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Post by Paul K on Jan 18, 2023 22:51:34 GMT -5
I wrote yesterday that I had not yet given an adequately close reading to the beginning and middle of section 2. Whether or not you felt my "hopeful" interpretation of the ending of section 2 had merit, you may find the following analysis of Retallack's re-shuffling of her lines, and the resulting enjambments, helpful for your own exploration of the poem. For me, it is a start on a close reading of all of section 2. Some of it is similar to what Lou did.
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The rearrangement of the lines in section 2 is not random but systematic. That is, it has method.
Note that section 1 has 26 lines. Section 2 has 35, of which nine are used twice. All lines in section 1 are used in section 2. No new lines are introduced in section 2.
This may be a good way to visualize the pattern. Begin by numbering the lines in section 1 as lines 1 through 26.
Section 2 then proceeds as follows, with the indents only a visual cue to seeing the pattern:
1 10 2 11 3 12 4 13 5 14 6 15 7 16 8 17 9 10 18 11 19 12 20 13 21 14 22 15 23 16 24 17 25 18 26
Notice that lines 10-18 (the middle lines of section 1), are each used twice in section 2, occurring in both the first half and second half of section 2. As others have observed, section 2 has the same first line and same last line as section 2.
It is up to us to discern whether this method of interleaving the lines is arbitrary, employed only to give "a new throw of the dice," or whether it is more tightly used. That is, Retallack, knowing the method of her shuffling in advance, could have written her lines intending for them to read both in the order of section 1 and quite specifically in the order of section 2.
Some observations:
Keeping the first and last lines unchanged from section 1 must assuredly be intentional.
At the turn or midpoint, we get lines 9 and 10 in their section 1 order. This is the only instance of two lines remaining together from section 1 to section 2. It reads:
in your empty apartment yes truth is a strange experimental fiction
They are followed by 18 and 11:
a message we can't make out something for which the past has left you
Taken together, these four lines seem central to the theme(s) of the poem.
The repeated lines (10-18) carry, perhaps, extra weight to the reader's imagination:
yes truth is a strange experimental fiction something for which the past has left you unprepared like the figure who appears in your dark bedroom and sneezes before he puts his hand over your mouth the fans are screaming high above the lights
a blimp flashes a message we can't make out
The enjambments created by the reordering, and the flows, contrasts or disruptions of sense created, might test the question of whether Retallack designed the lines of section 1 with the precise reordering of section 2 in mind.
As one step towards attending to these enjambments, I have tried giving punctuation (denoting sentence structure) to the lines:
This is a game where the players have forgotten, yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction. The rules, something for which the past has left you no use, telling sleeping dog lies--unprepared, like the figure who appears, as you move about the blazing green and white grid in your dark bedroom, and sneezes,d trying to look purposeful, occasionally hopping, before he puts his hand over your mouth to keep from burning up.a The fans are screaming. A Miss Pasta, high above the lights, has left another ominous message on the machine. A blimp flashes in your empty apartmentb (yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction) a message we can't make out, something for which the past has left you. We are dazed, unprepared, like the figure who appears from the glare of the lights--but in your dark bedroom--and sneezes,d "This is all beginning to sound highly metaphysical!" before he puts his hand over you,c mouth, "--and suspect!" The fans are screaming like a god dividing Light from Dark.e High above the lights (or the Light of Reason) a blimp flashes (or the Light at the End of the Tunnel) a message we can't make out: " 'You are the light of my life,' he whispers."
Some alternative readings occur to me.
One might as easily read at superscript a, To keep from burning up, the fans are screaming.
At superscript b, we might read a quotation rather than (in part) a parenthetical: A blimp flashes in your empty apartment: "Yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction, a message we can't make out, something for which the past has left you."
At superscript e, we could instead read, The fans are screaming. Like a god dividing Light from Dark, high above the lights (or the Light of Reason) a blimp flashes, "Or the Light at the End of the Tunnel"--a message we can't make out. "You are the light of my life," he whispers.
Certainly other readings are possible, as well.
