Friday, April 8, 2022

Isabella Wang and Stephen Collis : Two Imperfect Sestinas (for Phyllis Webb's 95th birthday

 

 

1.

for Phyllis

where are we now      hold our loved poets as seas     as oceans    close  
this imperfect sestina choreographs     the perfect
cinematography of six-beat repetitions      musics of this life

our hearts     slow motion not repetition but a moving
forward ephemeral improv    eyes pouring over the stone    in this heart you hear the sound

of a moving toward    her illuminations     that ephemeral thing 

Fred’s music at the heart of thinking
Steve says happens the moment a poem announces

itself as ready to be written 
  is lost now    perhaps
lost is readiness    of the mind ghost    to unhaunt the living’s
unhomed de-visioned    profiles of movement

bodies / parentheses / being to cohabit with the sound

at the music of sounding
who am i to you    to others    our common loving of mutual things
because if you are lost   how much of myself

that i recognized in you     needed our perennial path
is also lost    Butler writes   when we lose

something we grieve    we i ourselves inseparable    the removal

of selves      a moving
perfect vulnerability    bodies are submerged    such sounds

become the space they inhabit 
[— Ahmed]              think now
while Phyllis was here     think heart     journalistic eye
slow pulsing our collective i we recognized in her     our perfect

island congruent counterpart     and friend      compass point and means to a living

with meaning    inseparable the forces of living
are meant to be broken and assembled     composed moving
a reassembled broken body     without her      but surrounding

that ephemeral thing     [— Barad recomposed ]   
Phyllis i say    tell me what words you want to say up close

for the beating hearts    missing you     how to perfect

(if i’m worthy to know in afterlives you sea)     a music    imperfect
for the homeostatic quivering    Elee: of course   every grief is an anchor line

to previous losses   
island ferry rituals redefined not gone, Steve   the poet moving
in the cities and homes    and poetries     of her sound
how to feed her ravens red bitter berries of winter and still feed     everything

         
else up close we love     Phyllis thinks     we can it seems   

 

Phyllis     music toward the movement of closure
         
fill us music 1 2 3 …. 7 movements toward the closed beat of ephemeral things

~ Isabella Wang

 

 

2. 

YOU ARE HERE     west through islands and rain to islands and more rain longing
though not giving in to the fantasy of far-flungness     Conrad’s line

about the outlying islands and continents of the earth     close
the portals of the imperium     lest some forget their undiscovered thinking

we are always already here when we perennially arrive     moving
a reassembled broken body forming
     its own heart sounds music sounding

 

Remember those who imagined a direction to the flow of history sounding?
here is our distress and delusion     I listen instead to geological longings

mountains as hands raised upon arrival of immigrant island atolls moving
into late cretaceous sedimentary formations folded and gouged in glacial lines

now weathers of our own atmospheric making     river everywhere     over everything
so I come to ephemeral islands     heart mind music fires washed clean     composing

 

Yet still wondering     why is it so hard to dispel languages of colonial foreclosings?
whatever I I am     seeks to leap out of harbour’s deep soundings

to give what I can to our common love of mutual things
remember there was always resistance     fire after rain     and longing

bass tones of belonging     lifting our treble lives
life under harbours surface      surfacing     creatures creaturely     deeply moving

 

Under this constant rain and mountains that rivers are removing
the slow pulsing of our collective i     we may lose or are currently losing

but empire     Said said     involves all cultures in each other’s living
I wonder what differences are erased in storms raging over linguistic sounds?

everything is rooted in the earth     even the sea has roots and belongings
even here we must think habitation     as we are washed towards the sea thinking

 

I say this even if we are only poets     and don’t know anything
say this to other poets who know they don’t know     but are yet moved to thinking

out along their time-bent paths      leaning and longing
the whole culture leaning
from a tower in time     a simultaneous we we compose

on islands     edges     listening to the rain and waterfalls and other water sounds
perfect vulnerability
     tenderness of earth’s variable orbit     and the poem’s leaning line

 

You are in this with me too     climbing into curvature     along the living line
words thread through rain from island to island     to me poets are everything

composing we as vertigo vocalizing     send Columbus back to the shot stars resounding
send Columbia back too     let everything but the oldest names be removed

yes we made all that is all melt into an imperium of indifference and closing
so then recompose differences     erased ecotones     homeostatic quivering and longing

 

Are you still here?     repeating lines of a symphony of snapped strings     mountains afire

and seas moving

I Arnaut Daniel still grieving     thinking between imagination and study     trying

to keep you close

Empire follows art     Blake’s voice resounding     so lose it in the ark of the dark    

in our endless longing 

 

~ Stephen Collis

 

 

 

Authors’ Note: Marking PW's 95th birthday. While she left us in 2021, Webb's work and legacy continues to be generative. 'There ARE the poem,' and we continue to read and respond.

 

 

 

Isabella Wang is the author of the chapbook, On Forgetting a Language, and her full-length debut, Pebble Swing (Nightwood Editions, 2021). Among other recognitions, she has been shortlisted for Arc’s Poem of the Year Contest, The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Contest and Long Poem Contest, and was the youngest writer to be shortlisted twice for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Essay Contest. Her poetry and prose have appeared in over thirty literary journals and three anthologies. Completing a double-major in English and World Literature at SFU, she is a youth mentor with Vancouver Poetry House and an Editor at Room magazine.

Stephen Collis is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Commons (2008), the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (2010), Once in Blockadia (2016), and Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (2018)—all published by Talonbooks. A History of the Theories of Rain (2021) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for poetry, and in 2019, Collis was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.