Answering Back #1
A series of pieces in response to work by earlier poets.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens
I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
Nine Ways of Looking at a Goldfish
by David Dayson
‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world.’
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I The present moment is where the I am, I am, is. Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room watching a plump goldfish, six inches of curiosity, gobbling constantly around the aquaria, octagonal, the size of two bass drums, but quiet, so quiet, in silent repose, connected by two horizontal tubes. Three times now, in the span of writing this, the goldfish has has ventured into their second realm. (much like the first) The goldfish gloops around, sucking up pink gravel, and rolls it in its mouth, spits it out, and for a change nibbles fronds of plants; green, red and dark emerald. The goldfish has two companions: a tiny grey one which glues its mouth to the glass and shuffles up, rasping algae; and the other, slightly larger, who looks like its nemesis, a dark spirit of the night with glaucous eyes, tangential fins spill out from its sides, as if it’s casting off veils to reveal a mystery. Their present moment seems to me a memory loop longer than several seconds; for they know each other, they remember their circumspect geography, they tolerate and keep their distance. (they’ve learnt there’s no where to hide if they’re in conflict) While I wonder about the limits of my own confines, the receptionist slides back a glass panel I had not seen, and asks, ‘do you want tea or coffee?’ ‘No thanks’, I reply, ‘I am happy in my own thoughts.’
II Oh Fuck, Fuck Fuck, Fuck Fuck, Fuck! The tooth extraction had not gone well. I’m back here staring at the fucking goldfish. Still contented, bobbing in tight circles, fucking lucky, pain free fucking goldfish, who shed old teeth and grow anew. Why oh why, does nature play such painful pranks? How I want to smash your tranquil tanks.
III Do you dream too, are you dreaming through your life with indistinct transits between being and not being? Am I a goldfish who dreams I am me, like Zhuangzi’s butterfly? The empathic gaze is corrosive and dissolves boundaries. The paradox of empathy: one has to remain separate and distinct, to be able to invest oneself in the other, or else we become a mashup a ‘we-self’, of no use to man or fish.
IV Habitués of Secure Hospitals know, all too well, they live in the cliché of the long stay ward with an aquarium at the end of a long austere room. A trial of empathy, I guess, and the responsibility of caring for light inconsequential souls. And does it go in your tribunal report, ‘was diligent with the care of goldfish; did not try to make them suffer’?
V Are you spared our emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and the empty promise of desire? Is your emotional scope limited to seeking what you need to survive and being repelled by what would cause you harm? I do hope so; or else you are screaming inside a nightmare of your own eternal boredom.
VI
Speak to me across the glass in your Goldfish language,
‘It is it is it is it is,
if it and as if it, if it or as if it,
if it is as if it, and it is as
if it and as if it,
or as if it,
more as if it,
as more, as more as if it,
and if it, and for and as if it,
if it is to be if it is to be,
is it to be,
what is it to be,
it is to be what it is,
and it is, so it is,
as it is,
as it is,
is it as it as, it is
and as it is
and as it is,
and so and so
as it is’,
thank you Goldfish, I am none the wiser.
VII Dear Reader, Words fail us. They no longer correspond to our shared world. If I say to you, ‘goldfish’, you will see whatever is pulled from your registry of memory: perhaps a goldfish in a plastic bag won at a fair; or an emblem on a Chinese supermarket logo; or dig deeper still into memory and find when you were last at Giverny and thought a flick of a golden tail may have disturbed the nénuphares but were never certain. There is no reliability anymore between the two of us. Little by little words strain, crack, break under their burden and collapse into chaos. Every time we try to speak of what we see, it becomes false and distorts what we have seen. Your goldfish is never my goldfish. I tell you words were never signs, they are improvised demarkations on a map to avoid conflict. We need a new language of things that speaks of the function they have been willed to have, their form and emotional valence. Nothing less will do, or else we should not disturb the silence. Your Sincerely, The Author
VIII There you almost have it: a word play extending from the willed function of a goldfish, to induce tranquility in a dentist’s waiting room, to the caesura of pain, which stops creative thought, and as the pain recedes increasing abstraction, by way of absurdity and pseudo-intellectual poetic-babble, via a game or two of ‘spot the plagiarism’, though stolen texts are best hidden in plain sight. That was a way of putting it and not very satisfactory: a periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, leaving you with an intolerable wrestle with words and meanings. The poetry does not matter. The goldfish stripped of whatever I imagine it to entail, swims off free, un-freighted by my associations. Be in your beingness, do whatever goldfish do, oblivious to this scribe behind your glass screen, and all shall be well.
IX
goldfish and I —
neither of us know
our horizons
I wonder if DD's dentist has any idea what his fish tank has inspired? This is definitely one to cut-out and keep, with reference book and dictionary close to hand. After reading this, I may revisit "Goldie the Puffer Fish".