Reading 2

Laura Martin is a poet and a friend., I’d never heard her read at a poetry event before, so when I realized that I could attend her reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center I was beyond excited. While I was there I remembered that, yes, Laura is a poet of color, which didn’t occur to me in my excitement to hear her read, so the fact that I could type up the event up for our blog was just the icing on the cake.

            The reading was dynamic—everyone was a great reader. The pacing of the event and range, in both prose and poetry, was well done—there were moments that I forgot to take notes, which is rare for me.  Laura’s poems were breathtaking to hear and, with here permission, I have included one of the poems she read (see below).  

            The way Laura uses imagery and short lines in “My Father Is Saw Dust” comes across audibly as well as visually. The first few lines set a dense clustered pace that that builds and builds:

My father is sawdust,

cedar bough and chainsaw
grease.

He is Betadine,
rubbing alcohol, Ben-gay,

the hot plastic of a heating pad set on high

and old blood dried on Band-Aids

left scattered on top of the

bathroom sink.

He is 10W-40 oil,

acetylene gas, BBQ lighter fluid,

wood-glue, rubber cement,


and kindling pitch mixed with turpentine.

The poem is one idea or image on top of another and traps the reader inside of the poem in a manner that seems to mirror how the poet is stuck in the memory or myth of her father.  When the poem turns in the last few lines and ends with the father’s brittle lead, we understand all material things that the father is and all the material things he will never be.

My Father the Sawmill

Laura Martin 2012

My father is sawdust,

cedar bough and chainsaw

grease. He smells like a

Christmas tree every day.

He is melted snow soaked

wet under the bones

of a worn-out Levi Jacket,

mink oil trapped inside

the creases of freshly

polished steel-toed

work boots, new leather

shoelaces and the damp

ash of a Marlboro

tossed into a rain puddle

that he didn’t get a chance

to finish on break. He is Betadine,

rubbing alcohol, Ben-gay,

the hot plastic of a heating pad set on high,

and old blood dried on Band-Aids

left scattered on top of the

bathroom sink.

On weekends, he is Aqua Velva or Old Spice,

Lava hand soap, Barbasol

shaving cream, black Folgers coffee,

and stale Budweiser left out

overnight—opened and

unfinished—on an end table in

the living room. He is 10W-40 oil,

acetylene gas, BBQ lighter fluid,

wood-glue, rubber cement,

and kindling pitch mixed with turpentine.

He is purple Welch’s Grape Juice in a tiny

communion glass, musty hymnal pages,

and mothballs shoved deep down inside the pocket

of an old blue dress jacket.

Mostly though, he is an ashtray

of spent cigarettes mixed

with fresh pencil shavings—

the remnants of a dream house

sketched over and over and over again

on an old pad of blue gridded paper

underneath a thin and brittle lead.

I asked Laura if she considered herself a poet of color and I’ve included her snwser  below—because I find it interesting.

That's a hard question because my adoptive family is white and I am Cherokee/German on my mother's side and Spanish/Irish on my father's (my birthname is McDorman so there you go!). It was obvious to others (and sometimes not so nicely stated) during my childhood that my parents adopted an "ethnic" kid. I didn't find out until I was an adult that many members of my extended adoptive family (aunts, uncles, etc.) where worried that my parents had been tricked into adopting a black baby (can you believe I had this told to me!!!). Dark skin + black curly hair + almond-shaped eyes = a wave of panic in my rightwing, religious, God-fearing southern family.

 I had a fantasy in my head as a kid that my birthfamily was very spiritual in their ethnic background of being native American. I was wrong. They identify as white (but we pretty much all have olive skin and many of us are mistaken for Hispanic/Mexican). I don't identify with any race, really... I'm pretty ambiguous about it. Instead, I strongly identify with being an adult adoptee and being a fat woman.

Reading

Poetry Reading 1

I never know what to expect when attending an anthology reading. Diversity is something that anthology’s don’t usually or holistically address. Typically, I have found that they encompass a group of stylistically similar writers or some other unifying signifier.  So at the Late Peaches: An Anthology of Sacramento Poets 2012 book lanch and reading, I was more than curious if the city that Time Magazine named the most diverse city in 2002 would represent that diversity.

