Poetry survives in its particulars. Is it that the postmodern ("after the modern") becomes an increasingly vacant echo, a place no longer specific even to memory as a fact of people who once had daily lives in customary places? "Responsibility is the ability to respond," as Robert Duncan said, parallel to Williams: "A new world / is only a new mind. / And the mind and the poem / are all apiece . . ." Yet such worlds are necessarily plural, an endlessly arriving accumulation. Benjamin Friedlander has edited impeccably the complex texts of Charles Olson (Collected Prose) and Larry Eigner (areas lights heights). He has provided remarkable translations of other poets such as Paul Celan. All these made worlds of infinite particulars, locating, defining, proposing. His own work has long been a measure for his peers. Susan Howe writes of Time Rations (O Books, 1991): "This is intelligent, passionate writing. The poems in Time Rations are fragments, splinters, and pilgrim staves." If blanks must remain our world, if the missing parts, the frustrating absences, insist, we still need a witness if there is to be any such "we" left at all. Late voices in a late time? Here Benjamin Friedlander speaks with a survivor's humor and ungainsayable clarity of what we had thought to forget.
R. C.
Pathognomic Verses
The Gift Outright
Like a minivan
rolled into a lake
your eyes break
rolled into a lake
your eyes break
their beam against
the surface
of a kindness,
the surface
of a kindness,
a cold [. . .
. . .] giving
nothing back
. . .] giving
nothing back
Spousal Abuse
Here, where a diaper service wends
through a forest of flagpoles
a dungeon extends
invisibly as a breeze
lifting the stink
of caked shit
unpinned from a pledge,
scattering allegiance
like so many leaves
Sfondamento
Inscribed
on the obverse of inhibition
and accessible therefrom
solely by a punctured willingness
to carry with an exhaled cut
traces on the knife edge
Written in Yellow
My hands
are washed
in urine,
my heart's
a yellow star,
are washed
in urine,
my heart's
a yellow star,
my soul
is in your body,
is in your body,
bent
in a squat
raining down
condemnation
in a squat
raining down
condemnation
For Leonard Peltier
we cut
with rusty teeth
the brittle
thin lipped cup
with rusty teeth
the brittle
thin lipped cup
that pours the lies
settled like dust
on all we saw
settled like dust
on all we saw
waged
against us
Go On, Get Out of Here
Pit bull
in a halter top
sniveling
a beer,
a brow-
beaten
bag of wind–
in a halter top
sniveling
a beer,
a brow-
beaten
bag of wind–
Hag,
head protruding
from a grimace
from a grimace
Swaying
like a dead tree
like a dead tree
Squatting
in the steaming snow
in the steaming snow
Getting drunk
on somebody else's empties
on somebody else's empties
The Social Contract
We
who are about to sigh
anoint you
who sign for the drinks
when the jig is up
and lock us up
in the clink
of two
flutes of champagne
toasting the end
of a losing campaign
for temperance
For the Freedom of Information Act
Wheelchair access
Rings the state
Where planes dip down
Like sidewalk ramps
And rolling thunder
Clears the slate.
Rings the state
Where planes dip down
Like sidewalk ramps
And rolling thunder
Clears the slate.
An aborted document
Called chamber pot
Of horrors, henceforth cited
In the body of the text
As [. . . ]
Called chamber pot
Of horrors, henceforth cited
In the body of the text
As [. . . ]
Tells how a father of two
Was dragged from his car by the hair
A [ . . . ] made him [ . . . ]
His daughter in the [ . . . ]
And a [ . . . ]
Forced the family to stare
Was dragged from his car by the hair
A [ . . . ] made him [ . . . ]
His daughter in the [ . . . ]
And a [ . . . ]
Forced the family to stare
Her cries were like a flashlight
Exposing a deep hole.
Her face was like a flashlight
Dropped into deep darkness
Exposing a deep hole.
Her face was like a flashlight
Dropped into deep darkness
Hands of a stopgap measure
Clumsily made of words
That only a tongue can tell
Clumsily made of words
That only a tongue can tell
What time it is
By the shadow
By the shadow