Thom Eichelberger-Young : Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets, eds. Omar Berrada, Sarah Riggs

Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets, eds. Omar Berrada, Sarah Riggs
Litmus Press, 2024

 

 

 

What would we learn from the cats / the one on the back of the chair—eyes toward the structures on the other side of the window / all day observation—suburban fauna: squirrel, rabbit, birds, and free selves—transmit back (awareness) chattering / is a radio frequency, draws in [other] / The free selves are blamed for ecological devastation especially towards avian communities, but also towards smaller land mammals (rabbits, squirrels). Would this cat, always inside, express that they harbor fantasies towards ecological devastation? Another cat does not chatter, shares the chair, but looks inside / licks its self / Which one is the “free self” because here—ideation—even debate surrounds companion animal which has, after all, been domesticated / Domestication is a sure sign of human dominion / So, we wager to keep them off the streets, while wondering the alternative—there are millions of cats in animal shelters annually, and many of them are euthanized. We offset euthanasia, locate it within another occupation, not perceiving it as a solution. The suggestion is not a mass-culling, but to question how many “we really need” or “how many there need to be.” We play gods as the issue complicates—seeking a way out of the burden of our profligate spreading of companion species (especially abandoned dogs and cats), along the same lines as advocating for wider spread, say, plant-based diets—the background involves, somehow, mass-culling of a population that does exist, while the argument is in tandem proffered conceptually or theoretically, to avoid “touching upon” the dreadful subject underlying. At the same time, the contemporary solution is not mere euthanasia, but also the castration and spaying of male and female stray or wild dogs and cats. Trap Neuter Release encourages an abandonment of the animal after the alteration (read human intervention) of the animals sex organs, removing critical hormones contributing to the lived life of the animal, and, likely depriving them of immersion as fully within their instinctual perceptions. Moving away from mass-culling, towards the “optimal” strategy, is a static transition, completing only a circuit. The reality of the procedure of domestication—which is neither contemporary nor historical, but ongoing or braided with human behavior towards a society—is paradoxical. The only way out is also affirmational of our ideological and cultural valuation in the Anthropocene of human dominion. To maintain or solve our problem, we must deem it “a problem” (which we have done already through controversy and debate and profligation of animal welfare groups for many centuries with minimal impact) requiring human intervention to resolve. We are entrenched in it—being the problem, not the object—born not only from our actions but our clarifications and definitions of them (defenses and rejections) through language (distancing).

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I now spend my nights listening to the cries of cats gathered outside the gate. Theirs is a lost call; lamented by no one, drowned out by the last of the cars. ^[1] / Cats appear with semi-frequency in about 40% of the authors’ works in the recent Litmus Press publication Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets. The editors explicitly state This is not an anthology. It is a collection of murmured experiments, a room brimming with echoes. ^[2] / Cats are not the only animal, but they appeared often throughout the first half. / It is hard not to see connections and differences within this book—connection here feeling more the purpose or result of an encounter. When writers are grouped into anthologies, the goal is rarely to create great confusion, discord, or disagreement (though we know that many anthologies do offend the sensibilities of various readers, revealing issues with either the anthology or the reader) / Cats were one such connection, scaffolded through the early encounter with the cat in the first poem proper in the book. / Turn the page / Glance across the spread / You always make the mistake to think a glance is an action—an exertion / Aya Habih’s work here moves from the cat in “CITY ONE” to fish in “CITY TWO: BEACH” / Free Zone. Fishing Port. Photography is Forbidden. Disposal of Waste is Forbidden. And so is Fishing./ Small silver fish are observed being washed onto the shore on their last journey, which ended on a beach rock carved with graves the same size as the fish. It is as if their graves were molded synchronously with the cementation of the rock. ^[3] In this strange city, entered into, location of observation, the speaker relocates themselves from the ‘place of comfort’ situated within “CITY ONE” (hinged by “AIRPORT”), abstracting (possibly via censorship? Look at Rachida Madani’s “Author’s Note” where she describes how abstraction is required in order to avoid state censorship in her poetry—censorship rules! ^[4]) a political sensation into an ecological metaphor. The fish could and can readily be the doomed bodies of the proletarian subjects, underneath the State force of war, invasion, colonization, and capital accrual. On this beach, then, where so much is forbidden, while so much is also a potential, the movement together of the forces of nature (sedimentation, erosion) where they meet the residents of nature (the fish), the realities of our own lives are seen in focus—we are filled with so many desires that we are incapable of fulfilling. This morning, I read a blog post by Farah Rose Smith, which echoes many sentiments that are shared—not only now, but across traumatic situations (especially those taking place outside of our quotidian centers/sites of experience, where we, removed from positions of power and control, can only watch/observe/witness): How can anyone go about their days as usual… work, school, what else?... amid the images of dead children, limp, bloody, blue and green, eyes bloodshot to the point of flesh bursting around the irises?^[5] continuing a few sentences later How can I have so much and the women of Palestine so little? This is a question many around me are unwilling to address—not with Gaza, not with transgender bodies, not with police brutality (especially towards black and indigenous bodies). It is for this reason the image operates differently, because it is mediated, received, and understood differently by different viewers. The image, further, is not universal. The image we see is not the coffins and memes and cartoons that the Christian Trump Voter sees on their Facebook feed. These are all known things. They have little to do with cats, though they reflect the experiences of some readers encountering what many would quickly or offhandedly call an anthology. The aversion to the term is a challenge to readers of Another Room to Live In, especially within constant contemporary contexts we have been born under (myself, considering the decades of direct US involvement in Gulf Wars started just a few years before my birth, and has continued since then throughout my entire life) which seek to other and eradicate the Arab world, and its diaspora. Much of the resistance, to, comes through the ways in which the authors in this volume are distanced from “traditional Arab verse culture” (connections and disconnections of such being addressed readily by both authors and translators), and by the intense connection of the authors at hand—it is appropriate to avoid the term anthology when the title includes contemporary Arab poets for, while the latter is a correct and accurate term, most all of this work was produced through the TAMAAS translation seminar, and the book is more a documentation of that site than the wider Arabic diaspora, in the sense of where it was sourced from and how it was produced (no writer not included in the TAMAAS seminar is in this volume).

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It was yesterday when I read the majority of the poetry that included cats and kittens. It was this morning that I watched the cats on the chair chatter towards the birds outside / I know what they would do / I do not want such gifts / Therein lies another advancement of the conundrum with which we started—and perhaps I am wrong to extrapolate it out into a wider society of the United States, though I do because of the near corner store nature of humane societies and animal shelters in this country / I imitate the cats of this house. ^[6] seems an appropriate thought process to encounter when coming off the moral qualms of paying taxes. While we are low income and thus don’t send in a check or credit card payment to the IRS, we do still pay a small fee to them when checking out after submitting the electronic filing (two state returns, as you worked in the state adjacent to your own, and a federal return). You think about how you are grateful an estate document did not arrive before the filing deadline—to be put off for next year—and that you were finally able to access a W-2 so that you were neither audited nor required to submit a late filing. It is this thought process that is interrupted by the cessation of rain, which has been persistent of late (leaking through the ceiling on the first floor, damaging the chairs, sending us up at night to dump out the bowls of water catching below in pots and pans—the next day cleaning them and replacing them with whatever spare containers we have; still, there will be damage). When I pay taxes, I support the violence my State perpetuates on other bodies. When I vote—if I vote—I endorse the violence my State perpetuates on other bodies. My cats want to kill, instinctually, the other. Am I different, not wanting to kill, but not doing enough to stop the killing where I can (futile actions not so futile—Aaron Bushnell self-immolation forgotten already by the newscycle to be commemorated by new publication by FT through GENDERFAIL—what matters is who remembers) from the cat? In the journal entry from this morning, Farah had indicated that she held onto the belief for so long, the desire, that the world is born good. My husband is reading a book wondering over how good people can hold such ideologically apposite beliefs—I wonder that good/bad dichotomy is not only impossibly paradoxical, but derived from definitions outside our actual behaviors and desires, but underneath the lives impressed upon us by our various State bodies—such that I return to the question Juliana Spahr asked about why people were suicide bombers, what do they believe? In that I need stimulation, I am imitating the cat in a procedural similarity akin to domestication—where the State, through the corporate arm of (social) media has altered the thought processes and behaviors (as the cat with the window as barrier) that formulate my and others perceptions. Farah’s questions over the meaning or value of a diploma, occupation, a purpose here in this site versus the deprivation there (in Gaza) is another marker of the situation at hand—the recognition (by some of us) of actions of potential energy, which do have impacts, even if they are disregarded (loudly) by powerful others. The cats persist in their hunting desire for their prey—the birds. Beyond the hunting mechanism at play, the persistence of desire is the instinct which has not been abandoned in the animal body and psyche. It is this that I imitate.

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I took too long to interpret them/so the dreams stopped coming.//One that lingers is of the two/stray kittens, forgotten without food. ^[7] Sara Elkamel writes between Cairo and Egypt, but here, she talks, as Nabih does, of cats in Cairo—with many of us recalling the historical significance the cat held within Egyptian culture across time, perhaps nostalgically, perhaps fetishistically. Millions of stray cats and dogs live on the streets of Cairo, leaving some compassionate lovers of companion species wary of visiting the society. The “humane society” and “shelter” clung to by some as a resource of salvation for the downtrodden companion species (it is not—more so an animal orphanage masquerading as an ethical organization) is not as readily popular or common in other countries, save those who have adopted similar “concerns” towards companion-animals that are held by animal rights advocates in the West. These forgotten strays appear in Nabih’s poem, as well—drowned out by cars. The ecopoetical praxis is a perspective, an eye to what is ignored and forgotten. The cat in these poems is subjected to the whims of our urban societies, another emblem of the ways humans have enforced a sense of dominion over non-humans. Within the city, the animal, not specifically the cat (though some, like rats, have adapted) is generally deprived of the resource network (ecological) it requires in order to survive. It is forced to live on scraps, to hunt for rodents and other small animals which similarly thrive on human scraps. Some animals thrive on human kindness—which is often registered by people who share such eyes as these two poets. Elkamel writes in another poem, “August,” that she kissed the abscess on the kitten’s lips. ^[8] Those of us who do not witness, those of us who vote, who echo the State views, who endorse them and go about our daily lives ignorant of others suffering, appear synthesized in another work, curiously absenting specific animal species, by Safaa Fathy: Animals sit on fours/waiting for the verdict ^[9] Taking place within a city, and dislocating (shrugging off) the sensation of a lyric “I” as speaking subject, the poem in question abstracts the political and sociological situations amidst flux and revolution in an unspecific—though Arab—city. The animal could be human or non-human, regardless. The situation revealed exacerbates our awarenesses of how we live a “domesticated” life. Consider, too, the trappings of a domestic life within the West—what is called, how it is advertised and propagandized. It is something to aspire to—a stable space defined by others (often those in power or with access to it)—while decrying or despising what one does have. The domestic life is a trap—an enslavement—oriented at capital and exploitation of the subject (us—the polis) as a commodity or source of revenue. Such is the domestic of domestication.