            The reading was on a Saturday night in an old remolded antique store turned venue location. There were pictures of BB King and Lady Day painted in electric blues and yellows on the brick walls, I was too early for the other poets to arrive. Later, the seats filled with overwhelming middle aged, mostly white people, or that is what I saw looking back form the front row, so I was surprised as the reading began to see more poets of color and young poets that I had anticipated from my repeated glances around that packed room. It was a significant improvement from the anthology reading ten years ago, and even from the local poetry center’s Monday night reading series. I wouldn’t call the say the reading met with my personal expectations of diversity or Time Magazines, yet there was diversity that night the Sacramento poetry world. Thankfully things seem to be shifting.

            One of my favorite readings of the night was from Juan. He wasn’t the loudest poet or the quietest, but there was something in the way his words came of the page that captivated me.  He read three poems that were featured in the Late Peaches and I was impressed with his range. One poem (below) addressed his racial identity and his struggle as a second-generation American living between languages; however, his other two poems were different from identity narratives and reminded me a bit of Jennifer Chang’s work.

Jaun Espinoza’s poem

The Gardener

He rakes up the oak leaves

that fall like second hands on

the grass that will always be green,

piles them into bags in the back of his truck

and drives away,

counting the little handfuls that jump

out of the bed.

He wakes his youngest son,

the one still too young

to speak two languages like his brothers.

He carefully slits the bags over the dead

lawn and smiles, his son’s smile

peeking out from between the leaves.

You were all great today, here's your poem

Not Enough: The found poem of 184/284 and their mentors

One life is not enough

The stars go out

Unfouled night of sky

We don't want to talk

Say lie down

I lace your body with my hands

My fingers are dried and fatigued with belief

What do they find. Our bones

My friend  our bones

Forgotten and thrown to the sea

The opposite of your blessed room

I do not know where I want you

Lying here waiting, wasting away

Set

Rise

rise

set

life lived languidly

dead friends with so much potential

it got to them

I'm raising children here

Just follow the instruction

Growth is the one thing

worth keeping around

the sea in you has sunk into the

sea of me, a fragility fractured

I hear you L.

each heart and name a kind of ditty

of hopefulness, you weren’t that either

My selection for our reading

Hi, lovely poets. I hope everyone's holiday has been restful, peaceful, productive (or not) and everything you wanted it to be. For our World Ground reading I am going to read from Wind Shifts. I really connected with Brenda Cardenas' work and I would like to read Our Language on pg 59. I will partner that with one of my own poems called Carnal which is also about language and non-verbal communication between lovers.

Bio: Writing sincerely, from reckless places. 

 See you all tomorrow.

Cheena Marie Lo Reading

About a month ago I had the pleasure of seeing my dear friend and collaborator Cheena Marie Lo read at a Small Press Traffic Reading in San Francisco. The theme of this year for SPT has been Genders/Bodie/Hybrids, and Cheena and I spoke a lot about what it meant to be billed in that theme on a night with two other Asian-American writers doing experimental work (Paolo Javier, and Cathy Park Hong). Cheena was ready to have a discussion about the problems in billing a night like that (the identification of them with one another, even as their work did not necessarily correspond, the differences between them, and the troubles with representation). The opportunity to have that discussion, however, didn't occur - a switch from last year's SPT readings with always included q and a's. I was spinning with questions and critiques of the organization and the world of experimental poetry and its alignment with supporting the subversive modes of poets of color not just doing expected experimental work.

All that said, I was, as I often am, super impressed by Cheena's work. They took a risk in what they read - new work, very personal, which took as an jump off point the mail that was coming into their home and the moment of looking for work that they find themselves in. In really gentle language that maintained a somewhat distant tone, Cheena bridged the process of beginning to wear a binder, with the foreclosure on their parents home, with a look at race underneath it all. It painted a picture which asked which of the intersecting forces of race, gender, classism, were affecting Cheena's moment of navigation of the economy and how each might intervene differently in each moment. I found it a profound and exciting piece, calling into question a simplicity too abundant in race analysis and poetry worlds. Plus, Cheena is a dear one, and I felt so proud!

For The Zine & The Reading +Bio

From our readings I will read "Echo & Elixir 7" by Mattawa or "The Bamboo Insomnia" by Reyes
For our reading on the 7th I will read "Witness" 
For the zine I'm posting the first writing we did together as a class--when we had to exchange words. 

