Short Reviews: Mount Carmel & the Blood of Parnassus, Anaïs Duplan
“Everything you say about me is bullshit. Blah-blah-blah,/ the story is you are black.” (31) Within the pink cover, Anaïs Duplan’s Mount Carmel & the Blood of Parnassus is split into the opening essay on black pages with white letters and poetry in black letters dwarfed by the surrounding whiteness. Duality laid upon duality is further complicated by the poems that seem to exist in multiple realities, shifting between past/memory and present/future, playful/punning and pensive/pain. Male first names and figures interject and go, sometimes recurring, but never dwelling or insisting they are truly separate entities. The line of thought melts together and extends beyond what is seen on the page, as if it were a spiral viewed in two dimensions. This lack of concern towards being coherent or consistent, this anti-conformity places us at the verge of understanding and the verge of following, echoing the concern of “I’m not being seen for who I am.” (vi). Unlike the cautiously
As I said in class yesterday, I'm interested in exploring the ways voice performs/is manipulated/is affected in Giving Godhead and Serenade. Voice, as I see it, is inextricably linked to our explorations of the lyric/lyric shame, the confessional and the role of masks/performance/performativity. How does sincerity operate (or not) in both books? Irony? How does voice cohere these collections? What limitations are inherent in adherence to one project/book-specific voice? etc. I'll write my microreviewthing on this, but welcome conversation in advance.
ReplyDeleteSerenade: the "I" is positioning the world in relation to itself, vs. Giving Godhead: the reality is creating the "I"
Deletegiving godhead:
ReplyDelete-- announces itself into-and-via a language* it shapes for itself
* this language drips with a freshness one might conflate with youth
* this language drips with a self-harvested empowerment; a force originating from manifested proclamation that needs not apologize or compromise for its phenomenon-existence
--is no apology^
^ sticking to its promise of sacreligion and thereby feeling-up the otherwise easily-and-well-scandalized hostipitality of the patri-santified capitalist site it's burrowing a holey nest into
^ sticking its tongue out-into the void of ich, leaving a slime-trail through it
(o snap, will return to AM's interrogations, but here are a coupla notes vis-à-vis Serenade:)
Deletese-re-na-de =
"My authority, reader, is that I am illegible like an oil-shale mine spreading/ its shaky legs" tells us what's up.
a self-problematizing poetics
a hide-and-seek voice
in contrast to ''giving godhead'' does not charge itself against an invisible patri-antagonist. But is more INSINUATING. Is quiet for a moment to let the quiet come in more to let the reader ride the wave of this quiet to get closer to a coming-in to BYPASS the patri-antagonist.
So: Confrontation vs. Detour !!! (???)
Gah, also this! The language is creating the "I" as much as the reality space is, indicated by cyclical references (godhead, breaking apart the trinity, doG, different instances of a diseased body [there goes the leaky body club again])
DeleteI'm prepping my actual review as I write this, so as a teaser (that is, as an instigation--more or less), I'm wondering what you all think of what differentiates a rant/diatribe (perhaps more aligned with Krieger?) from a song/serenade (a la Ellsworth?). These fuzzy categories of "lyric" and "confession" that we've been questioning all semester are in full view in these texts, though in very different and, more interestingly, in very similar ways. I'm planning on sharing my thoughts on this matter soon, though I welcome any and all interrogations regarding this sticky issue!
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely more time for reflection (since there seems to be an eddy of time out of which the Serenade poems were written) when approaching Ellsworth's collection. There was time to collect, score, lyricize, and perform the acts of witness/testimony that both collections seem to be in reaction to. But Krieger is much more Reaction, I think. Less conscientious
Delete