Monday, November 23, 2020

Phil Hall :

folio : Paul Celan/100

 

 

A Defence of Empathy & Sentiment                   

There is a familial relation—more than sound—between fashion & fascism

What is in fashion is fascism—they are out to leech our complexities of all sentiment

To fight this—keep close to Susan Howe’s artistic scholarship—she honours the archive by fielding it

Or to Robin Blaser who says—I hope that scholarship—the joy of it—the helpless quotation of it—gave greater generosity

There are too many people on earth—you know this—by number we have made ourselves more vulnerable in new ways—you have said so yourself

Fueki Ryūkō—says BashōEternity (what is not changing) & Fashion (what is fashionable & changing)

By number we can be more easily swayed for Profit & Office—especially if we are fed bad food—
then poorly educated—look at us

Working together seems to work only in small cells—four or five syllables at most

Despite “the shipwreck / of the singular” (Oppen)—the defenceless digit—one—is till prime

Its angush & base needs are still the core of all song—all politics—or was—or still might be

Traditionally—empathy accrues by tending to each other & animals—or by travel—or by deep reading which is both

Now—with these routes made precarious by over-population—surveillance technology—& epidemic—we cannot be sure that empathy is alive in us—or welcome in us—with us—of us

Self-promotion—Fashcannot replace loyalty to language within long memory & active focus

The group—polis—Olson’s word—means also (as Melville says) the common content—of Isolatos—island of the self

Alone to tinker years until done without fanfare is community service

Self-promotion knows no community—even if speaking from within a group

Fasc is all about the glory of the official solo—each expensive garment is a Name

The ego wants attention—not by practise—thoroughness—care—or accountability

From cadenza to tantrum is a decline—a hardening

Getting attention by disturbance—buzz—this is what children do

Who scoffs at the slowness & isolation of care—is always the impatient secret handshake—the
restless & precocious pulpit—voracious children ignored at a party

And who is to be disturbed—kicked—that straw enemy—quietude

But quietude—Ron Silliman’s word—means how the Middle writer tends to settle for comfort—closure—a calm tone

This gentle shutting of the lid of the poem—yes an elocutionist's trick—the lid becomes a settee
yes ubiquitous—yes dull

Yet quietude as coined is not a sneer at those who work quietly in the interlude—who take time &
care with words

Keep close to process—as its choreography evolves—take as long as you are troubled—be open vowels

Each maker inside compulsion falls quiet at the enormity of etymology’s ticket to ride

For example—Tranströmer—C D Wright—& Tsvetaeva are not guilty of quietude

Silence—or the noun quiet—is as if a hardy material in their poems

On a scale of silence—from more to less—the right order is—Tranströmer—C D Wright—Tsvetaeva

Nor are they as noisy at their process as Gertrude Stein is at hers—yet all four writers are eccentric word-carers

Shhh—Tranströmer—C D Wright—Tsvetaeva—Stein—hey!

The original Oulipo conference in France 1960 agreed upon the word potential—instead of experimental

That’s what the “po” in Oulipo is short for—Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle

Potentielle—wherefrom the next word be—an invite—& a wait—low magic—improv

Potentielle accrues—during the journey—along the dash—or across the caesura—a future-ing—the
go-let

Not—the scientific method—experiment—a forcing of culture—the clinical trial

Waiting the poem out—word by word—even letter by letter—offers deep & wide welcome

Unto intricacy—unto lidlessness 
 

We are more complicated than the Parade Square or the Framing Square—those sites & weapons
that encase—display—or define—our legitimacy

A dancing soldier is not a soldier (no Parade Square)

Eventually Hundertwasser would live in only the round (no Framing Square)

Any truth is surprise—over-determined—fleeting—an aerial photo blown up to absurdity

Or a too-close selfie torn & reassembled blind—hey!

George Oppen says that truth—also is the pursuit of it

And René Char says that—truth is individual—which I translate to mean—lyric

Only literary fanatics / lawyers / politicians / religious zealots—speak of Truth in a singular— capitalizing—slogan-ish—final way

Work toward surprise—dubious & multiple—to arrive at a music of word as word—this & this & this—collaged notation—not Truth but song

A timed pointing—thus form

To use words—so that they do not taste like paper—while they stay aware of the paper they are set to—has always been radical—avant—despite the preening diatribes of any garde

Each letter in each word is challenged to bring interconnectedness—the sanctuary of the brier-patch—the mulch of etymology—to the billboard waste of the page

But Fash & Fasc—as one public campaign—as if one corporate name—is against all complicated random sanctuaries