Bio

Poetics of formation and current

From the first class for the zine--(Tessa I can also email this-- if pasting is a pain for spacing)

Between Bodies (April & Venus)

Surface           without form

what               is

already           and

not                 

  yet                 

we are

Ohio and California

mountain and valley

 we are

the black white love of pumice

green words that float from underground volcanoes

we are

the possibility that rises like new land

eons that are just beginning            

 and breaking

Moments

Poem from studies: "Between Two Languages" by Adela Najarro
Personal poem: Under the California Sun
Artist Bio: I write the sudden moments.

--Casey V

4 the performance and what not

hey y'all! so this was no easy decision, been thinkin abt it all damn day.

but, i decided to read lucille clifton's "surely i am able to write poems"...as if that wasn't obvious already ahahahah!

for my own poem, i'm gonna read some new-new. like, so new i haven't even typed it yet, so new it doesn't have a name. it's fresh off the presses of this notebook with its pages falling out (!!!). when i type that up, i'll send it to tessa :-D

oh -- and my five word bio is: runs on shrimp and laughter.

yeaahhhh so excited for this!!!!

Performance Info

Poem #1: Etheridge Knight's "Belly Song"

Poem #2: Poem from Seurat's Points series, "Breaking Point"

Artist Bio: Always near abstraction and obscurity. 

Potluck: Bringing a cake!!!

Poem #2 for zine:

Breaking Point

Further loss to change

No longer viewed a problem

People, it doesn’t make sense

On a drug

That may not happen –if at all

Created awareness specialist

On it from the beginning, no one challenged them

New concerns, long-term safety

The current looking with critical eye

Method used been called into question

How and how?

Is it, even?

The years keep evolving

Once diagnosed

A fragility fracture

A meeting of experts

Defined by density

One measure available

“Normal” were those of a deviated standard

Anyone who fell in between had a condition

A disease somewhat arbitrary

An independent prevention

Density helped her avoid

Density is only one part of the picture

Determined by other components, its capacity for self-repair

Melissa: carries the sea with memories

• Poem from our studies: Khaled Mattawa's "Echo and Elixir 2"
• Poem from my personal work: A poem, "The Afternoon Elephant in the Lunch Break Room." (posted below for the zine.)
• Artist Bio: carries the sea with memories
• Potluck item at Elmaz's: Maybe my pulled chicken adobo again? (;

The Afternoon Elephant in the Lunch Break Room



The Ravenel Bridge in Charleston
is a white, looming structure
over the south peninsula

where I climb over the fence
and think: not of dying
but meeting the black medical student

who jumped into the teal,
shimmering bay
just a few days earlier

at work, we heard the news



over the radio, interspersed
between minute-to-minute broadcast updates
about a white man who stopped traffic

drove into the bridge's concrete wall
wrote with black, bolded letters on
the side of his truck: I want to die

he didn't succeed in killing himself
but his life story was on the tip
of everybody's tongues

unlike the black medical student



whose story was spat out by the townsfolk
forgotten and thrown to the sea like her body
dismantled by the coldness

my coworker said: "Poor guy;
he gone and try to kill 'imself.
I gave my peace. Sent my prayers to heaven.

but that bridge's fence needs to be higher.
other folks can't be trusted."
"others like whom?" I asked her

but she dodged my looks



with her pretty, sea-blue eyes
so here I am, standing
at the edge of the bridge

at the tip of the concrete wall
and over the fence
cars past by me and honk

I'm not thinking of dying
I just came here to ask her:
how does it feel

to be remembered?

VJ's Poems and Five Word Bio

Poem from our readings: Lucille Clifton's "September Song" 

Poem from my collection: "Was he Black? (an oldie but goodie) or "Suffering in Silence" (a newbie)
The newbie will go in the zine

Bio: Venus wages peace through poetry

Bringing to the table? wine and or sparking cider

SUFFERING IN SILENCE (for 9/11 families who want to forget)

 By Venus Jones

I was silent yesterday/ You know when you've said everything there is to say about a dismal day/ Kind of silent/ When you want terrible memories to simply fade away/ Kind of silent/ I've said it already/ In different ways/ a thousand times/ Some people still haven't found their missing/Voice or vanguard/ Yet some how/ It comforts them to hear /about where I was// How heavy the mental lifting really was/ How heroic/ Everyday people can be/ Some survivors move people/Some thrivers move on/ He allowed the event/To eventually enter his body/The back pain/ The knee pain/The chest pain/ Got old/ We don't want to talk/ About the lack of assurance/ When the ailment and ache are hidden/ And people don't know--- What is not said lingers longer/ Inside he picks at the scab/ opens the wound again/ Yearly/ His wife cries/ the quiet tears that he can't / So they both turn away/ Suffering in silence/ What's the cost of remembrance?/ What's the cost to forget?/ Yesterday

Reading Details

For Reading:
Lucille Clifton: Mulberry Fields
LLesenia Bolorin: Dear L, (From my Opening Doors Project)
5 Word Bio: They said, so I say.