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For dogs, it is easier. At least, linguistically and perceptually (in some spaces). There are over 10 million stray dogs reported in Cairo, with as many as 60 million estimated. The human population of the city is around 9.5 million—leaving the possibility that there are nearly 6 dogs to every citizen in this city. In my experience, in the United States of America, having had a cat near my side since I was born—I have always understood that dogs are granted the ready idea of a personality, a desire to communicate and give and participate, while cats are deprived a personality, labeled as more aloof and sensitive. Certainly, some cats have been granted their own personalities, and there is the musical Cats. But, dogs hold the imagination differently. Dogs do appear in Another Room to Live In, but rarely as strays (though an interesting poem involves a letter to a disappeared individual using a childhood memory of watching a dog attempt to clean a wound first by licking, then by gnawing or eating the infected area). Such suggests the wider differentiation between cats and dogs in perception. From there, too, is to say that neither species has a globalized accepted discreet population of personality—instead, we ascribe group identity to these species, labeling them universally: they are allowed one identity, one personality, one behavior, or else they are an outlier—a curiosity. It interested me that most of the poems in the volume which dealt with cats were written by women, while one of the most prominent references to dogs occurred in a poem by a man (translated by Pierre Joris) which navigates the historical legacy of Ulysses: Homer will say that nobody recognized him, except the old dog. But dogs don’t live long enough to recognize their masters. ^[10] There is buried in the sentence the recognition of the domesticated life of the animal, but—I wondered—cats live similar lives to dogs, and do not they also not live long enough to recognize “their masters” within the diasporic situation, contemplating the analogue of the wandering Odysseus with the frequent issue of “living in diaspora” and “displacement” that is entailed in this work as a sequence of ideas and perceptions by various contemporary Arab poets? The word “cat” does not appear in The Odyssey.

 

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^[1] “CITY ONE” by Aya Nabih in Another Room to Live In. Litmus, 2023. 46.

^[2] “Editor’s Note” by Omar Berrada and Sarah Riggs in Another Room to Live in. 34.

^[3] “CITY TWO: BEACH” by Aya Nabih in Another Room to Live In. 47.

^[4] “Author’s Note” by Rachida Madani in Another Room to Live In. 76.

^[5] An important question, considering how many times similar images of infants and children with medically urgent conditions are readily shared and reproduced in order to garner sympathy, funds, and action by viewers—while the images of brutality, rending the body/somatic subject, in warzones do not impact similarly. There are, further, the imaging campaigns that take place on college campuses by right to life organizations which present similarly “graphic” (a specious term that suggests a wrongness or need to censor/hide/block/caveat an idea/image/object) medical images to their own ends—often operated by Evangelical Christians who readily support the brutality (cause of the images Farah Rose Smith is addressing) of Israel and the United States, actively denying the images of brutality from these warzones. The issue is abundantly not the image itself, but the question Smith follows up with.

^[6] “Dreams of the Detainee” by Sara Elkamel in Another Room to Live In. 54.

^[7] “The Eye Theatre Closes Its Doors, and Opens Them Again” by Sara Elkamel. Another Room to Live In. 56.

^[8] “August” by Sara Elkamel in Another Room to Live In. 55.

^[9] “April” by Safaa Fathy in Another Room to Live In. 144.

^[10] “Café Marine” by Habib Tengour in Another Room to Live In. 171.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thom Eichelberger-Young is an artist and mental health caregiver living in Buffalo, New York. Their books include ANITKYTHERA (Antiphony Press) and the forthcoming OINTMENT WEATHER: THINKING POETICS IN DESPERATE TIMES (CLOAK, 2025). They also edit Blue Bag Press.

Thom Eichelberger-Young : ISMS for Joan Retallack

In the following sequence, I will glossarize the “ismes” that Joan Retallack lists at the start and end of her pamphlet Mongrelisme, while also tracking my research and exploration of Retallack(‘s work) through the composition and revision of the work at hand, which is rendered actively transparent by the encyclopedic style of the composition—frequent transfers to different portions of the text are required in order to move through effectively, while linear readings are also “possible.” Often, these entries clearly notate changes, revisions, and additions that have taken place—as such, contradictions inevitably occur, which resolve only after the text is read “in full.” To my knowledge, Mongrelisme has not been recollected in subsequent trade editions by Retallack (it does not appear in her “selected poems,” Procedural Elegies/Western Civ Cont’d/—which is also not labeled as a selected poems and is treated like a new collection by some reviewers and as a selected poems by others—the interior does note if reading the notes, acknowledgments, and other front and back matter, that the poems are accrued from numerous other publications by Retallack across time). The list will then be a dictionary or encyclopedia. Her list is already alphabetized, and my list will extend the alphabetical terms with definitions provided by reading the work, indexing, meditating, following up on, and commenting upon them. Mongrelisme is an unpaginated book. It is made up of sections, some titled, some not. Many sections are preceded by Spanish language inquisitions aligned with an oral exam or interrogation. According to the book, Mongrelisme is one of eighteen pamphlets proposed for the “Isthmus Project” of Paradigm Press. Six authors will each produce three pamphlets. Mongrelisme is further labeled by Retallack the first volume of the “Mongrelisme Project.” Per Retallack’s CV, no further titles in this project, or via Paradigm Press, appeared (see Footnote 23, issues in rac– and terror– for instance also). A recording^[1] is available of part of the work. Another recording of other parts is also available from 2012.^[2]

Mongrelisme was released in an edition of 400 copies in 1999. The cost was $5. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the inflation adjusted value in February 2024 is $9.44. My first book, BESPOKE, is released with an MSRP of $15-16, though is available POD by Amazon, who have marked it as low as $2.77, which is the MSRP to consumers of four years of fairly frequent labor, or the fair market cost of accessing the results of same. I am pleased to share that at time of writing, BESPOKE is at its highest value in years (per Amazon, the only stable venue to obtain it after my publisher went AWOL)—$8.15. It used to be cost-effective for me to replenish my back-stock of copies to redistribute through this lucrative low cost system, as I presumed I was the only one buying copies, as I was the one responsible for getting copies into stores and readers hands. Perhaps, then, I am the cause of the increased value, as well—which benefits not me, but Amazon. I am paid no royalties for this book and have never recuperated the costs of the four years of living that it took to produce—not to mention the 14 years of abuse prior to that which were endured and pivotal to the expressions therein. Retallack’s work appreciates, mine depreciates. And, here I go, appreciating. (See also capital–, class–, etc.), all the while we wait to see if Retallack answers emails sent to her now emerita address at Bard (see Footnote 23).

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Many and most italicized portions of this sequence are from Mongrelisme or quoting of it, except where otherwise obvious and/or cited. The unpaginated nature of the book renders citation difficult, and in important instances where readers will hopefully seek to examine the source material, I have aimed to provide indicators of the quote’s location within the text. Because this book is not available readily to the general public, I have elected to make the statement to this effect, knowing that both citing and determining the cited material are rendered to extreme difficulty for the reader otherwise. However, this process should not eradicate the sense of responsibility on the reader’s part to engage with the work in question. OCLC lists the locations of the pamphlet—I encourage you inter-library loan or visit a nearby archive to read the material, as this is the purpose of libraries and archives, which are privately operated institutions for public edification. If you are unable to do so, reading this essay in full will give great scope, though not linearly, to the printed Mongrelisme as it works through the book via a list that bookends it. The readings provided, while further extrapolated as not entirely connected to the printed text under consideration, are also essential points of introduction to the project at hand, especially as it works intralinguistically. This essay is a work in flux.

