Excess & Access: That’s not how you do it over here in Ame-ri-ka. Got it?
((un)necessary) info: Don Mee Choi was born in South Korea and came to the U.S. via Hong Kong.
Reading The morning News is Exciting, I was reminded of Johaness’ “Teaching Translation” he wrote for AWP panel on translation: “These leaky bodies/trickle/trinkets are mysteriously context-less, merely “washing ashore’ (like a corpse?) without bringing the proper contexts to make sense of them. One of the problems with translation is that they come from other context; they generate excesses: too many meanings, too many versions, too many literary histories and contexts.”
Question I had here reading Johaness and Choi was then: What if the body brought ashore was alive?
Unnecessary info: The first “Westerner” Korean encountered on the territory of Korea was Hendrick Hamel, a Dutch tradesman whose ship was wrecked on its way to Japan, the original destination. He was brought ashore with his fellow tradesmen and caused great disturbance among Koreans who were struggling to keep the Westerners out of the territory, refusing any communication with the Western world.
Immigrants are insidious. You cannot stop them from trickling in.
Obviously, Don Mee Choi’s writing is not a translation piece but it shares characteristics of translation, Foreignertext, FOB -like existence that won’t shut up about his/her homecountry that nobody in the party cares about (and their obnoxious Engrish!).
In The Morning News is Exciting Choi unabashedly points to politics, foreign history , foreign folktalkes, foreign form of poetry, critical/theoretical texts and some Canonical text written in English. They are ostensibly stitched together, or maybe not even stitched, just put together like the parts of different bodies that don’t quite fit one another. The text does not assume pretense of coherency, smoothness or seamlessness; it flaunts the stitchedness with different fonts (italics) and “Notes on” pages that stretches the stitches and exposes what’s inside.
But it’s alive.
Knowingly, Choi’s “Notes on” page does not reveal everything(the context cannot really be seen through Work cited page) but pretends to be. The creature is mysteriously alive. (mystery and “exotic is the most suspicious of all qualities, not only insincere and fake but also potentially politically incorrect, possibly even imperialistic, as well as vulgar, seductive a ripoff.”(more from Johaness’ writing))
Foreigners can do things that would make the Native cringe unknowingly or knowingly (grin); Although this text is not a translation, this text acts like the foreigners who play their loud music in the backyard, making the neighbors cringe and embarrassed.
The Morning News is Exciting is unabashedly(delightfully) politically incorrect; Asian (American) lit/culture scholars would cringe at Choi weaving seemingly journalistic text about touchy issues like Korean women raped and murdered by GI with Western scholar’s writing like Deleuze & Guattari who DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE. Politics has to be focusing on particular, using particular voice.
Some critics will cringe at her use of Emily Dickinson; what does canonized English writer(disregard that she would not have agreed to this popularity or exposure to the public even) has to do with doubling of foreign identity in “Twin flower”? Isn’t that forced-inscribing for both sides, West and East?
Maybe incorrect info: From what I remember, Final Harvest by Thomas H. Johnson, which Choi chose to use for “Twin flower” section, was criticized for its heavy-editing on Emily Dickinson’s unorthodox use of punctuation.
The Morning News is Exciting is unabashedly loud; Language poet, like Susan Howe, insisted upon subverting the distinction between original/source/authentic text and the text that cites from the “source text” by not citing the texts that were used, and as Language poets took established positions, such convention became, well, the convention. “Notes on” pages in The Morning News is exciting refuses to follow such
etiquettes and announces where this is coming from, but not really.
Obnoxiously political statement [*Not cited]: Asians are often perceived to be model minority. They are thought to be quiet, gentle, (a)sexual.
This obnoxious loudness characterizes this book; Opening with “Manegg” section that sounds like accented/incorrect English, it not only flaunts its obnoxious alienness, but with “Notes on” page it shows off its incorrectness even more—I mean, what else can be more incorrect, semantically, than homophonic translation? It’s a slap-on-the-face for the translators who seeks the technique of “precise translation”. At the same time, it’s a mimicry of what native speakers want to tell those foreigners or Hong Kong people who speaks in Hong-Kong-ized English, “Say no lame!” trans: please speak English in correct manner.
And The morning news is exciting seems to play with excessive/unearned rhyming: wee & we, elite &petite, common confusion of lie & lay. Isn’t rhyming supposed to form a delicate mental link of both meaning and sound?