• poem #1: rick barot's "reading plato"
• poem # 2: a poem from my current project called "milwaukee aubade"
• bio: if dionysus were a feminist...

Bio + poem excitment

• Poem from our studies: Mộng-Lan's "Ravine"

• Poem from my personal work: A short excerpt from a series I titled "Bible Study"

• Artist Bio: Pink faced, glassy eyed honesty.

performancestuff

Poem: Jennifer Chang - one of the unction poems.
I'll be reading a poem that was broken apart in my thesis, linked to home and bodies.
Bio: Tessa Micaela, takes the long way home.

Note from Khaled Mattawa

after reading your posts:
Khaled Mattawa

Thanks for sharing this, dear El. Feeling rather wayward in Libya, and this is what the doctor ordered. Much love to your, in circles, rounding all your moves lovingly.
K

Hungover

Zodiac of Echoes is a wild ass ride. Due to a reason i'll share once i see you all in 2 hrs, i am just now reading this book. I sat down and soaked it all in over the last hour and i now feel drugged, exhausted, frustrated, inspired and kinda like i'm drowning.

I don't really know how to properly or maybe clearly is a better word, I don't know how to clearly explain and describe this book or my interaction with it. The words that rushed to mind as I read were "mosaic", "odyssey", "conflation", "layers", "weaving", "chaos", "interpretations", "elements", "witnessing", "adjusting", "holding", "culture clash", "memoir". These words do more to explain how i responded to this book than any wordy explanation I could craft right now. I'm reeling a bit.

Throughout the class I have encountered some poems that I didn't necessarily "get"...and was content with that. I feel like some poetry isn't meant to be milked for it's literal meaning per se. While reading Mattawa's words, I felt like i wasn't comprehending where the hell he was taking me, why, who all of these people and narrators were, I just felt like I was somersaulting through a mixture of Mattawa "stuff" that I clung to and sought clarity from. So many of the lines are some of the most beautiful, impacting lines I have ever danced with:

Shall I wake "hunger"
from his sleep? Shall I raise the ghosts
of ancient abstractions to define us, to tell us
our names?

And also, some of these  lines are the epitome of vague and abstract. There's so much movement through these pages. Of course with the varied placement, spacing, italics, numbers, form, etc. But also in the actual stories being told throughout (and there are many!!).

Yeah, did I mention i'm reeling and feeling drugged from all of this "elixir".

on the moon, alice

...before i begin this post, i want to immensely apologize to my lovelies. it was a wonderful day, until i got a ridiculously sized headache, and passed out; only for my body to f**k my alarm, and wake up at this hour instead. grrr. nevertheless, i was googly eyed for much of mattawa's writing, either because i'm waking up from a dream world or because it's that damn good.

i want to focus on "for years i've been prohibited for mentioning the moon", one for its amazing title and two, for it being such a far reaching gem of a poem. section 1 of Zodiac of Echoes is, in and of itself, a phenomenal whirling section that hit my soul further than most quote unquote pastoral poems i've read. it reminded me of being in the backseat of my dad's car as a kid, and being convinced the moon was coming straight at us the further we drove to it. in this poem, the moon really does come straight at you. in the opening stanzas, he has -- and this by no means matches the beauty of it, but describes it perfectly -- lunar verbal diarrhea. at first, i wondered, is this an excuse to write a sestina? is he mimicking the form? but as i was immersed deeper in it, it immediately caused me to wonder just why he was prohibited from saying it in the first place.