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agonisme: Are agony, conflict, trauma beneficial? The inevitable fact is that these things happen. Above, we have noted that aspect of radical closure as trajectory, alongside the somatic aspect of jetlag towards a perceived destination, experience, and inflicted stress. Now, we wonder to what degree the inevitable traumas we face could be positivist aspects of human experience. Q: Which of these is not an agonist text: Blood on the Dining Room Floor or Don Quixote? Both are cited in the sources by Retallack. When Gertrude Stein learned the news of her friend’s mysterious death (Madame Pernollet?), she had a new subject to write about, informed or driven by her love for murder mysteries (she did not appreciate to read her contemporaries, but to read pulp fiction, she also did not enjoy music or cinema to much substantial degree). The benefit of the conflict, or radical closure, of Madame Pernollet’s death enabled the production of a new text to process that experience, though within the text in question (Blood on the Dining Room Floor), the mystery remains unsolved and the issues are predicated not on motion, but on stasis, so that reading one appears to be examining photographic stills presented as evidence from the crime scene (as in, of a murder), and not witnessing or being taken into the moment of the event (the crime) itself—so it is not narration but detection, and that difference colors the perceptions of Mongrelisme as it is perceived. The first “isme” is “Born Under Punches,” per Talking Heads. Many poems are born from conflict. Responses to conflict. In Fanny Howe’s “The Dragon of History,” readers encounter the lines I have seen it happen / A face with fangs and gills // represents history and an angel / is beating the beast on the back. ^[3] The angel is useless—the beating does nothing, for the dragon is imperialist state forces (see the titular poem in the same collection) and it is the purveyor of history. The state, despite Citizens United vs FEC, is not a human being, so the state is the terrain of the environment, everything outside us, that does narrate, mandate, and dictate the routes of procedure of living. Conflict—breeding aesthetic production, so you read Retallack saying A SENSATION OF FLOATING AT THE MOMENT THE ROAR of the roar of the blast ends the silence lifts everything into the air & then the whimpering & sobbing & screaming begin^[4] / From conflict, the trauma response. Conflict gives us something to talk about. Drama, sips tea. We enjoy television where individuals (not subjects, but objects, and at that figures—framed in screens) are induced to fight each other.

altruisme: Are the links between the first three listed “ismes” philosophical strategies for mandating perceptual readings or mediations of quotidian experiences? Agonism, altruism, and anarchism are a holistic for fairly all-inclusive modes of perception. One could possibly even say they felt confident having a team of three people, representing individually one of those three schools of thought—but that is superficial considering what will arise from those three individuals' inevitable conversations with each other. What is altruistic about writing poetry like Retallack but self-effacement or displacement of concern, or is this the wrong question? Is emotion or empathy predicating the listed “ismes” that we work through here, or are these dispassionate, otherwise altruistically presented to the reader as autopsy of the various facets of the psyche of a self? I am racist I am agonized I am atheist I am lesbian I am skeptical liberal and conservative

anarchisme: see also agon— and altru—. the deterministic random / the stable unstable. See also anon– to decide for yourself. The anarchist lies outside the State. The State cruelly defines the subject positions of the individual. An anarchist either really or symbolically rejects that subject position/definition, and defines themselves. Anonymization can be mandated vis-a-vis the hyperfixation by a public market on a shoe, such as the derided Nike “panda” that is owned by too many people. The subject has to differentiate the self. In comparison to the other defining the subject, Retallack’s “ismes” define the self, radically so, and seek an excision of State and “other” postures imposed upon the writing subject.

anonisme: While I had thought to connect the phrase D’id I hear some one call me a sp’ic? to agon– is it not an erasure to be transitioned by the other from variable positive terms of identification (such as a good worker at a store, wearing a vest, sought out by the other for help, and complimented upon effective and polite interaction and successful being helped; such as I like your haircut, such as that lecture/reading/show was phenomenal, such as what a wonderful   [      ] they are) to negative terms of identification? The process erases the subject and harnesses them into the cognitive renderings of the other—I am their definition. I am anonymous. Who else is anonymous? In “that is, por ejemplo, par example,” Retallack includes the actual names of the figures of her text in parentheticals. An extension of this text is called a performance. This performance is a cyber-composition or artwork using the words or body of writing to create different impacts on the viewer. In order to render the idea of anonymity, the programmer has set up the text to erase, either slowly, upon analysis, or otherwise, the parentheticals. Readers may or may not perceive the names, blanks, empty parentheses, etc. Some may see the whole text. Anonymity occurs via the erasure. One of the procedures Jena Osman allows on her “Periodic Table” hypertext is dissolve, which functions similarly to this idea or presentation. Erasure, fading, using the screen and digital landscape to take something away slowly, visually, perceivably, is a tool that is not uncommon, or else visual/stylistic praxis frequently deployed. One then notices the final word of the text in question: anon. The movement between my subject to the definition of the other is a movement forth, from me, from one state to another. Closing, closure, occurring and commencing elsewise anew in the other. In the sense that anon means straight away, the immediate movement of definition forth from my body to theirs, anonymizing me, is a movement anon. Thus the etymological process anonisme is syncretic of a subject position, the desire (see rac–) for obliteration, and the process of erasure.

atheisme: todo afectación es mala Retallack quotes from Cervantes Saavedra. Two ways to move forward. The first (1/one) is to admit that you read affectation for affection and perceived an atheism through the idea that all love is bad, God is all, thus God’s love is bad and anarchist reaction is to reject—atheism. Then (2/two) you have to find conformity with what is there. Affectation (2, continued), affected speech—these are the words of the missionaries and their holy inflections. These are great evils—all religions are “bad” in their attempts to manipulate readers via affected speech into becoming part of their audience. The atheist speaks towards a teleology with no ends or affects.  There is also to the 17th Century English God it is written to have said I pray that ye me know will let Yep I’m gonna sit right down & right myself a bout of should or shouldn’t ^[5]

atomisme: immediately you recall the nuclear signs you live under. Not only are nuclear weapons proliferated over the face of the earth, the United States is at a standstill on permanent disposal strategies for nuclear waste, including from power and weapon deployment. In 1987, the United States proposed the use of Yucca Mountain as the permanent location of an underground burial site for nuclear waste. This site has been extensively developed by the federal government to the tune of billions of dollars, and remains only a proposed facility—no nuclear waste has ever been stored in this location. Readers should note that the United States remains confident that they have resolved the essential issue of permanently storing nuclear waste. They have prepared a site for this purpose. The hurdle is the process of getting waste there. All other nuclear waste disposal facilities in the United States have been determined as temporary ameliorations of the Yucca Mountain issue. No one wants nuclear waste in their backyards. There is no easy solution to the problem, and it has largely been forgotten overall in recent years, though the Trump Administration attempted to revitalize the facility. Joan Retallack is born in 1941. By the time she is conscious, over 200,000 people have been killed by the atomic detonation over Hiroshima. We live under the nuclear sign, waiting.

bisexualisme: prior to the word human, the word sex is defined by being categorical, a category fallen into. Bisexuality supposes two categories (of attraction). For instance, Mother’s family split in two. / One side thought / Don Quixote was a comedy. / The other side thought / Don Quixote was a tragedy. See also anon– and lesbian–. There is also where she had come and she was completely carried away by her imagination and by this unheard-of-madness that had laid hold of her for she was wholly absorbed and filled to the brim with what she had read in those lying books of hers. While physical lines of attraction may appear to heterosexualize (see also: heterosex–), readings (should not) do not align with sexist ideologies when inhabited or performed by liberal anarchists. Reading being a collaboration (Toufic) or a copulation, production after the fact, duplication or re-production. While the majority of Retallack’s sources are male/men, Gertrude Stein’s deployment is not insignificant. (see also agon–). The last two poems proper in Mongrelisme “read through” a detectory process related to etymological murder that is clearly mediating Stein’s text—itself a document of an international encounter between citizens of various nationalities (and, to a lesser degree, classes, considering also the inclusion of employees on site) on vacation at a country hotel. The bisexual modes of Mongrelisme flit between Cervantes Saavedra and Stein texts, with other theoretical and philosophical works indexed between. 

buddhisme: if action takes place only in the conditional. རྐྱེན་འདི་པ་ཙམ་ཉིད་ or idaṃpratyayatā^[6] is a Buddhist concept that describes a historical perception that runs antithetical and thetical to the concerns I am elaborating in this project. The world is derived from great, wondrous systems of causation, which act as conditions, determining various states. Events long ago, stretching epochally, impact subjects (or figures) within the landscape now, and have to be both understood and navigated in order to maintain sanity and logical positioning within the geopsychical landscape. Birth/life. These are states that have been described already and thus with ease can enter here for advancing the conceptual. Birth predicates the stage of life, which is more subjective—navigating object relations to confirm an identity. Death, however, is more object oriented, considering that upon death, the subject impacts their social networks (mourning—where specular concerns are directed to those who lost you, and less to your own subject). Death is itself a new condition where subjectivity has been removed, and thus death, where birth/life are removed, is a new trajectory. This is or could not be have been a subtle electric force farce but got so poor had to sell the Dharma Ware Hay does a man or woman come to mind in the question whether the Buddhist sensibilities do or do not tend to interfere with practicalities of everyday life in these.^[7]

calvinisme: Most people remember what little they are taught of Calvinism (it is little–for as a religion or faith-system, we learning about it often know less than those experiencing or living under its signs) that the faith teaches of a few elect amongst the populace who are predetermined (predestined) to get to heaven. I want to skip over some concerns that come later (see rac–, terror–, utopian–), and focus instead on the ways in which Retallack’s Mongrelisme indicates and documents the societies of the elect—as defined by the State. In this entry, the pamphlet works as an indictment, especially towards Romance languages and the societies whom speak them in “the West” or “developed nations.” This entry is predicted on an examination of the entire pamphlet, but can be begun merely by looking at the endpapers where are a few Romance languages and the word for them of “information.” MATIONENINFORMAZIONEINFORMA. Next page, first line INFORMATIONINFORMACIONINFOR.  The German word for information is Auskunft the etymology of which is aus+kommen to come out of—kommen is also the German verb denoting one’s being about to orgasm (the homophonic “come/cum”—come come lost rivers; see also bisexual–). This is of interest as the diction choice because it emphasizes or extends the way Imperialism entrenches itself in other societies—it demands itself as informational, didactic, as a better way of living through America (synecdoche for the West if it is possible). The process undertaken is “close reading.” English, Spanish, and Italian immediately jump out. Few German words occur in the text until it's violent conclusive piece (können sie mir einige—“can you show me some [thing]”—können sie helfen—“can you help”) which alongside Jew as present may extend the indictment of Imperialism by citing the “ills” which we have excised from ourselves—German language, frequently taught during the American occupation of parts of Germany after WWII, is a niche one now in the United States’ public school system, despite Germany being the largest economy in Europe and the fourth or fifth largest in the world. Chinese has surpassed German and French. Looking back at Mongrelisme, I realize that Chinese courses are introduced to every school I attended in K-12 systems at least seven to twelve years after this publication. It is an artifact of a time when people were experiencing Romance languages with a sense of preference, and other languages with diffidence. Economy intercedes on this, forcing the realization that a language cannot be ignored—after which, it is suddenly realized how beautiful various aesthetic aspects of that previously inferior language really are (assimilation/acceptance). The process of language acquisition observed thusly is mimetic of the process of grief, which begins with denial and concludes with acceptance and growth.

capitalisme: is not a choice. Which is why it is inevitable to write I like clocks radios clock-radios socks smocks flocks docks & crocks but not stocks. When examining this line, numerous aspects subsumed into the capitalist apparatus are apparent. The workers at the docks, bound to low wages, and wage slavery, rental economies, minimal abilities to replace expensive possessions such as cars or computers when they break. They live at the bottom-line (see now class–).

classisme: The people who live at the bottom-line are labeled undesirables by the State—you are instructed that you do not want to be or live like they do. However, in the process, you are also taught to avoid looking at such undesirables and downtrodden individuals. When you are at that intersection, you try and remember to roll your window up before you get to the light and lock your doors. You know a beggar will be waiting there, sitting on top of two overturned milk cartons. It frustrates you that you are in one of two lines. On your left, in the median, is the beggar. On the right, beside the car, is a liquor store. To say I do not like stocks is convenient but is the position of someone who is not articulating the why of it all. Does Retallack not like stocks because of the exclusion faced by lower class individuals incapable of playing the market? Or, does she dislike them because she is capable of investment, while those beneath her class are not, and she is expressing a liberal sympathy towards the oppressed—reflected as a disdain for systems of power afforded to her? Or, does this extend to a praxis of absenting the self from the stock market in full, saying no to the biased and exclusive system? Classism is engaged in by individuals who theoretically decry it. This is no different than the critical issues represented by the Founding Fathers and their frequent ownership of slaves—they produced a theoretical document, not a literal one, and were it to be interpreted as literal, it would not afford rights to everyman regardless (as demonstrated by the function of the Supreme Court, a glorified cohort of literary critics and theorists who have been enabled to the greatest degree possible). Many democrats and so-called progressives I know own Teslas, and think nothing of both the political ideologies of Elon Musk and the gross value of their vehicles—which have frequently been demonstrated to defy both the market ideation that every Tesla perpetually gain value, as well as that they are worth anywhere near their markup (many models rust, decay, and deteriorate rapidly along the lines of the vehicle’s trim than far more affordable combustion engine vehicles). Rivian is no different, though the CEO of that company has not been as publicly visible. RJ Scaringe, CEO of Rivian, finds it “weird” that consumers are buying combustion engine vehicles. He says it is “like building a horse barn in 1910.” The cheapest Rivian model at time of the release of the article “Rivian CEO mocks people who buy gas cars” was $73,000. The average salary in the United States is $60,000 (approximate), while by a hair the majority of Americans work hourly jobs, where they earn an unknown and generally untracked income—salaries are converted into hourly wages and factored into hourly incomes when statistics on average hourly wages are reported in the United States, hence the reportage that $34-35 an hour is the average hourly wage—one would be hard-pressed to believe the reality on the ground in this case, where people routinely work two or more jobs and make less than or just at an insufficient minimum wage.

communisme: see capital–, class–, polylingua—, polymorph–, etc. In the non-political, or the utopian-political sense (see also utopian–), a commune is derived from the latinate communis where variable instruments can be heard, alongside a number of talents—all of which are delocalized in ownership, instead being held in common. The pamphlet Mongrelisme is not digitized, and thus not readily available to the commons—something I seek to alter through my professional career within and after obtaining my PhD. This is not work available to the commons, and for readers today to access it, aligned with Retallack’s communal politics (readers are directed externally to the unrelated volume The Antidote via Compline, if they can find it), they have to spend a large amount of money. The communal value to Mongrelisme is the mongrel nature—mongrel being synonymous with chimerical structures, it is a composite. Reading the text, given the use of the variable Romance languages discussed, readers of different linguistic backgrounds (within the Empirical Western World) should be able to readily discern specific themes deployed and interrogated.

conservativisme: wariness over publication funding may bespeak reasons to exclude Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets from the material text. How long have these concerns persisted, and for what political reasoning? We note that the latter, political reasoning, has evolved over time.

determinisme: See also calvin–

From John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion

egotisme: see also ethnocentr– and anon–. When the parents split up she took Volume I / of Don Quixote, he took Volume II even though / strictly speaking, this was not his ethnic / heritage. Later the child said bitterly, I know it’s / not rational but I blame all my troubles on that / damned book or Dante’s Inferno.^[8] Typical masculinist parable, ripped from the day-to-day churnings of our society. That the man takes a book not only of someone else’s heritage, but also the conclusion of it, is the egocentric extension of masculinity towards imperialism. Here, the narrative connects the book to invasion and interventional history—the external State force machination. The conclusion is the undermining of liberation and elective history of the owner of the early history, or, the book’s first Volume. By noting another famous work, the Inferno, the allegory extends further—the remainder of only the Inferno is just a documentary of a journey through hell—you do not have the subsequent movements through redemptive spaces. Alternately, there’s the possibility of using very formal kinds of approaches. And it seems to me that you’ve negotiated those two extremes in a really interesting way in your work by making your formal procedures yours. By always having personal reasons for why you chose the procedure. It’s part of your work—being very aware of that, respecting… Aware of it without being self-conscious about it. ^[9] Where is “formalisme”?

emotionalism: an encounter with Don Quixote. Cardenio’s story of his misery concludes with these lines to his audience: Such, sirs, is the dismal story of my misfortune: say if it be one that can be told with less emotion than you have seen in me; and do not trouble yourselves with urging or pressing upon me what reason suggests as likely to serve for my relief, for it will avail me as much as the medicine prescribed by a wise physician avails the sick man who will not take it. I have no wish for health without Luscinda; and since it is her pleasure to be another’s, when she is or should be mine, let it be mine to be a prey to misery when I might have enjoyed happiness.^[10]

empiricisme: The theory of somatic processes developing the ideas and perceptual procedures which occur in our minds—aka the interactions of our senses upon the world in order to make sense. The sense/sense line seems an easy one, and it is important to remember this is a theory, alongside numerous other theories Retallack lists, which demonstrate the constant influx of contradictory inputs into the subject that have to be navigated and interpreted.

ethnocentrisme:^[11] So far as can be determined from available sources, Retallack is an nth-generation American whose exposures to language do not seem derived by ethnic community lines of familial exposure. They come from socialized lines of community exposure via the demographic experience in her childhood in New York City. Retallack mentions this and also her father’s work as an engineer for Bell Labs. There is a record of a “J.B.Retallack” in an Bell Labs document digitized online, and an obituary for a “John Leonard Retallack” who had a daughter named “Joan.” In that obituary, John Retallack is born in Montreal. Is this her father? Unclear. More research is required—provocative statements about authorial ethics require extensive examination and careful scaffolding—see also rac– and terror– wherein is discussed the grouping of languages in Mongrelisme. This point is raised in exploring the origination of a polylinguistic space, considering the productive tendencies towards such texts differ depending upon contextual experiences. As an example of alterity within this system, Anne Tardos’ writing is polylinguistic material produced by someone who openly asserts a lived experience. Joan Retallack herself asserts the importance of these identifications—in blurbing Tardos’ 1999 Tuumba/O Books publication Uxudo (a rare joint editorial project by Hejinian and Scalapino’s presses), Retallack writes Anne Tardos [...] grew up in four languages—French, Hungarian, German, and English. This did not confuse her at all. Instead it fed her sonne & licht. There appears to be an appeal to Schiller’s “An die Freude” within Retallack’s comment, which mentions too about the work that it is language play. The ways children acquire language enable greater freedom of play along lines of imagination, while adult language learners may feel capacious within the new linguistic terrain, but are stultified by too much lived experience for the newly acquired language to restructure their worldview. Caroline Bergvall disagrees with me introducing Tardos, but we should note that, after all, Tardos has several languages and does not treat one in a supremacist fashion. When Bergvall writes Cultural allegiance is not experienced as necessarily predicated on linguistic origin. The sense of linguistic belonging is in turn neither necessarily nor clearly predicated on the acquisition of one’s “first” language. In fact, the very notion of a first language is up for grabs^[12], she is not speaking of Retallack’s compositional practices. Retallack, primarily composing and teaching in the United States, has directed her compositions towards predominantly English-speaking audiences, while her translations into French have primarily impacted French readers seeking insights into American writings. Tardos and Retallack’s assemblage of “experienced” language occurring all at once within the mind is most similar in that final piece in Mongrelisme, “©old Beloved Murder on the Gout Rue.” The system at play in Tardos’ is not one of directionality towards an audience, but one of lived experience—possibly even through the Spicerian concept of dictation, wherein these polylingual voices are heard together. Retallack’s work is clearly procedural and constructed from an academic positioning of language—in part evoked not through a passage of language through the mind, but through a syntactic search for malapropism, metonym, homonym, homophone, and other such skewerings of language vis-a-vis a misinterpretation or mishearing.^[13] Bergvall continues Shall we call the “first” [language] the one(s) you were brought into or the one(s) you use daily or the one(s) you are asked to read the text in.^[14] Her explication isolates each language as one, experienced further in isolation, and parses them out, nullifying and eradicating the hybrid/holistic/syncretic synthesis of the linguistic experience with Tardos’ consciousness. Instead, the definition at hand issues forth from a reductive position of acquired languages over time, scaffolding that, and not the rarer born experience, towards a definition appropriate for Retallack—directionality. Bergvall’s comment may initially liberate readers’ concerns towards a supreme language ordained to be used by an author, especially one of multilingual background,  but it does not capture a concurrent linguistic experience, it documents instead one where language is a tool, capable of being brought up like a window on a digital interface, and just as easily put away. In this way, the first language is English in Retallack’s work. The reader will be American, and the process is struggling through the other languages. Reading Tardos’ writing, often, functions the opposite—the book “could” in theory be dropped to the face of the Earth somewhere between America and much of Western Europe, and readers would have a fairly neutral experience initially, coming together to construct a “work” out of the material field. It is this that is the machine-generated aspect of language as used by Retallack—the acquired language over time, through academic procedure, which is used to an end, rather than emergent experientially. Ethnocentrism is commenced by the positioning of Retallack as audience member, analyzing Tardos. We know that these are not two kindred spirits—which one of these is not like the author? 

