Recalculating Read online

  I don’t want to have a dialogue.

  That’s why

  though I’m calling this

  Talk to Me

  I really would prefer to

  talk to myself.

  What are you saying?

  I can’t HEAR you.

  BE QUIET!

  I want to hear what you’re saying—

  but I’m not listening!

  A poet

  Taking a long walk on the ice

  Slipped

  And fell down.

  A critic came along

  Seeing him lying there and said

  Are you comfortable?

  —I make a good living.

  I told my wife

  I was losing my grip.

  She said,

  What grip?

  My wife she stood—

  With a loaded gun—

  Who said that?

  I’ve always loved Sally Silvers’ work

  especially her early work where

  she does stuff with movement that’s extremely awkward

  a kind of awk-

  wardness that you don’t

  associate with dancers.

  I always wanted

  to do something like that

  with poetry

  to make poetry almost

  painfully

  clumsy, clumpsy . . .

  perhaps not reciting poems but

  declammering poetry

  á la Huntz Hall and the Bowery Boys—

  How beauteous is—

  The subway—

  In which I—toil—

  Schmutzing my way to the midnight’s—

  Ball—

  Right by where—

  You are—

  But the problem with that—what?—text

  is that the kinds of things I most readily come up with

  seem to

  follow some kind of

  pattern that’s

  feeding on memory

  and the beauty of the

  alphabet

  of writing it down

  is the memory function

  it remembers for me

  In many ways the in-process writing through poetry is contained in

  the performance of poetry, the different ways in which

  a relatively fixed alphabetic work

  is said differently, is performed

  differently.

  But the kind of patterns

  that I can improvise

  don’t allow for the kind of

  immemorability

  which I’ve always wanted for poetry—

  to articulate things

  that can’t be

  remembered

  which might mean

  phrases

  I can’t quite

  make up

  in real time.

  It was Alfred Lord and Milman Parry

  in their book The Singer of Songs

  that talked about formulas

  of memorized texts

  that were especially popular in Greece before the time of the alphabet

  and continue in cultures after that time

  that didn’t use writing as a method of memory. Still I want to try

  to do a

  paperless poem

  part of the paperless culture that we’re entering into

  and see what I can come up with.

  Transient

  Failure

  I’m not telling you

  what you CAN’T do,

  but what you CAN do.

  The pricks are points

  on a map.

  The past

  passes

  if we

  listen

  not

  to what it tells but to the tales we tell

  about

  it—

  what time is it NOW what TIME is it now what time is it NOW what time IS it now WHAT time is it n-o-w what TIME is it now what time is it now what time is it now what TIME is it NOW what time IS it now WHAT TIME IS IT NOW what time is it NOW what time is it now what TIME is it now

  the trees

  turn

  dark

  but the leaves are

  shot

  with light.

  Go back! Stay back! Way back!

  In back! Kneel back!

  Quickback!

  Stayback!

  Halt! Kick!

  Is performance better than writing?

  Writing better than Starbucks?

  Starbucks better than bugles?

  Humor better than seriousness?

  Peace

  better than tranquility?

  Microphone

  better than illusion?

  Illusion

  better than banisters?

  Banisters better than walls, ceilings

  better than lights, lights

  better than trees, trees better than floors, floors

  better than what’s under the floors?

  The warlords

  Drank

  Blood

  From cups

  Made of Euro bones

  And Euro dollars

  And Euro horns

  What time is it now? What time is it NOW? What TIME is it NOW? WHAT time IS IT now? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? What time is it now? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW?

  [talking watch:]

  It’s nine eighteen p.m.

  It’s nine eighteen p.m.

  It’s nine eighteen p.m.

  The light

  spills

  into pools

  of darkness

  I cannot

  find it

  —Now

  those are

  some of the elements

  that might go

  into a poem

  but in a poem I’d

  disperse and

  reorganize them

  in a way

  that would not

  have the same

  kind of, kind

  of rhythmic

  structure

  that I fall into

  when improvising

  What time is it now?

  TALK to me!

  I don’t wanna hear what you’re saying!

  SHUT UP!

  What do you think about?

  I don’t wanna know.

  Some of the images are occurring because

  one of the people that I’m in dialogue with

  is Dubravka Djurić

  a Yugoslavian poet and translator

  who lives in Belgrade.

  And all through this time we’ve been sending

  Internet messages back and forth.

