May 07, 2006

Wondering lately about what makes slightly archaic language (not even sure that is right term; but something more in Tradition than either the direct speech of so much identity political verse or the fractures and disjunctions of language political verse) combined with political content so endlessly moving to me. Ask this question a lot about the Jennifer Moxley poem "Cell #103" and others by her in Imagination Verses.

Found this in Laura Elrick's Fantasies in Permeable Structure:

Now understood barely as (it's past) What
a blind ledge in moment's fall now
Not transcendent now, Imperialism.
Summon me. Hudson Valley Land Tenants
with your tin horns Summon me. Fugitives
from the South and Southern Yeoman (raced as
you were). And summon Tejanos, Free Soilers
Iroquois and Sioux. Summon Wobblies
and Womanists. Summon Freedom Riders
Summon Black Panthers and prison fighters
Remote now rages!... and what's more what's
me, more or less, is you, making life.
Losses, in process, gain on some future some
Less progress than a Mad Refusal
pressing chance til it breaks--blooming
up from lasered fields...

Summon on!

Later, reading Leslie Bumstead's "Abidjan Notebooks" in Cipher/Civilian. Poem has less hope, struck by how it has no answers/programs/possibilities. I thought I had heard her read this years ago but now not sure because this poem is from 2000 and my memory has me hearing the poems before 2000. I like its page layout: shortish lines on top, narratives on bottom. Very attentive to complications to the point of not summoning.

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