evangelisme: (alt-def: trojan horse)—in this process, you wind up reading translations and old copies, digitized, of Don Quixote.

exoticisme: See oriental–. Looking just above the material quoted there, I note a reference to exoticism which also ties us to egot– and ethnocentr– and national–. Here, Said writes of how exoticism is something held in another location—an essential aspect of “native” cultural identity (viewed from the outside, say within the landscape of an occupying force such as the United States)—and eradicated by the occupation of those lands by external powers, especially those manipulating the landscape for exploitative reasons (economic gain): De Lesseps and his canal finally destroyed the Orient's distance, its cloistered intimacy away from the West, its perdurable exoticism. Just as a land barrier could be transmuted into a liquid artery, so too the Orient was transubstantiated from resistant hostility into obliging, and submissive, partnership. After de Lesseps, no one could speak of the Orient as belonging to another world, strictly speaking. There was only "our" world. "One" world bound together because the Suez Canal had frustrated those last provincials who still believed in the difference between worlds.^[15]

expressionalisme: alt-defs: confessional expository explanatory autobiographical memoiristic diaristic hagiographical empathetical sympathetical 

fanaticisme: linguaphiles are those who are (sexually) obsessed with language. Mongrelisme is an erotic work for such a reader, and for the writer. The collaboration or love-line is that of the quotidian linguistic texts encountered, primarily in Spanish. The linkage here to the entry is between sexualization and obsession or fanaticism. Another line of thinking to extend this could be examined elsewhere in rac– or radical– where issues of Judaism are encountered. Fanaticism is often linked to religious belief, and the then extension of the entry is the registering of the text within the global contemporary of 2024—with the genocide in Gaza. Around February 20th, 2024, IDF forces burned down the publishing firm and library at Al-Kalima. Have you seen charred books falling into each other as dominoes of ash and dust? This is what a fanatic does—and why someone of inquisition would inevitably seek to enter the lifeworld and experience of that fanatic in order to read what they have read to lead them to their conclusions.

fascisme: See stoic– and egot– alongside exotic–. These are the procedures of such entries when viewed holistically, with Mongrelisme having the radical turn against them that was already realized, also, within anarch–.

feminisme: the person lying recumbent who wonders if they were called a racial slur, did you notice they were a woman when you read the book? How does this transition her action from one –ism to another? Is she combatting racism, or is this a feminist action: the she stepping up to preserve her identity (see also anon–). When it is her deathbed, the paradox is the way anonymity is extended by the erasures of a legacy (subject in the hands of another) and contradicted by the challenge to the pejorative remark. By combatting the remark, the remark also could be considered a terrorist action (see also: terror–). Recent legislative actions in many countries have protected rights to such a degree that hate crime charges can be brought for misgendering an individual in the United Kingdom, under the Equality Act of 2010. At the time Mongrelisme is released, sodomy is still technically illegal as enabled by paucity of federal statutes in the United States, and will not be legalized by federal mandate via the Supreme Court until 2003’s Lawrence vs Texas. While the Supreme Court can readily return rulings related to Donald Trump’s various court cases ahead of the 2024 election, they have never rushed to release rulings related to gender and sexual identity, let alone racial discrimination.

fractalisme: Indicative of a structural proclivity in Mongrelisme. The front and back endpapers, for instance, the two versions of the final text, the numerous ways languages refract off each other as one moves up and down the etymological chains of meaning-formation. The way that is for example for example recurs in various ways. Is the malapropism like a fractal? Aren’t fractals about clean replication? It seems to me that it is very much a fractal life.^[16]

globalisme: see also ethnocentr–. The globalist is the one who affirms the identities and cultures of those outside the realm of their subjectivity—even where deficient—rather than denying the existence and identity of such individuals and cultures. The ethnocentrist does not make such identifications. While the definitional strategies of polylingualism can be explored through a reading of globalism vs ethnocentrism, this same reading is not holistic when examining the wider ethos of the project in question—to what end an obliteration of Retallack’s project along presumed militant lines of ignorance merely because her language is acquired in a process different from Tardos? The script, flipped, has Tardos’ in the position of privilege, attuned to numerous linguistic frequencies, while we who are not polylingual struggle to catch up and communicate. People with language acquisition orders are especially excised from the process. It is here that Retallack’s work looks towards an inclusive/exclusive balancing. The ultimate trajectory, of course, is inclusive—especially in a conservative United States that rejects the languages of its immigrant communities and demands assimilation (as articulated, as well, through genocidal deployment of the “School” along the Great Plains and Western United States where Indigenous Americans were forced to learn English, to the elimination of their own cultures and languages). The praxis suggested by Retallack’s work is towards such globalisms, wherever possible. Subsequent examples of globalizing works include Anne Carson’s Nox—which teaches a Greek passage to readers over the course of its pages, as well as Ointment Weather, where etymologies are deployed in order to advance wider understandings of shared experiences through the transmission of ideas through language over time. These, like Retallack’s Mongrelisme, are not comparable to the universalizing occurring in Tardos’ polylingualism. They, again, are unidirectional—towards an anticipated anglophonic and academic reader. Just consider the sources cited—to wit, there are none in Tardos, but she has included comics!^[17]

hedonisme: hedonic principles    naturalisms    intuitionisms neocognitivisims.^[18] suggestively, see romantic–. see also the alternate entry to egot– (self-indulgence)

heroisme: see modern–, postmodern– and lesbian–. See also evangel–.

heterosexisme: see also bisexual–. Why cannot Don Quixote be both comedy and tragedy, and why does the family split on relational lines? Is sex, and the reproduction of sexual difference to play? What would be the outcome of a side-by-side reading of Retallack texts with Irigary’s Speculum of the other Woman?

idealisme: see also empiric–, rational–, stoic–, neoplaton–, determin–, calvin–, et al. Subjectivity versus objectivity, the mind-body problem, what is the location of existence, as perceived, and through what comes meaning? In time, these questions would be picked up by the psychologists and neurologists in order to fine-tune and destroy the previous paths of faith and belief (philosophy). “psychologisme” is curiously absent, as is “knowledgisme.”

imperialisme: Romantic [sic] Romance languages are spoken by Imperial powers. For this entry, see: agon–, anarch–, anon–, class–, rac–, sex–, terror–. The pamphlet Mongrelisme documents many Imperialist histories vis-a-vis linguistic genealogy—please note Dutch and Germanic tendencies have been generally excluded until the final poetic texts (variations of each other: “©old Beloved Murder on the Gout Rue” (see: calvin–)

individualisme: see egot–, ethnocentr– and stoic–. Individualism is not possible in face of community impacts. The example of the MRI document as basis for guiding the reader through the text, for instance, is one instance of collaboration with the outside (see Distracted by Jalal Toufic, for instance). The usage of numerous languages furthers the reader away from their own experience and often forces a consideration of the other. See also the woman on her deathbed in rac– and anon–.

lesbianisme: null entry, see bisexual– and heterosex–. See also the influence of Gertrude Stein. Suggested Further [Retallack] Reading: ERRATA 5UITE ^[19], Gertrude Stein: Selections, The Poethical Wager (the latter two include critical prose by Retallack on Stein), How to Do Things with Words (further poetics influenced by Stein) and Procedural Elegies /Western Civ Cont./ (poetic pieces in dialogue with Stein which bear heraldic marks from the ERRATA 5UITE discussed in Footnote 14). Separation: I add “homosexualisme” and proffer “genderisme”

liberalisme: see also anarch–, egot–, provincial–. There is a severe tension in liberal spaces between liberty (of the subject/individual) and governance—the outsourcing of liberation to another entity, which is not biological but epistemological (secondary to human biology). By locating liberation in government and structures of government, responsibility for moral and ethical behavior is absented the individual. This nonsensical philosophy has greatly exacerbated the forces of the State witnessed in entries exotic– and orient– as well as ethnocentr–. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves.^[20] see rac–, terror–, and utopian–. “liberatedisme”

machivellisme: which appears at times tenuous to the connection of philosophical and psychological definition, and focused substantially on a name. See exotic–, oriental–, egot–

malapropisme: “M” is the first letter of two beloved terms of Language Writers, metonym and malapropism. These terms challenge readers to look outside mandate definitions at alternatives, mistakes, and chances. Dire erectly emerges as one possibility. In order to compose the text at hand, words have been ruptured into stutterances that come about as malapropic formations when they stumble upon alternative meanings, sometimes radically opposed to the phrase under hand. See also rac–. Another prominent line which also recurs in the recorded readings occurs early on in the pamphlet: she suddenly pipes on the very last day of class by the way my name’s not Jenny its Juana Juana with a HW sound. In this instance, the extension of the definition of a malaprop is redacted, considering the resultant issue is not humorous but traumatic and racialized. For a humorous instance, turn a few pages over to read Lisa immobilisa underneath which the page’s translucent property reveals the bold geometric and small square behind almost perfectly framing the word along in the line just beneath the one in question. The final text in the booklet (I have typically called it a pamphlet) is called “Virtue” and is subtitled by a phonological pronunciation which reads aloud “Very True,” translating phonologics as phonoillogics. That’s humorous, too, considering what “faith” teaches about virtue—whom has it and whom does not have it. There is also If Picasso’s the guy who chopped off his ear or not not the joke which may be too revelatory for some readers, or expository, for their comfort.

medievalisme: Don Quixote is not a medieval text. Whatever medievalism Retallack asserts conforms her is not explicated in this pamphlet. Don Quixote appears in the same line as 2 rap crew (possible metonym or malapropism—albeit racist—for 2 Live Crew?). The alternative definition for medieval besides “Middle Ages” is primitive or old-fashioned. What is expressed here is the ways in which one has to know, enmesh in, or immerse with the other in order to produce a critique/holistic evaluation of that. In this way, the “medieval” Retallack is the bridge of the self from the past, such as the upbringing of the subject/speaker/author/Retallack—middle ages being the mid-century—in context with the changed world of the contemporary, which is more readily accessible to those born as close in proximity to it (though ironically, yes, infants do struggle without assistance of the community around them). 

