Rosmarie Waldrop

reluctant gravities (1999)

I must only collect one word or two words with mutual gravity. What do I mean by this, mutual gravity? It becomes relevant when I read, very early in Reluctant Gravities,

_____________________________________________________fall draft

and this I refract through the title Reluctant Gravities, and I think of falling and the fall and this draft and the second draft but I desist and resist from this list, this explaining and I list, I am listfull:

fall draft
works projects
featherbed __________________(I think of bedlock Waldrop On Marriage)
Gap gardening
legible_____________________________often it is the last word of a block that lingers
breed content
spongy nature
vanishing air
wide-open_______________________________a verb
fathoms_______________________________________last word
invisible burns
my years
sliding sidelong
print, lakes
grass gh
lark's soar
yesterday's gravity
even doubt
deep honey
a me
Sicklied o'er
pale cast
red wheelbarrow
fabled beasts
alien rock
manifest destiny
worry pivots_______________________later God is matter between noun and verb
screeching brake
cockadoodledoo
rawest thoughts
self-gravity
higher math
torn fragments
clogged highway
floating heat
tiny point
carrying blood
beginning skater
gap visible
roadbed
foothold
texts salt
slice breath
sprung reason
tight fit
fine fickleness
inherent wear
without shore
smallest gesture
common nucleus
double-binds

these are from the beginning but I would also note the final word of the last conversation, CONVERSATION ON THE MILLENIUM:

intestate

and back to explaining and listing I think of inter state and intestate is reluctant or is it indifferent as in _________________________________________________________So to slide down, so unutterably, so indifferent.

Stéphane Mallarmé

un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1896)

a dice throw at any time never will abolish chance

The 'coup' of dice

_______of thought

propelling / casting / propulsion /

_______________________chancing

as space

___________as time

_______in between thought

the____in between thoughts

___________un roll a phrase

____________unroll possibilities of phrase

use ________________________________what is provided

____________here it is___________

____________spread________________

____page_____________page_________

Mallarmé:
___________'the [Page] being taken as the basic unit in the way that the verse or perfect line is taken in other works__________________other works

__________________other workings

between page _________ gutter _________ page

__________________gutter ___________ stars

1) position your fingers in between French and English translations in the same book and flick between - a linguistic movement

propulsion / on page / rolling over page

_______________________off page

off page to ______________

it is a line

__________even if a circle

it is too strong and short un coup not to push

____________________________forward and round

1969 Broodthaers replaces text with black strips
- if you cannot get hold of this version 2) blur your eyes or DIY

and what is these shapings this shape
what is it without its text

what is 'what is it without'
what is 'what is it with'
what is 'with'

Gertrude Stein

lifting belly (1915-17)

'Lifting belly careful don't say anything about lifting belly.'

I will say something about lifting belly

The thing I will say about lifting belly is this lifting belly

how Stein plays with a handle/tag/moniker/name

or as Stein has it a title/tittle

than runs through this work lifting belly

running pursued by Stein

lifting belly is the protagonist of lifting belly

lifting belly protagonises Stein

degrees of knowing in lifting belly, one

knowing that lifting belly is called lifting belly

the fourth - lets call them lines - is 'All belly belly well.'

a silly billy mock-deflation of what to expect

tantalising tease of an entrance

once played is put away leading to the

casual/domestic/intimate drama of

What was it.
I said lifting belly.
You didn't say it.

And from there on our hero leaps and twists and flirts and skirts and is Ms Pronounced and is Ms Herd and is verb and is

act/action

and is add verb and is belly belly much add verb

lifting belly cuts through and joins together, cleaving and cleaving all Stein is hearing

Stein's hearing, one

language practice/one side of a telephone call, jumping forward to Kenneth Goldsmith's Soliloquy / magazine articles / pillow talk / teacher is talking / tittle tattle / cookery instruction / schoolbook / debate / quarrel

public - private - informal - intimate - formal

scenes shifting - line to line - time shifts - voice to voice - thought to thought - back and forth

Stein as experimental film maker

lifting belly is Stein's star and Stein's actor and Stein's act

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