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.
'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.'
ReplyDeleteYes, yes! I'm very happy to have read this, and know that I wasn't the only one looking at Khaled's forms as a poetic puzzle, whose entryway is varied to different readers.
Also, thanks for the video! Hearing him read was yet another visceral experience, and the way he remediates anger/rage (from a place of remembering, of distance, of looking, reanalyzing the past) is fascinating to me. It also made me think about what you said on the third section, which I really do agree with you: it did ground me more than his other poems.
"Perhaps this not having a ground and necessity of hide things within themselves is the poetics of Mattawa."
ReplyDeleteYes. I think that not having ground or have many grounds creates a sense of ungroundedness that resonates in Mattawa's work.
he looks so serious in the video, so still and inanimate--
ReplyDeleteTessa, a very nice intersection with his work and a willingness to let go of systems that are familiar and go with his
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"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." I think Melissa already pointed this quote out from u but i have to echo it because i feel the exact same way. Ditto to everything u said.
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