modernisme: Here, Retallack notes lineage and influence. See postmodern– and lesbian–.

nationalisme: see stoic–, ethnocentr–, anon–, rac–, and egot–

naturalisme: potential alt-def: verisimilitude. The appearance of numerous languages is more realistic—thus is a realist stylistic procedure—than a text which absents such despite knowledge of them. See polymorph– and polylingu–. see also ethnocentr–.

neoplatonisme: Index of names mentioned relative to this entry in Mongrelisme (as sources for further reading)---these names are presented in order, though are not explicitly “neo”platonic. Et cet era / Aristotle / Socrates / Anon / A Jew (During the 4th and 5th Century BCE, Platonists such as Socrates were influential to Jewish thinkers wherever possible. Ravina I could have been one such contemporary of Socrates. Does Retallack intend a link between Platonisms and Judeo-Christianism, as a posture of heretical values towards philosophical and religious traditions? In the sense, I mean, that the world is not defined by the strategies contained in these views? While the platonic is more readily exegetic in works by Retallack, which verge on high secularism, the line referenced in entries such as rac– which mentions the desire to inhibit the space of the racialized other demonstrates a posture informed and interested in religiosity. Contemporary accounts of Socratic influence on Jewish thought tend to ignore the possibility of cross-pollination due to de-localized ideas of the past. It is far more common for Socratic ideas to be begun with readings of Maimonides, and then even further Mendelshon and later thinkers such as Benjamin and Freud. Theophrastus is cited as the first Greek philosopher to discuss Jews. He lived from roughly 371 to 287 BCE. / laws of equable description appears next as a seemingly platonic structure, as paired with “virtue”). see also malaprop–.

opportunisme: see egot–, exotic– and oriental–. How are people taken advantage of by their States to enable and fund invasions, occupations, etc? See stoic–.

optimisme: There is little room for naive platforming of optimism in the form of hope. keep / ing fatal sentiments at bay is the purpose of hope or positivity, not ignorance or denial—where one is ignoring or denying in face of the disarray of failing social structure, that is naivety. This is an important delineation of the space for positivity or optimism, despite the minimal room for recuperation of society, within the pessimistic situation. Another optimism is the Suggested Further Reading intertitle near the end of the pamphlet, which gestures to hope that readers will take up the work for further study. See also evangel–.

orientalisme: Chapter IV of Edward Said’s Orientalism begins with this statement: It may appear strange to speak about something or someone as holding a textual attitude, but a student of literature will understand the phrase more easily if he will recall the kind of view attacked by Voltaire in Candide, or even the attitude to reality satirized by Cervantes in Don Quixote. What seems unexceptionable good sense to these writers is that it is a fallacy to assume that the swarming, unpredictable, and problematic mess in which human beings live can be understood on the basis of what books-texts-say; to apply what one learns out of a book literally to reality is to risk folly or ruin.^[21] see exotic–.

pacifisme: suggested praxis resultant from the documentary process contained in Mongrelisme. See anarch–, egot–, ethnocentr–, exot–, and oriental–. Consider their impacts/and effects, as well as events after the publication of the pamphlet in 1999—in other words, then apply to Mongrelisme our contexts in examining any/all calls to action presented therein.

pessimisme: see optim– and positiv–.

polylingualisme: Polylingualism is readily defined by the existence of “linguists” who inevitably exist because of the inscription of these terms in a text. The “linguist” speaks one language, the “polylinguist” speaks multiple languages. But, that isn’t what the definition I was taught says… Correction, the inhabiting of a multilingual space is defined by people who only speak one language, for historical existence has relied on wider knowledges of multiple languages than exist presently in society, especially in the isolated United States—which suffers in its position in the “New World” having constructed an artificial barrier to keep the inhabitants of said world out. It is otherwise presumed normative and thus goes undefined to speak numerous languages.

polymorphisme: see also rac– for the immediate example that comes to mind is dire erectly as it appears in the body of the text and not as “title” hanging or floating above the text body. There are numerous morphemic structures playing out in the various titles at hand. Many of them are also etymological—they call the reader to break apart the word, such as Mongrelisme, and move into the component pieces, structuring the word again afterwards with a more complete and informed understanding of it. The variable movements back and forth with language, at times translating each other, extend this. The last two poems in the book refract off each other, acting as a fractal (and will then be discussed in fractal–) in terms of language. The effect of such linguistic encounters causes the reader to break down the title and come to the “is me” conclusion. This is but one benefit of the exchange values languages have in the work, as co-opted. The furthering of this is as suggestive praxis to the reader, where the reader is a producer or capable of going forth (anon) and producing, to replicate such strategies and develop them further. I suggest this extension because my own work has always functioned polylingusitically and polymorphemically. It seems an immediate instance to compel the reader to look something up to include, for instance, a Greek term, especially now that a phone camera can hover over foreign language texts and scripts and translate them, without the hassle of finding a keyboard and typing a word out in characters utterly unfamiliar to you.

positivisme: is it optimistic that “negativisme” is absent from the “ismes” listed?

postmodernisme: Here, Retallack readily affirms a contemporary positioning of her work not alongside any school but within a wider aesthetic movement characterized by oppositional categories against traditionally accepted models. It is not necessary to express such a factor, most likely, to any reader of the work. What it instead reveals, however, is the personal/public nature of the composition. Many of the “ismes,” and their already discussed very function or nature, are highly personal, revealing, and intimate. The connection to Anne Carson’s Nox recurs here because of the shared intimacy between the two—Nox deals with Carson’s estranged brother’s death and is extremely intimate, including family photos and other such similar scrapbook documents. The drive in both of these works is educational. Retallack, again (see provincial–), calls Mongrelisme a Difficult Manual while Carson is teaching a Latin text to readers, via the exposition of a family trauma. Both of these teachers deploy intimacy as a means of bringing the reader (the student) closer to the text, and defiance of many masculine beliefs about what a work should or should not entail—especially works produced by postmodernists. Personal, or life-writing, in composition is often, and still, derided and regarded as the space of minoritized writers, be they women, members of the queer communities, transgender individuals, or racial minorities. (There is also family drama in Mongrelisme)

provincialisme: The issue of romance languages recurs. One wonders why the specific decision to include exam questions derived from a Spanish language MRI text was made. Aleatoric processes are chance procedures, and my methodology for producing this essay is not to re-read the text linearly, but move through by chance and search out material appropriate for inclusion in my entries. In time I will move through the text linearly in order to find quotations ignored or forgotten, as a means of revitalizing the reading procedure that is more normative. The subtitle to Mongrelisme is A Difficult Manual for Desperate Times. A province is a region or conquered territory with uncertain etymology. It can be analogized with “genre” in order to examine the subtitular Manual more closely.

puritanisme: this booklet has a puritanical constraint to refuse non-Latin alphabets from inclusion.

quietisme: see rac– and terror–

racisme: if on D’s Deathbed again: she gasps, D’id I hear some one call me a sp’ic? (hard to record such things dire erectly in the catalog of elegant and practical winter footwear). This entry could also apply to mongrel– and vandal— for but two examples, looking at the syntactic division or joke about the impact trauma of racism by making directly the parapraxic dire erectly wherein we can recognize both the danger of the phraseology spoken to us, as well as an inculcated desire for the dangerous one, phrase, or moment—thanatos and “thanatosisme.” Also see agon- for trauma (though this entry is written prior so only presupposes discussion of there through the practical theorem provided by earlier interactions with Toufic and Vico, and their shared notion towards the ⟲ or eternal recurrence as historic composition. See also the first recording linked above. In the reading in Wesleyan’s collection^[22],

 Retallack reads a portion of Mongrelisme which is not present to any degree (even remnant) in the published form (is this from the hypothetical Volume 2 or 3 of the project, see conclusion to Footnote 23 for the answer that came later) which lists extensive pejorative terms, as well as backs and forths of mediations, for racial categories, including Mexicans, Jews, Americans, anon. The section that is “missing” in the print document is not from a later volume, as hypothesized in the parenthetical. Retallack reads it in sequence after an early epigraph in the printed text. She then exits the excised portion to continue where that “gap” has been created. I wonder why the etymological sequence exploring hate rhetorics is removed? When Retallack answers me in Footnote 23, I return here to note that the situation in the readings is of a new text, at least a newly performed text. Retallack noted, however, that the pamphlet is the version that represents the project. When I say in terror– that the text undergoes a “terroristic erasure” by excluding the scripts and languages of non-European societies, I also note the homogenous view towards Europe and “the West” that this entails. This is meant to entail a line of critique towards Retallack’s view on the project as any reading should—despoiling the textual apparatus from such an authorial claim. In development over time, Retallack’s comments on the Mongrelisme project come three years before and fourteen years after (so far as has been so far determined) her “selected poems” available via Roof Books. After pronouncing that the name is Juana and not Jenny the speaker opines but it doesn’t matter.

radicalisme: perhaps for this entry, consider definitions such as stage roles or characters—the radical teacher. In that instance, the reading experience (ergodic) of Mongrelisme is radical. Readers may inadvertently acquire language, but they certainly have to exit the book regularly in order to have greater and greater understandings of the text. For instance, having not read Don Quixote, and only having seen adaptations and heard of it in passing, I cannot express the meanings behind the comedy/tragedy dynamic expressed in this pamphlet. Hence why it is more readily of ease for me to posture the radical line of questioning—why can’t it be both, and more? When Retallack wishes to be a Jew in passing, she is expressing a radical desire to live another’s experience in order to better understand a text, the Talmud (pass the Talmud). In this instance, texts are what they are—commodities such as food, which nourish and are not so basic after all. Salt (sodium) is a critical component of the diet. The radical is outside of the society, or the common. Ecstatic experiences take one out of oneself, or typical sensation. The radical is, in many ways, experiencing life ecstatically. The my that is beside me. “Ecstaticisme”

rationalisme: They had all had and had not / all seen all the shadows of all the Moors and / Marranos in all the family trees.^[23] Religion (an illusion) is nothing compared to the impacts of DNA and its mutations across time and reacting to environmental inputs. Unfortunately, the proof is in the pudding. In 2005, Dr. Joy DeGruy publishes the controversial volume Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. In 2019, a study published by UCSD states that PTSD is polygenic, the press release for the study includes this statement: The study team also reports that, like other psychiatric disorders and many other human traits, PTSD is highly polygenic, meaning it is associated with thousands of genetic variants throughout the genome, each making a small contribution to the disorder. Six genomic regions called loci harbor variants that were strongly associated with disease risk, providing some clues about the biological pathways involved in PTSD.^[24]

realisme: This poem is decidedly about an MRI: Por ejemplo / and the stable unstable dissipative and turbulent systems catastrophic theories teaming unknown variables / and A SENSATION OF FLOATING AT THE MOMENT THE ROAR / these narrate the process of the MRI alongside the Spanish language instructional queries of the patient.

