Re: <documenta X><blast>Still
cwduff@alcor.concordia.ca
Sun, 27 Jul 1997 04:12:20 -0400 (EDT)
On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Keller Ann Easterling wrote:
>
Still, the kinds of poetry that one finds in
> vernacular speech or some of the very beautiful entries in this log (I
> actually was thinking of some of yours, Eve) which reflect more accurately
> some of the actual working of memory, mind, body relationship etc. always
> struggle against the official structure of our occidental language. So
> often it seems that these very common and simple skills we all have are
"I didn't mean anything by it."
******************************
And the language of poetry in all languages struggles against the
ossified and inert spaces which have come to inhabit the words. Word as
sower of seeds - exile et emigre - word as sword against the dead anagrams
of the everyday. And yes, one must also be alert and astute for the those
words and phrases which escape out of the banality of la quotidien. Where
once in a while a glittering phrases jumps out and to the listening ear,
agains the reckless speech of signs, one hears the broken formats of
speech emerge. A poetic truth which glistens. Last year I knew a woman,
not a very well-read woman, not a well-educated lady, a working woman all
her life (and a working woman never paid a salary for her work), who
took ill. She began to have pains in her chest and stomach area. A few
hours later she was in an intensive care unit. Later, when I and some
others went to visit her, she described her pain in this way.
I said what was that you felt?
She said - It was as if a steel building (a steel building!) was
pushing itself into my chest.
The next day I asked her the same question.
She said it was if a metal building had pushed into her.
Over the course of the next few days it modified until it became
Stone, concrete, brick.
When she described the image of the Steel building I thought I had
never heard anything like this before.
I exclaimed to her: A steel building, and she said yes, steel.
I went home later and wept.
Language had spoken through this tough woman, this woman whose
pain had felt like crushing steel in her chest. She had never seen a steel
building, nor had I. There was an archictecture of pain in her words, her
eyes, her face. Words, via the vehicle of physical suffering, had
transcended the everyday use of them.
She recovered by the way, completely.
"All words are seeds waiting for the planter of talk."
CD
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