patterns of speech relative to subject matter and context.

Consistent with my impression that Stein and Benson seem to be displaying traditional sex roles [possibly, as a mode of flirtation?] is the observation that he becomes the information-provider [especially regarding psychology, health, and movies], she, the student and information-seeker [e.g., pp 240-241]. Nonetheless, Section Four, also, demonstrates that conversations are more substantive, including less “chit-chat” and banality. In addition, the actors have become comfortable challenging each other [p 227] and demonstrate facility with conflict-resolution [p 244]. Clearly, by the final transcriptions, Stein and Benson have become emotionally invested in each other. Thus, pp 273-274:


Even though often we are the same person we /
had an impression already that we had been. /
I don't have a preference about the ways we /
don't know who we are going to be next /
I wish this could go on forever /
I am aware /
I think about that more lately too /
I want to know more about you


But, in stereotypically male, more pragmatic, fashion, Benson goes on to say, “Unfortunately, I also, have other passions and / fascinations beside this one.” Notwithstanding Benson's capacity for reality-orientation, one feels deeply for Stein's willingness and capacity for emotional vulnerability.

Throughout the book, I was struck by the remarkable lack of controversial material [say, politics, religion, sex], leading me to wonder what the specific prior agreements were between the actors, despite their claim that the conversations were “improvised.”. Furthermore, transcription requires erasure based upon value judgments, and it would be interesting to understand more about Stein's and Benson's beliefs, attitudes, and opinions. In particular, what audience[s] did the performers have in mind when they decided that their manuscript was ready for publication? Who were they hoping to attract to their work? Despite these lingering reservations and questions, Do Your Own Damn Laundry fulfills many formalist criteria, including, in my opinion, the most fundamental one—“interpretive power.” Kenneth Goldsmith has lauded work that is “provocative and challenging,” and this composition is a tour-de-force that will remain, indefinitely, in the mind of any reader having an appreciation for collaborative experimental literature.

*That each actor is heterosexual was determined by their self-references on websites and in the text of DYODL.



People Skulk by J. Gordon Faylor (Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in PANK, Oct '19)


People Skulk
J. Gordon Faylor
2019
Smiling Mind Documents
84 pp
$12.00 [lulu.com]

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in PANK, October 2019


“No theoretical generalization is foolproof.” Marjorie Perloff

The broader San Francisco poetry scene has a long artistic history and has been called the “countercultural center of modern poetry,” associated with poets such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. J. Gordon Faylor: an editor at San Francisco MOMA & Editor of GaussPDF, publisher of digital and innovative books, is author, among other works, of the highly-regarded, Registration Caspar [2016], a stunningly original novel/”long-form” poem, as well as, The Puppet Wedding, a 2017 pamphlet—both volumes composed experimentally using innovative grammar, semantics, form, and content, as well as, indeterminate semantics and non-sequiturs. A few words from The Puppet Wedding are employed in People Skulk [e.g., “puppet,” “half-pint”], a between-text repetition facilitating the perception of unity across the author's oeuvre. Other devices employed to enhance wholeness in the new collection are the lack of a Table of Contents and serial pagination. Similarly, the phrase, “people skulk” is repeated in the title poem, and idiosyncratic punctuation is employed throughout the book to highlight structure, as well as, “referential” and “non-referential” elements.

Titles of volumes and poems may conceal rather than expose or stress meanings of compositions, particularly, if there appears to be no connection between them. The title of Faylor's new collection is connected to its title poem's first lines, “People skulk, / they really do; / match affinities, rain descent / arrogance volitive, dated / worthy blisters on Leonora's / shells otherwise abandoned.” [36]. Experimental poems lend themselves to critical, including, textual, analysis [“close reading”], and the reader might ask, for example, is “Leonora,” Leonora Carrington, the British-Mexican Surrealist painter—possibly, referring to the author's aesthetics or the lens through which he intends his collection to be viewed? Alternatively, “Leonora” may be an intimate reference or a symbolic name indicating, perhaps, that the text is to be read as a heteronormative one. This quote exhibits a common device of experimental poetry—the deployment of non-sequiturs and erasure to “splice,” conceal, obscure, or delete material that may or may not enhance meaning or facilitate interpretation.

