Areas Lights Heights

By Larry Eigner

Literary Nonfiction. "Live thinking--rather than 'theory'--about poetry & prose & living & dying, often starting from or turning into poetry as easily as rivers & puddles become clouds become rain. Short pieces full of unexpected sparks & takes. Essays, letters, reviews, apercus--starting from anywhere at hand (often with 'input' from 'media'), ending somewhere we're surprised to get to. Too much fun to call criticsm-or the best kind. A pleasure to live with"--Jackson Mac Low. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roof Books
• Release date: Oct 30, 1989
• ISBN: 9780937804339

Book preview

Notes

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Larry Eigner’s practice as a critic, as I’ve come to witness it, involves a modulation of the pitch of thought in writing. It is a practice that has partly evolved out of the physical process of getting words onto the page, transcription, in Eigner’s experience, a registration of keys struck one by one. It is, as well, an articulation of values — ethical, ecological, aesthetic — dramatized by and in the articulations of a serendipitous prose. A considerateing, to use Eigner’s word, marking out thought as poetry’s. A poetics.

Implicit to this practice has been the accessibility of thought to language, of language to thought, and of thought and language to the world. A mystery of things … given meaning or realized, by voice, emphasis, physical force, the telos of this practice (the optimum mix Eigner hopes to discover) is in many ways a regulation of the senses.

But that’s only one side, the side that operates as an influence towards order. For Eigner also has a wild side, a side that distracts him, that bends towards distraction, seeking in scatter the elements of its poetry.

Then how does the extrinsic turn intrinsic at times, the extraneous become digested? A poem is a machine made of words? Anyway, the dragging in of things from beyond the poem can’t be carried out very thoroughly. In a sense everything has to come of itself, unexpectedly, and has to be faced.

(Like a Dog Bark in Music)

Immediacy and/or clarity. The clarity of the poem, in its immediacy, and the immediacy of meaning, so often lost by the clarity of system.

We are two-sided beings, says Olson, a dipolarity, a reciprocity of not-always-equal-sides of force. Eigner, in his writing, epitomizes this reciprocity. A constant, often surreptitious give and take animates his arguments. Observe, for instance, how speech figures in this poetics, especially in relation to thought, and how writing becomes, in Eigner’s conception, circumambulatory. The body, in these citations, is more than a complication. It upholds the poem—and qualifies it—as a thing more credible than reliable.

The self, Eigner tells us, is some head you can’t go around. The care and culpability of its writing is the limit faced in its own alterity.

A PREFACE ON TOP OF

Aftersome years—not many, it appears to memory, though time’s crept or rather unfurled or lengthened out, while you’re watching a movie say, as well as flown — more and more things seem dark, the darkness more substantial and definite, materialized, closer, like an oncoming wave, as I listen still, can’t help doing that, and look, but I sense some humor too and hope there’s enough of it as there sure is of the ridiculous, and sublime. Clouds shift, and sands.

I want a lot to thank all my correspondents and editors, who have in so large a part been responsible for keeping me pricked up, in particular James Sherry (for patience), Bob Grenier and Jack Foley (for upkeep and mirth) and Ben Friedlander for clearing things up and away.

Poets that Lasting Marble seek

Must carve in Latin or in Greek

We write in Sand…

— Edmund Waller             

Larry Eigner

May 1989    

DIFFERENT THINGS IN THEIR DIFFERENT PLACES

STATEMENT ON WORDS

Amid increasingly palpable news rather than rumor of scarcities (to be hugely euphemistic about it), abundant moments in various places persist and keep on in high or ultra high frequency, and a poem can be assay(s) of things come upon, can be a stretch of thinking.

HOW MUCH? WHAT’S UP? A BIT OF THE QUESTIONABLE WORLD

…to care and not to care / … to sit still my will

I’ve been, am, more or less a nut about having things adequate to staying, keeping alive and taking my ease without much pain or discomfort — loafing as Whitman had it — while I’ve been goal-oriented more generally (speaking) too, as well as curious as to things beyond or partly beyond reach, out of sight and/or hearing; and boredom has never been a problem with me, likewise, for instance I always believed in appreciating things and making them out to myself, making it and coming from behind getting knowledge and so on under my belt. Future and present life being rather worrisome, a lot more the present than the future at that, but in any case I felt vulnerable and at a loss enough I guess. I looked towards a desk job like, say, my father’s, being up to that, daydreamed some, and aimed to author tomes, books, opuses, collected works (that was something I didn’t put off but went at in the now, rhyming about as much as I cd, so as to get a head start and be a boy poet {there was a girl published poet I’d heard of}, later thought of writing greeting-card verse for some part of a living — get-well {or holiday} card verse — when I should finish school). And besides the idea of optimism, like sunshine on the floor and across the country, the concept of achievement was something, seeing what you could do, and getting famous, known. Well, OK. A lot of people have pretty much the same (biographical) reasons or causes—when it comes to reasons—for things, what they’re interested in, concerned or preoccupied with.

