SISYPHUS TIME
For Professor Heino Vanderjuice
I hurry to tell Dr. Blope that since V got pinched there are 33 references to idiots in Pynchon’s latest Against the Day. I keep some things secret though. As any good mathematician who has aspirations beyond poetry I say to myself: at least 33 references. “Bloody idiots,” Dr. Blope screams. He’s not in the camp who joyously welcomes poets: “Oh my God! Another poet! How lucky we are!” He’s with the masses who are exasperated: “you write poetry, get away creep.” (These are actually Charles Simic’s words, but as they say, you’ve got to steal from the best). I tell Blope that I’ve just won the Pulitzer. “Have you now,” he says, making a dismissive gesture. “You mean, theoretically?” he asks on second thought. “Of course theoretically,” I say. “Anything else would be so boring.” I want to imitate his rhetoric and say: “bloody idiot, do the math, man.” While I go for nothing, I think of Zermelo’s axiom of choice. “Have you told Vanderjuice?” he asks. “He’s into that sort of thing.” “Nope,” I say. “He’s stuck in the Michelson-Morley Experiment. Can’t see nothing.” You can’t expect to see emotion in symmetry. And I hate symmetry. It only works in practice. “How do you feel, honey this and baby that?” In theory it screws up the smartest question: who the fuck cares?
Comments
Jeg synes, at dine digte bliver bedre og bedre for hver gang du sender mig nogle nye. Specielt virker det, som om dine tekster nu rigtig markant og forførerisk udkrystalliserer deres 'transworld' universer. Jeg tror faktisk på, at 'tu est une autre'. Theoretically, that is. In practice, mind you. Og når vi nu taler om bevidsthed, så kan jeg ikke lade være med at tænke på Lorine Niedecker's jævnføring af den med tæer. Se bare her:
'Greek named
Exodus-antique
kicked up in America's
Northwest
you have been in my mind
between my toes
agate'
Niedecker has her moments - and toes though she only finds a semiprecious stone and not a plunger between them. Men jeg foretrækker trods alt alligevel dine sproglige bagateller, når pladsen er ved at slippe op og tiden er ved at rinde ud: så længe leve 7L, cette elle, c'est elle! Er dette et manifest for en ny slags symmetri? Eller er det en symmetri ligeså overlagt spoleret som den tro, Robert Creeley måtte have på en sådan:
'One, two,
is the rule -
from there to three
simple enough.
Now four
makes the door
back again
to one and one.'
Eller mere radikalt som hos Stein i "Poetry and Grammar":
'Ater all the natural way to count is not that one and one make two but to go on counting by one and one as china men do as anybody does as Spaniards do as my little aunts did.. One and one and one and one and one. That is the natural way to go on counting.
Now what has that to do with poetry. It has a lot to do with poetry.'
Have your fix, feedback junkie...
Knus,
Søren
"Pythagoras may well have been
the deepest in his learning of all men
And still he claimed to recollect
details of former lives,
being in one a cucumber
and one time a sardine"
The point? Den kan du få ved lejlighed. Det er noget med tal, bogstaver, og selvfølgelig en Miele maskine.
All this and mucho, mucho mas can be studied in "The Name Game" at the Pynchon Notes website.