william watkin's blog (since 2003)

Kent Johnson very kindly directed my attention to a review of by Paul Lake called "Poetry in the Mother Tongue" which may or may not be the title of a book by Jane Gallop. Aprt name as I have had to rush through this rather long piece. It is a really interested if rather fraught essay at www.cprw.com/Lake/tongue.htm which tries to undermine the whole history of poststructural theory in eleven pages. Slightly ambitious though this is it is interesting to see a new front developing between poststructural ideas of signification, and cognitive linguistic ideas of language as an evolutionary remnant of basic survival tactics. Thus the article suggests a link between gesturing, our technology of writing, and the evolutionary development of becoming upright, perhaps to allow mothers to feed their children and communicate gesturally, and obviously then links this to gestation. This is all sourced to work by Philip Lieberman at Brown. I can only touch on issues here as I am r...

from the sequence theseecstasies brown is this season’s black which means for the truly fashion conscious brown is already black thus they can say with impunity that black is this season’s black which is bytheby how poetry works or at least language but question is there any difference? I want you my lover’s back please—we go all the way up the poplar smothered lane to the shrub then all the way back don’t we not? the tautegorical hurt of ecstasy that is what I mean when I burn in my eyeballs seething “ver-ti-ge” through tawdry gaps in my teeth the brown hurt of a dissimulating spring whilst I embrace squalls take up droplets fell from the bushes tender green entreaties the same as dogs do I am the first to do so my hair a rose and I am dealing with it it’s queer aint it you say potato I bow down my jaundiced thoughts and smoke it. bare which the day it is synonymous to being borne by the winds of france to the singéd herbaceous to the singed herbaceo...

from the sequence theseecstasies this catalogue of smiles will be blown through by russia from counting how to do it to actually doing it we are to be bound over to be happy some day the way in which cheese is happy only some times with the crease of coldness they have gathered to do this I must in fact stop it if you see cheese then buy it for me and love me also revel in your teeth some way the day in which chairs are a threat to the lumber of bears all of which adds up to something moving like a finger in your mouth

from the sequence theseecstasies winter by the time you read this I will be writing “this” left over in the spare laburnum the strain for gold exhausts the day by four four o’clock drifting my companions are drifting by me the rush coloured clouds show up what was in any case never inevitable because we all hold onto it in common if you want me to my feelings run up to yours like a barely labrador a quick sieve through all this so called “chaff” turned up some “nuggets” but also the sensing of a direction into which I soon will be gone.

from the sequence theseecstasies and that was how it was and at this point because of this against my better judgement that they forced me into citizenry don’t ask me why I prefer to say the trees are in those threes than talk of dinner parties though you are beautiful and well it’s obvious isn’t it? I guess it was the wire things failed to gel but we have been provided with anniversaries which make us the streets are full for sitting and people for once are writing what they feel in formal structures: I love my mum my sisters are divining the way were all built up out of the same past the past is simple like leaves which of what is falling down will you catch on your tongue? you have all eaten what you have bitten if that’s what you do. all will be included this is the service we provided which is also as inclusive there are tears in you tears small wonder. in the womb holes of creditable mandolins...

from the sequence theseecstasies those were there very words up-ended in a greenly ambitious sea I realise that one cannot “have” “one’s” “phallus” and eat it though—and this is the point one might not want to or might not know one wants to and who’s here to tell you so no blemish and no rub just “there’s green” or “their red” never they’re blue/yellow/persimmon but endlessly endlessly and so on the totems are dancing into upward graced suspension into which and power drifts by just out of reach but kept well in hand curiously or one may eat other things or not eat and really mean that flesh unfettered by skin which gives when prodded with the perspex but without the blunt rod not spring-back automatically going spink-spink in blue static so we are “boids” after all and one day we just got tired I imagine of the massive fern fronds for life the big bugs which motor between them all got up by the perennial threat of ochre and olive spotted predation and walked...