It endorses Officiators who—a century after Duchamp’s cleansing avant—would see philanthropy as
an art—& personal taste as notary

Empathy is against any who would bronze the ready-made—we have not forgotten the practical uses
of the daily shapes we worked among & now so admire as designs

Each citizen is—as Blake drew us—a ready-made—functionally elegant—by the necessity of practical innovation

Empathy is against any laurels manufacturer who would dignify by use—as ad copy—what Nicole Brossard has called—Mr Vanguard’s language

Empathy is against those who would coldly tell us to wipe our arses with our first poems—& then claim themselves brother or sister to bp Nichol (the Generous One)

Citizen—hold up against the manikin's guard-gaze & surety—a copy of Gary Snyder’s Regarding Wave—hold up Inger Christensen’s Alphabet—or The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis
Make no mistake—empathy & sentiment are not conservative or formal traits—they have been diluted into service there

Empathy & sentiment are the ghost greases in a pact between solidarity & the incomprehensible—they
are the black milk we drink in Celan’s “Death Fugue”

When Wilde says—All bad poetry comes from genuine feeling—he is not disputing the importance of the very wick of our humanness

He is arguing against a tradition of pandering sloppiness—as embarrassing in 1895 as now

The way Monique Wittig says “lesbians are not women”—I say Feeling—the third F—is not sentiment

Wherever that wick gets replaced by pop feelings—the poem squeaks forth as magazine verse—white milk—I think that I shall never see

So hold up a copy of Refuse Global (Montreal August 9th 1948)—or a copy of The Wounds by Norman
Bethune—or Robin Morgan’s Monster

Don’t forget Char’s Feuillets D’Hypnos (1943-1944)his French Resistance poetic journal

Let each of us each day change our samples—our evidence—tomorrow Disobedience by Alice Notley—next Bending the Bow by Robert Duncan—or any Neruda—there are many campaneros

Read out loud Aimé Césaire’s Return to My Native Land (1938)—as translated by John Berger &
Anna Bostock—don’t let anyone stop you

Many conquistadors—remember how in 1899 Shiki in Japan accused Bashō of sabi—overtones of quiet meditative loneliness (quietude)

But remember too—at the Long Liner’s Conference—York U—1984—when sentiment in poems
was being attacked—M Travis Lane’s little voice on the transcript—I’m all for it!


She fought the frog to save her childthat old folk talemade up each timeby each stance

Much that is not History—& not a speech—is nonetheless choreographically pivotal

Choose the left hand—the shed—what is left off—or left out—what has been shed because it has no

Fash& therefore (it is argued) no meaning or worth

Writing as process yields a ranging & valenced truthishness

Complexity-music—circular—braided—oval-ing—ovalating

That the languages at all our boundaries be shuffled into a sustaining empathy—omphalos—so laugh more—shalom

OK these times demand a culture of immense lab coats & giant suits who board first

Each line’s natural tug & push—is dried out—insensate—devoid of its animal

OK these times are spelled out as long in-folding immigration line-ups—a labyrinth—entangled homelessness

Opening Night line-ups also try to spell us—boxed—policed—silly-rich—insured to the very nose—velvet-roped

But walk away—empathy’s form—is the owl pellet—not the Fabergé egg

Unless it is leached away by a Theory campaign—sentiment is intrinsic to—& in the very interstices
of—the letters of each word—e
ven down to its smallest cell

Which is the letter-word “a”—that indefinite article-sigh—ah

Sentiment—not calculation—is how we came by awareness—how each letter-shape evolves

Sentiment—not sentimentality (that gloaming parody of sentiment that conquistadors love to memorize)

Sentiment—is not clean—it annoys—is wrong-angled—curved—rude—unsaluting

Empathy is language’s d’être & preserve

There is always some fascism in anything that is fashionable

But the lyric is—in each compulsed blurt—ever only a small turned-away hump or curl of mammal—
a wastrel’s grimace

A warrening—a warning—the lyric as half-hidden larder & index

Our oddity-cry—a note—a no

-- 

Phil Hall . Otty Lake . 2014-2020

 

 

 

Phil Hall (Perth Ontario) has two new books of poetry out this fall: Niagara & Government (Pedlar Press, 2020) and Toward a Blacker Ardour (Beautiful Outlaw Press, 2021). He favours collage & assemblage in his essay poems & long sequences. Celan has taught him that when words lose their spokes they speak in tongues. His reading at Celan/100 [an online event celebrating the centenary of Celan’s birth] is from work that assays the threat of Fascism in the arts and the vital legacy of the Holocaust for non-Jews like him.