Anyhow, so at least if you’re out to make yourself and the rest of the world as well or long-lasting as possible there are these fairly unanswerable (which may be partly why they’re unforgettable or fascinating) questions, insoluble puzzles as well as problems — the problem of priorities when there’s a lot that needs doing, or of selection when you have abundance, which of course gets bigger the more you have:

How much is enough or too much?

How much is wanted?

How hot or whatever is good enough to encourage or steady or divert or freshen yrself and others with if there’s some ghost of a chance of solving worldwide or … local problems when there might be time enough if there’s not millions of words anyway?

Is Poem A (A & Z?) weak really or just different from—as much in its way, as — Poem B? How much // of the same // now?

How much to reread or else read more and more you never did see before — and write. I never got the will or facility to skip around much. So what’s before you, to size up or get some charge or coherence or new sights or whatever from, is some big deal. Some at least of my output on the borderline, maybe so-so. Like, there’s Hart Crane — real word magic maybe going purplish after enough pages.

Sufficient unto the day… though. Day by day, make it new. For which, the past has to be remembered, used, however much. But maybe not much a cataclysm if next to nothing can be put together with anything else.

METHOD FROM HAPPENSTANCE

I’m cautious, and come into things by understatement. Wary of exaggeration. Sotto voce has resulted in the suppression of words. Don’t like to begin with a big B, as if I was at the Beginning of all speech, or anything; which may also have something to do with why usually I’ve had an aversion more or less to going back to the left margin after beginning a poem, but otherwise than in hindsight I just tried to do the best I could, the simplest and most immediate thing being punctuation,* once words were forceful enough — a matter of getting the distances between words, and usage of marks to conform as well as might be to what there was to say, as spoken, then these typographical devices entering themselves into the discovery and the initiation of attention. As with any other detail, after dispensing with a routine duplication device — e.g., a period as well as a capital letter — a new thing immediately (neither period nor capital results in sentence splice, a poem without very explicit rests, if that’s what seems good), then, the availability of the device for vital use in some other connection may crop up, possibly. Oaks from small acorns. Forests of possibility.

But they can’t reach the stratosphere or leave the ground. In the stratosphere you get very stark claustrophobia. Now that I’ve met up with a good number of things and people I’m less able to keep open and give everyone the benefit of the doubt than I used to, which was the only way I found of getting along, just about, and it still is practically my only way — kind of a bootstrap affair.

(A limitation is, that although I seem to do all right al fresco, later when my nose is two inches away the stuff is more doubtful and apt to go flat. Many lines flush with one another can go more permanently flat.)

Parodying Socrates a little, you might say I know enough to feel naive.

*     From a confrontation, Gist, with work by e.e. cummings, then by Williams and others.

Be minimal then…

— Hart Crane

personal

     favorite what

        exchange

                          the 19th century

            echo

                parts as

                   all one’s property or

                        another’s

                      botanical conquest

                            African

                                   heads     rains

                                pouring down hills

                                      peace

                                  flowing lakes

                                      so much to inherit

                                                     heroically

                                              discovery or no

                                                          claimed

                                                     traded

                                                          practical reasons

                                                               land    gifts

                                                                   I pick

                                                                   some song

                                                                      people to

                                                                         do with

                                                                            come by

                                                                              settle

Minimizing (not stringent, actually, less condensation than aversion to tongue-twisters, etc., leave taking of the ponderous, in fact the ideal of Work in areas of abundance, let alone overabundance, no quixotic hang-up on aristocratic heroisms, facilitates thinking, integration, the assessment of things). Coming to weights, and feeling them. Thus expansions come of themselves too — the easy, amid so much hardship and complication, massive nowadays. (For instance sometimes one word by itself in a line or stanza—with a double- rather than a single-line break, that is — has had unwarranted emphasis {i.e., flat sky anyway}, and it’s only when I’ve realized or discovered this fixation that I’ve been able to continue. You can’t want or try too much to continue either, but better be willing enough to stop anytime, although, say, you’d like to live forever. In this way a poem will extend itself, naturally, quietly, and be like taking a walk, light, in the earth.)

flat sky

          going down

       to leaves

      birds    river

            sounds

         what then

              moon’s like

                 is

                          looks

                       still

               the face of death

                     think

                         you

                            numerous

                                not seen

                                     the mind

                                      season to season

DILEMMAS BY THEIR HORNS

Enough and few enough words from how many: To be democratic enough (involved and concerned with others, and yourself too,   i.e.) none might speak more than two fractions of a syllable? There’s enough language around (me)    so listening gets harder and harder and then impossible, quite a barrier to being adequate. Yet it flows on like a river of nice clean air. Does it? Never mind pushing terrific questions over much — it’s OK to have them, a lot more than nothing to kick about. A warm bath is settling. Forces less and less to happen. Thanks for ears, eyes, touch and tongues, flights of pages. There’s considerable heard clearly on (National Public) Radio too….

Really mysterious days and nights,

"The earth may glide diaphanous to death;

But…

Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile

Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height

The imagination spans beyond despair,

Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer."

— Hart Crane

But Spring shall come and flowers will bloom and man must chatter of his doom.