For example, “skulk,” and other words, may have more than one, or archaic, meanings or may function as different parts of speech, and the reader must decide how the poet is using language that may be deployed in many different ways—e.g., intentional-unintentional, conscious-unconscious. “Skulk,” as a verb, may mean to hide or to malinger [Br.]—often with a sinister or cowardly motive; alternatively, used as a noun, “skulk” means, a group of foxes. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept, “language games,” word usage is meaningful only insofar as the reader can determine what “rules” the writer has employed. The “game” for the reader is not to reconstruct what the author intended, but to use “close reading” to uncover “rules” or “associations” [n.b. “associative poetry”] derivable from the text. The title poem continues:

“I'm going to skulk myself
fudge fish chats with the NSA
these last days wagering
wipe-washing with my carrot
not behaving toward vocalizing
the glowed leftover, my standing here
unfollowed so to speak,
hoveling for present people
standing around here, dead guilty.”

—and, later in the title poem,

“You get to dress tape
understand animal
smarts not worthy
fuck and walk
undone go ahead hate me and my
pickled people love for putting up
with, at most, our kites' reports.”

Cowardly or sinister motives are not addressed explicitly; however, the poem's speaker refers to himself as skulking “with the NSA,” “not behaving,” “unfollowed,” “dead guilty,” and the like. Similarly, though foxes are not mentioned in the poem, the speaker mentions “fish” and “animal”— referentiality contrasted to and contradicting the non-referentiality of the composition when it is read as a whole and in parts. Furthermore, the components, “you...fuck and walk” and, “go ahead hate me,” direct the reader's attention to an apparent relationship between the speaker-subject and recipient-object, while other words and phrases may function parenthetically or as “fillers,” or they, also, may stand alone—referentially, or not. The subject's “gaze” is, clearly, directed at the female, “you;” however, it seems throughout that the object's gaze is not directed towards the subject or “voice,” who, we shall see, is Gordon, himself. Elements that stand alone, with or without apparent relationship to other parts of a poem, may be considered Functionally Independent components of a poem or, even, “fillers” or “stops,” devices common in experimental poetry [see “Collage” and “Erasure” below].

Joan Retallack made the following observation, “What I’ve found in my decades of teaching...is that the conviction that there is an entity called 'poem' with a discrete essence one should be able to discern and evaluate according to universal aesthetic principles continues to be widespread.” This point of view suggests, I think, that non-traditional, non-mainstream poetry—innovative, avant garde, experimental poetry—is not rule-governed. Retallack, and many others, however, would probably agree that different sub-genres of poetry may encompass different procedures and aesthetics. The brief discussion of Faylor's title poem, for example, demonstrates writing that is formally non-linear, without surfical clarity or 1 : 1 mapping of parts of speech and meaning. Such characteristics violate and disrupt the rules of classical art—what the 19th century German art historian, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, called, “true style”—incorporating, “noble simplicity,” patriotism, order, lack of emotion, symmetry, balance, emotional restraint, harmony, no distortion, and/or scientific precision, among other traits. Faylor's compositions, instead, are fractured with respect to form and content, grammar and semantics. Like Winckelmann's Greek Revival aesthetics, then, experimental poetry exhibits its own recognizable style that can be described no less clearly than “true style.” Consistent with this idea, Marjorie Perloff, speaking of collage, stated, “It does not follow that collage is essentially a “degraded” or “alienated” version of earlier (and presumably superior) genres.”

What additional information can we extract from People Skulk? Faylor makes clear that the “voice” of the collection is the author, himself—“Inside demand—inside demand, Gordon.” [14]; “stop apologizing, Gordon / people do it because they're depressed / or unintentionally dreary,” [48]. As Rosalind Krauss has noted, speaking of Claude Cahun's photography, the artist is “subject and object of representation,” a type of “mirroring” and “doubling” reinforced by the device that Faylor is, at once, speaking to himself and to an “Other”: “You're a radiant individual and make me glad, / but if we're done we're done, I promise. / I'll still send your / aerations a kiss and always tear up after.” [8]

