Tradition and the Individual Seismograph

Or, Developing the Historical Poetics of Lee Sharks’ “Pearl”
Johannes Sigil
from Pearl and Other Poems

Here is a little known fact: language is the medium of time. It is through it that we move to past and future, a “moon through the tender air.” The poet builds formal structures in language that iterate the substance of time, which tend it towards futurity. This is easy to see, looking backwards: “Howl” was a seed of time that grew into a viable present.

It is not so much images of the past that poetry creates for history (“the petrified remains of metaphor fragments”)—although it does do this. No, the poem’s most urgent function is to create that history of the present that disjoints it from itself; to fashion, within the present, a quality of time disjointed from the present, a pearl of unintelligibility that generates futures at a lateral angle, tangential to the course of historical time.

To achieve this, the poet willingly lives in a kind of temporal hell, “the wasteland a single metaphor could populate, if only there were any left.” He has doomed himself to this terra damnata of the historical present because of his allegiance to those other lost souls, called writers. Though the present hears, in these voices from the past, the chipper inanities of its own prerecorded voice (“thousands of scientifically identical plastic-flavored metaphors”), the poet knows they deny his present, just as they denied their own time. This communion by means of mutually incompatible presents (“an echo of parallel loneliness”) is a kind of hell, or, at best, a limbo, where Dante walks with the shade of Virgil: “the fading tactical resonance of what they used to mean.”

Thus, the poet lives in a historical hell. As a creature of his time, he is damned, and knows it: “Metaphors are dead / and moons no longer walk the earth.” Redemption might come to him through poetry, first in the form of reworking his personal history in such a way that it is bound to him in hell, a memento of his origins in the abysmal present, awash with its ugly light, but nonetheless tied to him in his exodus. This is redemption of the poet to himself. A second, greater redemption—the redemption that redeems him to eternity—is in the hope of sending this salvaged history—himself, his life—through time (“out into the night”), of finding the way—and there is only one—through to those futures which are being born, of finding his way to you, dear reader; the hope of blasting you from your tepid future into a timeless, historical hell: “no longer alone.”

This temporality has been called “the future.” It is the version of the present, in the form of a poem, that goes out in time, eventually replacing the shattered and abysmally tepid present with a brighter, historically purer anachronism: “a machine of living ghosts.” Telling stories about such movements through time is what we call “literary history.” And literary history, done right, is what we call “the history of the human race.” 

The poet is like a seismograph, “alert to your Morse-code blink.” The vibrations he records are frequencies of the future. The vibrations’ medium is tradition: the archive of the past, “a metaphor museum.” The poet listens for subtle lines of fracture in language. He scribbles vibrations in the crust of time, listening for the sequence that will signal the earthquake of the future. The metaphor is almost right, with one adjustment: if the poet is a seismograph, his object is the tremors that might CREATE, rather than simply record, the earthquake of the future.

His tools are what Eliot calls the historical sense, which encompasses both a grounding in one particular historical period, as well as a more general literacy of tradition, a sense of the way a tradition develops through time. His medium is the archive—seismographic records of the total history of vibrations in the substance of time. But though he learns from the archive, though these records are essential to his education in the art of time, the poet does not mistake the record for the reality: those vibrations are dead and gone, the earth has already shifted in that direction. Those voices show him the pathway that led to the present, and something of the structure of creating an earthquake. But they cannot show him beyond the present: “into a time so distant / not even my greatest metaphor could have walked halfway across.” He is, like they were, without a map: there is only one path to the future, and the map of the earthquake will be simultaneous with the instant of terrible shaking.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of the quotidian poet, the poet who has invested time, energy, and skill, but who nonetheless remains strikingly unexceptional, is seen in this historical sense, or rather, its lack. This poet is always mistaking the record of the earthquake for the thing itself, burnt-out husks for actual moons. For him, the monument of the earthquake collapses, repeatedly, into the lifeless shape of its record. He cannot recognize the new, much less fashion it, because he does not recognize the old.

To put it in another way, the quotidian poet can see the poem as an artifact of time only from the perspective of its existence in the present—the way it is now, the meaning its form has currently, a “husk of the celestial boulder.” He cannot conceive of the poem as an artifact of charged time, before which time was different (“a thing, once sent, that cannot be called back”). He cannot conceive that time had a different shape—that there was no form of time quite like it, before the poem took shape. Most of all, he cannot begin to consider the poem’s most urgent message: I might not have been. The time you see in me would not have been, would not be, if not for me. For him, the history of literature rehearses what time is.

For the archival poet, the history of literature warns us of the fragile series of contingent steps by which we have arrived at the present, a record of the enormous weight of contingency: “ashborn / a germ of the seasonal fires.” This artifact testifies to all the shapes that are passing away at this moment, to the pressing demand of the future, its desire to come to be. The history of literature screams, “Don’t let us be the last!”

