Showing papers in "Chicago Review in 2012"
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Finlay was a "makar," revitalizing that ancient Scottish term as discussed by the authors, who grasped a different means of poetic production, by insisting that each poem could be a thing; that each text has the potential to assume different guises through the careful choice of typeface, printed format, or material; each word could be weighted or floated within its own space, its meaning inflected by color, light, or grain.
Abstract: Standing on the edge of a heather moor where the Pentland Hills rise is a whinstone boulder with a single vein of quartz. This stone is a poem. Inscribed "CURFEW / curlew," it invites us to hear the bird's liquid call as it plies down to the valley below. The transition of letters--inward folded "f" for alert "l"--translates natural song into human alarm. Imaginatively we have entered Stonypath, Little Sparta, genius loci of Ian Hamilton Finlay. This poem conspectus belongs here because this is where poet first heard the curlew's oracular call. Carved, the words suggest permanence; but sun and shade, wind, birdsong--all the transitory effects of nature--are also integral to the garden poem. More than any other poet of the modern era, Finlay realized the potential of the poem as an object that belongs within an "environment"--though he would doubtlessly have preferred the term "garden," "grove," or "landscape." This brief account, stitched around extracts from his letters, sketches how Finlay became an "AVANT-GARDEner," pioneering poems in glass, aluminum, and neon, and then installing permanent poem-objects in parks and landscapes throughout the world. This great adventure spanned four decades, culminating in Finlay and his wife Sue's celebrated garden, Stonypath--born of his youthful dream of young philosophers wandering through a classical landscape. Recent critical accounts make little or no acknowledgement of the collaboration with Sue; they conjure the garden as cynosure for a reclusive Neoclassical "genius," whereas, for the poet, its status was elusive: "I don't know what the garden is really--I don't know. In general the garden has proven its own alibi: it proved its own necessity." We can grasp the degree to which this poetry garden and world was a necessity when we understand the essence of the poet's experience of place: Stonypath was his fond home; it grew into the territory Little Sparta, his martial state, complete with stamps, medals, monuments, a flag, and Garden Temple. Finlay was a "makar," revitalizing that ancient Scottish term. However, as his letters reveal, his ambitious and expansive poetics arose from a "homesickness" that was life defining. If readers wish, they can enter his poetic world, even touch the texts with their fingertips. Finlay belonged to that generation of innovators--many of them his correspondents and friends--who grasped a different means of poetic production, by insisting that each poem could be a thing; that each text has the potential to assume different guises through the careful choice of typeface, printed format, or material; that each word could be weighted or floated within its own space, its meaning inflected by color, light, or grain. This radical transformation of the poem arose from his realization that with the translation of the poem-object into the outdoor poem, there was an implicit requirement that these poems should, ideally, belong within a composed landscape--grove, vista, or, to use his preferred practical term, "area"--suited to this contemplative art. The shifts of form that mark Finlay's output are vertiginous: from early plays, stories, and poems offering lyrical and quirky portraits of the Scottish Highlands and islands, to Concrete poems of the 1960s, and the evolution of these into the garden poems of the 1970s. His art is all the more challenging given that the reader has also to negotiate radical shifts in subject matter: from the toys, boats, and idylls of the early era to the poet-revolutionary embattled in his "armed" domain, Little Sparta, surrounded by stone warships, eulogizing Robespierre and Saint-Just. These shifts can best be grasped through some understanding of the personal drama of the poet's life. In this respect his remarkable letters--charming, wry, sometimes raging--convey the necessary details of biography. Correspondence was the primary means by which he collaborated--and collaboration was fundamental to Finlay's art. …
3 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Toussaint's The Truth About Marie as discussed by the authors is a novel about a commercial director for Fiat France in Paris who moves in a child's world of simple pleasures and pains, inscrutable motivations, and general inconsequence.
