W I T Z A Journal of Contemporary Poetics Volume II, Number two SPRING 1993 NOTE: THIS ISSUE FEATURED AN EXTENDED CONVERSATION BETWEEN DAVID BROMIGE AND ROBERT GRENIER, AS TRANSCRIBED BY ROBERT GRENIER. THIS TRANSCRIPTION CANNOT BE REPRODUCED IN ASCII CHARACTERS. I HOPE TO REPRODUCE THIS TRANSCRIPT IN HTML AT A WEB SITE, BUT, FOR NOW, ANYONE INTERESTED IN OBTAINING A COPY SHOULD WRITE TO ME. COPIES OF THIS ISSUE OF WITZ ARE STILL IN PRINT. USE THE ADDRESS AT THE END OF THIS DOCUMENT. -- EDITOR ------------------------------------------------------------------ READINGS & REVIEWS _when new time folds up_ by Kathleen Fraser, Chax Press, 1993, $11 (paper). Reviewed by Susan Smith Nash A sense of mystery and discovery underscores the text of when new time folds up. Kathleen Fraser's lyric poems are interspersed with letters, quotations, fragments of explanation, and the effect of reading the work evokes the feeling of participating in an archeological dig. As in an excavation, what is probematized is the constructions of history. How does one go about reassembling the fragments uncovered in the excavation? The task requires one to decide how to compartmentalize and separate the areas of knowledge. Possibly the most tempting method of organization is to correlate chronology with strata - the youngest are near the surface, the oldest are at the bottom. The result of this organization scheme is a privileging of the hidden - the deepest, most hidden layers - and a devaluation of the surface. In _when new time folds up_, Fraser suggests that such an organization scheme is limiting because it confines the finds to the layers in which they were discovered, and it reduces everything to simple, discrete, and ultimately separate groups. In Fraser's view, the exciting part of an archeological investigation is realizing that the layers are not completely separable. The layers containing the archeological discoveries - the relics of pottery, ceremonial pieces, funerary material, as well as the fragments of written language - cannot be considered in isolation. The materials pervade the other layers - perhaps by mechanical means (recycling, mixing), perhaps by the use, the adoption of the materials by later cultures. The persistence of influence is not an easily mappable quantity; ancient Etruscan pieces may be mixed with scraps of letters from a later age. Furthermore, the influence may migrate - fragments of Etruscan culture may be found far away. Fraser suggests that the fragmentary, scattered, and irreducible quality of an archeological investigation may be the source of a deeper understanding about the nature of our understanding of time. Time is not a simple line, neither do cultural developments proceed in a simple-to-complex fashion. Instead, Fraser questions the notion of evolution. In fact, she suggests that the Etruscans possessed a spiritual life and a set of beliefs that may be virtually ungraspable by a mind trained to trust only empirical evidence. _When new time folds up_ is divided into three sections. The first, "Etruscan Pages," confines itself primarily to the experience of uncovering Etruscan antiquities. Of the three sections, it is the most specifically archeological, and in it, Fraser concerns herself with questions of representation and signification. How does one assign meaning to a shape, or a series of inscriptions in a writing without a Rosetta stone, or a key to interpretation? In a letter describing her thoughts and dreams upon living near the cliff tombs a Norchia, Fraser recounts what a classical archeologist told her about the Etruscan language: " We still have no idea,...beyond family names and lineage or sometimes an inscription to a particular god or goddess ... one doesn't have much to go on, with tombs as your main reference" (28). And yet, there is something decipherable in the Etruscan texts, and in the fact that Etruscan foundations underlie the "severe parabola" of Roman arches. What is decipherable is history - it is not, perhaps, the clearly organized chronology of invasions and sackings. Instead, it is the awareness that human history is the history of the body - the stuff of textbook history has little or nothing to do with how history affects our own living bodies. We are touched by the fragmentary relics of the past: "Tight fist that held you,/you entirely separate - // what is mortal / in this body" (48). The second section, "Giotto: Arena" incorporates a more medieval aesthetic than the one operative in "Etruscan Pages." Fraser opens with a passage from Dante's Inferno, which foregrounds the tension between narrative and symbol. In this passage, the reader is cured that this is a polysemous text - that is, it contains a multiplicity of potential interpretations and meanings. By referring to Dante, Fraser alerts the reader that part of her project involves questioning the manner in which allegory functions. The Convivio, Dante explored how one can learn to read transformationally. The strategies for reading that Dante developed were not new - they had been in place since at least the time of St. Augustine, whose City of God and De Doctrina Christiana spell out the nature of signs, and how one might interpret signs and symbols in order to connect the text to ethical, theological, and moral significations. The purpose of the allegory is essentially directional - it allows one to ascend from the fallen, corrupt earth to the realm of perfection, the realm of the spheres. This is a Platonic conception even more fully developed by Neo-Platonic thinkers. Fraser seems to be simultaneously employing and questioning the Neo-Platonic tradition in this section, which