Though the poet does indeed create the future, bring it into being, this future is no more a random figment of imagination than is my beating heart. The future’s shape is prescribed on all sides by the nature of its medium, the archive (“compacted and polished in the heart of a muscle / around a fossilized shard of shrapnel”). Certain fault lines might move through this medium, triggering an avalanche. A poet finds those fault lines, and shapes time along the trajectories of the possible. 

This is not to say that the future is fixed—far from it. Not only is the shape the future will have up for grabs, so is the possibility of its existence. It is not historical necessity that the future come to be, or that the human race be born into it, forward. Nor is it to fix the past in a particular body of texts, a particular cultural lineage. We are headed somewhere, all of us, together.

Poetics must turn to the composition of archival forms that embody possible futures. I say “must,” not in the colloquial, common-usage sense of exhortation towards urgent action—“We must stop and ask for directions.” If there is to be a future at all, we must construct its archive now. Whether we will it or no, history demands an archival poetics, is calling it into being as we speak. 



(c) 2014 Johannes Sigil

from Pearl and Other Poems:

http://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Other-Poems-Crimson-Hexagon/dp/0692313079/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429895012&sr=8-1&keywords=lee+sharks+pearl

ON TEAMWORK: Damascus Grants Authority over Mind Control Powers

ON TEAMWORK: Damascus Grants Authority over Mind Control Powers

All things are possible, when you are part of a team. Those who are part of a team will say to the mountain, "Leap!" And the mountain will not leap. Then they will try a second time, more politely, "Excuse me, I'm trying to get by," and the mountain will get out the way.

Wherever two or more are gathered on a team, and believe my words, whatsoever they shall command together, telepathically, using mind control powers, the same shall be accomplished that very hour. A mountain falls on your face, and crushes it, and then a planet falls on your face. Under the mountain and the planet, your face is all f**ked up, from being crushed, and also you are getting hungry, because you are dead. All this presses and crushes about you, and yet all you do is complain and whine, because of a pain level 10. (What do you THINK my pain level is? Do you see the PLANET on my FACE?!) Anyways, you're dead and stuff, but you haven't used telepathy in my name. Why not? I just told you you have badass mind control powers, but you are just sitting there, by yourself, not part of a team, not even attempting telepathy. Go, stand you together with your brother-sister, any who is called by my name, and use your words to get stuff done: "Get off my g**damn face!" and the planet flies away. "My nose is sore as f**k, because a mountain crushed it, and also I am dead--enough!" and the mountain transforms into gummy bears, and 46 tiny plastic surgeons rearrange your face, in a good way, and also you are no longer dead.

Now go, for I have given you authority over telepathy, with words and stuff, and mental powers, and whatsoever you command in my name will be done.

Then Damascus got onto a boat with his people, and sailed down the river Kwanza to a desolate place, where he could read and think.

On Recycling: THE PARABLE OF THE TRANSFORMED DINOSAURS

"Ahypnah, the Awakened One"

image (c) 2015 R William Lundy

THE PARABLE OF THE TRANSFORMED DINOSAURS
from Human Testament, a ms in preparation for New Human Press

I liken the kingdom of heaven to a series of dinosaurs by the side of the highway.

A group of archaeologists looking for ways to make archaeology relevant successfully applied for large university grants to transform some of the dinosaurs into badly animated mechanical dinosaurs for an expensive, but ultimately irrelevant, walkthrough exhibit at the zoo.

Sanitation worker transformed some of the other dinosaurs by the side of the highway into plastic milk jugs and later recycled them into flimsy plastic Kroger's bags.

Some of the other dinosaurs fell into a tar pit.

And some of the dinosaurs were transformed into special, limited edition poems and sold for twenty dollars in your heart.

When Damascus Dancings had finished speaking, his disciples took him aside, and asked him to explain the parable of the transformed dinosaurs.

O, you foolish disciples! How long have I been with you, and yet you have need of me to explain the parable of the transformed dinosaurs.

Not always will I be with you, but still--come, and I will explain for you the parable of the transformed dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs transformed into a cheesy animatronics exhibit at the zoo by overzealous archaeologists with too much government money and not a clue about to how to make archaeology relevant are those who have transformed their poems into items on their C.V.

Their dinosaurs started off as real live dinosaurs by the side of the highway, but soon their desire for government money and archaeological relevance choked the real live dinosaurs and turned them into robots.

The dinosaurs transformed into plastic jugs and recycled into flimsy plastic Kroger's bags are those whose poems have been used up.

They loved their real live dinosaurs, but soon they got too broke and had to sell their expensive live dinosaurs for money.

Weep, weep for the sellers of dinosaurs, those who recycle their poems for a grocery bag.

The dinosaurs who fell into a tar pit are those whose poems were actual physical dinosaurs at one point in the past.

Their dinosaurs fell into a tar pit with all the other dinosaurs and went extinct from suffocation.

And also volcanic meteors.

And the dinosaurs transformed into special, limited edition poems and sold for twenty dollars are those whose poems are alive in their hearts.