It could be that reading section 2 aloud, focusing on different possible sentence structures, could be as or more useful.
Note that at superscript c I have retained the spelling you, as printed, rather than your, as in section 1. Assuming this is not a typo, it is the only change in a word from section 1 to section 2.
Two of the oddest (perhaps forced) readings are around "and sneezes." These are both marked superscript d. The constructions become even more comical, as it seems to me, than in section 1. In fact, I become tempted to read the whole of section 2 in a comic vein. But perhaps comic in the way Melville was in Moby Dick: comedy with irony, fellow-feeling, and seriousness behind it.
A final question: What is the hoped-for product of close reading and analysis--an interpretation (of meaning, sonority, method or more) or a performance--a reading (aloud) that makes the poem live for yourself and others?
-Paul
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Post by Jason Luz on Jan 19, 2023 0:47:36 GMT -5
A final question: What is the hoped-for product of close reading and analysis--an interpretation (of meaning, sonority, method or more) or a performance--a reading (aloud) that makes the poem live for yourself and others?
-Paul
Hi Paul, wow. That's a lot of work, thanks for doing the deep dive. For me the meaning comes more from the meta-poetics of the procedure--the procedure is the performance is the gesture. So I'm almost not as interested in interpreting the semantic slippages that occur in the re-ordering. I think it's kind of like the steinzas from the last work we considered, how they made for lines that couldn't possibly be paraphrased, but gave an impression of flesh boiled down to connective tissue, or a building deconstructed to it's most integral parts. The way that 1st poem didn't figure for me a representational shape, but more of a tendency, a pattern. So if the 1st section is a passage of dream logic, strange but somehow coherent. The operated on text of the 2nd section seems to still carry over all of the menace. With the addition of something carnivalesque about the repeated lines, maybe like a Kurt Weill song, and the nonsense seems to somehow make the proceedings even darker, a dark carnival. So the impression I get in the relation between the 2 sections is of a bifurcating, whirling, roiling system--troubling the already troubled dream of the opening section, like some kind of ancient specter or embodiment. Maybe that's the problem of evil too, that it's bewitching, enticing, hypnotic in its malevolence and we sink into the maelstrom overcome with fascination.
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lidia
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Post by lidia on Jan 19, 2023 1:41:14 GMT -5
In the Stein audio (Memnoir) and in this poem JR has gone for noir. In noir there is often a lot of grey - unreliable narrators, flawed characters, slippery slopes, good does not triumph over evil, there is moral ambiguity, moral detours and amorality. It is the right genre for questioning the notion of binary. Lots of cinematography in JR but no femme fatales - maybe because they are male constructs.
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Ross
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Post by Ross on Jan 19, 2023 2:03:28 GMT -5
I find the tone of the poem to be layered. It has a superficial playful tone, derived from the initial reference to a game, and then the twisting of the folksy idiom about sleeping dogs. And then the reference to American football, mixed with "hopping to keep from burning up," which reminds me of the game my daughters used to play, where you couldn't step on certain things because those things were the hot lava. And the fans screaming and the blimp alludes to a (typically fun?) football game. Although you can immediately see there is something philosophical going on, the tone seemed largely lighthearted at first.
But after more readings, I found the intensely unsettling, threatening, dark tone that lies underneath.
I think the problem of evil may equate to the problem of meaning. And the different uses of the word "light," this game with indiscernible rules, the variation in section 2, and even the hidden tone of the poem, all manifest this problem of meaning in their own ways.
The problem of evil could be that evil is difficult to find and point out, because it can be hidden and buried under language. Truth is a fiction because we don't have language to distinguish truth from fiction. A light can be divine, but it can also be used to impose a religious orthodoxy, or it can refer to the whispered desires of an intruding figure. And could this intruding "figure" be interpreted to be a word, in addition to being a "he?" The game of language (i.e., "this") has indiscernible rules because we can apply language of morality or beneficence to evil. It reminds me of the missile that was given the name Peacemaker. And all of us fans of this are left screaming and dazed. I think the ominous tone of the poem that lies underneath the superficially playful tone of the poem exhibits this same problem of meaning. And the variation in Section 2 as well. Simply by manipulating the lines, the same set of words has a different meaning, or no meaning at all. So the various uses of the word light, and the variation in Section 2 emit a disorientation to the reader, and a distrust of language.