Abstract: Jean-Philippe Toussaint, The Truth About Marie. Champaign, IL: Dallcey Archive Press, 2011. 160pp. $12.95A quarter of a century and nine novels by Belgian writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint separate the following scene descriptions:The rain had become a downpour, as though all the rain were going to fall: all. Cars slowed on the drenched roadway; sheaves of dead water rose on each side of the tires.... I was looking for a sweater. Was there no sweater anywhere?Outside the sky was dark, black, immense, invisible, and an unbroken sheet of rain falling through the yellow light of the streetlamps blocked the horizon. I threw myself straight into the downpour, my jacket's collar raised.Rain is rain, but the change in style will be apparent even to readers who have not followed Toussaint's prolific career in English translation from Dalkey Archive Press- from his debut novel, The Bathroom (French 1985; English 2008), to the latest, The Truth About Marie (2009; 2011). (Since 2007, there have been seven novels: Television [1997; 2007]; Monsieur [1986; 2008]; Camera [1989; 2008]; Running Away [2005; 2009]; and Self-Portrait Abroad [2000; 2010] ). It's a change from a writer who once delighted in using a dry, dispassionate, almost scientifically precise narrative voice ("water rose on each side of the tires") to a writer unashamedly sentimental, loquacious, even verbose.Dispassion has been more than just a narrative voice for Toussaint- it is an entire milieu, with its own version of morality. The nameless narrator of The Bathroom decides to move himself, books and all, into his bathroom, in order to combat a general, unnamed malaise. This premise offers Toussaint the chance to poke fun at social graces and personal foibles in a light comedy of manners: the narrator hosts his visiting mother in the cramped space and exchanges verbal spars with two house painters his girlfriend hires to paint the kitchen. Here is the typical denouement of a wild episode in which the painters offer their hosts an octopus for lunch (and spend hours on the kitchen floor trying unsuccessfully to cut it up):He told how he'd spent the night playing chess in the back room of a cafe and made friends with his tablemate, a young fellow who, when the bar closed, had dragged him to Les Halles, where they bought a crate of octopus which they'd divided at dawn in the Invalides metro station. I looked at him, thinking of something else.Much of The Bathroom reads like a tale of utter disinterest, like the narrator (or Toussaint) is constantly just "thinking of something else"- or merely offering the preamble to a real story to come. Mechanical descriptions of mundane activities- eating, shaving, picking clothes out of a drawer- overexplain each discrete step while refusing to elaborate on or evaluate their significance.Toussaint increases the psychic distance and the comedy by casting another early novel, Monsieur, in the third person. We follow insouciant Monsieur, a commercial director for Fiat France in Paris (and a dead ringer for Jacques Tati's clueless Mr. Hulot), as he spends his days doing unexciting things with uninteresting people. Like the narrator in The Bathroom, Monsieur moves in a child's world of simple pleasures and pains, inscrutable motivations, and general inconsequence. The story's premise is that Monsieur needs a suitable place to live: he moves back and forth between rented rooms, adjusting chairs, trying to avoid nuisances while being one himself. But few real problems appear, few solutions are found, and no one grows or changes. The narrative is cursory with abrupt transitions. Dialogue is reported and indirect, creating an awkward distance that lends itself to situational irony. Without access to Monsieur's interior motives or thoughts we cannot identify or sympathize with him. But this is part of the fun. And although events do in fact occur in Monsieur, more striking are the innumerable plot opportunities Toussaint cheerfully denies. …
2 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Soundeye 2011 celebrated the life of Corconian poet and singer Patrick Galvin, who died last year, and opened the commemoration by skewing one' s sense of Galvin s work.
