occurring at the same time.—As the original moment
History does not exist; (my reading of her text “Articulation of Sound Forms in Time” is) Howe’s writing is not a re-creation (the latter being ‘drama’) of people ‘in history’ but an occurrence solely in a present reader—that is itself the occurrence of disjunction.
Corruptible first figure—so that its second occurrence in/as present-time is itself only; is not transmuted.
The event (Bright armies wolves warriors steers) is not transmuted either, breaks bounds (is out of bounds) (p. 17)—By its being illusion—and is out of bounds by being marginal (real-time/historical) people who are ‘unknown’ or ‘minor.’
Have lost the beaten track—being on the beaten track is one’s illusion and losing it is. Vault lines divergence—the divergence occurs by the continuance of the illusion, the antecedent moment stretched and occurring ‘only’ in the present/as page of text merely, the written itself becomes the vault line and the divergence.
As their activity is nowhere in it—second figure can be somewhere, ‘an’ occurrence in time at all. That is, by history/event not existing at all, there can be occurrence at all.
The Progress of self into illusion/history as activity in the present only—because the real actions of the past no longer exist; The figure of a far-off Wanderer is illusion of self.
Whatever suffering existed then or now—is ‘only’ the present person in real-time; Portents of lonely destructivism
The line of writing as (their/any) one’s physical death. As if the writing could be a spatial relation ‘to’ being.
The concentration is on not diverging from illusion—this is the physical/spatial relation that occurs as the text
The writing is also a false Impulsion of a myth of beginning, an element of rigorous Americanism as Knowledge narrowly fixed Knowledge (p. 12) by being antecedent to (any) action—it is nowhere—not existing in one—where one has no activity in the present.
Writing is the present creation of illusion in order to diverge from it in being a state of attention. Attention, the activity of reading or observing, is the only history and present moment—at all.
Best plays are secret plays (11)—because it is an action, at all (Anarchy into named theory) (p. 32)—this is in attention itself.
Her wild thoughtpath is there being a present at all—there’s no life rather than activity there.
Frequently critics regard Howe’s writing as salvaging ‘lost’ experiences in relation to tradition or history, rather than separating these (as actions) from history—rather than secret actions because they are not in history at all. Are also the actions that are ‘of’ that which is the poetry. Have no translation.
Howe’s use of ‘selection’ (rather than initiation) as a writing process submerges the writer’s activity of thought ostensibly in history itself, by being in prior texts by others outside one’s/her own cognition as instrumental: “This is my historical consciousness. I have no choice in it. In my poetry, time and again, questions of assigning the cause of history dictate the sound of what is thought.”5
Howe’s introduction to her Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974–19796 places biographical accounts of people living before the author’s life alongside memories of her childhood; that is, her life is ‘unrelated’ (can’t be observed to be related) to theirs. Yet the framing of these accounts, and these being an introduction to the poems, structures a view of history as causality. Her framing there is ‘opposite’ from my reading of her lines from “Articulation of Sound Forms in Time.” Her imposition of ‘history’ on her own life and poems is a traditionalist myth of beginning, a determinateness: “Innocency. A pure past that returns to itself unattackable in the framework. Restoration” (p. 26). A state that is “Innocency” suggests the poet’s seeking stasis of a childhood reconfigured (as if a Golden Age). “Restoration” is that past state, which didn’t exist and is desired.
Actions as Reading and Plays.
It occurs by simply giving up one’s mind; yet one can’t do that in order to write it. This contradiction is evoked also in reading and hearing it:
During performance of my poem/play, The Weatherman Turns Himself In, the audience sat in a darkened field of hanging black irises (flowers) with rapid action occurring outside this field in front of the viewers. The activity is going on in a medium where it cannot realistically occur. Rapid action is apparently being represented in a setting of a play that cannot be rapid action, as of action films; and the play’s action is occurring solely via the language being stilled to be contemplative as the language’s only activity.
For example, slab of yellow teeth man on motorcycle to slash woman hurrying with suitcase—occurs as ‘speaking this action’ at/in the exact time of it.
By the activity being separated from the language and going on at the same time, the action is not (only) what is heard and seen, and it only takes ‘place’ there.
Activity is the only community. At the same time the viewer is conscious of separation, one solely.
This passage from As: All Occurrence in Structure, Unseen—(Deer Night) (writing that is to be read and not enacted and is also the activity of a play) analyzes the structure of The Weatherman Turns Himself In:
There could be a circumstance in which the actions were continual and ‘visible’ by the people speaking of an action while doing it. People were describing an action as it was occurring and being seen: all being its occurrence. Being seen, seeing, and speaking are all actions that are equal and in time. A man said, “I found the action/the movements distracting—so that I couldn’t listen—I just wanted to listen to the language.” I want the viewer to exist, in this distraction. Not to listen as such. So as not to re-form the action of listening, itself. At all. That one could apprehend outside of formation only.
This same passage from As: All Occurrence in Structure, Unseen—(Deer Night) also analyzes structure in a prose work (of mine), Defoe, sections of which were performed as a play called The Present. In The Present, separate scenes occur at the same time in and at the sides of a small center space. The past action (which is the first part of the play; inconveniently difficult choreographed actions occur, such as a heroin dealer later flickering on a motorcycle being carried in a cocoon by starving boys on a desert) impinges into present commentary (second part of the play), the action recurring as a different present which is at the same time.
Thus both play (The Present) and prose work (Defoe) have sequences solely of written ‘rendition’ of physical action (in the play actions are ‘said’ as they are enacted) followed later by sequences of observation or discursive commentary (in the play this is in part two; these are spoken and also shown as handwritten phrases on slides): these are separate as if observing the physical actions, which are also past and present. The separated passages cause the ‘obverse’ (conceptualization or action) to collapse becoming one—always being separate. It is ‘as if’ we’re seeing and reading mind structuring.
Writing not having any relation to event/being it—by being exactly its activity. It’s the ‘same thing’ as life (syntactically)—it is life. It has to be or it’s nothing.
“A
