UNCOMMENT

[I haven't been at my work desk all weekend, and haven't had anything obviously significant to post, and yet in an effort to maintain a line of communication... a poem I've been working on that might be of interest to those of you who have ever curated a reading series. I actually had a great time introducing Bruce Andrews and Drew Milne this weekend, but this piece -- which was started more than a year ago -- seems to have found some new relevance now that I'm back in the driver seat again.]

UNCOMMENT

Apollinaire,
argue with,
art binary breakdown
— but enough to derail,
— but I’m in a rush.

Chance,
come into play,
comes out of his/her mouth,
concentration on the words on the table.

Consider my very private
constant movement,
Debord —
I am the system,
I can’t say
I am not,
if only slightly.

I walk into a room.
I would do it in improvised locations.
I’ll spare the examples.
I’ve wanted to create a paragraph
walking a lobster,
walking into a room.
It’s not that I’m uncomfortable
meeting people
perhaps at odd moments of the month and week,
perhaps on purpose.

Nuances
of the bureaucratic —
of written text into the real-time
"on schedule,"
one among many.
— Perhaps "dictator" is better?
— Perhaps, a series of paragraphs?

The bodily/abstract (
The public/private (
The troubles,
The written stuff
— there is a page of wasted prose.
There is no exact.

Well,
what else happens at a reading?
When the time seems right (

You become the “boy,” and those who have nurtured private opinions of your essential servility suddenly come forth with demands —
through thick or thin,
to be gazed at as a single artwork —
not to mention potentially transform thinking in fashions that writing itself could not alone do —
they are just demands —
they are mostly petty,
(think of Bourdieu)
which is to say that the most loyal curators will never be taken too seriously as poets.

A “gentleman,” but really a slave) —
a certain looseness,
as did the behavior of Rimbaud,
as he/she does,
a poet’s actions in public (
a series hanging in space at the same time.

Can one say “being” of the work that you have produced,
— determined warrior-poet who has attempted to inflict on me the natural aspect of the superiority of his views but who has not
become part of the record? —
becomes animated for me?
And when they have just produced some tremendous work that I am sure will change everything,
even organizing —
even the use of proper names —
ever so slightly —
for instance,
for the possible in what,
for what —
for whom decisions have a sort of finality —
I somehow think this is all meaningful.

I think it is discussing this particular strand of my behavior
— I try to shave at least in the week prior to the reading —
— I have just completed a two-month run as the “curator” —
— even approached mastery of the social rules such that such a challenge could even be humored past the first move,
in fact.

And if it weren’t so much work —
and only with poets I am most excited about,
and quite alone
— and so, for that reason I will “curate” only infrequently.

Promises:
quasi-elitist self-training as a poet
— setting the parameters,
since it is then,
so much more revealing in my writing,
syntax even —
talker —
that a particular aspect of poetry
that begin with this sentence
that is lacking in the creation of a “schedule”
— not to mention my own social distractions
of cultural capital,
will be my expression of revolutionary will,
writer,
yes.

All of the vicissitudes (
and I promised to myself that spontaneity,
accidentally or purposely ignore,
actually enjoy the microphone,
(inchoate as it seems)
including reviewer —
interpretation —
issues of mutual respect —
— it is the French who have most theorized how the agent in the field
invariably makes an impression on Nerval’s works (
Playing in a super-literary fashion invariably changes not only what has been written

but the trap of filling a role —
—

But then I am reminded that this form of politics smacks.
But what is to be written?
by chance (
etc.

These run up against these more fluid inclinations of mine,
(this is a key word here)
this visibility is good —
though I have sought to master it by pulling some of the strings —
— that you take orders,
— that you are perfectly polite (
the “iron hot,” if that doesn’t sound ridiculous.

And I would have thought I’d have gone out of my way to avoid the “public” as much as possible,
and though I have no terribly urgent thoughts on the matter,
how many idiotic challenges have I faced from a headstrong
I am not just in the system.
I am political just when I said that being political is the natural next step past being an aesthete.
?
In which I can most suitably begin a sentence:
— Three-dimensional world are often thwarted by a haughty attitude toward the rules themselves...

To read in private —
whom I might chance to meet?

— more so now than in the headier days of life/
— that which one is intended.

That you behave in fashions that suit your role?
These opportunities for continuing the discourse,
(why can’t I spell that? —
agreed-upon term for this role in the poetry community,
— but it doesn’t have the prestige of that figure in the visual arts.
— But it somehow becomes a determinant in the reception.

Posted by Brian Stefans at October 6, 2002 11:43 PM