Ultimately, I found this poem to be successful in two ways. First, both its form and content successfully portray how confounding language is. For example, I don't think I will ever again trust that the word "light" means something positive. And that is disheartening in a way. But second, the rules have only been forgotten; they're not irretrievable. So the poem also compels you to look to the future and search for a way to solve the problem.
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Post by jimlynch on Jan 19, 2023 3:13:36 GMT -5
God's honest truth, last Sunday I was walking Dizzy, my 8 pound chihuahua mix, down my street when a neighbor's cat attacked him, rolling him over on the ground – I had to use some force to get the cat off my dog – who when free ran straight home – but the cat turned it's rage then on me, leaping up at my face again and again as I fended it off with my left hand (which was holding no less a Jacket2 transcription of Joan Retallack, Al and others discussing “Alternative poetries and alternate pedagogies”) - and then its mate joined in, also leaping up at me alternately. I don't even remember it stopping, just that it did and I retreated home. My hand and arm and one leg covered in bites and scratches, I felt bad for using such violence even if in self-defense – they were just cats after all I kept telling myself. Dizzy was OK as far as we could tell, his blue down coat was pretty torn up. The thought of rabies went through my mind, but only because I'd never seen such rage in a cat, it was as if they were possessed by demons, exuding pure evil. Certainly more than an absence of good here. Or were the cats just being cats, some cats don't like dogs – or maybe the cats had experienced similar violence in their lives at the hands of an other, the abused become abuser scenario. Is the natural world evil? Or the fallen world? Should we have to live with evil? Do these question matter to soldiers and civilians dying in war, to children starving to death, to victims of violence the world over, to the polluted waters and air of the earth? The “Problem of Evil” can be traced back to Epicurus (the Epicurean paradox). In Retallack' s introductory essay of The Poetical Wager, she discusses the Epicurean (& Lucretian) origins of clinamen, the random swerve of certain atoms plummeting down like raindrops, the swerve that creates consciousness, self-consciousness, the crossroads. Can we make the world a better place to live in by swerving away from the often mindless, thoughtless trance of everyday regimen and habits and beliefs, and by continual effort try new ways and experiments to improve all of our lives and interrelationships? Are we able to replace the banality of evil with the novelty of good?
The game of life, living, live-evil of problem the. A palindrome like dog-god. Let sleeping gods lie. Is there evil in the world because the gods are sleeping, or have left the world? Palindromes and homonyms. In Gnosticism, the creator god is evil, the deceitful god, the lie; the good god is the hidden god, the absent god. Are we just rats in the Demiurge's cage of Creation? Pushing the buttons to be fed whether a shock accompanies the food or not? “a Miss Pasta” - pas amis – near palindrome - the demiurge is no friend of mine. Missa, mass; passus, suffering, esp passive, as in God becoming man and suffering on the cross and dying for the salvation of the world. The prime sufferer. Transubstantiation. Metamorphosis. “Give not that which is holy to the dogs.” (Didache) Suffering builds character. How can we atone without suffering evil? Born with amnesia, learning is recollection. No you or yous counting all told slipping sleeping is a slip of the tongue a lie? Were we told on purpose? Did we forget by accident? Keep hopping because there is No Exit and Hell is life on earth, hell is others. Hell is Miss Pasta and all her messages. Hell is an empty apartment, an unoccupied life. Are we absent from our own lives? Are we the absent gods? Ominous omens and auguries and auguries and omens, the random fall of the I-Ching yarrow stalks, the lottery. This is all intuition, direct knowledge of the unknown. The portent. The stretching toward, the effort. To the future.
To the future from the strange experimental truth of the contemporary, who needs to be prepared for the unknown? the truth is no use as you move like the figure occasionally hopping over your mouth in your empty bedroom. “the past has left you” “for a strange experimental fiction” the past has left unprepared you are the figure who sneezes and puts your hand over your own mouth. We are forever leaving ourselves messages.
The floor of the rat cage metamorphosed into the football field, the rat-fans are screaming – the messages from heaven only blind us rats crawling through the tunnel, the blimp divides wonder from wonder, rapt attention from doubt and uncertainty, we are dazzled by the whispers, we suspect we look up at the light and a hand it covers our mouths and our ears and our eyes and we see no evil we see no light we are divided there is no reason.
The second part of the poem achieves in its interwoven rearrangement of the lines what the first part achieves in its juxtaposition of ideas and images – the movements back and forth, forwards and backwards, rightside up and upside down, the transposition of key and tone of a fugue – creating a Gordian knot of light and dark, of good and evil – perhaps which can be untied by the rearranged horizontal lines in varying juxtaposition which create different chords of meaning and new ways of looking at old problems.
- Jim
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adef
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Post by adef on Jan 19, 2023 3:53:56 GMT -5
Conterpoint as radical reformulation.
Cat, Yesterday you used the word 'Counterpoint' in a response to a post of mine. What a wonderful word. What a Retallackan word I might dare to suggest.
It has varied meanings depending on where the spaces are: counter point, counterpoint or even count a point. The meanings of these same letters can be mutually contradictory. Counting points or counting counter points has shades of black and white.
In music however counterpoint also has several meanings:
'Melodic material that is added above or below an existing melody.
The technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality.
A composition or piece that incorporates or consists of contrapuntal writing.'
So it can be a musical line in itself, the ability to create and use a line in itself or the new thing - a composition - created by both the above.
Could this be an example of fractal imagination? Letters to words to lines to composition to re-arrangement.
Then people changed the rules. Schoenberg tightened them and then I discover on looking up counterpoint, John Cage was one of a number of composers who changed the rules again to ensure that the counterpoint line generated dissonance.
He said of music: 'The composer (organizer of sound) will not only be faced with the entire field of sound but also with the entire field of time. The “frame” or fraction of a second, following established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the measurement of time. No rhythm will be beyond the composer’s reach.'
So from 'counterpoint','time' and 'framing......following established film technique' ( as commented on several times above) bring me back to Retallack.
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kagh
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Post by kagh on Jan 19, 2023 7:08:13 GMT -5
For me, the poem carries on with many other ideas in the other poems. Just to consider: complexity, repetition and division (from Western civ). I think the poem covers again Xeno's Paradox (from western civ) in that it speaks of a concept that continually divides itself into smaller pieces but still strives to carry on. Repetition and division (a sort of contrast there) do battle in a way. The ending is chilling; it does seem to speak of the idea that our patriarchal system will strive to perpetuate itself. I am just kagh, visitor this time only (likely!).
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Will B
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Post by Will B on Jan 19, 2023 10:10:13 GMT -5
For a change, I’m going to take a shot at addressing a question or two.
(1.) “Evil” here seems to represent lying or misrepresentation or untruth. “…telling sleeping dog lies.” Presenting Darkness as Light or redefining things to reflect your own beliefs. One of the problems of the ongoing game of lies is that it makes it increasingly difficult for us to distinguish Light from Dark, Reason from Ignorance or Emotion (choose your antonym). But even truth (especially as half-truth) is susceptible to misuse. The truth game and how one plays it also depend on who’s doing the deciding about what’s true and what’s not. Different truths exist for different parts of the world, different parts of each country, maybe even different members of the same household. “the fans are screaming” in favor of different teams playing the game.
(4.) Regarding structure, I found it interesting that the first 9 lines (the first stanza) and the last 8 lines of part 1 are repeated only once in part 2, whereas the second stanza and the first 4 lines of the third stanza (i.e., from “yes, truth…” to “a message we can’t make out”) of part 1 are repeated twice in part 2, which makes me wonder if those twice-repeated lines are more important to Retallack. And the fact that the once-repeated lines alternate with the twice-repeated lines seems to reinforce the argumentative nature—the back-and-forth—of the game as it’s being played.
