Ghost Opera: Performative Words & Situations

By a path that, in its own way, is also negative, the poet comes to the brink of language. And that brink is called silence, blank page. A silence that is like a lake, a smooth and compact surface. Down below, submerged, the words are waiting. 
                                                                                                                            ----  Octavio Paz 

I am particularly intrigued by how Roffé engages with the quotation by examining the undertones/hidden meanings beneath the surface in her poetry. 

In Circle, the underlying messages beneath “the brink of language” that lurk in the abyss understands itself, and the understanding of itself is concave, directing inward to its depth. In “his” memory, the abyss is a hole, but its complexity is fleshed out via “their” words in “his" retrospection: “an even more heinous passage”, which unravels a vast and ominous space extending beyond the hole. The poem’s sparse lines and the white space between them seem like a visualization of what’s unsaid under the surface, and acts as a conduit for readers to move through the “heinous passage” to the abyss where unspoken words abound. 

In Wildness of the Hours, language collapses into fragments of words and whispers (in its “constant dissolution”), words have an irresistible and “obstinate” urge to return to the mouth, to the “brink of language” before the words are enunciated in the mouth. In the process of retrieving the language, an obscure fear rises: 

                                                        afraid 

a nuance may linger 

                                                        so            apparent 

of the ministry of water

"The ministry of water” echoes with the lake in Paz’s quotation. The lack of quietude in words about disrupt the "smooth and compact surface” will counteract the return of words to mouth, refusing to communicate and to be interpreted. 

In the poem Vesperal, even though the messages can’t be read/heard in the communication (“illegible waters” and uncertainty about what’s said), the language emerges despite the silence, and the attempt to conceal failed, like the girls who can only cover the “lewdest corner of their mouth”, but are not able to fully seal their mouths to the prevent propagation of lewd language.

Some poems in Situations: Events and Spells hinge on a similar pattern of actions and its evolution with increased participants in the collective actions. 

In Situations with Cups, the collective action turns into a spectacle. The initial act of pouring coffee and spilling it is individual. But when the following people imitate, they have an expectation that their acts are subjects to others’ observation, thus the act of spilling coffee becomes performative. However, the actions of spilling coffee itself is a meaningless and excessive act, so performing that act does not create value as well. The crowd is uncritically repeating the act for others to watch without reflecting on whether the act has inherent value, or can generate value for the performers/spectators. In the end of the poem, the crowd looks at each other, the coffee pots, & the cups, which neither has no significance in itself nor derive functions from collective acts. Despite the following the act, there is no reciprocality between individuals, and coffee functions as a object to be watched rather than to be consumed. I wonder what the poem want to suggest by focusing on acts of spilling (as a result, wasting) coffee, and as a reader/spectator outside their circle, if I will gain something from vicarious observation of the collective act through this poem other than feeling perplexed. I have similar questions about some other “situations” poems as well. In Situations with Whistles, I immediately get that the act of whistling results in the departure of another. As the poem progresses, readers see one “grapples with him/herself for doing nothing but does nothing”, and whistling is an act that terminates as well as replaces the grappling. However, the outcome of whistling is merely causing someone to leave the room, and I wonder 1) how it’s different from doing nothing if both two don’t generate anything other than proving that one always fails to be productive in that space and have to leave in the end; 2) whether the variants about in what sequence people whistle and leave the room matters if lack of productivity is the only thing witnessed in the space. 

In the “Situations" series, I am more interested in these poems that subvert or reverse the desired effects contained in the title. In the first stanza of "Situation to Heal the Sick”, the repetitive command “he shouldn’t” after the statements of letting him not do what he is incapable of doing indicates that the party excludes him rather than accommodating him, and inviting people to the party + encouraging noise maintains the status quo of his sickness, rather than bringing recuperative effects to him. I am curious about the act of filling the “hollow” of the white, embroidered sheet with all the leftovers and dumping it in the river, which seems like either a strange ritual to offer these food to the river, or a insult to deprive the sick person of any enjoyment from the party, and wonder if the act is related to or (purposefully) not relevant to healing the sick. In “Situation to Break the Spell”, “as if you were to die/or give birth to yourself” frames the ambivalence of the meditation/ritual to break the spell. The speaker instructs “you” to “dive into the deep, narrow scale of oblivion” and “confront the one you were before memory” in order to reach “you” in the inaccessible past, which is subject to erasure of amnesia. As “you” delve deeper, “you recognize the road that brought you here”, and the present + distant past of “you” become linked rather than divided. The question “Can you see yourself?” and the instruction “Ask why and accept it --- whatever the answer” urges “you” not only to confront the past “you”, but also to confront how “you” perceive the past self. The space (the wall of cold fire) between “you” and “your” failure is lit up by creation of ‘your gaze” -- “a trail on the ground/a track of moist dirt and ashes”. The path back to the present self is made possible after you turn back to the failure, while following the same road back. To break a spell that causes pain “in the belly or the chest” is painful itself, “as though something had been torn from you”, probably because the pain had become a part of self before it was severed from “you". Despite the symptom and the spell are removed, (“the memory of the gash will unfailingly follow you). Going on a journey for a discovery of a trajectory of selves in “your" personal history might eliminate the physical pain, but the phantom scar/wound (the memory of the gash) remains (perhaps because each segment of experience consciously or unconsciously  constructs the continuum of self’s memory)

I look forward to hearing your ideas about the book and let me know if I should clarify anything I write above.

Lavinia