romanticisme: WHETHER THE PITCHER HITS THE STONE OR THE STONE HITS THE PITCHER IT WILL BE BAD FOR THE PITCHER (Sp. Prov.) as in Whistler’s Symphony in White wh’ere the romantic young woman in a long white dress stands on fluffy white furskin of flayed white bear one might notice a subtext I can hardly bear to say it it’s so obvious isn’t it once said once as the last hint of blue drains out of the shadow of that bell curve ball polished by ebony naked African nubile girl fruitstand by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.^[25]

sadisme: please pass the Talmud. I am not a Jew and but wish sometimes I had the text to context all the suffering succatash minus the tash over a delicious ritual dinner or the secret of the moaning. It is sadism to desire or wish or speculate to live the life of intense oppression, conflict, and trauma of another. Is sad or sadis the prefix? What is sad. Is the moment of reflection upon the invective directed at the recumbent person sad or is it something else? Neutral, processual? When does this transition into sadness? Is it when the self realizes and inflicts upon the self, secondarily, the explosion of the landmine laid down by the racist? I am reminded of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Fifty Year Sword. In this allegory, the characters are all come together for a birthday party for a middle aged woman. The mysterious magician and storyteller hired to entertain the children dazzles them, to fright, with a story of a mysterious, bladeless sword which injures the victim many years after the cuts are inflicted. Fifty years, to be exact. But, the sword does not determine the length of time, for apparently birth is the tether to the sword. This is a fifty year sword, to which when it strikes you you die when you are fifty, or are wounded by it. To say die is to perhaps foreshadow or spoil the ending. The birthday girl takes the sword so as to dispel the childrens’ fears and furiously “slashes” herself, via pantomime. A short time later, at the chronological hour aligned with her birth, she turns fifty. Her body falls apart, rended into dozens of pieces, to the further horror of the assembled party guests. Despite the story told, the protagonist still sought to interject themselves into another world of violence and death—they were forewarned. Such is kink.

sexisme: One is, coming off (see also sad–) the previous entry very wary of the prefix and its concerns. Is this sexism or is this sex is me. Erotic or pejorative space, though the subsistent erotic functions often as pejorative. See also bisexual–, heterosex–, and lesbian– There is also the stable and unstable dissipative and turbulent systems.

skepticisme: see also universal–. How likely is it that a monkey produce Shakespeare, or letters randomly falling to the ground align to read as well as Don Quixote? In order for us to perceive the letters on the ground as a classic novel, the classic novel always already has to have been produced. How else will we know the novel to be both a novel and a classic? Otherwise, we are prone to ignore the words altogether as random chance—going for the broom instead of the stylus, we seek to inscribe a cleaned space to start another work anew. See also Darragh, Tina, Dream Rim Instructions (Drogue Press, 1999), “Pumpkin Letters.” Is the novel in question a classic because it has been read widely for an extended amount of time, impacting and inspiring millions, or has it been accepted for its stylistic and symbolic value as conformities to institutional values perpetuated by the State sanctioned University system?

sophisme: as with the metonymic/malapropric fascinations of postmodern writers and their predecessors, sophistry has been another object (so has myopia, as with Hejinian and Bernstein—in both cases, actually). The sophist emblematizes a tension described extensively by many critics of the transition between radical aesthetic tendency and academic enshrinement via tenured positions in departments at liberal universities—a trajectory many of the radical poets after the 1950s entailed.^[26] Joan Retallack was a named chair at Bard College for many years.

spiritualisme: the presence of knowledge and intelligence does not beget infallibility, but for some reason, this is the posture of many within society, especially those reliant upon these intelligent individuals for ideas and inspiration, or information. Take, for instance, Rae Armantrout’s cover to Next Life. According to the copyright page, Cover illustration: Albert von Shrenck-Notzing. The medium Eva C. with a materialization on her head and a luminous apparition between her hands, 17 May 1912. This is a widely debunked photo but there is no mention of this or the debunking of Eva C. either—what does this suggest? In the final poem of the collection, the titular “Next Life,” Armantrout writes be a concept^[27]—be an “isme.”  See also athe– and calvin–.

stoicisme: Seeking to economize time and attempt to incorporate tools used by other people in a wider reading public (the polis), I ask ChatGpt3.5 to tell me How does stoic philosophy support the State as a system before the subject?  The machine answers: Stoic philosophy supports the idea of the State as a system before the subject through its emphasis on the importance of living in accordance with nature and the rational order of the universe. Stoicism teaches that individuals are part of a larger whole, and that each person has a role to play in the functioning of society. According to Stoic thought, the State is seen as a natural expression of the social order, reflecting the interconnectedness and interdependence of all individuals. The Stoics believed that the State, as a system, exists to promote the common good and to ensure that each person fulfills their role in society. Stoicism also emphasizes the importance of virtue and duty, suggesting that individuals have a responsibility to contribute to the well-being of the State and to uphold its laws and principles. In this way, Stoic philosophy supports the idea of the State as a system that takes precedence over the needs and desires of any individual, emphasizing the importance of social harmony and cooperation. The State has increased its relations with the University (institution) in recent years.

terrorisme: Terrorize me. The already mentioned entry rac— is of importance to consider here, for in reading and hearing the variable versions of Mongrelisme available, the printed text incurs a conceptual terrorist action (violent erasure) upon semantics by excising the etymological sequence, or rhetorical/syntactic one, predicated on derogatory and pejorative terms applied to various global categories of human beings. It is not apparent when the sequence in question was written. The only readings available of the text come after the publication of the pamphlet, so it is entirely possible the material in question here is written after the fact, but it is read as seamlessly incorporated with the material in the pamphlet, page to page, with a gap to include it in between (see Utopian–). Without this sequence, readers are, honestly, deficient in assessing all of the “ismes” that Retallack suggests are her (it is for this reason I suspect the pamphlet excludes or anticipates, and does so [anticipating] naively that more would come later, for the future is never guaranteed [(my) white hope, optimism, etc. within even a negative or anarchical space of the Failed State, the extension of implicit biases runs incredibly deeply and exists at levels such as that alone, or the capacity to have such perceptions or beliefs])—we are also tasked by the syntactic structure of the “isme”=”is me” to ask what it is about the excision that is Retallack? One line cut says that some individuals say Crazy Mexicans while Retallack says Crazy Americans—such explication is otherwise absent but as implication in this text. It does appear the remaining text is far more difficult, less linear and didactic or explicatory than what was read in both readings available. The next question, considering these cut aspects, is to come back to availability. Of the 400 copies of the pamphlet produced, only two are for sale online, and both cost roughly that of two trade poetry collections, new, now. Certainly prohibitive as an expenditure for, especially, a scholar—and hence my direction to the recordings of the work (capturing “the spirit” of the project superficially) and archival holdings. Thus, these recordings represent the more readily available version of Mongrelisme as a poetical and textual project to wide audiences. It is for this reason that the “Prologo” material which is not present in the pamphlet is just as viably part of this project. Conversation with Retallack, or else archival research, would prove the only effective means to otherwise determine the level of “authority” (which from various fields must itself be held in skepticism, see also skeptic–) of the material heard in the recordings versus the printed material—it is here, too, that issues of terrorism may occur, conceptually, in the ways an author mandates a version of a work that has appeared under various guises and presented in revised or variant forms across time. The reader cannot be guaranteed to encounter the “final” or authoritative version of the text, considering the variable method of encounter possible in the genesis of that final object. The authority intended with such finality is only illusory and is explicitly aesthetic (and manipulative), especially where it may excise referentially sociological or political material.

universalisme: The second epigraph in Mongrelisme will sound familiar to many readers. Is it an epigraph, a poem, a text, a section? The “section” is given a “title” (“Relis” out of Mongrelisme) offset from the text via different emphasis on the typeface—this is bold and the body is not. The epigraph reads If all the type in a printing-press were printed at random… something would be composed which would be as good as Don Quixote for those who would have to be content with it and would grow in it and would form part of it. The epigraph which is a poem or section is attributed to Miguel de Unamuno, in 1912. Readers will equate this epigraph with the thought-experiment of banging monkeys at a typewriter churning out Shakespeare. Recently, the thought-experiment has evolved to replace the typewriter with a word processor, though the smartphone has not extended as the “next step”—possibly because such technology seems (consider facial recognition software, for but one instance) beyond the capacity of animals to use. If this is too weak of a definition, remove the staples from the binding of Mongrelisme and pull out the first leaf. If you are looking at it correctly, you will realize the front and end paper is actually a single page, folded in half, to create a secondary cover. The word “information” is given in various Roman alphabetical languages. This, too, is a universalism. But, so is the empirical and rational truth that, in time, everything will happen. Or, is that a faith? “Religionisme.”

utopianisme: everyday life wish-fulfillment utopian vision. Define the term for yourself—thought-experiment, I am asking you: what is utopia, to you? Long volumes have been written on the very subject, and one has never succeeded. The equation always amounts to the same conclusion: dystopia is easier. Is the text in toto as some syncretism a utopia? A paradise derived of language? The immediate answer appears to be no, for it is an exclusive utopia, if it were to be one. But Retallack’s work almost never explicitly deals with racial issues of the white/black dichotomy in the United States, and the global racial issues dealt with are along class lines—often academic and imperial in their origin, and the nature of critique thus lobbed against the state. There is a racial ignorance to many of these works, at the same time they immerse themselves in globalization—but a Western globe, and one of Romance languages, where the further out you move, the fewer linguistic domains are folded in. There are only words included in this volume in Latin/Roman alphabetic characters. Thus builds a line of exclusion which is not an explicit but an implicit bias—when it is re-produced in material texts, however, it becomes explicit. As I write this, I direct you to the recordings. Pamphlet published 1999, recording at PennSound 2002, recording at Wesleyan 2012: the excised material—which may have been written, certainly, after, could function then as response to the exclusions present in the pamphlet. It is for this reason I have not directed you reading to this entry as extensively as I could have, but instead sought to leave it towards the end. There is room for the corrective or a recuperation to occur, and the emphasis is then laid upon the commentary of the pamphlet Mongrelisme being but one part of a wider project with the same name. One has to read through more of this project than the pamphlet alone to come to conclusions along ethical and racial lines—if one read, as I do above, the strictly racial concerns emergent just from the pamphlet, they would be deficient to see how the project grows towards a more holistic syncretic concern.

vandalisme: the above list, terms, and definitions have been vandalized from dictionaries, histories, lives, experiences, and contexts at times forced upon, at times copulated with, at times eaten, by the individuals in question.