Abstract: Soundeye 2011 kicked off with a commemoration of the life of Corconian poet and singer Patrick Galvin, who died last year. The festival, now in its fifteenth year, has been devoted to innovative Irish poets working in the Modernist line, and to their counterparts in the UK, the US, and points beyond. Galvin s work might not appear to fit easily in such a tradition any more than it fits easily with the predominant forms of mainstream Irish poetry. But Trevor Joyce opened the commemoration by skewing one' s sense of Galvin s work. After pointing out the poet's deep engagement with Lorca- whose example had permitted him to write again after a long silence- Joyce read forcefully Galvin's ballad, "The Kings are Out," a fierce and peculiarly hard-edged work that is reminiscent of Brecht' s "Red Army. " But there are other resonances: in a quite unsettling way, the rhetoric of the ballad, at least as Joyce read it, seems to fuse the idiom and rhythms of popular poetry with the chill and elemental images invoked in Celan s late verse. That might not be so surprising in light of Celan s own early absorption in the rhythms and motifs of medieval German Minnesangand the ways some of his early poetry seems to give a surreal twist to popular verse forms. Of course, Lorca's own engagement with folk poetry, especially the violence and rawness of the Romanceros gitanos, maybe a more immediate impetus to this aspect of Galvin's work, as surely was his own life as a performer and writer of Irish songs that draw on their own folk traditions. What was startling was the apparent fusion ofthat folk idiom with a European, avantgarde language. Joyce's reading enacted the more conceptual claims that had been made throughout a conference held on innovative Irish poetry on the Tuesday before Soundeye started- that Irish poetry, and the culture more widely, has always had its own peculiar relation to European modernity that is not always fully readable within the context of Anglo-American poetries.It was, in fact, one of those evenings when something grasped conceptually suddenly materializes with a sense of shock and opening. Galvin had always been close to the Irish labor movement, whose own emergence was closer historically to European syndicalism than to British trade unionism. As the evening progressed, Galvin's friends, admirers, and former students, and political activists, local poets, and singers read or performed his work and work that would have resonated for him. …
1 citations
Journal Article•
[...]
TL;DR: In this article, a mexican man disguises as a car seat to smuggle himself across the border to the u.s. and is discovered by a newly awakened, laughing border patrol, a format that activatesholger mein s prosein bo cavefors' translation.
Abstract: "SO GIVE ME THE MACHINEGIVE ME THE MONEYABOVE ALL GIVE ME POLITICAL POWER"in february 2003a mexican man triesto smuggle himself across the border to the u.s.disguised as a car seatthe commentary to the monumentnobody's car tripthe state is awakened by violence every morningsomebody's assassinationimages from the rest of the worldthe map is everywherewhat has happened is archivedsearch tool, then "mexican + car seat"the distance between here and thereis long since gonethe body contortssewn into the synthetic leather materialquiet, a single nightof inhuman formsculptures are crushedand move across the world(iraq museum in bagdad looted)unintentionally realized in kabuladolf loos' dreamof heavy motorized vehiclesplowing down the streetsso the houses quake and facadeornamentation crashes to the ground(a dream for Vienna, but still)petrifying glancethe world's myths calibratedestruction and lossa mexican manfills up a second skinand has an armrest for an armin sweeping gestures one cangrasp the terror in the worldin glimpses, now and then, one can seehow everything collapses(to never be rebuilt)and is built again at that very momentthe glance that petrifies is embarrassingon the border between countries the body is discoveredby a newly awakened, laughing border patrola format that activatesholger mein s prosein bo cavefors' translationwhat is to be highlighted of raf:s action isthe conviction and the raw communicationthe final prison texts conveythere are no capitals other thanTHE PIGS and THE STRUGGLE GOES ONan important word is writtenwarmaterialtogetherfor the othersa typographic consistency is appliedthat is coherent with the political convictionthe writing conveysand in its places is the same thingas the meaning of the textsthat is to say structure and styleauthority, energy, consumptionone can understand the image of the violencebut not exactly which (image of the violence)to combine materialswithin delineated bodiesand to combine bodiesas a fuel for the activityto extend one's handa violent textthe book object is placedagainst the elusive authorityof the human bodyin a book beyond the bookan unbound dream whichtakes shape (at) (in)terracotta, realistic audiencethe sculpture collections"the mass is principally for revolt"how is one to find the ways out necessaryfor individual engagementin this border intermezzoto begin with the bodywith the book and the imageto begin with what takes form(to take form) and gives form (to give form)the glance that petrifiesbelongs to individual groupingsthe mass is so largeit takes form and is formless, liquidfirm until it starts to be processedto write on it, in itthis mass that is now written uponwhat takes form and takes lifehappens in another placeand is not discovered until on the borderbetween taxonomiesdetermined by ownership …
1 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Hong's Engine Empire as mentioned in this paper is a collection of ballads, prose poems, sonnet variations, and less familiar forms with a focus on the challenges of defining selfhood apart from one's personal history or the cultural diversity that overwhelms it.
