Not “poetry,” not “literature,” but the aesthetic phenomenon, the particular linguistic act: that happens in time — this happens in time. If we keep the pen moving, the process will lead us through our lives. Nouns slow it down; nouns got us into this mess. Instead, to see the words written in sparkler, fading out, discarnate sonograms. I’m writing these posts to get to the point where I no longer need to. When you climb the ladder, you pull it up after you: Wittgenstein called it “the American way.”
“Pan-demic” should mean “of or pertaining to half a loaf.” Since it doesn’t, we’ll have to settle for what we have, settle in place. We cast all our anxieties (creeping or sudden authoritarianism, climate crisis, joblessness and hunger, pregnancy scares) onto the King of the Viruses, the all-around pox, for now, a displacement of something even worse. If you keep in motion, you won’t feel a thing. If you dwell in the moment forever, you’ll never have to act. Olson said “Art does not seek to describe but to inhabit”; but just because you stay-at-home doesn’t mean it does. An emergency is something that emerges, the latest creature rising from the black lagoon or popping out of the wall like a freak-show haint. Or just what happens next, the next clause in the chain of syntax changes everything. The work of art is an emergency. The president can veto a virus or whip the ocean for not obeying orders, for not sheltering in place, but it doesn’t make the earth any bigger a pinprick of light, just the president a bigger prick. Melting, spreading, evaporating, bubbling up: it’s always something. Writing tries to keep up, to join the acts of nature. If the poem seeks to inhabit, it’s not inhabiting, merely trying to hide. What will it do when it gets the all-clear? A sign is never.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |