Four
poems for zarf
1.
If there is any reason to be dissatisfied.
I could hear the difference. The world
began
with arms upturned,
imagine. These parabolic
orbits.
2.
The fluid dynamics of a
small description.
3.
The roots of fear: if I ever made
such a conscious decision. A sentence,
and a sound of wheat.
4.
Nakedness of air, of sky. Will prolong
themselves in fragments. The permutations
are endless.
“Four poems for zarf” begins with an incomplete conditional: “If there is any
reason to be dissatisfied. / I could hear the difference.” The next clause
should offer the “then” to the first clause’s “if,” but the period fragmenting
the thought disrupts the cause and effect relationship. And once something is
“in fragments. / The permutations //are endless” (4.2-3). This speaker can
certainly hear difference, and makes us hear it, too.
The sequence’s other fragmented
conditional examines not the hearable difference but the unconscious one: “The
roots of fear: if I ever made / such a conscious decision” (3.1-2). The roots
of fear are the underlying condition the speaker may not have consciously
assessed. This speaker is certainly interested in the unconscious structures
that make decisions possible, especially the structure of language. Language
users draw on an underlying grammatical knowledge to make sentences—or
fragments: “A sentence, // and a sound of wheat” is not a sentence (3.2-3). The “sound of wheat” evokes the field of significance
out of which individual speech acts are possible. Wheat only makes sound as a
field, the individual stalks touching each other in the wind. Likewise,
individual words only make meaning because they exist in the larger field of
significance that is language, the structure of meaning we draw from as we make
sentences, or fragments, or whatever permutations we like.
The wheat field underpins the sound of
wheat like language underpins individual fragments, sentences, or poems, and
this poem sequence explores meaning as it is made in multiple fields:
linguistics, astronomy, and physics. When mclennan’s first poem puts a world
into orbit, it is perhaps the world of the poem in “the sphere of activity”
that is poetry (“orbit,” Oxford English
Dictionary). Zarf is the larger
body around which this poetry sequence orbits: the title produces a
gravitational force binding these poems to the poetry magazine. Literary
magazines have certain aesthetics and certain followings, and this sequence
aligns itself with Zarf, which
publishes “experimenting poetry” (zarfpoetry.tumblr. com). In what sense can
poetry be “for” a publication it isn’t published in? This “for” honours the
magazine by attaching its name and circulating it into space. These poems forge
a relationship between themselves and the larger space of small experimental
publications by participating in “[t]he fluid dynamics of a / small
description” (2.1-2). “Dynamics” can mean the “physical or moral forces in any
sphere, or the laws by which they act” (“dynamics,” OED), so “fluid dynamics” sound like the experimental possibilities
the small magazine universe offers: “The permutations // are endless” (4.2-3).
Fluid dynamics is also a kind of physics.
So, mclennan calls up the dynamics of a sphere of poetry and of the physical
universe, of linguistics and of physical sciences, of the world of poetry that
we might “imagine” (1.4) and of the physical world, of the poem’s fragments and
of the sky’s air. Indeed, “Nakedness of air, of sky. Will prolong / themselves
in fragments” (4.1-2).
These dynamics produce a world. This
“world began / with arms upturned” (1.2-3). “Upturned’ could mean palms-up,
arms turned to show their soft undersides in a gesture of nakedness:
empty-handedness, emptiness, peaceful intention, the shrug of not knowing or
inability. Or these arms might be up in the “Nakedness of air, of sky” (4.1),
forming the u-shape that the world could follow in its “parabolic // orbits”
(1.4-5). A parabolic orbit is not one that goes around and around a body, but
one that at some point moves away into new space. This world evokes the
underlying bodies of knowledge of various spheres, but also suggests the
experimentation of moving beyond the established. “Parabolic” can mean like a
parabola but also like a parable (“parabolic,” OED). Here is a parable about creating new worlds of poetry.
Note to Readers
I
appear here as a reader of these poems offering models of response, aiming to
open up possibilities for other readers. I’ve connected with the poets, and I’d
now love to connect with other readers. How do you respond to these poems? Do
you have questions or comments about my readings? Or about this project? Please
get in touch with me at deicticpress@gmail.com.
Works Cited
“Dynamics” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford
UP, 2020.
Gardner, Callie. Zarf Poetry, https://zarfpoetry.tumblr.com/.
“Orbit.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford
UP, 2020.
“Parabolic.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, UP,
2020.
Born
in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives
in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with
Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction
and non-fiction, his most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019).
He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the
University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and
other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
Dale Tracy, a contract faculty member, is an
assistant professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication at
the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. She is the author of With
the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s,
2017) and the chapbooks Celebration
Machine (Proper Tales, 2018) and The
Mystery of Ornament (above/ground, 2020). She received an honourable mention in
Kalamalka Press’s 2019 John Lent chapbook award contest.