Technologies/Installations

By Kim Maltman

This extraordinary sequence of prose and free verse poems explores the postures, styles, and rhetorics of our culture and its history -- not with the predictable aim of criticism and rejection, or the fashionable aim of recombinant word-play, but in the service of an unflinching, and thereby real, passion. This is humane vision of great breadth, depth, and particularity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Sep 15, 1990
• ISBN: 9781771312585

Kim Maltman

KIM MALTMAN is a poet, theoretical particle physicist, and occasional translator who has published five books of solo poetry, over two hundred papers in the scientific literature, and three books of collaborative poetry, most recently Box Kite, published in 2016. In addition to recent solo work which has appeared under a variety of heteronyms, he is involved, in collaboration with Roo Borson, in ongoing translations of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai and Song Dynasty poet Su Shi. Past honours include the CBC Literary Prize, and, with collaborators Roo Borson and Andy Patton, the Malahat Poetry Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and two National Magazine Award finalist appearances. Perhaps his most unusual literary credit is having served as consulting dog poetry editor for André Alexis’s novel Fifteen Dogs. He lives in Toronto with poet and collaborator Roo Borson. Baziju are currently at work on a new manuscript project called Short Moral Tales.

Book preview

Technologies / Installations

KIM MALTMAN

TECHNOLOGIES / INSTALLATIONS

BRICK BOOKS

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Maltman, Kim, 1950-

Technologies / installations

Poems.

ISBN 0-919626-46-7

I. Title.

PS8576.A57T4 1990     C811'.54     C90-094545-1

PR9199.3.M35T4 1990

Brick Books gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

© Kim Maltman, 1990

Brick Books

www.brickbooks.ca

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

for Roo

CONTENTS

The Technology of Sorrow

The Technology of Inertia

The Technology of the Narcissus

Installation #4

The Technology of the Persistence of Memory

The Technology of the Moon and the Eugenia

Installation #7

The Technology of the Sadness of the Quantum Physicist

The Technology of How the Moon is Made Faceless

The Technology of the Hostility of Objects

The Technology of Compassion and Complacency

Installation #12

The Technology of Terror

The Technology of Objects

The Technology of Nausea, and Ecstasy, Which,

Having Flared a Moment, Remain Like a Blue Flame

Around the Body

The Technology of the Metal at the Heart of Sorrow

Installation #17

The Technology of History, Tangled as it is By the Desire for Greatness

Installation #19 (Disquiet and Distance)

The Technology of Sound (30 Below)

Installation #21

The Technology of the Yellow Butterflies

The Technology of Arrogance Which Enters the Mind Unasked

and Poisons It With Visions of Paradise

The Technology of Happiness

Installation #27 (Solitude, with bees)

The Technology of Metal, Turning

Installation #33

The Technology of Doubt Such As Grows Unwanted From the Furrows of the Brain

Installation #36

The Technology of Industry

Installation #42 (Stella in Red)

The Technology of Introspection

The Technology of Miracles

Installation #47 (Sudden Pain)

Installation #49

The Technology of the Woman in the Dunes

Installation #51 (The Rio Grande)

Installation #52

The Technology of the Existence of Memory

The Technology of the Secret Technology of Armaments

The Technology of ‘Romance’

The Technology of the Day of the Dead

Installation #54

The Technology of Salvation

The Technology of Sheep

The Technology of Affection

Installation #61 (Minor Irritation)

The Technology of Alchemy

Installation #63

Installation #66 (Eschatological Bravado)

Installation #67

The Technology of God

The Technology of Mortality

The Technology of Cruelty

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. Francis Bacon

The best music always results from ecstasies of logic. Alban Berg

The singed shores, the bears who talk. The VAX Primer

… But obviously nobody takes an idea like this seriously, even though of course such ideas, which are not taken seriously, are actually the only serious ideas and always will be. It is in order to survive, it seems to me, that we have such serious ideas which are not taken seriously.…Thomas Bernhard

THE TECHNOLOGY OF SORROW

When the back is tired of the weight

and of the carrying

it makes a joke of it

It takes off the head

and lays it on a grassy slope

Then the arms

which are not tired

join in

Their joke is a joke of

looking elsewhere

dissolving into the air and the

body at once

But how unstintingly the back

bears its burdens

Gently reaching down

it replaces the head

And the arms too

sky-blue at the veins

Only the head does not forgive the little joke

It is in a sour mood

It wants to control the body

to fill it up with sorrow

This is why the body stands so still now

under the weight

The body will not run on sorrow

It will not bear it

THE TECHNOLOGY OF INERTIA

The image of Klaus Barbie comes to a wall

and sees before it

not so much a wall

as the absence of a door,

a momentary obstacle.

With a jackhammer he sets to work and soon

a hole is knocked in the offending wall

just large enough for a man to pass through.

Only there before him

is another wall,

like the first.

Again he begins with the jackhammer.

Again a wall.

Let this continue.

However often he may knock a hole

let us place before him yet another wall.

Let us grant ourselves that power.

Not that it could have been,

or ever will be, so,

but let us imagine it anyway, until,

disgusted, he turns from the wall

and walks back through the open door.

What we are hoping for, perhaps,

is the sound of gunfire,

the silence of the garrotte,

that it should reach far back in time,

but still, this is only

vicious and wishful thinking, and of course

it is 1984 and Barbie is alive.

No, we are thinking

of another sort of door entirely.

A man and woman

– and where once much pleasure

passed between them now is none.

Only the fear of losing some

desired but unknown

comfort

binding them across the table.

Facing the woman,

with whom once he

gave and shared contentment –

turned now –

as if something laughed at behind