(2.) “Light” in these lines make me think about how challenging it is to deal with these issues of truth. Who’s definition of light are we using? It can be a noun (light as illumination, light as enlightenment, light as The Light (a prophet)); it can be an adjective (light versus dark, light versus heavy, light versus depressed); it can be a verb (to provide light in the senses already described, to land or settle upon). So how you read the poem depends upon which combinations of these possibilities you deem to be true. And here the “…metaphysical/and suspect” remind us that it’s not only a poem—it’s life or truth (or evil) itself.
(5.) Here, too, I think the “tone” of the poem could go in many directions, depending on how you choose to define the terms. If, for example, you are drawn to “ominous” and “dark” and “dazed,” you can see the game as a losing battle, but you can also be “dazed” by the impending victory of your team. And I could go either way with the last line of both sections. To me, “you are the light [note, lower case ell] of my life he whispers” can be either hopeful (“you are the sunshine of my life, whoa-oh”) or critical (“you are such a lightweight”) or somewhere in between (“you are so easy to talk to”). The twice-repeated lines seem to leave us in uncertainty (they conclude with “high above the lights/a blimp flashes/a message we can’t make out”).
What I am left with is the conclusion that words matter, words manifest as actions, and the game is one that everybody plays and, so far, nobody wins. Words have too much power, and, as with so many other things, the power to make the definitions, to decide what is true is in the hands of the people who have decided they are in charge. Okay, I’m more optimistic that that, but I avoid watching the news.
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Post by marciacamino on Jan 19, 2023 10:11:47 GMT -5
I saw Apocalypse Now too. It was upsetting. Very upsetting, yes, from what I recall, made the mistake of seeing it on the big screen.
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Will B
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Post by Will B on Jan 19, 2023 10:16:13 GMT -5
This poem struck me as very noir to begin with -- and that the evil being conveyed in it was kind of noir, which is to mean stylized and campy, but also kind of genuinely scary for me when in the first section the mention is made of the man's hand going over her/the speaker's mouth. In this respect, it struck me a bit as a dream repetition, the two sections; I've had dreams where someone is doing something bad, such as killing someone else, or kidnapping, and I can't yell out or scream -- a different way of being silenced in a dream, maybe -- maybe that is what scared me, maybe part of what can be evil is being silenced, or silencing someone else. Perhaps part of the way silencing of people can happen is through cliche and through trope and through form. If a form (of film, of narrative, of poetry) does not permit a certain way of speaking, this, too is a kind of silencing. Perhaps another way silencing can happen or has happened of women in general in literary and political history is through being idealized ("you are the light of my life he whispers") at the same time as being silenced/oppressed. And in fact those things going together -- if the/a woman speaks, the idea of her as ideal perfection (at least by traditional Euro patriarchy's standards) is broken, she is no longer "a light" but instead "darkness". This also reminds me of Laura Mulvey's influential writings about the male gaze in film -- that "men do the looking, and women are to be looked at.” However, in darkness, not much can be seen at all. I realize Retallack is a more complicated read than this, but I wonder if she is referencing Mulvey's ideas. In any case, those ideas certainly are evoked for me in reading this poem, which seems so cinematic -- I also think of "the light" now as the projector light that cuts across a darkened cinema, the idea of woman as projection of male gaze, particularly in film. Thousands of women have acted in this light, across a cinema screen, but for most of them the words coming out of their mouths were written and directed by men. That said, the "evil" could reference classic cinema titles such as "Touch of Evil." It could reference patriarchy, or patriarchal ideas about women, as evil. It could reference violence against women, symbolically or otherwise, as evil. Before I went down this track in my thinking, however, I was thinking about the "recutting"/"editing"/"intersplicing" between sections 1 and 2 and when I considered the word "evil" and splicing that or rewinding it of course I end up with the word "live" - from this perspective I wasn't sure if it was possible to read this poem as being about some kind of statement on evil being intrinsically part of being a/"live". Instead, perhaps here and now, thinking through this, I read it as another possibly filmic reference -- the action in a film never being "live," after all, always edited, always respliced, always recorded and replayed (I think this could be the referent action Retallack is going for between sections 1 and 2 -- different cuts of the same "film," "shoot," or "scenes") perhaps we can think that if recorded cinema is the opposite of "live" action, it linguistically thus constitutes the "reverse" of life, or "evil." Anyway, this was fun to think through! Looking forward to reading others comments and thinking more about the other questions Al has posed. Yes, I see this now. One person's truth can serve to silence another's: "truth...////...puts his hand over your mouth." Thanks for making me think about that.
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adef
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Post by adef on Jan 19, 2023 10:21:59 GMT -5
I wondered when this poem was written, but couldn't find a date. However, that search took me to a Retallack essay "Hard Days Nights in the Anthropocene" in Electronic Book Review [https://doi.org/107273/hfb3-gk94], an investigation of the paths (phiolosophical, scientific, linguistic, poetic ...) leading to our current situation that left me reeling and totally impressed.
The link here didn't work for me, but this one does: electronicbookreview.com/essay/hard-days-nights-in-the-anthropocene/Thanks for finding it Lou.
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Will B
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Post by Will B on Jan 19, 2023 10:23:55 GMT -5
A contemporary example of the 'problem of evil' lies within so called cancel culture: 'As the Atlantic writer Elizabeth Bruenig points out, despite all the talk about how advanced, how enlightened and how modern we like to think we are, unlike past generations we have simultaneously managed to create societies which have absolutely no coherent story, none at all, about how somebody who has made a mistake, who has committed an error of judgement, can atone, make amends, and retain some sense of continuity between their old life and their new, cancelled life.' via Matt Goodwin on substack. Retallack's poem speaks to a real world. Counterpoint, there is no such thing as cancel culture: time.com/5735403/cancel-culture-is-not-real/Just to be fair, the article's full title is "Cancel Culture Is Not Real—At Least Not in the Way People Think" and explains why.
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Post by marciacamino on Jan 19, 2023 10:24:24 GMT -5
I wrote yesterday that I had not yet given an adequately close reading to the beginning and middle of section 2. Whether or not you felt my "hopeful" interpretation of the ending of section 2 had merit, you may find the following analysis of Retallack's re-shuffling of her lines, and the resulting enjambments, helpful for your own exploration of the poem. For me, it is a start on a close reading of all of section 2. Some of it is similar to what Lou did.
*
The rearrangement of the lines in section 2 is not random but systematic. That is, it has method.
Note that section 1 has 26 lines. Section 2 has 35, of which nine are used twice. All lines in section 1 are used in section 2. No new lines are introduced in section 2.
This may be a good way to visualize the pattern. Begin by numbering the lines in section 1 as lines 1 through 26.
Section 2 then proceeds as follows, with the indents only a visual cue to seeing the pattern:
1 10 2 11 3 12 4 13 5 14 6 15 7 16 8 17 9 10 18 11 19 12 20 13 21 14 22 15 23 16 24 17 25 18 26
Notice that lines 10-18 (the middle lines of section 1), are each used twice in section 2, occurring in both the first half and second half of section 2. As others have observed, section 2 has the same first line and same last line as section 2.
It is up to us to discern whether this method of interleaving the lines is arbitrary, employed only to give "a new throw of the dice," or whether it is more tightly used. That is, Retallack, knowing the method of her shuffling in advance, could have written her lines intending for them to read both in the order of section 1 and quite specifically in the order of section 2.
Some observations:
Keeping the first and last lines unchanged from section 1 must assuredly be intentional.
At the turn or midpoint, we get lines 9 and 10 in their section 1 order. This is the only instance of two lines remaining together from section 1 to section 2. It reads:
in your empty apartment yes truth is a strange experimental fiction
They are followed by 18 and 11:
a message we can't make out something for which the past has left you
Taken together, these four lines seem central to the theme(s) of the poem.
The repeated lines (10-18) carry, perhaps, extra weight to the reader's imagination:
yes truth is a strange experimental fiction something for which the past has left you unprepared like the figure who appears in your dark bedroom and sneezes before he puts his hand over your mouth the fans are screaming high above the lights
a blimp flashes a message we can't make out
The enjambments created by the reordering, and the flows, contrasts or disruptions of sense created, might test the question of whether Retallack designed the lines of section 1 with the precise reordering of section 2 in mind.
As one step towards attending to these enjambments, I have tried giving punctuation (denoting sentence structure) to the lines:
This is a game where the players have forgotten, yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction. The rules, something for which the past has left you no use, telling sleeping dog lies--unprepared, like the figure who appears, as you move about the blazing green and white grid in your dark bedroom, and sneezes,d trying to look purposeful, occasionally hopping, before he puts his hand over your mouth to keep from burning up.a The fans are screaming. A Miss Pasta, high above the lights, has left another ominous message on the machine. A blimp flashes in your empty apartmentb (yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction) a message we can't make out, something for which the past has left you. We are dazed, unprepared, like the figure who appears from the glare of the lights--but in your dark bedroom--and sneezes,d "This is all beginning to sound highly metaphysical!" before he puts his hand over you,c mouth, "--and suspect!" The fans are screaming like a god dividing Light from Dark.e High above the lights (or the Light of Reason) a blimp flashes (or the Light at the End of the Tunnel) a message we can't make out: " 'You are the light of my life,' he whispers."
Some alternative readings occur to me.
One might as easily read at superscript a, To keep from burning up, the fans are screaming.
At superscript b, we might read a quotation rather than (in part) a parenthetical: A blimp flashes in your empty apartment: "Yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction, a message we can't make out, something for which the past has left you."
At superscript e, we could instead read, The fans are screaming. Like a god dividing Light from Dark, high above the lights (or the Light of Reason) a blimp flashes, "Or the Light at the End of the Tunnel"--a message we can't make out. "You are the light of my life," he whispers.
Certainly other readings are possible, as well.
It could be that reading section 2 aloud, focusing on different possible sentence structures, could be as or more useful.
Note that at superscript c I have retained the spelling you, as printed, rather than your, as in section 1. Assuming this is not a typo, it is the only change in a word from section 1 to section 2.
Two of the oddest (perhaps forced) readings are around "and sneezes." These are both marked superscript d. The constructions become even more comical, as it seems to me, than in section 1. In fact, I become tempted to read the whole of section 2 in a comic vein. But perhaps comic in the way Melville was in Moby Dick: comedy with irony, fellow-feeling, and seriousness behind it.
A final question: What is the hoped-for product of close reading and analysis--an interpretation (of meaning, sonority, method or more) or a performance--a reading (aloud) that makes the poem live for yourself and others?
-Paul
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Post by marciacamino on Jan 19, 2023 10:24:51 GMT -5
What a ton of work, Paul! Thank you so very much for that.
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Will B
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Post by Will B on Jan 19, 2023 10:32:01 GMT -5
I wrote yesterday that I had not yet given an adequately close reading to the beginning and middle of section 2. Whether or not you felt my "hopeful" interpretation of the ending of section 2 had merit, you may find the following analysis of Retallack's re-shuffling of her lines, and the resulting enjambments, helpful for your own exploration of the poem. For me, it is a start on a close reading of all of section 2. Some of it is similar to what Lou did.
*
The rearrangement of the lines in section 2 is not random but systematic. That is, it has method.
Note that section 1 has 26 lines. Section 2 has 35, of which nine are used twice. All lines in section 1 are used in section 2. No new lines are introduced in section 2.
This may be a good way to visualize the pattern. Begin by numbering the lines in section 1 as lines 1 through 26.
