Joan Retallack, BOSCH’D

 

Human [hyu-muhn]

The human is one of many humorous creatures rolled out in the evolution of this planet. Wholly animal, charismatically self-conscious, intellectually ambitious, emotionally feral. Prone to abstraction, estrangement, hubristic fantasies, bitter depression. Psychologically lethal while imaginatively promising. The “we” that are human are no more, no less than part of nature. Nature is the whole of us. Denial of that has been our greatest folly.

I’m intrigued by American poet, critic, biographer, and multi-disciplinary scholar Joan Retallack’s latest poetry title, BOSCH’D (Brooklyn NY: Litmus Press, 2020), the first of hers I’ve read. Retallack is a poet I’m clearly behind on, given the length and breadth of her publishing history, from books on poetics, artist books and numerous poetry titles, including Procedural Elegies / Western Civ Cont’d / Selected Poems 1970-2008 (Roof Books, 2010). Although it should be noted, that despite whatever other publications she’s produced over the past twenty years, BOSCH’D is her first collection of new poems since the publication of Memnoir (Post-Apollo Press, 2004).

The poems is BOSCH’D are set in two sections, “BOSCH” and “BOSCH’D,” which itself is broken up into numerous sub-sections: “IN LOCO (ON THE SPOT),” “IN LOCO SCIENTIA (MATH & SCI),” “IN LOCO TEMPUS (NICK OF TIME),” “IN LOCO MALUM ET ALTERITAS (EVIL & OTHERS),” “IN LOCO CONFESSIO (SPILLING THE BEANS) BLOOD*LITANY” and “IN LOCO POST SCRIPTUM (AFTERWORDS).” What is the difference between the short “BOSCH” and the extended “BOSCH’D”? The second poem of the opening section, “Bosch [bash, bôsh]” includes a kind of prose poem lyric biography of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), the Dutch painter known for his “fantastical paintings on religious concepts,” writing: “His paintings intermix species of many kinds, / realistic and fantastical. Part-human, part-animal, part-mechanical creatures, ethereal / figures, wily demons—a world filled with the exquisite and grotesque in startling clarity.” She writes of time and absolutes, of saints and statues, including numerous poems with codas: an intriguing boiling down of lyric and language, a Greek-chorus style of end-point reminiscent of Toronto poet Margaret Christakos offering the same, via “THEREFORE” codas, throughout her own wipe.under.a.love (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 1998). There is something in the way Retallack expands and contracts her lyric thinking I’m quite taken with, providing both the stretched-out exploration and one boiled down to the bone, both of which still provide an equally-delightful openness.

EXHAUSTION

The exhaustion of truth in language was so
great there was no way to know what one
had to go on as one had to go on going on.

Retallack composes poems as a study of language, of Stein and Sappho, of science; writing the sparks and fragments of lyric. She writes big ideas and small details, exploring the connections across and through physical space, physics and theory, math and myth, philosophy and storytelling, and dreams of the impossible. BOSCH’D includes an array of some absolutely stunning lines in equally stunning poems. At the end of the poem “The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma,” she writes: “Someone will claim / real is a misleading construct. Someone will claim / night flew into a tree. Those five words in a line.” This is a wonderfully complex collection of poems of thinking that can’t help but spark further thinking; a poetry of inquiry as strong as I’ve ever seen, and there are echoes here that remind, also, of elements of Anne Carson, Norma Cole and Kathleen Fraser: an ongoing and deeply engaged poetics of language and inquiry. As Retallack writes to open the poem “St. Anselm’s QED”:

St. Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God:
God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived:
omnipotent, omniscient, omni-beneficent. 

If God does not exist, then something greater can be conceived:
one with a fourth attribute—existence. Therefore,
God, than which nothing greater can be conceived, must exist. QED.

 

P-QUEUE #15 : BLOOD

Hello Some

We all know that some cook & some clean some cut leaves gather stones some pick them up some others open & close & unravel

Some eat quickly some take breaks some list grievances & others say them out loud

Some dream of violence & murder & some dream nicely some take triggers & wait by the road some clean their afterthoughts

Some protest & some watch walking on the other side by the hour some hold hands & some travel tell stories some are the stories some count for much longer and whose some, hello some, whose some. Hello. (Eunsong Kim)

I’ve long been an admirer of SUNY-Buffalo’s annual P-QUEUE (I’m still seeking copies of the first few volumes, if anyone has copies or suggestions of how to procure), and the latest, their “BLOOD” issue, Allison Cardon’s second volume as editor, includes new work by Biswamit Dwibedy, Joan Retallack, Eunsong Kim, Petra Kuppers, Travis Sharp, Renee Angle, erica kaufman and Soham Patel. Throughout its history, P-QUEUE has held to an idea of a loose “theme” for each volume—“Anomolies” (2), “Space” (6), “Polemic” (7), “Document” (8), “Mourning” (13) etcetera—an idea that has, throughout the journal’s five editors-to-date, has existed as a thread to connect sometimes disparate works, as opposed to any thematic bludgeon. Fundamentally, the strength of the writing has always propelled each volume, and has done so quite brilliantly. As Cardon writes to close her introduction:

In this, P-Queue’s fifteenth issue, blood conveys a wealth of information that is less in need of discovery than of care. As blood covers the intersection of history with finitude and relation, these poetic, polyvalent explorations of this viscious and revelatory bodily substance help us imagine a form of vitality disarticulated from blood’s labor time, net work, or progression.

[photo lifted from Allison Cardon's facebook page] 

I’ve always been fond, also, of journals that provide enough space for a writer’s work to stretch out, and reveal itself, as opposed to including only a couple of pieces, or even a single poem (for the sake of getting in as many writers as possible). Even beyond the variety P-QUEUE is traditionally known for, I’ve appreciated the journal’s interest in including multiple pieces, even longer singular, extended works, by fewer authors. Highlights in this volume abound: erica kaufman’s work is stellar—sharp, rich and smart—writing: “when i say i’m driving through / mountains i mean not just words / or filth, skepticism, & pronouns. / staccato is ordinary reception / like rabies or powerpoint or generic / welcoming verbs who need punctuation.” (“Post Classic”). Eunsong Kim’s work is powerful, and makes me want more, as she opens the poem “Tithing”: “This city’s symbol a woman who killed her colonizer // Woman is euphemism for recorded state property.” The authors collected here write blood and discomfort, trauma and progress, and Cardon’s introduction outlines the issue both generally and specifically quite beautifully. Basically, there is plenty here worth paying attention to, continuing a strong presence for an annual I have long learned to pay attention to.

Alabama Is a State on Mars #3

In the hospital twice in two years, first a heart attack and now a mugging. Sitting in his van outside his daughter’s pharmacy, he is dragged out of it, pistol whipped, punched repeatedly, possibly kicked. Daughter and coworkers inside lock the door and call the police. In the hospital face already swollen beginning to bruise. He smiles when he sees me.

Now staying up late and with a machete under his chair. Now circling the yard with the machete. Now asking everyone in the house if they, too, saw that light across the lawn. A flashlight? Do you think it was a flashlight? (Travis Sharp)