New review of this brilliant, tangled web of words posted on the Book Reviews tab. For more information on the book, visit Two Lines Press.
All posts in category writing
old rendering plant by wolfgang hilbig
Posted by sean on November 27, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/11/27/old-rendering-plant-by-wolfgang-hilbig/
small poems in prose [alejandra pizarnik]
The sun closed, the sense of the sun closed, the sense of the closing was illuminated.
*
A day arrives in which poetry is made without language, day in which the great and small desires scattered in the verses are called together, suddenly gathered in two eyes, the same ones I praised so much in the frantic absence of the blank page.
*
In love with the words that create small nights in the uncreated part of day and its fierce emptiness.
[Alejandra Pizarnik, Texts of Shadow and Last Poems (1982)]
(The Unstoppable Myth of Alejandra Pizarnik by Enrique Vila-Matas)
Posted by sean on November 7, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/11/07/small-poems-in-prose-alejandra-pizarnik/
at the border of writing
It was almost easy for him, there where he lived, to live almost without a sign, almost without a self, as if at the border of writing; close to this word, barely a word, rather a word too many, and in that nothing but a word from which, one day in the past, gently welcomed, he had received the salute that did not save, the summons that had awakened him. That could be told, even if, and especially if, nobody were there to hear it.
—Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond [translated by Lycette Nelson]
Posted by sean on August 29, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/08/29/at-the-border-of-writing/
when spirits decide
the planchette inscribed
ovals on the board
stay or go
we had asked
a reply of stay
led to a why
ovals came back
first spelled out
then drawn
over and over and over.
Posted by sean on July 25, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/07/25/when-spirits-decide/
spatial divide
Black sky of crows crowns mornings, bookends to nights of ferocious dream violence
[can an empty space feel occupied—be occupied—with no bodies present]
Jackal fear circles, breathing hidden threat-breath, by unknown summons
[can shadows of bodies, once (they have) / left, still linger, filling space once occupied]
Inside, a wavy line descends, evens out, climbs a steep peak—teeters—declines again
[two containers—one infinite, one finite—hold space—connecting valves open and shut to control in/voluntary flow—allowance for expansion / contraction]
Outside, surrounding space—unbroken—limbs recede at the height of uncertainty
(11-12.14 / 7.17)
Posted by sean on July 23, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/07/23/spatial-divide/
[revised] guidance [from two years ago]
There is nothing where you are going.
What do you mean…nothing.
I mean what I say.
That means nothing.
I understand it to mean something.
I think it’s just something to say…
[shrugs]
But there are things here…around me.
Are you certain.
Yes.
Describe them.
Leaves scattered on the sidewalk. A car’s headlights flicking on in the predawn gloom. The distant whistle of a train.
And do these things have meaning to you.
I-I’m not sure.
Take a closer look.
Well, I notice them.
And what about faces—do you see faces.
They are obscured.
Do you wish to see them with more clarity—to distinguish one from another.
Perhaps.
Now it is you who are evasive.
It is in my nature.
And everything that came before—what happened between when you left and when you returned—is it now gone.
Yes, for the most part. I see only glimpses but I cannot bring it all into focus.
In those glimpses you see more than in what surrounds you now. The latter is of little consequence.
How do you know.
It does not matter. What matters is in between.
In between what.
The words.
Posted by sean on July 20, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/07/20/revised-guidance-from-two-years-ago/
Moment death–
each day a thousandfold.
From atop the promontory:
Ahoy! The headwind wakes.
Connections cleave–
backwind pushes us.
I cannot stop it.
I cannot step into it.
Clinging tendrils,
even unthought-of,
gulliver us
to the not-now.
Tripartite refuge limps
on weakened limbs.
Ever-widening eyes
Astigmatized.
Posted by sean on July 12, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/07/12/7845/
luxuriant leprosy of the vegetable kingdom
Soon began the glorious days of autumn particularly unmistakable in the melancholy curve that the sun, already noticeable lower over the horizon, drew across the sky in whose calm expanses, as though constantly swept by a wonderfully pure wind, its golden trace seemed to linger like a magnificent ship’s wake, and hardly had it turned its course toward the horizon than the moon, as though suspended to the beam of a celestial balance, appeared against the blue light of day with the ghostly glow of an unexpected star, whose malignant influence would now, of itself alone, explain the sudden, strange, and half-metallic alterations of the leaves of the forest whose surprising red and yellow brilliance burst out everywhere with the irrepressible vigour, the fulminating contagion of a luxuriant leprosy of the vegetable kingdom.
—Julien Gracq, The Castle of Argol (a most curious book, and one filled with what would become Gracq’s signature lush descriptions of Nature as a possibly supernatural force. In particular he seems to have a thing for forests…reading his forested prose turns hypnotic after a time. See also: A Balcony in the Forest.)
[Review here.]
Posted by sean on June 21, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/06/21/luxuriant-leprosy-of-the-vegetable-kingdom/
virginia woolf’s summer madness
The only thing in this world is music–music and books and one or two pictures. I am going to found a colony where there shall be no marrying–unless you happen to fall in love with a symphony of Beethoven–no human element at all, except what comes through Art–nothing but ideal peace and endless meditation. The whole of human beings grows too complicated, my only wonder is that we don’t fill more madhouses: the insane view of life has much to be said for it–perhaps its the sane one after all: and we, the sad sober respectable citizens really rave every moment of our lives and deserve to be shut up perpetually. My spring melancholy is developing these hot days into summer madness.
Source: The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume 1: 1888-1912 (from a letter dated April 23, 1901 to Emma Vaughan)
(thanks: lost fun zone)
Posted by sean on June 19, 2017
https://sd-stewart.com/2017/06/19/virginia-woolfs-summer-madness/
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