  But just before

  the recent NATO bombing of Belgrade began

  she asked me a question

  about a line from Robert Duncan.

  And the line was:

  The African princes

  drink

  from cups of rhino bones and horns

  . . . and she didn’t know what that meant.

  And so she sent me an email.

  And I thought it was very interesting

  in the midst of all that was going on

  that she was so concerned what this image

  what this poem, of this

  poet no longer alive, Robert Duncan,

  could mean. And it reminded me of a trip

  that James Sherry and I took

  to Belgrade in 1991. We rented a car

  in Vienna. And drove down to Belgrade.

  And then that little tiny car

  (James will remember this) . . .

  I couldn’t get the reverse clutch to work.

  And this was extremely irritating

  to James, because it wouldn’t back up.

  We were in a parking space and yet

  we couldn’t get out of there. I just

  couldn’t get that clutch to
work.

  And one thing that Dubravka said to me

  somewhere during the Serbo-Croatian war

  was that the kind of concern for poetry

  and the politics of poetic form that Bruce

  was engaged in that I was engaged with

  and many others—

  took on an acute meaning to her

  when that war took place and she never

  understood so well why we saw poetics

  as political, about what we can’t think

  as much as what we can . . .

  worrying about what images mean

  how language works

  how representation works . . .

  it’s all very frivolous and fun

  but it’s not

  serious, it doesn’t matter but suddenly

  it started to matter to her.

  One of the reasons it mattered to her was—

  What time is it?

  DON’TALKTOMEICANTHEARYOU

  One of the reasons . . .

  DON’TALKTOME

  I want to hear you

  DON’T TALK TO ME I WANNA HEAR YOU!

  One of the reasons was—

  . . . you know whenever I want to hear other voices

  I have a very

  comforting thing. . . .

  My watch comforts me.

  Talking to other people is OK but

  really I only want to hear the dialogue

  that I create myself.

  That’s the problem with poetry:

  I want other voices

  but I want them always to be

  My own other voice

  What time is it now?

  [talking watch:]

  Nine twenty-three p.m.

  What time is it now?

  It’s nine twenty-three p.m.

  I find that very comforting

  because it answers me. . . .

  And I know what the answer’s going to be

  yet it’s still another voice.

  Dubravka’s mother is from Croatia and her father is from Serbia

  so she’s a Yugoslavian.

  And one of the things that you realize

  is that this constant representation of land and a people

  in terms of these ethnic maps that we draw . . .

  The pricks are points on a map

  the points are pricks on a map

  There’s nothing to lose

  but nothing itself

  the thought of nothing.

  Go BACK STAY back WAY back!

  Ich bin ein Yugoslavian.

  I am a Yugoslavian.

  Because, as Dubravka says, the intersections of the different representations, the ability to live with ambiguity, the ability to live in dialogue with multiplicity instead of trying to have some moral order that says this is this sector, that is this sector, everything is separate, everything is divided . . .

  And we’re writing together, we’re

  getting back these messages that say

  “transient failure.” Transient

  failure. As the bombs are falling and then

  she writes urgently, she says very urgently

  Don’t post the message to the listserv

  electronic group because I’m afraid

  with this message. And what this message says is

  before the fall of Communism, there were poets

  who were Communist poets, who were all about the Communist

  credo, who put forward socialist realist values. And then

  in the time of Milosevic there were extreme Serbian nationalist poets . . .

  and she didn’t want us to post this information . . .

  and then . . .

  James got a message that said . . .

  “fatal error” . . . and I kept thinking what is that?

  Fatal error. Transient error. Which one is the fatal error

  and which is the transient error? And then I thought

  Alfred Lord, Singer of Tales, I mean that’s a Serbian singer

  and when you think about improvisation, and oral culture, one of the key

  ways that we know about it is through the singers of Serbia

  and who are they? And can we live with a dialogic reality

  that doesn’t have a fixed order . . . that this is here, and this is there . . .

  that there isn’t a right or wrong?

  Ich bin ein Yugoslavian.

  What time is it now?

  What time is it NOW?

  What time is it NOW?

  And then we got a message

  via B92, which is the alternative radio station

  that was shut down on April second

  by Milosevic and it said

  Don’t send any more messages

  these messages you’re sending are going through the server

  and you’ve got to stop.

  Transient error. Fatal error.

  We didn’t know which.

  Could it be a transient error?

  Was it going to be fatal?