Their dinosaurs started off as real live dinosaurs and went extinct from volcanic meteors like all the other dinosaurs, but then later in a major motion picture called Jurassic Park their DNA was extracted from mosquitoes caught in amber and recombined with the DNA of frogs and other amphibians and birds and resurrected by a quixotic billionaire who likes dinosaurs.

You, my disciples, are the transformed dinosaurs--the dinosaurs transformed into robots and bags and stuck in tar and the dinosaurs still alive in your heart.

Wherever a dinosaur lives, there my poem is alive.

Except a dinosaur falls into a tar pit, and die, its DNA cannot be extracted from petrified mosquitoes by quixotic billionaire dinosaur enthusiasts.

All flesh is a dinosaur. A volcanic meteor falls and covers the sun in volcanic ash and makes all the plants die, and the dinosaurs die, too, except for certain deep aquatic species of scary snaggletooth water dinosaur which swims around way under the sea until the ash is gone, and sometimes bites your feet.

But except for those dinosaurs, all dinosaurs are grass--clothed in dinosaur glory, withered in the space of a day.

Does the grass outlast its cloth of ashes, or a dinosaur, its tar pit?

Indeed, I say to you: both dinosaur and tar pit, the grass and its cloth of ashes--even the quixotic billionaire and scary deep sea dinosaur--all is ash, all, a passing moment; soon petrified, soon broken; the transformed and recycled, the professionalized and cashless; sellers of dinosaurs and buyers of dinosaurs; old women, little children, young mothers and fathers gone too soon, lives recycled into flimsy bags.

The child fetched me a grocery bag. What is the grocery bag? he asked. 

What answer could I give?

Should I speak of the hints of the dead old mothers, the children and fathers gone too soon? Should I say the bag is a dinosaur, the extracted reclaimed polymer of transformed brontosaurus?

This bag is very flimsy to come from the brontosaurus' thick neck, thin to derive from the scary aquatic dinosaur, substanceless to fare from its snaggled teeth.

Or then again, this bag is colorless and wan to come from the dark full hair of mothers, wrinkled to consist in a child's smooth hands.

Perhaps the bag is a tar pit, the post-manufactured remainder of past dinosaur extinctions, a plasticity of death, the transformation of their transforming, given over again to groceries.

The women and men and sons and daughters, the gray old mothers and fathers; overzealous architects, ancient dinosaurs and cheesy robots; weird genetically-engineered shemale toad velociraptors accidentally switching genders to breed more velociraptors and eviscerate quixotic billionaires;

Bag and ashes, tar pit and bones, all flesh, the grass, all clothed in the glory of a day; soon arriving, soon fading; the cycle of day and night, the turning leaves, the passing seasons;

Root & ozone, surrounding void & sun, prickling stars & Milky Way, vast circuits of matter in fractal arrangements, the splash of light, the nothingness--the black matter and antimatter and quotidian void of vacuum--even death will die, in time come after dinosaurs.

You say that I have been gone from you for a decade, and soon will leave you again.

I say to you, what do ten years measure?

Does a brontosaurus change in a day?

No--a brontosaurus lives a long time.

Not many brontosauruses, not many plastic bags; not many shemale velociraptors, not many petrified tar pits; very few turns of season, not many prickling stars, not a single Milky Way can be measured by a decade.

(But perhaps a child gone too soon, perhaps a young mother or father)

And yet how many blades of grass, whole armies of numberless glory?

Ten years is many lifetimes, when in the space of a day, I die ten times.

I have been as the dinosaur, and I have been as the grass.

I pulled my glory around me, I shot up in the dust of the field.

Light crowned me, a king among kings, priest to a nation of priestly stalks.

All the air & the rain & the thick black soil, the bones of brontosauruses & mulchy decay of faded mothers; the sun itself, the twisting earth skittering on its axis of seasons--all the handiwork of the Lord, his own strong invisible fingers, attended me in my glory.

& in the space of a day, my glory left, the Lord blew over the fields, the armies faded, my own blue crown gone brown.

Drooping, embrittled & weary, low--the earth shut its face, and served my fading.

Here and gone, fodder for dinosaurs, the transformed handful of old mother's hair.

& even the fading was not unlovely;

& too I have been as the dinosaur, a creature of stolid aeons.

How many decades passed while I watched?

Not many, too many--

Dinosaurs becoming grasses, transformed grasses becoming a dinosaur;

Countless thousands of dyings & livings, whole armies of fading away, unchanging;

The blade of grass bears witness: the decades & centuries shoot up & decay; an aeon is an inconstant thing, brontosauruses yield to the lily's glory;

The millennia are a wine of dandelions, distilled from petrified splendor; thousands of gone decades; 

Whole tender dinosaurs lost to time. Flesh is grass, the grass is flesh, and I have died too many times: 

I am no more, I never was.

(And for a dinosaur not to have existed is different than any had supposed--way luckier.)

(c) 2014 lee sharks, property of planet mars