is set in the Vatican, a place where one might expect to find confirmation of two things: first, a Neo-Platonic idea of how one might gain an understanding of the realm of perfection, and second, an orderly, Dantesque, medieval cosmology where one's relation to the divine (and to the profane) is always clearly mapped. Such orderly notions of the world are questioned by Fraser in this section, and even more so in the third and final section, "when new time folds up." In her final section, Fraser depicts a chaotic, yet possibility-filled world. The period of time which is under investigation is the present, and it is a vigorous one, containing the "high whine of electric saw on false marble" and an "old Smith-Corona crumpled in a heap." Although the book's organization- progressing from the Etruscan to the modern cities of Rome and Berlin - suggests a linear, chronological organization of time and history, there are indications that the past intrudes into the present, that "a city's constant / and hidden remove" lies "beneath construction." The difficulties for the poet are in how to represent the complexities of time, and to create a discourse that shows how time does not merely repeat, but seems to fold in upon itself. Fraser's techniques suggest that one must, to a certain degree, recreate the form and appearance of an excavation. Further, _when new time folds up_ asks the reader to consider that collage, fragmentation, inverted syntax are the most effective when combined with letters, overheard conversations, scraps of journal entries, which interject a hint of autobiography and the presence of living, breathing bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------------ _A Hundred Flowers_ by Janet Gray, Thumbscrew Press, $11.95 (paper) Reviewed by Susan Smith Nash _A Hundred Flowers_ explores the body's transformations, and how language may posit the capacity for change, even when the alterations are slight, and they occur, not in a world of constructivist text, but in one where poetic language possesses a more concrete anchor in the tangible world of fervent bodies and fragile lives. There are surreal relations to self and to others, and these relations reinforce the body's tranformative capacity. In "XXVI," as in the other individual flowers, or poems, Janet Gray utilizes poetic form to suggest various states of being, and she conterposes unity with isolation. "XXVI" consists of seven stanzas: six couplets, followed by a single line. The lines are brief, and yet, in the first stanza, a condition of broken unity and of rupture is introduced: The bride is sleeping rolled up in a blanket. The groom notably absent To reinforce the impression that the condition of the married couple is flowed, and that this condition contains implications about how it is that we view unity, and that the loss of unity reflects our notions about the state of language, Gray creates a spare, Imagistic collage of objects, which include "wings, beaks, antennae, pseudopods." The effect is essentially lyrical. In the one hundred poems, there is almost a refusal to engage in an extended narrative, or to appeal to archetype, myth, or other language patterns which carry with them long chains of allusions and associations. This is, as Marjorie Perloff points out, an Objectivist strategy, which Gray employs with dexterity - an almost easy virtuosity. The technique could begin to seem somewhat facile, particularly when faced with one hundred such poems. However, Gray avoids that pitfall by concerning herself with issues of gender inequities, and the tendency of the female body to be broken, violated, and "the skin of the breast / turned to salt" (98). What happens to the female body in _A Hundred Flowers_ reminds one of what Simone de Beauvoir suggests in _The Second Sex_. De Beauvoir proposes that in a culture hostile to the work of women artists, whose work is perceived to be ideologically threatening and destabilizing to a locus of power, the women who dare to be artists will feel enormous, destructive forces which will seek to damage the will as well as the artist's own body. In _A Hundred Flowers_, Gray stretches the limits of flesh and body in "a late mutation of the mind" (17). The condition of the body replicates the condition of language in this work: there is "a chasm through her" (64). Implicit in the form of the work is the desire to create a poetic language which reaches across language's rifts. By making frequent use of the language of rupture, erosion, and violence, Gray emphasizes that the task of unifying the poetic body with the mind's mutations is a difficult one. Her work also suggests that despite the advances of feminism, our culture still makes it dangerous and painful for a woman to produce art or poetry. --------------------------------------------------------------- END OF WITZ 2.2 --------------------------------------------------------------- W I T Z WITZ is a journal of critical writing edited by Christopher Reiner (creiner@crl.com). It is published three times a year. The contents of this issue are copyright (c) 1993 by WITZ. Copyright reverts to authors after publication. Reproduction of this magazine for NONPROFIT purposes is permitted, so long as this notice appears on each copy. To reprint or distribute individual articles, please contact the authors through WITZ at the address below. To submit an essay or review for publication, please inquire first. Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for reply. Inquiries may also be e-mailed. Submissions sent without a previous letter of inquiry will be returned. 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