Abstract: Cathy Park Hong, Dance Dance Revolution. New York: Norton, 2007. 120pp. $23.95Cathy Park Hong, Engine Empire. New York: Norton, 2012. 93pp. $24.95"We offal de finest sampla," announces the "guide" of Cathy Park Hong's Dance Dance Revolution as the sequence of poems nears its end. The book, for its variety of sound play, might itself be considered a "sampla," a platter of linguistic delicacies in the forms of puns, malapropisms, and phonetically spelled words. Hong's new collection Engine Empire adds yet more variety to the spread. It continues the earlier book's social commentary in a progression of ballads, prose poems, sonnet variations, and less familiar forms. Both books create hybrids of narrative genres, including travelogue, fantasy, and memoir. Dance Dance Revolution guides us from Korea to Sierra Leone to Connecticut to the "Desert"; Engine Empire pulls us westward towards California-as-frontier and then to urban China and into the future. The science that shapes each of the situations is fictional: the Desert condenses the world's major cities into hotels; the future has a climate of "smart snow." As allegories of cosmopolitan life, these tropes caution against overvaluing the mere appearance of cultural variety. Hong's wide range, then, is the subject of her critique as well as a source of her poetry's pleasure.Hong's invented dialect reveals the difficulty of defining selfhood apart from one's personal history or the cultural variety that overwhelms it. The main characters of Dance Dance Revolution embody this dilemma. The Korean tour guide and the historian who interviews her, our Desert liaisons, both narrate their past experiences amid recent international conflicts, the Kwangju uprising in South Korea and the civil war in Sierra Leone. The present setting is the fantastical Desert, a small-scale caricature of the world. Like the Borges map that suffers human neglect and the effects of weather, the Desert continues the conflicts of the world it would put on show. But unlike Borges's map, the Desert is not built on a one-to-one scale. Its appeal and its ghastliness come from its acute contraction of cultures and histories and languages. The book's foreword, written in the voice of the historian, explains that the Desert is a "city whose decree is there is difference only in degree. This city is the center of elsewhere but perhaps that is not accurate. As the world shrinks, elsewhere begins to disappear." Hong's Desert is an alternative to flat models of globalization: it preserves features of culture as well as inequalities of power while gathering them in one place. The first part of the decree, "there is difference," proves as important as the second, "only in degree." Cities "elsewhere" might be present superficially in the physical structures of cities-made -hotels, but they are profoundly so in the figures of residents who bring their stories with them. Hong's optimism lives in language's promise to accumulate and transform- to enrich- as it encounters its neighbors.Both the richness and the risk of miniaturizing become evident in the language of the Desert, a range of pidgins that vary by accidents of region, but also by time: "Civilian accents morph so quickly that their accents betray who they talked to that day rather than their cultural roots," the historian explains. The characters most often speak and write about their families and childhoods. But the guide describes herself in language that draws on other people's speech (and other poets' language) and introduces to her biography a range of influences far beyond her own experiences. The guide is a linguistic performer, playing what she calls the "mouthpiece role":...Opal o opus,behole, neon hibiscus bloom beacons!"Tan Lotion Tanya" billboard. ..sheyour lucent Virgil, den G s taka ovaas talky Virgil. . .want some tea? Some pelehuu?Mine vocation your vacation!In this first, eager sales pitch, the guide's verbal range reaches so far that it risks consuming her: "o"s and "b"s and "v"s stack up, bathetic punning ("behole! …