Matter might be called imagination turned war,
puzzling scenes in the bombardment during “that ongoing,
vast but somehow boring destruction. The landscape grows
increasingly perplexed. “Little conceived more American
than the “cryptographic” since it can reorient sense, helping
to account for turbulence that follows, therefore begins. Instance:
color aspects of American democracy, or terror
here and over There. Or even: in traffic snarl delayed construction
at city edge: President, man behind history, realize instant
interstates would not connect American cities but cut through:
psychic zones of relationship. A site society systematically
unordered. Questions about the limits social does.
How specificity feels general. How does language page
put one somewhere and nowhere—vague idiosyncrasy
of place uses multiple particular places (as opposed settings,
to anchor what would otherwise be untenably pathless, wondering
meditation. Still, these places remain largely general; place names
and multitudinous nature of them, augment both
distinctness and lack of clarity. The the. Incantatory, calling aura
and past, bringing half-imagined events life. And are arenas,
and in that, their specificity negligible—they name relatively
idiosyncratic settings merely, in which events occurred
or might have. And of culture, education, lends at least a flavor
of Antwerp or Oran, a French concentration suburb, Euphrates,
Pyrenees. Places as much about the or of those places, as about
what hints are provided by name attachment.
1976 Juan Gelman, exiled by junta; twenty-year-old son,
and pregnant nineteen-year-old daughter-in-law “disappeared.”
Gelman lived in Europe and Mexico since with Dark Times
Filled with Light, ‘56 to ‘92, as in “one day i watched death going
by / she wasn’t on horseback / she was screaming.”
Before actions abroad had few to no direct significant
consequences at home. 9/11 changed. Oppen declared,
“There are situations which cannot be honorably met by art, and
surely no one need fiddle precisely at the moment house next
door is burning.” And if the fire lasts a decade, or three,
or if the house is down, and only be returned to in mind?
And once exile has granted freedom to write in opposition
to interests of dominant classes, but has largely taken your
audience—then? Transcending arguments over writing
as politics as opposed to writing about politics.
