Enclosing Next To Nothing

Anarchy, like Communism, like Marxism, is one of those words that institutional power has poisoned for so many of us. That is to say, we cannot think of it without fearing it in some way: we might fear the idea of it, that is be afraid of what we think anarchy means if "unleashed" upon us, if Marxism means Pol Pot or Mao then we might as well just starve ourselves, or if Communism means Lenin or Stalin then, again, we must imagine our immediate murders, but perhaps we'd prefer this end rather than be forced to live through such a social order. But, let's think a little harder.

We might just argue that bad men make bad things happen by force. We might argue that "ideal" men make bad things happen by force. We might even argue simply that good men make bad things happen by force. And I suppose now there are two common denominators here that you've recognized. Men and Force (and by that I mean violence, but not just physical violence--coercion is often psychologically violent as well, and as an extreme we can point to forms of torture that are directed at the mind more than the body). (I think we might assert a real connection of anarchy to the female and so offer another reason a society dominated by men would want to disabuse us of exploring anarchy.)

Anarchy, Anarchism, is, I think, best characterized by a single tenet: that of eschewing force and coercion. I had written "opposing" here but think that, though true, it might indicate a "counter-force" and I am uneasy using "force."

Further, as a person who writes as a part of self-making, and who writes poetry in particular, I am an anarchist. Which is to say, I am seeking words to embody an openness. Poetry too is coercive, at least as an institutional practice. That is to say form is coercive...which is as much to say that history is coercive. But, let's be clear that it is the systematizing of history that is coercive; the systematizing of form that is coercive.

This (form) does not need to be considered always a negative. Form, at least in poetry, can help focus our thinking. If I have to put a word down that conforms to a rhyming pattern, or a syllable count, for example, then I am forced into a limit. This can prompt one to finding "the right" word.

But see how even as I wrote all of this I used words that really, if enlarged and placed in other contexts, become troubling. We might all believe that limitations and "narrow" or focused thinking are, or can be positive, yet, they seem to me more probably detrimental, at least where thinking is concerned.

Perhaps it is the insistence on form that becomes difficult; the insistence on form is an external pressure, but one that gets internalized in societies and thus becomes a propriety and thus a calcification of thought.

William Carlos Williams said once that Marianne Moore was always a poet. He didn't quite know what else to say about what she wrote, but he knew it was poetry. It might be difficult to understand the idea of Williams, a poet who eschewed form, other than the fact that poems were written on paper and to him really needed to "look" a particular way (that is, he applied a visual aesthetic which may be said to be less of an interference in his thinking than a "metered" or linguistically formal practice might have been), liking Moore's poetry as it seems to stand apart from his own constructions. Moore creates her poems often via "syllabics" and so applies a kind of self-imposed form. Which is to say that MM did not use traditional forms, she made up her own as a way to be "formal" but, we might say, her forms are anarchically free, or "open." Add to this the fact that she changed (revised) her poems constantly throughout her life often to the point of very nearly erasing them entirely.

We might see Williams as a poet of anarchy. Or an anarchical poet. (I think possibly that his contemporary Mina Loy might be a greater example, but I'm not quite, but almost, prepared to say that.)

What he offers in Kora in Hell and in Spring and All are discoveries of the anarchist in the artist. We could go back to Emerson for a "foundation" if only to assert a program to undermine foundations (and programs!): "I unsettle all things," and "I would write on the lintels of the doorpost, Whim."

David Graeber (anarcho-anthropologist?), in his latest book, The Democracy Project, seems to make two primary further points about anarchism as an idea "in practice": it is an opening of a space that allows for, encourages, improvisation. And in that space flowers imagination.

Hence, poetry. Hence, the truly human.

And so too the Williams of Kora ("improvisations") and Spring and All ("the book of the imagination").

There's so much more to say, but I'm really just starting to feel my way into this. And surely I'll have to bring Melville's White Whale into it somehow along the way!

Let's close though with this from Williams (1938):

THE POOR

The anarchy of poverty
delights me , the old
yellow wooden house indented
among the new brick tenements

Or a cast iron balcony
with panels showing oak branches
in full leaf. It fits
the dress of the children

reflecting every stage and
custom of necessity-
Chimneys, roofs, fences of
Wood and metal in an unfenced

age and enclosing next to
nothing at all: the old man

in a sweater and soft black
hat who sweeps the sidewalk-

his own ten feet of it-
in a wind that fitfully

turning his corner has
overwhelmed the entire city

Let's say that with emphasis, "in an unfenced//age and enclosing next to/nothing at all..."

Unmaking the Man

I'm listening to a recording of Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

On the walk with the youngest child to school (actually on the way back home) I made my way uphill past a pavilion where two women appeared to be preparing to run or at least do some kind of exercise--there were two full water bottles for a "clue."  One was fully clothed and even seemed overly covered, the other was basically in what we call "athletic gear" that would easily be comparable to beach wear.  Her bottoms were painted on and were kind of a mint ice cream color with some white streaking.

It struck me finally that I was staring at a form, a thing, a visual/sexual aesthetic (?), and that when I came to awareness this section of chapter 3 of Herland was being spoken into my ears:


   The most prominent sensation was of absolute physical comfort. I was lying in a perfect bed: long, broad, smooth; firmly soft and level; with the finest linen, some warm light quilt of blanket, and a counterpane that was a joy to the eye. The sheet turned down some fifteen inches, yet I could stretch my feet at the foot of the bed free but warmly covered.