Section 2 then proceeds as follows, with the indents only a visual cue to seeing the pattern:
1 10 2 11 3 12 4 13 5 14 6 15 7 16 8 17 9 10 18 11 19 12 20 13 21 14 22 15 23 16 24 17 25 18 26
Notice that lines 10-18 (the middle lines of section 1), are each used twice in section 2, occurring in both the first half and second half of section 2. As others have observed, section 2 has the same first line and same last line as section 2.
It is up to us to discern whether this method of interleaving the lines is arbitrary, employed only to give "a new throw of the dice," or whether it is more tightly used. That is, Retallack, knowing the method of her shuffling in advance, could have written her lines intending for them to read both in the order of section 1 and quite specifically in the order of section 2.
Some observations:
Keeping the first and last lines unchanged from section 1 must assuredly be intentional.
At the turn or midpoint, we get lines 9 and 10 in their section 1 order. This is the only instance of two lines remaining together from section 1 to section 2. It reads:
in your empty apartment yes truth is a strange experimental fiction
They are followed by 18 and 11:
a message we can't make out something for which the past has left you
Taken together, these four lines seem central to the theme(s) of the poem.
The repeated lines (10-18) carry, perhaps, extra weight to the reader's imagination:
yes truth is a strange experimental fiction something for which the past has left you unprepared like the figure who appears in your dark bedroom and sneezes before he puts his hand over your mouth the fans are screaming high above the lights
a blimp flashes a message we can't make out
The enjambments created by the reordering, and the flows, contrasts or disruptions of sense created, might test the question of whether Retallack designed the lines of section 1 with the precise reordering of section 2 in mind.
As one step towards attending to these enjambments, I have tried giving punctuation (denoting sentence structure) to the lines:
This is a game where the players have forgotten, yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction. The rules, something for which the past has left you no use, telling sleeping dog lies--unprepared, like the figure who appears, as you move about the blazing green and white grid in your dark bedroom, and sneezes,d trying to look purposeful, occasionally hopping, before he puts his hand over your mouth to keep from burning up.a The fans are screaming. A Miss Pasta, high above the lights, has left another ominous message on the machine. A blimp flashes in your empty apartmentb (yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction) a message we can't make out, something for which the past has left you. We are dazed, unprepared, like the figure who appears from the glare of the lights--but in your dark bedroom--and sneezes,d "This is all beginning to sound highly metaphysical!" before he puts his hand over you,c mouth, "--and suspect!" The fans are screaming like a god dividing Light from Dark.e High above the lights (or the Light of Reason) a blimp flashes (or the Light at the End of the Tunnel) a message we can't make out: " 'You are the light of my life,' he whispers."
Some alternative readings occur to me.
One might as easily read at superscript a, To keep from burning up, the fans are screaming.
At superscript b, we might read a quotation rather than (in part) a parenthetical: A blimp flashes in your empty apartment: "Yes, truth is a strange experimental fiction, a message we can't make out, something for which the past has left you."
At superscript e, we could instead read, The fans are screaming. Like a god dividing Light from Dark, high above the lights (or the Light of Reason) a blimp flashes, "Or the Light at the End of the Tunnel"--a message we can't make out. "You are the light of my life," he whispers.
Certainly other readings are possible, as well.
It could be that reading section 2 aloud, focusing on different possible sentence structures, could be as or more useful.
Note that at superscript c I have retained the spelling you, as printed, rather than your, as in section 1. Assuming this is not a typo, it is the only change in a word from section 1 to section 2.
Two of the oddest (perhaps forced) readings are around "and sneezes." These are both marked superscript d. The constructions become even more comical, as it seems to me, than in section 1. In fact, I become tempted to read the whole of section 2 in a comic vein. But perhaps comic in the way Melville was in Moby Dick: comedy with irony, fellow-feeling, and seriousness behind it.
A final question: What is the hoped-for product of close reading and analysis--an interpretation (of meaning, sonority, method or more) or a performance--a reading (aloud) that makes the poem live for yourself and others?
-Paul
I actually drew this out, but it didn't reproduce very well. I placed the pages side-by-side and drew lines between the repeated lines of the 2 parts. The visual result is interesting if you want to try what Paul and I did.
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