In addition to identifiably “experimental” devices, Faylor's new collection includes some traditional features—occasional soft rhyming, even, a few 14-line, sonnet forms [32], or near-sonnets, suggestive of the classical “love poem,” and the couplet on p 61 is Shakespeare-like: “Answer me with both lolling now that I'm bare / let me bleed my share.”—a couplet expressing loss and, possibly, regret. Apparently, as suggested above, People Skulk is, inherently, about lost love [“...secure until you finally see me off? / I'll love you until I die, regardless.”, 5; “I'll still send your / aerations a kiss and always tear up after.”, 8; “If and when you coddle her goneness”, [15]; “...in retrospect, bitterly.”, 27], and there are numerous references to sadness, regret, reflection, and loneliness. Also, conventional, if not, traditional, the volume includes quite a few words uncommon in US speech but more common in the British vernacular [“archegonia,” “aletheia,” “propaedeutic,” “psionic,” Latin phrases, etc.], a device that might be interpreted as pretentious or elitist, though archaic or uncommon words combined with inclusion of splicing, erasure, or non-sequiturs in a poem can be employed as a formulaic way of creating an innovative or experimental composition. Although, “death,” “necrophilia,” “dead,” “lifeless,” “malignancy,” “polyps,” and angry tones are elements of many of the poems in People Skulk, this is not a “dark” collection, in great part due to Faylor's frequent word play, as well as, the indeterminacy [“undecidability,” “non-referentiality”] and fractured arrangement of the compositions. On the other hand, see 4-5, “They wanted the same minced baby / lowered into its cradle, sobbing.” The subject has his low moments—like all of us.

The device, “collage” [splicing], and its relation to experimental literature, whereby poets layer ideas or images, assembling various forms of speech to create a new whole, has been famously studied by the poetry critic, Marjorie Perloff*. Collage subordinates and disrupts the voice and identity of the subject, though each composition is likely to have dominant elements serving as moments of clarity or emphasis or, sometimes, normalcy. In the two-sonnet poem, “I Forget,” for example, “Gordon” states, “'You could've responded with so much more' I tell myself....” [44]. Motifs such as the foregoing denote what dominates situations [see the poem, “Proof of Staff” (may become, “Proof of Stuff”?) on p 3], and strong units of speech may dominate through emphasis, making a point, or grabbing attention —similar to repetition. On the other hand, speaking of Dadaism and “anti-art,” Dietmar Elger has pointed out that the reader may not make “coherent sense” out of the works. Admittedly, fragmentary language [“text fragments”] often suppresses logic, and People Skulk includes several fragmentary, even, one-line, pieces [e.g., 40, 49, 58]. I am arguing, however, that collage poetry is not necessarily random, “stream of consciousness,” or “free association” though some content may be concealed in subconscious [dreams] or unconscious processes. Commenting on Kenneth Goldsmith's idea that Conceptual Poetry is “unreadable,” Marjorie Perloff contended that each word constitutes a “choice” by the poet and is, thus, intentional. Thinking of a Bob Seger song, the poet must decide, “what to leave in, what to leave out.”

Collage poetry requires erasure and non-disclosure—of words, phrases, parts of speech. The Italian Futurist writer, F.T. Marinetti, for example, exclaimed that adverbs, adjectives, punctuation, conjugated verbs, and syntax, in general, should be abolished. Erasure might be employed to conceal or repress painful, embarrassing, socially unacceptable, prohibited, triggering, private, or otherwise unpleasant or proscribed material. Erasure, then, might hide [sic—“skulk”] meaning, though it would be a mistake to attempt to recover whatever thoughts or motivations Faylor [“Gordon”] may have had when composing his collection. Erasure might, also, function as a type of Wittgensteinian “language play” [“I take on the malignancy of the room / swept on by sterile water, / polyps of my itinerary.” [55], a complex line that might have been written by the German poet, Gottfried Benn. Examples of “word play” may be found in the rich poem, “Archegonia” on pp 26-27. Language and word play may entail the reader switching or adding words, such as in the lines, “I want to make you comfortable / I defied that one cracked night / and spun out apologizing.” [56]. What if we change the phrase, “one cracked night” to “one crazy night?” “Crazy” appears in several poems and, if inserted here, may facilitate associations and decipherability, substituting for “cracked.” Similarly, The reader might, also, elect to insert “of control” between “out” and “apologizing,” creating a more harmonious and normal phrase, “and spun out of control apologizing.” Both of these modifications may enhance the reader's experience of, interpretation of, and/or accessibility to parts of the poem or of the whole composition. On the other hand, collage may, also, be effected for purely artistic purposes by the poet, and, according to Perloff, “...is, by definition, a visual or spatial concept.”, implying that collage poems are types of spliced visual art, in addition to spliced verbal compositions.

Because of the juxtaposition, intertextuality, and unconventional usages [e.g. using verbs as nouns or adjectives] of a variety of linguistic elements, collage and erasure may contribute to the experience of contradiction, ambiguity, ambivalence, tensions, oppositions, and conflicts, such as, those between male-female, imagination-reality, archaic-modern, native-foreign. Experimental poetry, then, is, in part, recognizable because of indeterminate meaning, yielding a “transrational” experience, according to the critic, Gerald Janecek. He goes on to suggest that, like many Russian Futurist compositions, poets strove to write independent of Nature—like Abstract Expressionists after them; elements were, often, interchangeable, as they seem to be in many of the poems in People Skulk, and there seems to be no necessary logical or functional basis for the poems' ordering in the text. Nonetheless, as pointed out by Perloff, some logical elements and relations may still be present, such as, negation, contradiction, similarity, equivalence, identity, and their negatives; as well, arrangement, association; assortment, repetition [e.g., 28, 36] are often used as “rhetorical devices” for clarity, memory, emphasis, or other functions, as in the following excerpt from the poem, “Safer's Pet Rescue” [28],

“Gory repetition childish
your small dog isn't. No you don't bit by bite sled dog
the world war's garage
my students' crystals depicting ruby red
I want kids to band together
in uncooperative moments
cads ripping back-up plastic article “Stressed”
for the small dogs' fiber, their backup system finally tested
yet no longer my own, which
I gave up depressed-guy style.”

What comes next [“indeterminacy”]? Logical conventions are not followed throughout [“transrational”]. “World war's garage” does not occur in Nature—at least, not on surface. Words, phrases might be interchanged without loss of effect [e.g., “crystals” and “article”]. However, some logical and relational associations remain present, particularly, at the level of phraseology, if not complete sentences [e.g., “small dog,” “ruby red,” “backup system”], and repetition [“small dog”] is employed for emphasis, to enhance memory, to attract attention, or other effects.
Several critics have pointed out that Indeterminacy in literature is a device in which components of a text require the reader to make their own decisions about the text's meaning. Often, the final lines of a poem leave the reader “hanging,” as in examples above. The text's meaning, then, remains open to interpretation [“indeterminate”]. Some readers have decided that these features render the poems of John Cage, Gertrude Stein, John Ashbery, for example, “incomprehensible;” however, I have attempted to show that close reading and critical analyses may result in intra- and inter-textual comprehension of some components of experimental poetry such as that found in Faylor's new collection. In People Skulk, “Gordon” is never whole or self-actualized. Throughout the book, he is embedded in a “system” of contradictions, ambiguities, and oppositions: subjective-objective, plant-animal, personal-impersonal, part-whole, attachment-detachment, self-conscious-other-directed, instinctual-cerebral. Like the formalities of the text, “Gordon,” himself, remains indeterminate, fractured—“self” determined, primarily, by what the Other [“you”, the subject's object] reflects back [Jacques Lacan's, “mirroring”]. Non-specificity can be distracting and can seem like no more than distortion or obscurity or illusion or tricks or games that the poet is imposing upon the reader; however, if we understand that “entering” and embracing an experimental collection, such as Faylor's, People Skulk, relies upon methodology no less than traditional poetry, as outlined in this review, the reader's efforts will be rewarded many times over.

*Chapter 2 in Perloff M (1986) The Futurist Moment. The University of Chicago Press.