---

^[1] See also: rac– where this recording is discussed in depth—this recording includes work apparently cut from the final version of Mongrelisme.

^[2] This recording, following the selected poems of Retallack which is discussed herein, gives a sense of authority-of-inclusion, regarding an authorial canon, and what the author “selects” of their work. I assert, far before statements below, but now written weeks after I composed the terror– entry that the intention of this essay is not to malign Retallack’s composition, but to note an example of ignorance or overlooking, which does warrant some reflection. I will be looking to query Retallack, now writing this (March 31st, 2024), on if she has a more expansive view of Mongrelisme than she is letting on—considering that not mentioned in Footnote 23 is the fact that she discusses “pieces you [that is myself] have seen” which she composed after the fact, for the project. It must be asserted that the Mongrelisme project came to an abrupt conclusion for a variety of reasons, and while the authorial “answer” is effective, viable, and, arguably, a truism, the same answer is only one side of the story, and thus should be viewed as “authoritative” with great skepticism or hesitation. I think Retallack’s comments, for instance, about Gale Nelson, publisher of Paradigm Press, are kindly circumventing, implying a frustration with kindness. That it was sadly with which the project was halted, for instance, decries/bemoans the “unfinished” aspect I cite. TLDR: Retallack should be more expansive about the life of the textual artifact so as to demonstrate the wider inclusivity of the Mongrelisme project, for if readers were to have been able to see the three volumes+prologue which were indicated in the first volume, we would certainly have been able to better contextualize the “ismeS” and “is me” structure. As Retallack has heavily hinted, Mongrel, Is, and Me, represent the movement across the three volumes. The planning and conception of an artwork are part of the legacy and impact that artwork has. While many authors/authorities suppose (as in Howe’s Frame Structures) a “final” text, the reality of audience exposure and response viably rejects that capacity towards authoritative canonization.

^[3] Howe, F. On the Ground. 30

^[4] Emphasis added.

^[5] In the section of the pamphlet immediately following the Hay instrucciones esepicales para ninos?

^[6] Google search: “conditional tense and Buddhism” extends understanding of the present text under consideration.

^[7] From the section bearing a heading “resumen: summary:”

^[8] Title applied: “that is, por ejemplo, par exemple, per esempio”—title seems an ineffective descriptor for the effective nature these phrases produce.

^[9] Darragh, Tina and Joan Retallack. “Interview” in Aerial #5. Edge Books, 1989. 69.

^[10] Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote, translated by John Ormsby. 1885.

^[11] Readers are reminded here of the all-encompassing positive/neutral/negative terrain of “virtues” (a term pivotal to understanding the thematics in Mongrelisme) created towards an identity through the use of the “is me” structuration. Ethnocentrism is me is one of these identifications, of course I don’t like isms, but /mais/ isme, c’est moi!

^[12] Tardos, Anne. Uxudo. Tuumba Press/O Books, 1999. 8.

^[13] Further conversation about Retallack and “mishearing” language can be found in “Silénzio / Scienza: Registering 5 in Joan Retallack’s Errata 5uite” by A J Carruthers. Carruthers does not use Mongrelisme in their essay. They are also perhaps too caught up in the list of citations Retallack provides in their essay—there are many sources Retallack does not cite in 5rrata Suite—why? (Explication versus analysis). See Footnote 20—Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman are not cited in this volume. 

^[14] Tardos. Uxudo. 8.

^[15] See oriental– and Footnote 22.
Said. Orientalism. 92.

^[16] Darragh and Retallack. “Interview.” 77.

^[17] Uxudo also includes an author’s preface briefly detailing Tardos’ language acquisition. In this preface, she notes that she is aware she has readers of different languages, and makes concessions in certain ways to those speakers, such as direct translations at times for English speakers, or vocative examples directed towards other speakers.

^[18] In the section of the pamphlet with the header Mas pregunats? More questions?

^[19] For Witt quote Gert / ergsht on gosht saga goose reremouse zero. (28) and save him doubt save Stein he said comics for Picasso and said he said by then to die is different. (32) and read need to (skip to) course of reason language history geographys loss of plur red Girthrude em body (ing) sad grids (34). In the latter, note not only the bastardization into infinity of Gertrude Stein (the name or words) but also where language history geographys cite Stein titles as further influence. Presage.

Retallack, Joan. ERRATA 5UITE. Edge Books, 1993.

^[20] Friere, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, 2005. 56.

^[21] Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage Books, 1979. 92-3.

^[22] Listed date, 2012. But, this does not seem accurate to the reading as provided. All files in this collection (including eleven female writers reading in the 21st Century) are dated to 2012. Retallack’s other reading takes place at the Segue Foundation in 2002. The Wesleyan reading likely is not a revised work but a re-reading from the text as written in the very early 2000s/late 1990s, considering that it aligns with the PennSound recording which is a decade earlier). These are the only two readings online from the work in question. The voice reading in the two recordings is also very different. The PennSound reading is extensively inflected when using foreign language texts—because Retallack does not read that portion, but a speaker of the language in question does—as the logic of another language would dictate to do if communicating effectively, say, as an English speaker when speaking in another language. The Wesleyan recording is minimally inflected and sounds aurally more like the speech of an English speaker conforming foreign language structures into English sonic habits; it is entirely performed by Retallack. But, after the reading in Spanish at PennSound, you can hear inflection in Retallack’s voice. Retallack says that Mongrelisme uses ambient spanish as experienced from various quotidian textual sources, such as instruction manuals. The “prologo” read in Spanish (by “Elena”) and English (by Retallack) is not included in Mongrelisme either. However, the questions that are presented in Spanish in Mongrelisme are revealed in the PennSound reading to come from a Spanish language MRI instruction text for patients. The reading at PennSound includes the Mexican/American and derogatory/pejorative term chain which is removed. This is apparently the “prologo.” In the pamphlet as printed, the text early indicates that Mongrelisme is Tres Novelas Ejemplares y un Prologo. Considering the statement about Retallack’s to produce three pamphlets for Paradigm Press, one wonders the degree of completion of the Mongrelisme project prior to this excerpted publication. The “prologo” does not appear in Volume One, and is stated in that phrase from the pamphlet to be posterior to the Exemplary Novellas. Miguel Cervantes was a progenitor of the exemplary novella. Why is this? I went and asked Retallack. Here is some of that response: When Gale Nelson, who conceived and edited the Isthmus pamphlet series at Brown, invited me to do a 3 part pamphlet (actually 3 interrelated pamphlets ) for his Isthmus Project, it sadly turned out that he was running out of funds for the remaining pamphlets in the series. Since then, I have written other pieces (some of which you have seen) with their eventual integration into my planned 3 [...] in mind. But, ultimately, I realized the spirit of the pamphlet was already consummated. I found myself happy with MONGRELISME as is. The core of the larger project remains in multilingual  and multicultural experiments that involve new structures. All with with humor and gravitas. (March 28, 2024). In this response, I think the critical moment is that the pamphlet represents the textual artifact. The project was not so much abandoned as it was realized to an effective enough degree as to be set aside and felt satisfactory. Of course, this is realized through the critical issue of capital—is it easier to have this realization by force or by choice? A few days later, and before I reply to her, I see that Retallack has stated this information in an interview with Jan Baetens. In this interview, Retallack does not go further in regards to her comment to me about the project feeling summated in the material present in the pamphlet. 

^[23] Final lines of the section with heading “that is, por ejemplo, par exemple,”

^[24] https://health.ucsd.edu/news/press-releases/2019-10-08-study-reveals-ptsd-has-strong-genetic-component/#:~:text=The%20study%20team%20also%20reports,small%20contribution%20to%20the%20disorder.

^[25] Section with header “cosas para recordar: things to remember:”—this is roughly one-half of the section or page.

^[26] This is discussed throughout the first three chapters especially of Barrett Watten’s The Constructivist Moment.

^[27] Armantrout, Rae. Next Life. Wesleyan, 2011. 78.

 

 

 

Thom Eichelberger-Young (T-E-Y) is an artist, mental health caregiver, theorist, and publisher living in Buffalo, New York. Their first book, BESPOKE, was published by Saint Andrews University Press in 2019. Their third, ANTIKYTHERA, is forthcoming from Antiphony Press in October of 2024. Other works have appeared or are forthcoming in Mantis, Bombay Gin, Belladonna Series' GERMINATIONS, Magazine1, and elsewhere. T-E-Y operates Blue Bag Press (bluebagpress.squarespace.com or @bluebagpress on IG), a chapbook publisher of innovative writing as well as an archival poetics project producing reproductions and publishing new, critical, writings. This glossary is an excerpt from a longer work called Ointment Weather.