you-will-go-to-the-mall-----------to-the-home------

I wanted to write about the tough, wiry but straight stems of Herb Bennet, aka Wood Avens, aka Geum urbanum, a garden weed that's quite difficult to get rid of unless you're some sort of Bayer-head. Best to appreciate the pale green leaves, pretty yellow flowers and the spiked heads of seeds poking out from among other plants, and to put up with working on them every summer. It's a master of disguise and very good at being lost among other plants, only the hooked seedhead revealing its presence. With the ground being so dry,  it's sometimes possible to twist or rip out the whole root, but that's unusual. In normal conditions the stem just snaps, so we are talking about containment at best. The root is a magenta-flushed knobble, a bit like a miniature Pink Fir Apple potato.  I was thirsty but glad to be out in nature. Feeling below the canopy, my fingers easily distinguished the tough stems of Herb Bennet from e.g. geranium, loosestrife, bedstraw and marjoram.  From other gardens came the sound of shrieks and splashes from paddling pools. I laboured on, at the back of the bed beneath the bullace, getting ripped in my turn by slender bramble stems. Herb Bennet, on the other hand doesn't fight back. I've been immersed in it for hours and never even got a rash.


But and however, this post is about Johan Jönson.




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------------electricity-------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------re-actor-----------------------------


------------silicon-circuit---------------------------------------------


-------------------------------------------------------inter-zone-face-




















[next page]








-------------the-home------------------you-will-go-to-Paris-------










I wake up.  The walls and windows are exposed to background
radiation. From a merciless and self-consuming sun. I know where
I am. in an artaud state. A müller bunker. A fanon field. I have just
woken up. May-




[next page]


be with memories from a memory collage of abstract bodies.
Of temporary vectors.  Of movement.  Of rest.  Of duration.
I lie down. I lie on my back. I find myself in a larger movement. It
is an uninterrupted movement








---Paris------you-will-go-to-the-worldfactory----------------------










away.  A pattern on the beach.  I move through colonized
territories. In segmented zones. In naming map-drawings.
It is an immense larger movement. It is a soft metabolic
transformation machine. It is an uninter-










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ruptibility. It is a force that wants to bring friction to an absolute
zero. That wants immobility. That reveals a desire to die. I move
continually in also this form of death. I myself participate in the
annihilation and recon








-worldfactory---you-will-go-to-the-mall------to-the-home------










struction.  Nobody is innocent.  Striated snake-spirals in the
desert are more complex than the mole's underground system.
I have to get away. I have to get away from the immobility of
writing. Away. Away. Constant uninter-














[from Collobert Orbital (2006). Translation by Johannes Göransson, Displaced Press, 2009.]










*


Antonin Artaud, French dramatist.
Heiner Müller, German dramatist.
Frantz Fanon, Martinican philosopher and revolutionary.


The names are not unconnected. For example, Müller's Die Hamletmaschine and Artaud-fragment quotes from Sartre's preface to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth: "under the sun of torture".




Danielle Collobert, French author, took her own life in 1978. The poem is loosely based on her journals.  "An experimental writer, Collobert wrote prose poems in a haunting, pessimistic, tense and stark style. Her work showed an obsession with death as the destination of humankind, the ambiguity of gender, travel and madness" (Wikipedia). Like Fanon, she was involved with the FLN (Algerian National Liberation Front).




*






March

     Such a strange night -- on the Quai des Fleurs -- I've been living here for a
few days -- very nice apartment -- They're sleeping -- the table faces the
window where I write -- the Seine -- the lights -- water -- calm came back --
like glancing crystal in the water -- rising and falling -- as real as my hand
-- my face in the pane -- the Seine's reflections disrupting the lamplight's
opacity -- like crossing dream with reality -- and then a car passes -- from
light to opacity -- disappearance --
     tranquility -- very rare peacefulness - after days of emptiness -- empty
enough to put off getting up -- because of the emptiness itself -- and after
-- completely futile efforts to fill in --
     why despite appearances I go to such lengths to achieve this feeling
emptiness -- of discomfort -- as though every gesture --every movement were
bringing me nearer to death --
     the sensation of emptiness disappeared in that orgasmic moment --

---

     I have possibly never been so far into that solitude as these last months --
it still might not be enough -- there is a vague form of stability left here
-- of security -- some doubt about what I can stand --
     more wandering -- add leaving the country -- breaking all bonds -- or
whatever -- being broke in a country I don't know -- maybe --
     probably an illusion -- equating being alone in a room for days -- and going
off somewhere --


