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Wednesday, December 06, 2006

 

Mechanics and Semantics: Language as Paralysis

I) The House Machine as the Renewable Starting Point

It spits us into streams of cars and busses
while the sun arcs above us. Imitation:
elevators, escalators, airplanes, burnt bread
leaping from the toaster. William Carlos Williams
offered us poem machines, but words are the things
that generate gravity, keep us from floating free.


II) Between Sunset and Sunrise

There’s no sleep, just time travel: wake.
Alive. Surprise. You’re the same animal
still saddled to the back of the bed machine.
The sun is an egg beater dream eater
and both of the better Beatles are dead.
Williams said poetry is this ship’s engine,

yet it tethers us to this space like an anchor.


presented by Cadet Ledet at 2:32 PM  

Comments:
rather eloquent for a criticism of language. i suppose you've mastered that machine? this is beautiful. although i don't know if i agree with the idea that language is what's really holding us down.
posted by Cadet Alanna : 7:53 PM, December 06, 2006
 
Here's a link to Williams' thoughts:

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/wcw-machine.html

Language as a limitation was a concept I pulled from a book description your mom read to us in your kitchen. I really wish I knew more about it. I should ask her, I guess.
posted by Cadet Ledet : 10:35 PM, December 06, 2006
 
so there, henninger!
posted by Cadet Rebecca : 8:28 PM, December 07, 2006
 
anais nin says words are destroyers. addie bundren says words go vertical and actions clutch along the ground until they are all seperate. I wish I knew the backstory for this poem. It is beautiful, especially about saddled to the bed machine.
posted by Eileen : 10:20 PM, December 07, 2006
 
beautiful. sorry I'm such an idiot. Call me sometime. -Steven
posted by Anonymous : 1:08 PM, December 09, 2006
 
i've never thought of you as an idiot. was that a reference to the poem or a general assumption? i guess i should call to ask.
posted by Cadet Ledet : 12:06 AM, December 10, 2006
 
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