Thursday, April 27, 2006

Ann Lauterbach and Liminality. Some Examples from her work

Liminality in the Arts (by Lim Le Ann)

"Liminality is derived from ‘limen’, meaning threshold. The concept of the ‘liminal space’ as introduced by anthropologist Victor Turner, suggests the idea of ambiguity and ambivalence. This in-between space should allow active exchanges of ideologies, concepts and methods of working. There is an indication of a transition from one state or space to another, an on-going search for answers, yet the end point might not or need not be defined. Therefore, the ‘liminal space’ might be read as a metaphorical realm where ideas and concepts: artistic, political, cultural, social or otherwise, are in constant states of contestation and negotiation."

1. limen, meaning threshold, This is in-between space should allow active exchanges of ideologies, concepts, methods

a temporal clerestory evades the threshold
No smears, no red ink

Stairs, halls, doors---
An incitement to blur, to be inconclusive.”
“How Things Bear Their Telling” in Clamor


2. She doesn’t commit, poems and life are open ended:

‘we are kept by the indefinite, aroused.”---“ Lakeview Diner” in Clamor

In Clamor a poem is entitled “Not that it could be Finished”

another poem begins:

“Forget that version”---“Stones” in Hum


3. she changes direction, or scene in the middle of a sentence or a stanza
everything is about to change

See the poem R/Endings” in Hum, in which the last word of every line
rhymes with the first word in the next line, often totally changing, or
erasing the meaning:

“The second hand
lands outside the circle and
demand threatens to usurp the young road rats on the bus
us, all our distractions seem arbitrarily chosen like a form
norm of nostalgia in an indigo drawing: Whistler’s for. The heart’s
art, caged in its gauze, making a poor sound. Gers slip and now
Dow it seems is being help up by so
low many cheats, instantly assembled, not one exactly like another,
others interchangeable. If a part hissed
mist, then it was hissing for goo. We were dangling, inevitably a delay”

4. she is not about certainty, nor sureness

“Drink the apparition.” ---“Instruction,” in Hum

“Blur” and “Dream” are two of her favorite words

5. transition from one state or space to another, on going search for answers

“The dream modifies not you but your hand
across the anomaly
between question and answer

neither to say nor to write betrayals.”
“Topos” in Hum

6. an undefined end point

“He stood up as if to wander.
Cloudy again, distributed thinly, unanimous.
Are you wondering? Are you clear?
The decision omitted its conclusion, obviously:
I crossed only to here, another invitation
Without fruition, and no need for boots, gloves, hat.
When asked if I had written about her
I said no, not exactly. She became wild.”
“Untoward,” in Clamor

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Hart Crane again

Hart Crane has more and more to say to us now, he seems more and more relevant to our times in poetry:

“For poetry is an architectural art, based not on Evolution or the idea of progress, but on the articulation of the contemporary human consciousness sub specie aeternitatis, and inclusive of all readjustments incident to that consciousness. The key to the process of free creative activity which Coleridge gave us in his Lectures on Shakespeare exposes the responsibilities of every poet, modern or ancient, and cannot be improved upon. “No work of true genius,” he says, “dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed is there any danger of this. As it must not, so genius can not, be lawless; for it is even this that constitutes its genius---the power of acting creatively under laws of its own origination.”

Hart Crane. “Modern Poetry” (1930)

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Some notes on Ann Lauterbach

She certainly is Intense. The work is driven and doesn’t pause much, doesent ask permission, or care much how it is being received. Though it seems to me Ann L. is always reconsidering.

Here are some other attributes: exhaustive, self conscious, investigative, self reflexive and wandering. She relies heavily on syntax, or morphing, deforming, exploring syntax to keep her poems moving. She also uses fragment, and disjunctive ness too. And of course, indeterminate, she is. The hallmark of the post-modern, this last.


The poem “Invocation” in On A Stair, is a more lyrical, more condensed, more romantic version of her work. Probably cause it was written as an Ode, or an apostrophe, a non-elegy, an encouragement for Bernadette Mayer, after she was rendered motionless, speechless and almost sightless from a huge stroke [from which she has since recovered a long way].

Lauterbach relies on spontaneity. Doesn’t plan out even her sentences. Each word has many possibilities for what comes after it. She is in love with possibility. A sentence wanders, taking off in the middle for other lands.

Her word pool is strange. Besides the attributes given to Mayer (Mistress Quaker, Pilgrim, Hooligan of Ages) the poem is motored by “I” words: and complicated half abstract words like conditionally, viable, literal, incipient, brevity, dilated, dim, iteration, potion.

I am not mystified by the comment, Remain among thieves, but can’t figure out the last two clauses, steal advent from avarice, dark from idiot sight.

In her investigations she never gives up, but surrounds some event, some thought, some perception.


Monday, April 17, 2006

Poem

Untitled (potential daybed)

—"legerdemain in the Elaboratory"
Ronald Johnson (ARK 72)—


Now, what do you want to do about frankincense,
patchouli oil or vetiver, all tools of Satan, decriminalized
nonetheless and disguised as glassy liquids of desuetude?
Also, the loved one is appearing as a big Harlequin
great dane. Lovely dark guy. Doesn’t slobber either. Like
some I know. Pines, vale of heavenly rest, all. Yikes, rest?

Lay down and dream we have been intersecting all along
as if there is no help for it. Melpomene for instance is dancing
on our noses. Fractured toe of hers don’t help much though.
Porticules, curly cues, pool cues, actor signs, boots: all blew
up in a big cool Flaubertian lack of distance. You know
blah blah blah, c’est moi. Dillinger, Rimbaud? Especially if.

What is modernity? Can I read to you from the first Iris
Murdoch novel? Potential daybed, that one. It’s all over anyway,
Peak Freens and Dentyne stuck in the hair. Frangipani, I am
tempted to think, is an oil too. Echo things nosewise. Rosewater
burns the eyes apparently. Things don’t come together so
well. Swelling sense of direness zips u up, gordo. Funny name
for a dog, twirling in the starry eye.


Saturday, April 08, 2006

See Hangman, number four

Do not let them fly away from earthly things
and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so
much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew
away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a
meaning, a human meaning.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Poem

Queen of Scots

with Winthrop. and his basket bases
thinking in French. & past participle
oh we. wallflower. wainscot
I haven’t any. sight. site
vocally said: agave, Ogilvy. O.
flicker confiture; flute & publicity
truth being imageless. no matter
petals designed for empathy, telepathically
I am knowing. all about. folding
a feint notice. origination is not destiny
waif, wayfarer, with every gain a stranger
subjectivity. of sexuality. lily uncalled
for. come near. let go. Advertisement.