I Remember Nightfall by Marosa di Giorgio (Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in Otoliths Oct '19)


I Remember Nightfall
Marosa di Giorgio
Translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas
2018
Ugly Duckling Presse
318 pp
$22 (paper)

Reviewed by Clara B. Jones in Otoliths [AU, October 2019]


"As a rule a father prefers his daughter and a mother her son; the child reacts to this by wishing, if he is a son, to take his father's place, and if she is a daughter, her mother's." Sigmund Freud

“The temporal is only a symbol.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Publication of I Remember Nightfall is part of a relatively recent “recovery project” highlighting unrecognized, or forgotten, female artists—including, the American “beat” poet, Elise Cowan (Ahsahta Press) and the Brazilian poet, Ana Cristina César (Parlor Press). Marosa di Giorgio (1932-2004), Uruguayan lawyer, actress, and poet, was raised by her hard-working Italian immigrant family on a farm in rural Salto, a “readymade” world of flora and fauna—including, human fauna—for her vivid imagination and mental, if not physical, escape from loneliness, even, trauma. “Marosa” means “lover of freedom,” an apt description for her fluid transformations and configurations of words, images, Nature, music, and occasional soft rhyming. Jeannine Marie Pitas' stunning translations of di Giorgio's lyrical, narrative prose verses demonstrate a childlike wonderland inhabited by familiar, altered, and devised people, situations, memories, as well as, other animate and inanimate events, phenomena, and things—a conjured fantastical environment. The feminist prose poet, Holly Iglesias, has theorized that the prose poem symbolizes the “boxes” in which women have traditionally been confined—kitchens, bedrooms, nurseries, playrooms, convents—like di Giorgio, farms.

The bilingual I Remember Nightfall comprises four separate texts packaged as a single volume and paginated consecutively—a wise editorial decision since, in effect, the compositions may be viewed as a long-form poem that should not be read as discrete sections but as fluid elements, in some instances, interchangeable, using the same symbolism throughout, a feature that, in addition to, the poetic form, unifies the text—though the Uruguayan scholar, Carmen Boullosa, has commented that di Giorgio, “always wrote the same book.” Indeed, the author is reported to have characterized her complete oeuvre as a single project, and the reader might interpret the prose poem form as a malleable element for “collage” writing with the capacity for combinatorial play. Such a linguistic trait might be received as symbolic of a fragmented reality in the Postmodern sense—representing social and political chaos such as that experienced by di Giorgio in Uruguay, including a period of urban guerilla warfare and military dictatorship. War is referred to several times in the text; however, it may be a mistake to perceive di Giorgio as a “political” poet since, according to the Uruguayan scholar, María Carolina Blixen, the poet was primarily consumed by her writing throughout life.

Di Giorgio's poetic style has been labeled, variously, as “expressionism,” “magical realism,” “surrealism,” and “neo-gothic.” One might, also, argue that many of these verses are examples of “grotesque” literature in which empathy resides with cruelty—represented by other notable female writers such as Flannery O'Connor and Iris Murdoch. As several writers have pointed out, the “voice” of di Giorgio's poems is childlike, and, in her verses, the narrator is referred to as being, eight or nine years old [“I was only a little girl with a crown of braids.”, 259], “sixteen” [279], and “not yet twenty” [257]. This girl's persona should be read as Marosa herself, clearly indicated repetitively in the text [“Marosa,” “María,” “Rosa María,” “Marge,” “Virgin (María)” and, speculatively, “Mario,” “Maríano.”] Di Giorgio's persona is, as well, symbolized by iconography, possibly, alter egos or imaginary intimates—plants [roses, carnations, magnolias, violets, squash], animals [rodents, hares, birds, butterflies, bats]—each of these living entities having its own symbolic meaning in myth and literature, indicating multiple facets of personality, situation, locality, and space—differentiated and complex.