So now the cedar-scented moon, and moon-
glow encasing the sky in lavender velvet,
clouds splotched on a moon-radiant sky
and a sickle moon raking a field of violets
and the moon and sun in Joseph's dream kneeling,
and how years ago we could've been on the moon
watching the city from an airplane,
the stadium lights a diamond necklace,
and she was there, a star singing...

brill.i.ant. i want to hear his musings on the moon, and everything that the moon illuminates. even those less desirable things, like underground pipes. mattawa's imagination takes him to what's not being seen, and he acts in moon-like fashion to shed light on the darkness and physical underbelly of this precious land. he reaches from the sky to the depths of the earth, and is fixated on it for most of the poem. he still doesn't provide an answer for why he was prohibited from saying "the moon", but leads us into something much deeper (pun intended). it begs a question of "what was lost", which again is not revealed, but the sense of loss is immense throughout the poem. is it a loss of language, or loss of humanity/respect for earth and its citizens? if water is a life source, why is it becoming poisonous, and trapped in these pipes? why does his brain go from here to the moon, and back?

the poem has no physical pauses, and we are encapsulated in between fire hydrants and "pipes stacked like pythons", though it is unclear to me what turning "into this subdivision" means other than to transition the poem from sky to earth. still, even if the poem's lines move us along without any breaks, it is nevertheless paced; it doesn't feel rushed. the commas help to pace the poem.

then, he suddenly whisks us back -- the interesting thing about mattawa's poems is they have no specific date and time on them, but you can feel that he's evoking history. he assures us of this by stating "i am moved again by something i felt before":

surrounded by the rubble of conquest
where there are only old stars and dead wolves,
i am moved again by something i felt before,
shaken, but without an atom of pity in my body,
filled with a transparency capable of bearing
the whole world, a void that takes on the moon
in the sky...

this intuition and feeling of the sky, of having witnessed it all, of acknowledging that we're comprised of the same elements as the moon and the ripping apart of time, all the while being intrinsically attached to matters of the earth, are woven beautifully together. he captures those moments that i only mumble about to myself at nights when no one's watching, and scribble when no one's around. "the wind" was equally amazing!

When the stories, words, enter your body

---
"I sing 'Happiness uncontainable'
and 'fields greening in March'
until I'm sad and tired of truth,
and as usual I'm never believed."
---

Khaled Mattawa's Zodiac of Echoes struck me in a visceral and mentally shifting place. His poems play around with form, empty space, and geography, commenting on a transnational relationship between place, labor, identity, and memory. I loved his poems, and though some weren't as accessible to me as others, it reiterated many thoughts I've been thinking about lately, like a poem's insularity of multiple meanings, its many shades, and the impressions that we--as a reader--imprint unto the poems.

Mattawa's poems talk a lot about the sea. And that was my gateway into his poems--his sense of displacement and self that was dependent on a vastness that ultimately connects via the body of water. His first poem of the collection opened his moving, stunning voice to me:

"Next time, we promised, it'll be the Atlantic, next time
some salty immensity, some honest to goodness breeze,
the smell of the earth turning around itself,
a clear run to the horizon, a clean shot to Africa,
to something we could beckon and understand,
something the waves would release us from
now that we were stuck here on the Biloxi road
chained, and chain smoking, aware of the sea
we left behind, and that had left us,
the Mediterranean, that other swamp, too far
to touch us again, too far to ever matter."

I brought so many of my own emotive responses to these lines. And I think that's the beauty of poetry in comparison to fiction. There's a direct brevity with poetry that's able to strike the "belly song" much faster, and poetry can use narrative and language as tools in a succinct motion which fiction or prose takes time to create. With poetry, you can picture a world with one phrase, "a clean shot to Africa," and the imagery saturates in your mind, creating a mental space that is vividly distinct and tangible, filled with mood, tone, possibilities, longing. And I think this beauty of poetry has given me so much this past semester, and how Khaled writes from a place of remembering has allowed me to see what I want to do with my own writing, with my own emotions, thoughts, shouts, and whispers on paper.

Khaled's poem series, "Echo & Elixer," was a liminal journey for me. In the second poem, he takes me through the body of languages through cab drivers in Cairo, and I feel the world at the edge of my tongue in this piece. To do such vast movements in my mind--through a narrative, through such brevity--really broke me down to a space of clear adoration. I have to admit it's my favorite poem in the book, or at least one of them.

“Vicinity (A Sequence)" was a constant moving portrait, a poem of accessibility and inaccessibility to me. I say the latter, too, because of its moves in empty space and breath, its differing forms, and how it embodies--to me--a lingering puzzle, a labyrinth of emotive language.

'subway cars plunge into the sea "to form a reef
                           off the Delaware shore." What do you mean to me now
that I have become your substance?
You a moment                           and I am your duration,
a web of instincts             refined
             toward a pure savagery,
                                                    paradisal, pubescent.

To me, this part of the poem becomes an actualization of the metaphysical and self-reference to the poem. When I read a poem, it becomes a part of me, as if the stories, the words, enter my body. I am transfixed by the signifiers, by the objects and forms that the words allude to. In a way, the words do become "a web of instincts      refined / toward a pure savagery, / paradisal, pubescent."

Historicizing the Echoes

Mattawa’s conceptualization of the zodiac is fantastic; he describes how “since the whole zodiac is in constant motion, and as this sun constantly spins about its orbit, some prayers become detached. Unable to resume their original ascent to the highest tier, the prayers spin about the zodiac filling it with their echoes. It is the mingled sounds of these unanswered prayers that give this zodiac its name.” In Diversity, Mattawa writes of a woman caught in daily life amid chaos, “her face dreamless, unhistoricized.” It seems that Mattawa’s entire work encompasses the undocumented aspects of life, personalizing these histories by people and their unnoticed echoes.

The personal level of his work is transcendent, for even well-historicized lands seem new by his poetry, documented by moments of heroism, love and difficulty. He describes not only political battlefields but also intimacy, where “the lover tells the beloved ‘I loved you first,’” pain like “a glow, an abandoned fire,” all the while wondering “how will I console the world?” Each poem seems to encompass at least one scene, a glimpse of emotion that describes places and events in a way that is impossible to technicality-driven history books.

This brings to question—what is history? Mattawa makes history his own term, defining it as anything past that can be captured or created. His work has a profound sadness, describing how “a woman picked and offered me/ a delectable sorrow, intractable: /our bittersweet insistence." His work depicts personal emotions and he allows these snapshots to stand for the places he describes, the struggles that inhabit every land and create unification. Mattawa describes a woman in turmoil by saying “she is not dead. she cannot stop dying.” It creates a sense of purgatory, caught between life and death. It seems this relates to emotional and locational division, for Mattawa describes a nationalistic sense of “ritualized terror” and the perpetual fear it inflicts.  

One of the first things I noticed about Zodiac of Echoes was that I have no idea how to pronounce a large part of the content. Upon closer inspection a lot of these unidentifiables are Mattawa’s references to countries and places that are entirely foreign to me and yet speak to his feeling of identification with other lands. Mattawa’s work is not only a depiction of spirit, love and pain amid the chaos of life, but also an unanswered question. He asks how to solve the world, an enquiry that feels almost rhetorical in its impossibility; however, his first step is clear: create unity. Mattawa’s work speaks to collective emotions and thus reveals the universal neglected echoes of the zodiac. 

Tangible Echoes

Like an organic form or mold or a shadow one can capture with one’s hands there is a solid tangibility in Khaled Mattawa’s hyper distinction of being and one’s environment.

How is an artist shaped? I think Mattawa exemplifies the raw realness of how the reactionary part of the artist and the work that comes out into affect. 

Recently he wrote this in Kenyon Review about Libya’s Day of Liberation: One Year On (Oct. 24, 2012):

What makes these developments bitter sweet, yet again, is that it is indeed unreasonable to celebrate situations that may bring about more violence in the future. This goes along with my conviction that it is indeed inhumane to celebrate any war victory.

The great poet philosopher Laozi wrote:

The killing of many people should create sorrow and grief.
A great victory is a funeral ceremony.

Laozi also wrote:

Weapons always turn back against themselves.
Encamp an army today;
the campground is all thorns and brambles tomorrow.
Make war for a month; there will be famine for years.
Do what needs to be done, but do not rejoice in victory.
Make war, if necessary, and win,
but without arrogance, without hostility, without pride,
without needless violence.
War, victory, and the rest do not last.

What will last I hope are the memories of real accomplishments, the moments when the nation in duress acted in peace to further the wellbeing of its citizens. We’ve had a few of those here in Libya this past year. I hope we will begin to celebrate them instead.

There's softness and caution to his words and work and such a deep deep connection to Laozi's ethos as well. I'm still sitting here trying to digest Mattawa. 

Khaled Mattawa's poetry is gorgeous and has an internal logic to it that is potent and undeniable. That being said, I can't find a way to enter into what he is doing in his poetry, or how to talk about it. While reading it was very clear to me that, yes, there was a system inside of which Mattawa was writing, and that all things that were said, were also saying something covert and hidden underneath (like lucille's behind the poem is an other...but maybe I've just still got her on the brain). When I reached the notes at the end of the book, I found some sense of understanding the logic of the books' structure, but again, only clues to touching down on the heart of the book, or of this poet's positioning in the landscape of displacement.

The third section (based on the state of the soul) felt, strangely, the most reliable of sections in terms of finding a ground. Perhaps this not having a ground and necessity of hide things within themselves is the poetics of Mattawa. It is nontheless extremely difficult an emotional and literary experience, which is why in the third section I felt some consolation. Echo & Elixer 6, especially, affected me deeply. After we've been taken so many places and through so many images with Mattawa, we land on the "echoes" of sentences gathered, seemingly, from all those distinct locations. The sentences swirl around each other in a prose block that feels like it incarcerates the lines. And then the lines begin to repeat in different configurations, subverting any original impulse towards narrative, while never escaping the prose block. In thinking of this poem in the context of the the state of the soul, there is this simultaneous way of being very specific and swirling, explicit and elusive, grounded and ethereal. And so even here, where on first read I felt most safe in locating myself, there is a refusal to locate.

I came upon this video of Mattawa reading a poem about the anger and drive towards dissidence as a young boy in Libya, and also the internalized fear and self limitations in the context of political repression. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq32NX9lkdQ. The simultaneous pulls of action and restraint seem to be present all across The Zodiac of Echoes - even in this as title and structure. A system of divination based on the stars but resonant in all that has come before and lingers underneath. That said, I'm really excited to hear other people's readings to help illuminate this book for me.

constellations, interconnectedness, the global

i'm having a hard time figuring out how to talk about this collection, mainly where to begin and where to key in from. i can't think about them without thinking about how poets and writers in libya were imprisoned for writing, how this policing and criminalization affected content, and then what it means for mattawa's poems to exist as they do and take on what they do in the 2000s. and then i also can't not think of the libyan uprisings two years ago. i am thinking about all this, but again, not necessarily sure about how to connect the past (1970s/1980s) the present that this book takes up based on when it was published(2003) and then the future (2011, which is now the past, but WAS the future when thinking about when this book was published).

mattawa talks about how he cannot write from the moment itself, but has to write from a point of reflection and processing. i think this tactic of contemplation before responding to events instead of a direct reaction contribute to how this collection weaves together so many different experiences, voices, places, influences, etc. in his poems, you get a sense of cause and effect. how immediate decisions and structures contribute to building tensions, oppressions, and problems over time. how you cannot look at large governmental decisions and institutional actions as disconnected from racism, classism, issues of access, worker safety/health, and the proliferation of certain serious illnesses, birth issues, etc. in certain areas as affecting certain communities. and then all of this continues to echo through time and history, calls back to the origins, even predicts problems/reactions/consequences in the future.

i think this zodiac form that he uses to organize the collection and sequence the book makes a lot of sense in relation to what i can glean of his personal politics. he calls us to understand how national actions have global consequences, how globalization puts us all in a constellation of connectedness where policy, regimes of power, populations of people, capitalism/competition, grassroots efforts, etc all hold influence and create various consequences for how we either negatively or positively experience our world. he reminds us to recognize that worlds we refuse to think about or understand we are directly responsible for or influencing even if we are unaware (cairo with its daewoo stereos , jews rescued by ottoman boats) as a result of our globalized world.

i think this happens continually throughout the collection. and the fact that poems interrupt other poems and then pick up after other poems have finished speaks to the way time is non-linear and that consequences continue to echo and influence long after their initial occurrence.

Echoes of Identity

There are two pieces of work from this book that I immediately felt a strong connection to and made several notes about: “Echo and Elixir 3” and part one of “Vicinity (A Sequence).” From this beginning section of the book, I found very complex associations to identity that Khaled Mattawa weaved between seemingly simple words. From “Echo and Elixir 3,” these three sections called out to me the most:

“People do not ask how long you’ve been away,

but what have you brought?

And being away is all you bring.”