Inappropriate reference: Reading A Mown Lawn by Lydia Davis, my students called Lydia Davis to be pretentious for feeling entitled to talk about unearned political topics like Vietnam War.
A Mown Lawn by Lydia Davis
She hated a mown lawn. Maybe that was because mow was the reverse of wom, the beginning of the name of what she was—a woman. A mown lawn had a sad sound to it, like a long moan. From her, a mown lawn made a long moan. Lawn had some of the letters of man, though the reverse of man would be Nam, a bad war. A raw war. Lawn also contained the letters of law. In fact, lawn was a contraction of lawman. Certainly a lawman could and did mow a lawn. Law and order could be seen as starting from lawn order, valued by so many Americans. More lawn could be made using a lawn mower. A lawn mower did make more lawn. More lawn was a contraction of more lawmen. Did more lawn in America make more lawmen in America? Did more lawn make more Nam? More mown lawn made more long moan, from her. Or a lawn mourn. So often, she said, Americans wanted more mown lawn. All of America might be one long mown lawn. A lawn not mown grows long, she said: better a long lawn. Better a long lawn and a mole. Let the lawman have the mown lawn, she said. Or the moron, the lawn moron.
Unnecessary attachment:
Poetry space hasn’t been kind to women, especially Korean women. 허난설헌 (Huh nan sul hun) was a poet in late 1500 who was abused and abandoned by her husband for being a poet and being regarded as brilliant poet; the poetry was the space of men, and the uninvited was to be punished. Poetry betrayed her.
That's why poetry has to be loud and obnoxious!!!!!
Poetry have to crash party where people exchange pleasantries.
For public announcements are for boys and men, instructions are for girls. Poetry has to speak louder, be obnoxious, using the Master’s language, the Poetryspace in a “wrong” way. Girls should. Make them frown. The error/mimicry makes the Master’s voice blush. The traditional Korean poetryspace, its format is now used to avenge her.
What an error. She’s an errorist(28).
Unnecessary attachment: Korean aphorisms.zip
1. Women and dried fish get softer as they are beaten
2. Women are like Christmas cake; nobody wants it after 25th
3. Once married, you have to live three years deaf, three years blind, three years mute
to obey your husband and while doing so, have to bear a son(s) for the family
(Incorrect translation, probably)
From notes on Disability Studies lecture: “In theatre, a Character with Disability has to lay out his/her backstory that explains where the disability is coming from. Explained, laid out, narrated. The disability has to be utilized for defining the character, and for developing the plot. Gratuitous disability is not allowed on the stage.”
Oh but it is.
Gratuitousness & Loudness is encouraged:
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
they talk but their words don't register
This will probably be a bit scattered. I feel like Antwerp is an intensely layered book, and I’m having a hard time conceiving of discussion points for it that don’t leave out a lot of the other things that were so interesting. Anyway, I hope what follows has at least a grasping point for some further readings that I’m very interested in reading about.
Antwerp :
1. Filmic
2. Hallucination
3. How to approach? Is it like an excerpt from an unfinished novel?
In thinking about Antwerp and the way it composes itself, as these prose blocks/prose poems (what are these? do we care?) unfold, as a collection of hallucinatory films.
1. Film and film, filminess, filmicness
The book sways between two modes for me—one that is filmic, takes on a movie-like quality, takes on that language explicitly, and a second that operates through a film/screen, again, sometimes explicitly, but also often atmospherically.
Filmic:
Here, I’m interested in the idea of writer-as-cameraman, observer-as-moviemaker. It’s an intentional move, with phrases like “fade to black” and “synopsis” appearing several times throughout the book, but I’m curious about exactly what effect this gives. For me, at first, it made me feel as though the “speaker” of the text (are there one, or a few?) was moving toward a position as a kind of director, but this didn’t last long, as we are consistently bombarded with scenes that the observer is only a watcher to—not implicated directly, but somehow vaguely associated with the girls in the scenes. I’m thinking particularly about pieces involving a girl having sex with a cop, like page 37. The cop in this scene, as a cop, has “overcome all the risks of the gaze” which enables him to take full part in the scene, as he has the ability to turn out a light, tune out the photographs, and carry on. The position this places the speaker in, then, is one of a kind of ultimate-gaze. The speaker is forever lights-on, which makes me wonder if he’s some kind of victim of the scene.