April

     Departure -- tomorrow -- real escape -- I'm going to Tunisia -- calm --

---

     Tunis 1
     here with no break -- already the same life -- I go to cafés -- I make love
-- I go to films -- I talk to people -- no distance -- I've already been here
since forever --
     but still it's the East -- the light -- the colors -- the beauty -- at least
this: I have new eyes -- senses beginning to function again as though after a
long illness -- this morning very early -- in the village -- scarcely daybreak
-- through the grillwork on the window -- some noises in the covered streets
-- after making love all night -- body heavy and hot -- impression of
tiredness -- of well-being -- H. motionless -- head on my belly -- almost cool
-- a smell I couldn't place -- almonds and oranges -- old food -- and then
suddenly in the silence -- a very long sound -- very low -- the slow
modulation of the muezzin -- extraordinary beauty --
    now here -- in the café -- seated on matting -- they're playing cards --the
patron sitting on a chair by the stove closes his eyes -- head thrown back a
little -- he is tall and lean -- looks high as a kite -- they aren't paying
any attention to me -- I'm fine here -- it's raining out -- sound of rain on
the steps --








[Extracts from Danielle Collobert´s Journal for 1960, trans. Norma Cole, found here: https://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/archive/online_archive/v1_1_1999/ncdanielle.html]




*


Looking for a link with some good information about Johan Jönson, I came across this excellent post by Johannes Göransson:


http://montevidayo.com/2013/08/swallowed-repulsion-johan-jonsons-soiled-conceptualism/#more-3890


Reading further, I discovered my own name and that I had even asked a question in the comments stream: why might you consider Jönson a conceptualist poet?  I'd completely forgotten about this. So after a five-year gap,  I finally saw Johannes' very informative response.

Dryas octopetala and Geum urbanum from C. A. M. Lindman's Nordens Flora

[From C.A.M. Lindman's Nordens Flora. The Swedish name "Nejlikrot" arises, apparently, from the root having a slight scent of cloves ("Kryddnejlika"). I must try this on the next of my (rare) smelling days. The original meaning of "Nejlika" is the Pinks, i.e. various wild flowers in  the Dianthus family, some of whom (notably the Clove Pink or Carnation, from the Mediterranean) are quite strongly clove-scented. Lindman's fine illustrations, from 1901-1905, are widely available online, e.g. http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/lindman/]

The Dovre Slate Mill

[Post now republished on Intercapillary Space.]

Dovrefjell, with Musk-Ox

[Image source: https://www.nasjonalparkriket.no/]






In Dovre Slate Mill

Maneuver the body across deep traps, across water-clogged holes and open wells. across the animal's wet fur with terror in my neck-frenzy. Sharp branches strike and lash blood-needles against my finger-skin my face of blue enamel against naked nettle fibers. On the other side of the smeltery at the edge of the murky lake there I see Zachris move too close to the shaft. I move closer to the head even though chains clang dull metal against the febrile radula. Here runs a clear underground border a fistulation toward Mare Imbrium. I thrust the muscle latch toward the machines that throb there in the wound. What evil can happen to you what evil can happen to you here near heavy waters. In the smithy the Daude choir's tortured tracks shrieking against sharp spits. Chitinstaffs, porphyry, cold coal crystals. And my stiff hands cupped, and my stiff hands cupped around the surface of your black cranium.

I Dovre skifferkvarn

Manövrerar kroppen över djupa fällor, över vattenfyllda hål och öppna brunnor, över djurets blöta päls med skräck i ryggens hets. Vassa grenar slår och snärtar blodbarr mot min fingerhud mitt ansikte av blå enamel mot nakna nässelfibrer. På andra sidan smältverket vid randen av den dunkla sjö där ser jak Zachris komma schaktet allför nära. Jag rör mig närmare mot huvudet trots kedjor klanger matt metall mot den febrila radulan. Här går en tydlig underjordisk gräns enfistelgång mot Mare Imbrium. Jag stöter muskelfästet mot maskinerna som bultar där i såret. Vad ont kan hända dig vad ont kan hända dis här nära tunga vatten. I smedjan Daudekörens pina skenor skriande mot skarpa spett. Kitinstavar, porfyrer, kalla kolkristaller. Och min stela händer kupade, och mina stela händer kupade kring ytan av ditt svarta kranium.

Aase Berg, from Mörk materia (=Dark matter) (Bonniers,1999), with English translation by Johannes Göransson (from Remainland: Selected Poems of Aase Berg, Action Books, 2005).

This was Aase Berg's post-apocalyptic second collection of poems (in Sweden, the book is often regarded as in dialogue with Harry Martinson's 1956 sci-fi poem Aniara). Born in 1967, Berg is one of Sweden's best-known younger poets. She has now published seven collections, she also writes for Expressen.

One of the ideas I took from reading around this poetry is about a two-fold conception of nature: one side facing towards us, acculturated and interpreted through culture; and the other side facing away, the "dark matter" that exists in crushing solidity but beyond identification and beyond the possibility of acculturation. But it seems important to add that in Berg's poetry nature is not separate from the body. She is not a landscape poet; everything is within.