  And I keep thinking of not being able to go into reverse because you can’t go into reverse, you can’t go back, and we kept going forward and I kept thinking maybe talking about this maybe thinking about the way we talk about things is political, is crucial and maybe dialogue is the problem.

  Listen—

  if we don’t have dialogue

  if we don’t listen to what we can’t hear

  what we can’t understand

  then we’re not—

  What time is it now?

  [talking watch:]

  It’s nine twenty-seven p.m.

  It’s nine twenty-seven p.m.

  And the curious thing

  that Dubravka said

  was that these Communist

  social realist poets

  and the ultra

  right-wing poets

  the ultra-nationalist poets of the present . . .

  they were the same poets.

  I’m not telling you

  what you can’t do,

  but what you can do.

  The pricks are points of light

  On a map.

  The leaves are dark

  Before the trees

  Are shot with light

  GO back STAY back WAY back!

  In back! Lay back!

  What time is it now? WHAT TIME

  is it now? What time is it now? What

  time is it . . . TALK to me! Talk to me!

  I don’t want to hear it. Talk to me

  I don’t want to hear it! Talk to me

  I CAN’T HEAR WHAT YOU’RE

  SAYING! Talk to me. Be QUIET!

  You can’t go in reverse.

  Fatal error.

  Transient error.

  And B92’s motto,

  which they have on their website,

  is Don’t trust anybody. Including us.

  TALK to me. I don’t want to hear it!

  What do you think? I’M NOT LISTENING.

  They were the same poets.

  And you might answer B92’s motto:

  Don’t trust yourself either.

  The warlords

  Are drinking blood

  From cups of Euro bone and Euro horn.

  The light

  Spills

  Into pools

  Of darkness.

  I cannot find it

  By myself.

  FROM STONE

  I’ve been given a body. What should I do with it,

  So singular, so my own?

  For this joy, quiet, to live and breathe,

  Who, tell me, am I to thank?

  I am gardener, but flower too;

  In the world’s dungeon I am not alone.

  On the windowpanes of eternity,

  My breath, my warmth has already settled.

  On it a pattern is pressed,

  Unrecognizable of late.

  Even if moment’s gloom streams down—

  The
pattern, so dear, won’t be crossed out!

  1909

  Osip Mandelstam

  translated with Kevin Platt

  SANE AS TUGGED VAT, YOUR LOVE

  after Leevi Lehto, “Sanat Tulevat Yolla”

  O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

  Talon—Jokasta’s vivisected valor.

  Silly virtual item.

  Sane as tugged vat, your love, kaput.

  Tamed tapestry’s caressed master’s tasseled luaus.

  O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

  Talon—Jokasta’s vivisected valor.

  Silly virtual item.

  Medusa pouts as vat’s veil’s oldest lament jokes.

  Tamed tapestry’s caressed master’s tasseled luaus.

  O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

  Talon—Jokasta’s vivisected valor.

  President—he itsy, oily, tainted, laminated.

  Medusa pouts as vat’s veil’s oldest lament jokes.

  Tamed tapestry’s caressed master’s tasseled luaus.

  O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

  Talon—Jokasta’s vivisected valor.

  Silly virtual item, yah!

  Sane as tugged vat, your love, kaput.

  TWO STONES WITH ONE BIRD

  Re-

  demption

  comes

  &

  redemption

  goes

  but

  transience

  is

  here

  for-

  ever.

  SAD BOY’S SAD BOY

  after “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath

  I ruin my hats and all the mat slides glad

  I hop my girls and all is skip again

  I jump I run you up inside my truck

  The car goes looping out in dark and light

  And yellow hat slides in

  I run my mats and all the girl slides glad

  I hoped you skipped me into luck

  And jump me black, ruin me glad

  I jump I run you up inside my truck

  I jump my slopes and all the dopes slide glad

  I glide my luck and all is slip again

  I jump my hopes and all the rope glides sad

  I skip you jump the way you said

  But I run old and sigh your name

  I ruin my mats and all the girl slides glad

  At least when luck hops it skips back again

  A rune my mats and all the girls slide glad

  I jump I run you up inside my truck

  DESIGN

  for Jean-Michel Rabaté

  I saw the sign

  on its hooks

  grappling with

  the being of its

  having become &

  gone, in a flash

  just like the gun

  returned to its holster

  or the prairie dog

  howling with

  homesickness

  even at home.

  The consciousness of

  consciousness lapses

  into intermittent

  power outages &

  salt water taffy.

  History will end