Filmy:
While the speaker, for me, has an ultimate-gaze in that he is forever and irreversibly the gazer, he is also constantly gazing through a kind of screen. Sometimes its hair—blonde hair pops up constantly (the hair of the Mexican girl, who he is in love with? Who Bolano is in love with?) and overtakes the vision of the scene. Some scenes are “fuzzy,” (36) and on page 22:
“On the wall someone has written my one true love. She puts a cigarette…”
The barrier between the wall and the love seems to be the writing, which becomes a screen and a transition marker, and each time this woman appears, she appears through this lovescreen. On 25, similarly, we have a fuzzy beach scene whose details are guessed at, at best. The ultimate-gaze seems to stop at these points, seems to be disrupted, and for me, makes an otherwise pretty choppy, sharp book take on these murky, aqueous qualities, which makes me feel like I’m reading it through
water.
2. Hallucination/Dream/Memory/Perception
There’s some dreaming going on here. Specifically, dreams of mouthless women (15). And often, I get the impression that some places here are more spectral or more real than others. When there are campgrounds and battlefields, these seem somehow more real than named places. We know that technically it is in Barcelona, and sometimes travels to Portugal and thinks about Antwerp a lot, but the named places seem like little more than their name to me. This brings my reading back to the idea of hallucination. I almost feel as though these places are complete fabrications in the world of this book.
3. How do we piece this together?
I had a hard time finding a lot of reference material for this, and one of the more amusing things I came across was some dude’s blog review. (http://www.mikeettner.com/04/2010/antwerp-by-roberto-bolano/).
He finds that there isn’t much storyline to latch onto like other Bolano novels, though I doubt that this matters to any of us. If it does, please do tell.
He finds that only devoted Bolano fans will like it. Hmm. I disagree.
He also cites the preface, and Bolano’s scattershot approach. This added to my impression of being in a kind of hallucinatory bubble—there is, for me, this constant shift between pieces of the way that scenes are perceived, with only threads in common to connect them—a Mexican girl, a redheaded girl, the hunchback, etc.
Anyway, what the blogger is curious about is how exactly to piece the book together. My approach was akin to watching choppily put together early films like Battleship Potemkin where scenes are spliced, dramatic pans in and out are par for the course, and the drama is high, yes, but the scenes are still almost syrupy in their drama, slow and dreamlike.
This is getting too long, but other things I’m interested in hearing about:
1. The hunchback
2. Who is Bolano in the world of this book?
3. I found Antwerp to be really unique in regards to what we've been reading so far. That is, there wasn't an immediate comparison for me between it and others we've read stylistically. In regard to thematic links, I think we deduced, when comparing Reines and Zurita, that smart, creative people can basically make connections between anything--so I'm interested in hearing about some of those as well. It isn't particularly my natural reading-mode personally.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
SMILE, YOU’VE JUST BEEN NICK DEMSKED
(or, my hair is shiny but it doesn’t feel clean)
i.
Nick Demske’s Nick Demske—a kind of potent (and endless) doubling immediately—demands to be spoken through and over and again like the glitchy, media monster that it is. Even titling this post is difficult: which sound bite (doubling as byte) to choose? Joyelle introduces Nick Demske/this contaminate/this contagion to us in her Judge’s Citation. “Language,” she writes, “de-synchs and hooks up in detrimental sequences” (xi). Indeed, Nick Demske has assaulted my brain with Nick Demske force like a Nick Demske (cracked with Nick Demske, spilling Nick Demske)—off my tongue rolls Nick Demske (or maybe in his tongue I—or we—roll/chew, as he commands, “Put Your Face In My Tongue”). I considered, at one point in the reading process, declaring that “I’ve been Nick Demsked” on Facebook. But this just sounded dirty, wrong. Plus, he’s out there somewhere in our virtual reality. Plus—a hole in my logic—, who/what is Nick Demske anyway? A collective? A criminal? A terrorist? A mimic? A strip tease(r)? A jazz musician? A piece of shit? (Joyelle poses the question, “Is it shit or is it speech?”) (xi). In a recent Montevidayo post, Johannes notes, “Transfer is media. Media reproduces. Art is the transfer, the ‘mediumizing.’” In Nick Demske, Nick Demske is as slippery and globby as a media membrane/Art goo, perhaps? “I just want to secrete some hatchling/ So unrepulsive even my grandmother could be// Indifferent,” says the speaker in “View from a Balcony” (57). The “figure of speech,” the loop itself—perpetual syndication: Nick Demske (like): we’ve (always) “never seen him before” (17).