Dovre

Name of a village, region and mountain massif in central Norway. (I think Berg has Norwegian ancestry, though I could be mistaken.) The famous Grieg tune known in English as "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is really called "I Dovregubbens hall".

The meaning of the source-word dofr is disputed but the best guess is that it relates to a deep cleft or gorge.  In this poem, it's apparent that the journey is into the earth.

skifferkvarn ("slate mill")

In Swedish the line between standard vocabulary and coinage is fuzzy: the agglutinative nature of the language naturally tends to produce coinages and re-coinages, and Berg's poetry makes heavy use of this. This particular word had been used (rarely) before, for example in a history of artificial fertilizers to describe a gypsum-crushing machine. In this case the important thing is perhaps the crushing of form and identity (the distinct thin layers of slates; books, screens, images; the picturable, the nameable).

Mare Imbrium

The largest crater on the moon (it's the Man in the Moon's right eye); resulting from a catastrophic planetary collision 3.8 billion years ago. The collision was so traumatic that its effects can also be seen at the diametrically opposite point, on the moon's dark side. Berg's poem is strongly aware of geological time-spans. Other poems in the sequence refer to Lemuria (hypothetical ancient continent) and Purgatorius (the original primate genus).

Daudekören ("Daude choir")

Daude is a Norwegian variant, especially in compound words, to the standard word død ("death").


Brief biography of Aase Berg:
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/27827/Aase-Berg

Three other poems from Mörk materia, with English translation:
http://www.actionyes.org/issue1/berg/berg-printfriendly.htm

A selection of other poems (Swedish only) from the period of Berg's involvement with the Stockholm Surrealist Group, including six from Mörk materia .
http://www.surrealistgruppen.org/poeterna.pdf

"Sälformen släpar skinnet -- om naturen i Aase Bergs tidiga diktning"
Interesting dissertation (in Swedish) by Johan Attfors about nature in Berg's two earliest collections,  Hos rådjur (=With Deer) and Mörk materia  :
http://www.diva-portal.se/smash/get/diva2:782085/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Johannes Göransson's excellent essay "'Antibody': Aase Berg's Grotesque Poetry and the Swedish Welfare State", in Transnationalism and Resistance: Experience and Experiment in Women's Writing ed. Adele Parker and Stephenie Young, can (mostly) be read here:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IUQjAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=dovre+berg+sjolin&source=bl&ots=UhU7ZxWklX&sig=cgURTaU5TOj4SpVCMWHTNlxkpE4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwvrOdvqXQAhUkDcAKHeS4DfAQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=dovre%20berg%20sjolin&f=false

Aase Berg

[Image source: http://www.expressen.se/kultur/bocker/aase-berg--uggla/]

playground

Blogs are dead, everyone's moving on! This vigorous meme continues to circulate in literary circles, Chris Goode (on closing down Thomson's) noting with something like surprise that Dennis Cooper's DCs is still so vigorous. (Great and alarming blog, but not necessarily one to browse in the workplace, as I found out to my cost yesterday.) And today Todd Swift is taking a break from his long-running Eyewear, using very similar rhetoric about there being more elegant and quicker ways to reach people. (Chris and Todd might not agree about a lot else, I'm thinking.) Perhaps I'd better wait. Todd tends to shoot from the hip, and many's the time that I've spotted the first few lines of one of his tastier posts on "Blogs I Follow", only to find that by the time I get there the post has already been pulled.

Mark Scroggins, it must be a couple of years ago now, also lauded the potential of Facebook and Twitter - but Mark still maintains his blog, and even writes good things on it, though never enough. But I just don't think Facebook has the potential that's claimed for it. (I subscribe to the now equally vigorous meme "What a waste of time and evergy is Facebook, I'm moving on".) I think it's quite good for vaguely staying in touch with the more shadowy outer circles of your acquaintance, and that's it.

But surely blogs themseves move pretty fast? Last autumn's targeted attack on Todd and Eyewear by the Barque crew Sean B, Frances K et al was so Swiftly tidied up that most people missed it, even if they were watching. Like a tussle in a disco, its 10 blurry seconds revealed a lot more about all the participants than anything that clear-minded literary historians compose.

It would be better to celebrate the democratization of literature, The Blog's gifting of an expressive outlet to such a various and surprising crowd of lay people - admittedly, not a representative bunch in global terms - but a large number of people, nevertheless, who might otherwise never have found writerly expression in any form. If many of the resultant blogs are quite generic, though in ways that might not have been predicted - e.g. the workplace blog - yet The Blog is also a container that can be used in many ways, most of them not discovered yet.

I am resisting the impulse to yet again list my favourite blogs. Most of them are in the list of links to your right, but it does need a spring clean.