The above section introduces us to the poem, and as an introduction, this statement is a pretty heavy one to take in. It is true for the most part that upon your return from wherever you’ve been away from, no one really asks you how long you’ve been away, why you’ve been away, what being away has done to you (if it’s done anything at all). And this question of what you’ve brought is so interesting to read because it can be seen as several things. The first that I thought of, mostly due to the mention of duty-free shops, is the most literal translation; if you’ve brought any gifts or trinkets from where you had gone away to, which begins to play into the idea of the identities people assume as consumers and how they become consumed by their own personal consumerism. The other way I read this was a more abstract “gift” or “trinket,” and it was one for the self. I mentioned earlier how no one really/genuinely/truly/etc. asks what being away has effected in your life and in asking this question keeping that thought in mind, one is compelled to ask themselves what they’ve brought aka learned, accomplished and so on. But in the end of it all, being away is all that you’ve brought back. I’m trying to process this idea, especially when I personally place myself in it since most peers my age romanticize over the idea of going far, far away and returning with hoards of newfound knowledge and wisdom without ever taking the time to think that you might not come back with anything at all.

“And the life in the hands you shake,

the poetry in the sand more than the poetry in poetry.”

First of all, THESE TWO LINES ARE SO INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL. There is such a high degree of the significance of life placed into something that seems so common and small (the act of handshaking). I was stuck on that one line for a long time because we’ve all learned that the act of shaking hands is something done out of politeness and courtesy or as a professional greeting. What we aren’t taught is to think about how in our hands, which are full of life, we are holding the life of someone else’s for a moment. The line following this line seems so appropriate because of how it also places a high degree of importance (the meaning, interpretation, value, etc. of poetry) in something so common and small (sand). The second line also stuck out to me because it made me recall previous discussions we’ve held in regards to writing poetry and how we can’t look at something in nature without associating it to something else.

“I am a spirit and a body.

The trees speak a language of light and thorns.

Let me tell you a story now.

You see a city in the clouds

and give it a woman’s name,

always a woman’s name.”

OKAY, reading this section of the poem forced me to take a break and a breath. There is so much to unpack in each single line. The statement “I am a spirit and a body” was something strange to read for me. I’ve never had the idea to separate my spirit from my body. I’ve always felt the two were connected. But in saying that one is both a spirit and a body creates an entirely different meaning than simply separating the two. By stating this, I feel the speaker creates dual identities for themself, one that is finite and fallible (body: human, living creature), and one that is infinite and pure (spirit: soul, something otherworldly, greater being or power). The other section that I bolded caught my eye because I went on this internal rant over women and how they are subjected to becoming objects. It’s common for people to name their property with female names (cars, boats, etc.). I’m wholly unsure of how this practice began or why it’s still perpetuated, but Mattawa explicitly states that it is always a woman’s name. To this effect, I started rambling in my head about how objects are given names commonly given to women and how this in turn affects the value of a woman. If you are always associated to an object, what does this mean? That you yourself are an object? Or that your personal worth is equated to an object, something without moral or opinion? I DON’T KNOW, BUT I WAS LIKE DAMN WHEN I READ THIS because of how it creates a dual identity crisis for women and people who identify as women that differs from the dual identity of being a spirit and a body.

From part one of “Vicinity (A Sequence),” these two sections spoke to me:

“What do you mean to me now

that I have become your substance?

You a moment

                        and I am your duration,

a web of instincts       refined

            toward a pure savagery,

                                                paradisal, pubescent.”

The question posed at the beginning of that section and the answer following it really bummed me out. There is such a potent sense of dependence on another to create (and perhaps validate?) your own identity. This identity crisis is much different than the ones I’ve previously mentioned because it does not solely involve the self; here, other factors (people) affect the self. The decision to use the word “web” was very skillful, since it creates an image of desperate entanglement, that one thing has power and hold over the other.

“’Verily , beloved, the hearts in this heart

                                                                        chant your name.’

The ballpoint threatens

                                    to carve it

                                                on the totem pole,

            to prod the faces

                                    that betray                 nothing.”

I’m not entirely sure what this section is inspired by, but I really liked the reference to the hearts and how it ties back to the beginning of the poem. Part one begins with “[a]n artificial heart whirs.” The word artificial is typically used to address something that is fake or, probably more appropriate in this sense, something that is not genuine (earnest, true). Nearing the end of the poem, someone says that “the hearts in this heart chant your name.” Keeping the beginning of the poem in mind, I read this as a lie. A desperate plea to whomever is dependent on the speaker or vice versa.

I’m not sure if I’m even accurately touching base with some of the ideas Mattawa wrote about, but geez I really loved reading through this book.