And my heart remained like winter oranges, curdled and frozen; I /
became delirious; they put me in the big bed and watched over me. /
At times, I got up, paced through the rooms, fell back into bed. And I /
always dreamed of that Rose, now a giant, who drank all the herbs, the /
mushrooms, the hens, and above all, who had some other scheme fixed /
in his mind...until at last the harvest was measured; the carts went out to /
the village, filled with jewels, those gems thrown out by the plants. And /
the old man left. /
Through my fever I heard my mother tell me: “The old man Rose /
has gone.” (155)

*

Her father came, having crossed all the land, all the fields; he knelt /
down and nearly kissed her. She could still run away, once and for all; /
the boundaries were clear, and beyond them lay other fields and other /
kings, who perhaps would take her in sweetly, shelter her for life. But she /
was sure of one thing: she was never going to take a single step beyond /
the family property. Her father embraced her; he remembered the night /
when he had conceived her, the tiny, the cry from the gut as she began /
to be born; he looked at the stars that had sent the order; he kissed her /
almost as if she were his bride, on her lips, on her breast that was naked /
like a mushroom, and he killed her. (257)


Di Giorgio's poetry encompasses myth, fable, and unconscious processes; although, despite Pitas' report that the author was not prone to revision, the verses seem intentionally composed, not a product of automaticity [an ideal of the Surrealists]. Similarly, many of the poems are “indeterminate,” incomplete, and di Giorgio often leaves us hanging. This characteristic, also, seems, to me, a purposeful conceit. I do not “read” di Giorgio as a naif despite the childlike posture she adopts in her poems. The writer is aware of life's possibilities and contradictions—both pain and beauty, love and violence, acceptance and rage.

She displays a genuine fondness for her maternal grandparents [section two, Magnolia, is dedicated to her grandmother], but she has an ambivalent relationship to her mother who is foreboding and powerful:


Then, my mother appeared with her box of letters; /
I could see her slim form, her well-hidden shoulders. I had to close /
my eyes and dig my nails into the grass in order to contain myself, but /
I followed her cautiously until she crossed the threshold and sat down /
on the bed and started to sort through some recently arrived postcards; /
then, I attacked her; I scratched at her clothes; her breasts popped out, /
big, fat, smooth, with pink tips, like two gorgeous fungi, two singular /
mushrooms...[S]he recognized me, she stared at me straight in the /
eyes, but I tore at her violently, and then almost immediately, she died.


But, I Remember Nightfall is not only about a girl's unhealthy, love-hate bond with her mother. Moreso, we are in the depths of a familial triangle—child, mother, father, and the book's conceptual framework is a classic, Freudian “Electra Complex” [see epigraph] involving Marosa's love for “Papa” [51] and the ultimate trauma—the betrayal of that love and trust by his emotional and physical violations [257]. In several places throughout the text, the child-woman portrays herself as a victim of men, a possible source of her conflicted rage directed toward her mother's failure to protect her. Perhaps the female iconography mentioned above represents a “doubling” [“mirroring” in Lacanian psychoanalysis] of Marosa and her mother, a possibility that the poet may have been aware of—possibly, as a result of some intimate knowledge with psychoanalytical treatment so pervasive among the privileged classes in Uruguay, as reported by the Uruguayan psychoanalyst, Ricardo Bernardi. On the other hand, Marosa's primal instincts may, simply, be releasing her covert psychological motivations.

Clearly, it is a straightforward exercise to interpret di Giorgio's work in terms of Freudian theory, investigating the interaction of conscious, subconscious [e.g., dreams], and unconscious processes. In psychoanalysis, the patient undergoes “talking therapy” [“free-association” and dream interpretation] to access latent mental content negatively influencing current behavior, including, language [e.g., “Freudian” slips] and other creative, generative acts. If we follow Freud's paradigm to consider erotic and morbid features of thoughts and actions, we can identify these elements in di Giorgio's writing that include overtly sexual allusions, e.g., “corrola” representing female genitalia; “mushrooms” representing “phallus” or nipples; autoeroticism; orgasm; homoeroticism, as well as, numerous examples of her ambiguous, conflicted relation to sex, including, her knowledge that sex is considered a sin in her Catholic tradition [though she, or her persona, pursues it, anyway].