*

The collaborative blog Montevidayo definitely needs to be on there, and it might be another demonstration of The Blog's developing vigour. Johannes Göransson is one of the people I listen to most attentively, and the way he's writing on recent posts about the Plague Ground (Playground) - e.g. this one, tracing implications of Joyelle McSweeney's original idea :

Welcome to the plague ground: There is still "too much" American poetry

- is typically beautiful with the beauty of clarity and pragmatic as a toolbox. Along certain lines the Montevidayo way converges with my own relativistic views of literature and artefacts generally. I'm not really talking about the detail, I mean the submersion in processes of decay and rebirth; artefacture as waste.

It so happens I'm reading Göransson's translation of Johan Jönson's Collobert Orbital at the moment. A fantastic book I will certainly write about some time.

*

CAMBRIDGE-POETRY-RELATED DREAM (dreamed last night).

I am reading the editor's preamble to a poetry magazine associated with the Cambridge School. The Editor tells us that this time he has, for pressing reasons that I forget, included a number of poems by both men AND women. He is well aware that, contrary to his usual practice, this flouts the principle of "NIcarnation" (in the dream I specifically noticed that this was an anagram of INcarnation). He then rather helpfully explains that NIcarnation means, of course, the separation of the sexes in poetry. His magazine usually prints either poems that are all by women or poems that are all by men. The heart of NIcarnational practice, as cultivated e.g. by Simon "Dionysus Crucified" Jarvis, is that a poem written by a male author should never refer in any way whatever to women, likewise a poem written by a woman should never refer in any way to men.

I'll resist interpreting this dream, at any rate publically, but I ought to say that as of today I haven't ever read anything by Simon Jarvis. (Maybe I will now, if only because I'm curious to find out whether his work does in any respect aspire to NIcarnation.)

*

"I made a suggestion once, but I didn't get any response, so I re-submitted it. Then I did get a response. It said, Shut up, we heard you the first time."

"Oh, that was the old suggestion scheme."

"The old suggestion scheme??"

"Yes, there was a suggestion scheme in Bob's time, but it got chocker with ideas so they killed it off."

*

AUTOMAGIC - Expression used by the UNIX community to explain things that happen on a computer that are clearly the result of some piece of automated stuff but no-one can remember exactly what it was.

*

YOUNG LENNIE'S KNOWLEDGE OF MALE SINGER-SONGWRITERS.

(L Sings a line or two of "The One I Love.")

L: "I expect that's part of your set-list, isn't it Mike?"

M: "To be honest I'm SO old that I really think of REM as newcomers. I was never that into them. Because I'd been around for Neil Young and The Band, that was 15 years earlier, I thought I'd heard it all before."

L: "Neil Young. Yes, don't tell me, he went to sixth-form college in Ipswich."

M: "Toronto."

L: "I'm sure it was Ipswich."

M: "We're talking about two different Neil Youngs. I'm talking about the internationally famous one, and you're talking about your mate down the pub."

L: "I do get mixed up. Was he the one who sang Rhinestone Cowboy?"

M: "No... - who was that ... can't remember"

Terry: "Glen Campbell."

L: "Well, I'm sure he wore rhinestones. Oh yeah, (illumination) I'm thinking of Neil DIAMOND."

M: (Illumination) "Hot August Night! Yes, he was a bit like Glen Campbell."

L: "Maybe it was PAUL Young."

M: "who -"

L: "- who went to Sixth-Form college in Ipswich."

M: "Wherever I lay my hat."

L: "That's it."

M: (hoping to sow more confusion) "And then there's Paul Simon."

L: "My God yes. But I do know that one. He's the one with the recording studio in Box."

Terry: "..No, that's Peter Gabriel! Remember he did "Solsbury Hill", that's a hill just outside of Bath."

M: "The one they ran the by-pass down after it was a hit."

M: (later, reluctant to miss an opportunity) "Talking of towns that end in -wich, did you know that it means a Roman salt extraction site..?"

Gunnar Björling

Is not dada necessary for lightweightless eyes?

DADA:


          I slay dust beneath my foot,
          I am the voice shaken out into space,
          I am the sieve that let through
          and built the hall of pillars.



   Your lip gives off its colour and the tongues twist, you change your head, you meet the gaze of your fate on the streetcorner or right in front of your very nose's cut-out.

(from Kiri-ra! 1930 trans David MacDuff)

Jag skriver inte litteratur, jag söker mitt ansikte och fingrarna

(I'm not writing literature, I'm looking for my face and my fingers)

(Gunnar Björling 1887-1960)



[Posted in honour of International Dadaism Month. I wanted to quote some of Björling's poetry in Swedish but I couldn't find even one snippet of it on the Internet. However, my search felt worthwhile when it led me to Johannes Göransson's Släpkoppel.]