— W.C. Williams

"…ruin for myself

     and all that I hold dear,… see

also

… the power

to free myself

    and speak of it…"

— W.C. Williams

A POEM & A COMMENTARY ON CREATION, DESTRUCTION, PRESERVATION, ETC.

The closed system

    Of earth

         Of the Ark

                      Love

    Mercy

             shut him up carefully

    in it    like involved self the

       wandering spot with

           the man    family    beasts

                         the needs        after predictions of

                                                         your own acts

                            rise up    go forth

                on the water beyond

                       the walls that

                           can be made

                   creation

                        and the floods

                 the more there is the more

                          begins

                                         a kind of chain

                                              firecrackers or

                                                    burning woods

                               having defined a thing

                                   and called it Evil

                                             in all proportion

                                                  the outsized Man

I first saw a chumesh Oct 1970 at a Bar

         M. where the kid’s sedrah was where Noah boards the Ark —

Pentateuch and Haftorahs (Soncino), annotated by

the editor, J D Hertz; from notes I learned Elohim (very mighty, capable) orders Noah to get in the ship and YHVH (being, concern) shuts him up carefully and lovingly inside. Purpose,

I guess,                                                 involvement

goal — priority — setting, judgment, feedback, Grk Justice due proportion and balance

The Ancient Rabbis, says Hertz, had it Elohim and YHVH are inseparable (Shema… Echod?) (Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one — the two are one). And it figures, purpose and involvement, a lot of one without any or enough (there’s the rub) of the other is fanaticism, hang-up, or else getting flooded (unless, everything being serious and a game in inverse proportion, you can afford more or less to be indecisive and tentative, can afford negative capability amid one kind of abundance or another — only thing for me here, by the way, which by now seems a good thing, so far, day-to-day living my only forte). Anyway, purpose and involvement always, may be pretty much like creation/destruction/preservation (the Trimurti, Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva), beginning/ending/continuing. There’s morning baths in the Ganges and other rivers and tubs, Day By Day Make It New…

Has Enough Seemed Nobody With

A Pretty Strange Language       

       Or Just Accent Can Think Much

At All         

(She speaks brochen English

    —grandma E,* of a friend and

                       rival   )

V  o  i  c  e      i  n      m  i  n  d      ?

Sweet silent thought. Still, small voice (sotto voce — e.e. Cummings’ or maybe even Charles Olson’s never or hardly ever closed parentheticals?). Your own, maybe, or others’, another’s. Assessment, valuation, emphasis, stress—intonation, inflection—realization might be figured a good part of thinking, as is reasoning, deciding, ascertaining, noticing (perceiving)…. A change of word is (pretty often?) more or less a change of idea, it’s been said, it was years ago, or written; and thought is silent speech (at first or if/when the going gets tough, as in learning a new language, you read aloud, but silently when it’s easy enough, and a child learns communication, speech, and however soon after or possibly even simultaneously gets to thinking, to have interior monologues or conversations, maybe after picking up on feedback, taking in information, from speechless things — which to him or her appear to speak, or he or she tries to hear them, while in people the auditory imagination seems less than the visual, sight being man’s main sense, as smell is the dog’s, the visual cortex greater than any other brain sense terminal area — subsequent to ideas coming to him from others of mankind, caretakers, providers). But this can’t always be so, it doesn’t have to be, evidently — in other words, there may be quite a few exceptions, numerous ways of conveying or expressing fairly exactly absolutely at least almost the same idea or impression even without a foreign language, saying the same thing. Deaf people, or those bom deaf, must (?) think in signs or something else. Helen Keller (18801968), who was deaf and blind since infancy, learned to speak, read and write, her teacher tapping messages on her palm and whatever else. Chimpanzees that’ve been taught American Sign Language have extended its vocabulary or rather lexicon, composing words on their own, making them up, and other chimps, their offspring anyway, have learned it from them. A baby gorilla in the San Diego zoo a few years back after some hours of life had to be bottle-fed, its mother couldn’t get the hang of breast-feeding in the absence of others to learn from, to observe, it was said, she having enough options to be puzzled (perplexed) and passive. Whereas a sow or cow has only to stand or lie in one place and let her litter suck.

*     Celia Eigner from Galicia east of Czech.. {?}SE Poland/NW Ukraine, who at an advanced age tried to learn reading but couldn’t do it, just all the time reading off the letters, never the words.

What sensations through a dog’s or monkey’s or sheep’s or cat’s head if it thinks at all or just makes choices, in the time it does. Just sights, sounds, smells…? It thinks on its feet — instantaneously? Quick wits? About as fast-acting as a computer, in a way, maybe. I guess there’s no means of knowing what, how, an animal feels through its hide, fur. Well, we all (mammals, anyway) have adrenalin etc. or similar stuffs.

All or almost all writing is based on speech, you’d think, though a b c or & and 0 could have been devised and then named, rather than the other way around. Zero and the decimal system anyway. And the alphabet was derived from pictures, while these pictures called speech sounds to mind. Wm Carlos W..ms, theorizing that a poem is a machine made of words, didn’t often (?) get very far from everyday speech, normative grammar