Though di Giorgio''s poetry lends itself to interpretations of hallucination and pathology [“crazy” occurs several times in I Remember Nightfall], Pitas and Blixen have communicated to me via e-mail that there is no evidence that the author underwent analysis. In fact, according to Pitas, her family vigorously denies it. On the other hand, even if these demurrals are accurate, an article by the Uruguayan psychoanalyst, Denise Defey, reports that Uruguay has high rates of depression and suicide and there has been a tradition of untrained analysts and networks of informal therapy groups in the country; thus, it cannot be excluded that di Giorgio had intimate knowledge of and with “talking” therapies in one way or another. The translator, Jessica Sequeira provided two articles, one describing di Giorgio as “the madwoman of Uruguayan letters,” the other as, “la rara.” Via e-mail, Blixen stated that di Giorgio was called, by some, “;rara' o 'extravagante'” On the other hand, in a book chapter, Teresa Porzecanski depicts di Giorgio as a retiring, rather parochial, old maid; however, since di Giorgio traveled extensively abroad and received at least one international prize, she may have been more sophisticated and worldly than she appeared to many. We know that the poet was perceived as strange, eccentric, and flamboyant, but, whatever the facts may be, many details of her biography are lacking or unclear, requiring systematic research by scholars and critics.

The psychological and linguistic are not the only levels at which a reader can consider the complexity of di Giorgio's collection. Her themes resonate with her documented knowledge of myths, perhaps, the stories of Demeter [agriculture and fertility] and Persephone [underworld]. Further, considering the poet's use of Christian symbolism mentioned above, religious motivation should not be taken literally since Uruguay is said to be the most secular of Latin American countries. Indeed, none of the writing in I Remember Nightfall should be taken at “face value,” particularly, since the author clouds so much in mystery. Di Giorgio was, also, no doubt, familiar with European fairy tales with their idealized and romanticized themes of good and evil—“surrealist dreamscapes” lending themselves to Freudian dream analysis. Consider, for example, the German fairy tale, “Snow White and Rose Red,”—“Rosy-Red / Will you beat your lover dead?” Again, the grotesque is apparent in this tale as well as in di Giorgio's compositions [“We devoured her and it was like she was alive. / The ring I now wear was once hers.”: 49].

Comte de Lautréamont was the nom de plume of Isidore Lucien Ducasse, a French poet born in Uruguay whose writing di Giorgio must have been familiar with. Lautréamont's only works, Les Chants de Maldoror and Poésies, had a major influence on 20th Century arts and letters in Europe, particularly on the Surrealists who championed interpretation of unconscious motivation, especially, dreams, and who strove to practice “automatic writing.” According to Bernardi, and other direct and online sources available to me, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan are major figures in psychoanalytic traditions and practice in Uruguay—Klein's program advanced ideas about how the child's “existential anxiety” manifests in the unconscious [71: “...he / searched the wardrobe, drawer by drawer; he looked into the album; he / asked which one was Celia. We showed him my little sister. / He chose her.”], and Lacan's project addressed the notion of “desire” to be recognized by the “other” [253: “There / were only two dwellings in that vast region. 'Ours' and 'the other.' Our / family and 'the other;' that was how we referred to each other.”]. The scholar, Bruce Dean Willis, has pointed out that a theme of South American poetry is “recognizing one's self in one's other.”


In conclusion, di Giorgio's writing expands our understanding of Latin American literature at a time when women in the arts are receiving well-earned, though delayed, recognition. Consistent with this project, it is important to determine the extent to which she was engaged with feminism—intellectually and/or actively. Who, for example, were her friends? Did she live a “liberated,” “bohemian” lifestyle like many other female artists of her generation? The poet, Cristina Peri Rossi, has stated that “feminism began very early in Uruguay,” women enjoyed working—preferring to be single mothers, and they “detested” marriage and domesticity. Was di Giorgio a woman who broke traditional rules? Did she participate in the sexual freedom associated with a “unisex culture,” as Rossi describes the 1960s and 1970s in Uruguay among artists and intellectuals? The feminist scholar, Soledad Montañez, analyzing di Giorgio's “erotic prose,” claims that the poet “constructs gender narratives in order to undermine the patriarchal system from within.” At this point, many issues regarding di Giorgio—her work and her life—must remain indeterminate—like so many of her poems. Perhaps, she has written her verses and her biography to be intentionally ambiguous with regard to meaning and interpretation. Whatever the case, I highly recommend I Remember Nightfall to any reader who appreciates noteworthy innovative writing. Marosa di Giorgio deserves a wide audience and international recognition.