II. Eponymous?
In an interview with Tarpaulin Sky’s Julie Strand earlier this year (available here: http://tskynews.blogspot.com/2010/11/libraries-small-press-and-cross.html), Demske discusses the self-titling of his book as relying on a tradition practiced in music (but less so in literature). Here Demske suggests that, rather than the title being (solely) “eponymous,” he is interested in contributing to an investigation (as launched by poets) into power structures perpetuated by or inherent in the act of naming. He says,
"We assign words--little names--to all these things to separate them from each other, but those distinctions so often--maybe always, I don't know--are artificial and that's a majorly flawed system…Making the book self-titled in an attempt to kind of force collaboration on others is one of my ways of trying to circumvent--or at least bring attention to--one of those power-imbalance flaws of language."
Last week I suggested that we might be able to think about Demske’s text as it relates to Homi Bhabha’s mimicry—as the book often deals in “double articulation” and serves as perhaps “a threat to disciplinary powers” by “cross[ing] the boundaries of the cultural enunciation through a strategic confusion of the metaphoric and metonymic axes of the cultural production of meaning” (122, 130). I think Demske’s stated objective in regard to the self-titling of his book jives with Bhaba’s notion of mimicry’s threat; its partial display is dangerous because there is “no essence, no thing itself” (131). Nick Demske’s Nick Demske is always a dangerous doubling or repetition rather than a representation; in “Rhetorical “Prayer,” he writes, “I ripped out my stuffing./ Removed guts, veins, organs. And then: Nothing” (25). There is “no presence or identity behind its mask” (129) (Lara Glenum describes the work of the Gurlesque poets as operating this way in her introduction to the anthology, and CJ and others have already discussed Chelsey Minnis as “colonized by poetry”; how might Nick Demske’s work compare to the work of some of the Gurlesque poets we’ve read?) In “Put Your Face In My Tongue,” the poem begins with a series of familiar expressions ripped from their context: “Nobody move. Read them and weep. Lifeguard on duty” (17). In these phrases—and Demske’s rickety, swerving, doubled (or frankensteined) clichés (for instance, “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I stuck a needle/ In my eye and all I got was this lousy needle/ In my eye”—or the continually thwarted move toward distillation or reduction which instead result in accretion: “I’m not a poet, I/ Just write poetry. I’m not a cop killer , I just/ Kill cops. I’m not a cop killer, I just”)—the text lurches—a kind of paintmixer rattling, without falling or moving away (29, 38, 3). Planes, plates shift across the textual surface; the face contorting in its strict form (Nick Demske: botulism?)—as Joyelle writes, “The sonnet sequence is one brief sequence played backward and forward until its fake, twitchy face says everything” (xi).
C. Criminal? (Crime Scene?)
We’re stuck in the looping, twitching, chewing, media face of/in Nick Demske (the text—and/or we—can’t extricate (ourselves) from the reel, the scene: “The EKG tweets ‘sell’ in Morse code./ Through gold fronts. And it’s going: once. twice. sold” (50)). Is Demske’s text then, like a criminal returning endlessly to the scene of a crime (the “known world” mapped as such—given the “media apriori,” the media shaping/constructing this “true crime” reality as Mark Seltzer suggests) (4)? Nick Demske lurks over (/observes) corporatism, terrorism, atrocity in the book—and he glitches (or is in a glitch in) the system at the level of transmission—or transfer (“My muse gushes deafening orchestra that shreds into fleshy/ Confetti” (36)—“I’m faking it. For real. I actually have/ No idea what the weather will be/ Like” (37)). The language, the rhetoric is unstable (though stable enough to hinge)—dangerous, thieving (a little from this line, a little from previous—speeding things up or drawing things out long enough to make us uncomfortable: “It is raining men. Ha/ Lleujah. A young person is smearing their privates” (an exuberant and unholy observation? (36)). If Demske’s text is offensive (in his TPS interview, Demske considers the word as meaning “not defensive”) in its violence, do we participate in this crime as it is constructed/occurs in the language—the media (we feel these vibrations where, as Seltzer notes, experience is always “referred” because of the “technical combinations of communication and corporeality” (5)? (Nick Demske/Nick Demske: Crime Scene/Scene of the Crime?) Nick Demske sounds his emergencies (“I need an adult,” he writes in “Good Touch”); the emergencies are (sound like) Nick Demske (and the noise of everyday experience).
