How does a poem begin?
with a pique / or question / that the poet cannot / a question that the poet does not yet / know is a question / a longing or restlessness / that sits at the juncture between / because poems are interstices / between / thinking / and feeling / and body / and language / and history / and experience / and and and[i] / because these are not separable / the poem is / life / not separable / because language / is a nexus / between / and body / and history / and material / and image / and sound / and thinking / and feeling / made of language / a body throbbing with / how to put / that into / begins with / where sense accrues / sensations / inside and outside / thinking / intersection of the body’s / multiple / intertwinings with the world which / compose the possibility / of body / a site of contact with / not singular / bodies of bodies / intertwining / with a question / that does not know / it is a question / multiple questions / intertwining with / the possibility that / language cannot quite / cannot quite / in standard orthography / according to conventions of syntax / and argumentation / or narrative / joins / what cannot otherwise / through a conception / of language / as isolate / and body / and experience / not intertwined with / other others / cannot be singular / expressed otherwise / this chiasmus[ii] / of word / and world / inseparable / a wash of / a rush of / waves / a poem accumulates / questions / driven by / this longing / understood not as lack[iii] / nor absence / plenitude / this reaching out / across / for / other / a poem / a tool / for joining / thinking / across / in non-orthodox syntax / non-standard typesetting / accented speech / the way a dog rolls in the snow
A poem ought to ask many questions that the poet cannot answer. At least three, anyway. At least one of those questions should be “How does the form of this poem contribute to how I am able to ask or answer these questions?” Coordinating threads of inquiry.
No longer sufficient to assume that language will be neutral. No longer sufficient to let form be passive. Conversely. No longer sufficient to see form alone as able to accomplish a political or aesthetic aim. All tools are available. No aesthetic or political purity. No longer rely on disjunctive language alone but coordinating between a relentless critique of received form and, and, and understanding experience and identity as key sites for political and poetic intervention. Where the rubber hits the road. Where the fist hits the face.[iv]
I, too, am bored by poetry.[v] “Poetry should be at least as interesting as, and a whole lot more unexpected than, television.”[vi] The poem is a nexus between reader and poet. Poems that open, allow entry. Porous. This does not preclude difficulty, but the poems that understand the conditions under which the reader arrives at the poem. Understand that the conditions of difficulty are not neutral. That other forms of difficulty exist that preclude other forms of entry. A citation of Goethe. The model number for brand of roofing underlayment. The precise curvature of the Pont Neuf. The taste of saffron. The glimmering peacock on the table at Freddy’s Bar. “Water stain spreading across the living room ceiling.”[vii] The precise pressure of a 12-gauge shotgun recoil. An unspeakable horror. ¿Qué otras cosas? Difficulty to be strived after but earned. Enough with poems that are less interesting than their footnotes. Except, except, except. Publish the endnotes, the poem in the trash.[viii]
Conversely, I am bored by poems that only tell me something and do nothing. A monologue on a therapist’s couch with line breaks and rhetorical figures. An image that is just an image. A simile that is just a simile. I want poems that understand poetic language as history as dialogue, that understand form as the means of speaking across these gaps. Form is more than craft. Craft is more than form. I want to be surprised. Structural surprise at the level of letter and line and phoneme and stanza and poem and life and. “As for we who love to be astonished.”[ix] Surprise is the nodal point, connecting. A relentless desiring.[x] Coordinating inquiries. I want to be surprised. Tension and release. Every poet wishes they were a musician. Every poet wishes they were a comedian.
No more flat affect readings. Except. Every tool is at our disposal. Use. Performance as another aspect of form that cannot be divorced from what appears on the page or screen. “I write poems that pose a problem for performance and then figure out how to solve that problem.”[xi] The intertwining of of of. Site and. Space and. Audience and. Text and. And and and.
Why write a poem rather than doing (literally) anything else? Anything easier. Anything that would accomplish more readily. A means of last resort. A poem begins where other language fails. Gesture is a language. Touch is a language. River is a language. Trash is a language. Scent is a language. Body is a language. Air is a language. I love you, and our bodies touch, so I don’t write you a poem. Uselessness is a virtue under the current organization of human effort. A kernel stuck in the tooth of the beast. In bocca al lupo. Down with capitalism. Dance to the downfall of imperialism.
Yet, any other means would be more useful to whatever we envision on the other side.[xii] Or acclaim or riches or love or attention. Write a novel, poet. An essay. A brick through a window. Cook a meal for a lover or stranger. Start a hardcore band. Anything that could reach across to that other future. Except except except. And so: Why write poems. What can be accomplished here that cannot be otherwise.[xiii] Language fails. Poetry begins. Poetry begins with nothing except except except failure. And builds from there. Connecting. Failing. I love you.
[i] Karen
Villeda, Teoría de cuerdas.
[ii] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Chiasmus /
The Intertwining.”
[iii] Ann Carson, Eros: The Bittersweet.
[iv] Hugo García Manríquez, Lo Común.
[v] Cf. Marianne Moore, “Poetry.”
[vi] Charles Bernstein, variously.
[vii] MC Hyland, The End.
[viii] Clemente Padín, “The New Poetry.”
[ix] Lyn Hejinian, My Life.
[x] Lisa Robertson, variously.
[xi] Jordan Abel, public reading, NYC.
[xii] Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The
Undercommons.
[xiii] Cf. William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That
Greeny Flower.”
Zane Koss is a poet and translator living in Guelph, ON. He is the author of Country Music and Harbour Grids (Invisible Publishing) and co-translator of Karen Villeda's String Theory and Hugo García Manríquez’s Commonplace (Cardboard House), with the North American Free Translation Agreement (NAFTA). He was born and raised in the East Kootenays, BC, and earned a doctorate at New York University.