   I felt as light and clean as a white feather. It took me some time to conscientiously locate my arms and legs, to feel the vivid sense of life radiate from the wakening center to the extremities.

   A big room, high and wide, with many lofty windows whose closed blinds let through soft green-lit air; a beautiful room, in proportion, in color, in smooth simplicity; a scent of blossoming gardens outside.

   I lay perfectly still, quite happy, quite conscious, and yet not actively realizing what had happened till I heard Terry.

   "Gosh!" was what he said.

   I turned my head. There were three beds in this chamber, and plenty of room for them.

   Terry was sitting up, looking about him, alert as ever. His remark, though not loud, roused Jeff also. We all sat up.

   Terry swung his legs out of bed, stood up, stretched himself mightily. He was in a long night robe, a sort of seamless garment, undoubtedly comfortable -- we all found ourselves so covered. Shoes were beside each bed, also quite comfortable and good-looking though by no means like our own.

   We looked for our clothes -- they were not there, nor anything of all the varied contents of our pockets.

   A door stood somewhat ajar; it opened into a most attractive bathroom, copiously provided with towels, soap, mirrors, and all such convenient comforts, with indeed our toothbrushes and combs, our notebooks, and thank goodness, our watches -- but no clothes.

   Then we made a search of the big room again and found a large airy closet, holding plenty of clothing, but not ours.

   "A council of war!" demanded Terry. "Come on back to bed -- the bed's all right anyhow. Now then, my scientific friend, let us consider our case dispassionately."

   He meant me, but Jeff seemed most impressed.

   "They haven't hurt us in the least!" he said. "They could have killed us -- or -- or anything -- and I never felt better in my life."

   "That argues that they are all women," I suggested, "and highly civilized. You know you hit one in the last scrimmage -- I heard her sing out -- and we kicked awfully."

   Terry was grinning at us. "So you realize what these ladies have done to us?" he pleasantly inquired. "They have taken away all our possessions, all our clothes -- every stitch. We have been stripped and washed and put to bed like so many yearling babies -- by these highly civilized women."

   Jeff actually blushed. He had a poetic imagination. Terry had imagination enough, of a different kind. So had I, also different. 

In Carlyle's Sartor Resartus it is literally the clothes that make the man and here it seems this is the beginning of the interlopers' education, or "unmaking."

*********

I will note (stealing the idea from Douglas Crase in Amerifil.txt) this bit of comparative literature.  Also published in 1915 on the opposite coast of this nation and to much less fanfare then and now (we should note that Perkins Gilman was a popular and respected author), this, from possibly my favorite modernist poet, Mina Loy, "Love Songs."  These (1-4 of the songs that would come to be included in the sequence "Songs to Joannes") were published in The Others the poetry journal started by Alfred Kreymborg and frequented by Williams (and occasionally edited by him).

The pagination matters here and I can't find an easy way to reproduce it so if you simply go to this page at The Modernist Journals Project you can find a facsimile of the original journal.  And here also, quite wonderfully, is a handwritten ms image.

LOVE SONGS


I
Spawn of fantasies
Sitting the appraisable
Pig Cupid his rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage
" O n c e upon a t i m e "
Pulls a weed white star-topped
Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane
I would an eye in a Bengal light
Eternity in a sky-rocket
Constellations in an ocean
Whose rivers run no fresher
Than a trickle of saliva
There are suspect places
I must live in my lantern
Trimming subliminal flicker
Virginal to the bellows
Of experience
Colored glass.

II

The skin-sack
In which a wanton duality
Packed
All the completions of my infructuous impulses
Something the shape of a man
To the casual vulgarity of the merely observant
More of a clock-work mechanism
Running down against time
To which I am not paced
My finger-tips are numb from fretting your hair
A God's door-mat
On the threshold of your mind.


III
We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spilled on promiscuous lips
We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily news
Printed in blood on its wings.


IV
Once in a mezzanino
The starry ceiling
Vaulted an unimaginable family
Bird-like abortions
With human throats
And wisdom's eyes
Who wore lamp-shade red dresses
And woolen hair
One bore a baby
In a padded porte-enfant
Tied with a sarsanet ribbon
To her goose's wings
But for the abominable shadows
I would have lived
Among their fearful furniture
To teach them to tell me their secrets
For I had guessed mine
That if I should find YOU
And bring you with me
The brood would be swept clean out.

A God's Door-Mat

Here is "Song II" from Mina Loy's "Songs to Joannes."

                                      II

                             The skin-sack

In which a wanton duality
Packed
All the completions of my infructuous impulses
Something the shape of a man
To the casual vulgarity of the merely observant
More of a clock-work mechanism
Running down against time
To which I am not paced
    My finger-tips are numb from fretting your hair
A God's door-mat
                              On the threshold of your mind

________________

I like this, but I seem to need to read it from the bottom up.

That is, the last phrase speaks most clearly to me of the poet/persona as woman as writer confronting either reader or another person (lover/friend/other).

These words a "fretting" attempt to convey something to you that you are simply not getting.

What?  Are you the skin-sack?  And with that figuration perhaps the poet does not think much of you, of humanity generally.  

She is not paced with machines or clockwork--she is, as "woman" often is, a weaver.  

And yet, what is she making?  A thing on which one wipes the shit off the shoes.

What are your thoughts?