4. Scat? (“Fuck me, shit me./ Remind me what it’s like to be offended, Nick Demske./ Ah. Already with thee” (7).
Though I know very little about scatting, it occurs to me that scat (in both the scatological and musical senses of the word) might serve as an interesting lens through which to consider the text. In terms of singing, scat (according to Wikipedia) involves a vocal improvisation in which the singing attempts to turn the voice into a kind of instrument (creating “the equivalent of an instrumental solo”). Just as scat involves improvisation and the use of specific musical structures (“stock patterns, riffs,” etc.), the magic of Demske’s text seems to occur in the activation of strange correspondences—opening up strange lines of flight (though sound in music—in scat— would be a reterritorialization, according to D&G) along the sequence(s)—which we might read as hosting Demske. In “Sonnet,” the speaker disappears from the scene: “Because I am the substitute teacher, better than any/ [insert six lines here]” (31).
…
(Some more questions/closing/opening remarks)
How is the book form figured here—especially as Demske’s obsessions register across/throughout the text? How does this text compare to others we’ve read this semester or last? (For instance, Demske’s text seems to exhaust itself less than The Cow, I think, while remaining nervous/nervy. Do Demske and Reines (register) shock(s) (to) the system in similar or different ways?)
Does curation seem like an apt way to describe Demske’s text? If so, how does this curation compare to Hawkey’s Ventrakl or Aaron Kunin’s The Sore Throat?
Who/what is Nick Demske, anyway? Is he endlessly aborted in this text? Scooped?
Other thoughts?
***
“There is no I in team” (27).
i.
Nick Demske’s Nick Demske—a kind of potent (and endless) doubling immediately—demands to be spoken through and over and again like the glitchy, media monster that it is. Even titling this post is difficult: which sound bite (doubling as byte) to choose? Joyelle introduces Nick Demske/this contaminate/this contagion to us in her Judge’s Citation. “Language,” she writes, “de-synchs and hooks up in detrimental sequences” (xi). Indeed, Nick Demske has assaulted my brain with Nick Demske force like a Nick Demske (cracked with Nick Demske, spilling Nick Demske)—off my tongue rolls Nick Demske (or maybe in his tongue I—or we—roll/chew, as he commands, “Put Your Face In My Tongue”). I considered, at one point in the reading process, declaring that “I’ve been Nick Demsked” on Facebook. But this just sounded dirty, wrong. Plus, he’s out there somewhere in our virtual reality. Plus—a hole in my logic—, who/what is Nick Demske anyway? A collective? A criminal? A terrorist? A mimic? A strip tease(r)? A jazz musician? A piece of shit? (Joyelle poses the question, “Is it shit or is it speech?”) (xi). In a recent Montevidayo post, Johannes notes, “Transfer is media. Media reproduces. Art is the transfer, the ‘mediumizing.’” In Nick Demske, Nick Demske is as slippery and globby as a media membrane/Art goo, perhaps? “I just want to secrete some hatchling/ So unrepulsive even my grandmother could be// Indifferent,” says the speaker in “View from a Balcony” (57). The “figure of speech,” the loop itself—perpetual syndication: Nick Demske (like): we’ve (always) “never seen him before” (17).
II. Eponymous?
In an interview with Tarpaulin Sky’s Julie Strand earlier this year (available here: http://tskynews.blogspot.com/2010/11/libraries-small-press-and-cross.html), Demske discusses the self-titling of his book as relying on a tradition practiced in music (but less so in literature). Here Demske suggests that, rather than the title being (solely) “eponymous,” he is interested in contributing to an investigation (as launched by poets) into power structures perpetuated by or inherent in the act of naming. He says,
"We assign words--little names--to all these things to separate them from each other, but those distinctions so often--maybe always, I don't know--are artificial and that's a majorly flawed system…Making the book self-titled in an attempt to kind of force collaboration on others is one of my ways of trying to circumvent--or at least bring attention to--one of those power-imbalance flaws of language."
