Samuel Beckett

what is the word (1989)

is described as Samuel Beckett's 'poetic last word' in David Wheatley's introduction to his Selected Poems. I cannot help but see, glimpse in it a fitting starting point.

and we may think of fitting and starting and pointing

In this series of 'text messengers' I want to closely look at the texts but not to linger, to straightway leap with them how far forward

the hyphen, dash in 'what is the word' as

parameter / absentia / reaching / seen but unpronounced / mark

referring, deferring

referencing, deferencing (to language)

pointing towards a 1990's poetics of disgust (the disgust of the 'folly'?) that points and cannot name

what where

this here

reaching towards the right word - the reaching is the marking as performance that is a reaching after language.

Also in the introduction, Wheatley points out the differences in the last statements of the English and simultaneous French texts. In French, 'comment dire- /comment dire' we may read as to question how even to say 'how to say'; where in English one possible reading supplies us with the quasi-conclusive 'what is the word': the word is what