Last week I suggested that we might be able to think about Demske’s text as it relates to Homi Bhabha’s mimicry—as the book often deals in “double articulation” and serves as perhaps “a threat to disciplinary powers” by “cross[ing] the boundaries of the cultural enunciation through a strategic confusion of the metaphoric and metonymic axes of the cultural production of meaning” (122, 130). I think Demske’s stated objective in regard to the self-titling of his book jives with Bhaba’s notion of mimicry’s threat; its partial display is dangerous because there is “no essence, no thing itself” (131). Nick Demske’s Nick Demske is always a dangerous doubling or repetition rather than a representation; in “Rhetorical “Prayer,” he writes, “I ripped out my stuffing./ Removed guts, veins, organs. And then: Nothing” (25). There is “no presence or identity behind its mask” (129) (Lara Glenum describes the work of the Gurlesque poets as operating this way in her introduction to the anthology, and CJ and others have already discussed Chelsey Minnis as “colonized by poetry”; how might Nick Demske’s work compare to the work of some of the Gurlesque poets we’ve read?) In “Put Your Face In My Tongue,” the poem begins with a series of familiar expressions ripped from their context: “Nobody move. Read them and weep. Lifeguard on duty” (17). In these phrases—and Demske’s rickety, swerving, doubled (or frankensteined) clichés (for instance, “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I stuck a needle/ In my eye and all I got was this lousy needle/ In my eye”—or the continually thwarted move toward distillation or reduction which instead result in accretion: “I’m not a poet, I/ Just write poetry. I’m not a cop killer , I just/ Kill cops. I’m not a cop killer, I just”)—the text lurches—a kind of paintmixer rattling, without falling or moving away (29, 38, 3). Planes, plates shift across the textual surface; the face contorting in its strict form (Nick Demske: botulism?)—as Joyelle writes, “The sonnet sequence is one brief sequence played backward and forward until its fake, twitchy face says everything” (xi).
C. Criminal? (Crime Scene?)
We’re stuck in the looping, twitching, chewing, media face of/in Nick Demske (the text—and/or we—can’t extricate (ourselves) from the reel, the scene: “The EKG tweets ‘sell’ in Morse code./ Through gold fronts. And it’s going: once. twice. sold” (50)). Is Demske’s text then, like a criminal returning endlessly to the scene of a crime (the “known world” mapped as such—given the “media apriori,” the media shaping/constructing this “true crime” reality as Mark Seltzer suggests) (4)? Nick Demske lurks over (/observes) corporatism, terrorism, atrocity in the book—and he glitches (or is in a glitch in) the system at the level of transmission—or transfer (“My muse gushes deafening orchestra that shreds into fleshy/ Confetti” (36)—“I’m faking it. For real. I actually have/ No idea what the weather will be/ Like” (37)). The language, the rhetoric is unstable (though stable enough to hinge)—dangerous, thieving (a little from this line, a little from previous—speeding things up or drawing things out long enough to make us uncomfortable: “It is raining men. Ha/ Lleujah. A young person is smearing their privates” (an exuberant and unholy observation? (36)). If Demske’s text is offensive (in his TPS interview, Demske considers the word as meaning “not defensive”) in its violence, do we participate in this crime as it is constructed/occurs in the language—the media (we feel these vibrations where, as Seltzer notes, experience is always “referred” because of the “technical combinations of communication and corporeality” (5)? (Nick Demske/Nick Demske: Crime Scene/Scene of the Crime?) Nick Demske sounds his emergencies (“I need an adult,” he writes in “Good Touch”); the emergencies are (sound like) Nick Demske (and the noise of everyday experience).
4. Scat? (“Fuck me, shit me./ Remind me what it’s like to be offended, Nick Demske./ Ah. Already with thee” (7).
Though I know very little about scatting, it occurs to me that scat (in both the scatological and musical senses of the word) might serve as an interesting lens through which to consider the text. In terms of singing, scat (according to Wikipedia) involves a vocal improvisation in which the singing attempts to turn the voice into a kind of instrument (creating “the equivalent of an instrumental solo”). Just as scat involves improvisation and the use of specific musical structures (“stock patterns, riffs,” etc.), the magic of Demske’s text seems to occur in the activation of strange correspondences—opening up strange lines of flight (though sound in music—in scat— would be a reterritorialization, according to D&G) along the sequence(s)—which we might read as hosting Demske. In “Sonnet,” the speaker disappears from the scene: “Because I am the substitute teacher, better than any/ [insert six lines here]” (31).
…
(Some more questions/closing/opening remarks)
How is the book form figured here—especially as Demske’s obsessions register across/throughout the text? How does this text compare to others we’ve read this semester or last? (For instance, Demske’s text seems to exhaust itself less than The Cow, I think, while remaining nervous/nervy. Do Demske and Reines (register) shock(s) (to) the system in similar or different ways?)
Does curation seem like an apt way to describe Demske’s text? If so, how does this curation compare to Hawkey’s Ventrakl or Aaron Kunin’s The Sore Throat?
Who/what is Nick Demske, anyway? Is he endlessly aborted in this text? Scooped?
Other thoughts?
***
“There is no I in team” (27).
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