francis ponge on the poem and the object...

"from now on, may nothing ever cause me to go back on my resolve: never sacrifice the object of my study in order to enhance some verbal turn discovered on the subject, nor piece together any such discoveries in a poem.

always go back to the object itself, to its raw quality, it's difference: particularly its difference from what i've (just then) written about it.

may my work be one of continual rectification of expression on behalf of the raw object (with no a priori concern about the form of that expression).

therefore, writing about the loire from a place along the banks of the river, i must constantly immerse my eyes and mind in it. any time they dry up over an expression, back they must go into the waters of the river.

recognize the greater right of the object, its inalienable right, in relation to any poem... no poem ever being free from absolute judgment a minima on the part of the poem's object, nor from accusation of counterfeit.

the object is always more important, more interesting, more capable (full of rights): it has no duty whatsoever toward me, it is who am obliged to it.

what the preceding lines do not adequately emphasize: consequently, never leave off at the poetic form - though it must be used at some point in my study because it produces a play of mirrors that can reveal persistently obscure aspects of the object. the reciprocal clash of words, the verbal analogies are one of the means for studying the object in depth.

never try to arrange things. objects and poems are irreconcilable.

the point is knowing whether you wish to make a poem or comprehend an object (in the hope that the mind wins out, comes up with something new on the subject). it is the second phase of this alternative that my taste (a violent taste for things, and for advances of the mind) leads me to choose without hesitation.

so my resolve has been reached...

after that i hardly care whether someone chooses to call the outcome a poem. as for me, the slightest hint of poetic droning simply reminds me that i'm slipping back onto the old merry-go-round and need to boot my way off."

francis ponge, banks of the loire, 1941, reprinted in mute objects of expression.

i realized as i was typing ponge's text into the computer, my interests are not only in the sharing of these things via this blog, but also an interest in the act itself of transcribing these texts onto (or into) the computer (and/or paper), and how it effects my reading of them. the act of re-writing (or typing) allows me a different kind of reading experience, moving across letters and words much more intimately in relation to their individual forms, for a second or third reading, and a slow walk upon the construction of language. i seem to comprehend or understand a text differently when i'm reading, than when i'm reading and writing at the same time. movement is fragmented and slowed in the latter case, usually revealing something i'd missed during the initial rolling down a hill with my eyes closed... lately i've felt the need to read things twice, once in a simple singular flow, and once mining the words and the forms to dig deeper. it's not exactly a decision, as it is for the writer, to "comprehend the object" or to "make a poem"; but to comprehend also the poem or writing as an object, and to find within the text that "play of mirrors that can reveal persistently obscure aspects of the object" - in this case the object being the poem itself.

when mathews mentions the written word and the unwritten world...

if, as IC (calvino) said the other night, description is an activity in which the writer can begin to resolve the irreconcilability of the written word and the unwritten world, is there a hierarchy of preferences of things to be described? should one pursue the description of objects that are more and more devoid of salient characteristics, for instance the cigar box given me by the j and r tobacco company, a parallelepiped of the barest sort? or should one aim at portraying objects that are perpetually in flux or, better, that are transformed by our very description of them, like this page? what else could be so transformed? a beautiful woman tattooed with an account of her diminishing beauty - but she wouldn't then be truly something else: simply a woman being treated like a page. experience itself, past or present: as we represent it in words, it is assuredly modified, it's reduced, it's stripped of what is virtually an infinite ambiguity of interpretation and given only one version of itself - it becomes that other object which is the set of words of our description. ponge's genius - or part of it - is that he so immediately quits the oyster or cigarette he's describing for other objects to which he metaphorically compares it that the original object and our access to it are left unencumbered by what he has made of it. all his descriptions should carry april fool's day as the date of their inspiration.

harry mathews, 20 lines a day, 1988

like a starry cloth...

"At night i light with a candle this cabin of granite and pine.
There is a high wind; it threatens and sighs at the doors, triumphs
ragingly and rivulets down the leaves opposite: a glorious whirl...
The window is open, the sky all clear. Decorating it, with stitches
and embroidery, like a starry cloth.

Neither the music of Pythagoras, nor the fearsome silence of
Pascal: some things very near and very precise, as a spider might see
his web from within when it has rained and droplets gleam at each
intersection."

excerpt from 'the peasant's house' by francis ponge, translated by john montague.
image: detail of RPPC, circa 1900

to serenade the fields...

here we have a young man with a victrola and a giant horn. perhaps he has come to serenade the fields. perhaps he has a gramophone record of francis ponge, and the horn speaks excerpts from ponge's faune et flore about plants, to plants:

"they have no voices. they are all but paralyzed. they can only attract attention by their postures.

they have no movement other than extension.their every gesture, thought, perhaps desire, intention, ends up a monstrous growth, an irremediable outgrowth, of their bodies.

no gestures; they simply multiply their arms, hands, fingers - like buddhas. this is how sedentary beings carry their thoughts to logical conclusion. they're no more than a will to expression.

their only means of attracting attention are postures, lines, now and then an exceptional signal, and extraordinary appeal to our eyes and sense of smell in the form of light bulbs and perfume atomizers that are called flowers and are probably wounds.

animals express themselves orally or with gestures that erase each other. vegetable expression is written down once and for all. there's no way of retracting it; second thoughts are ruled out: revision is only by addenda.

an infinite variety of feelings born of desire in a state of immobility gives rise to their infinite diversity of forms."quotes from francis ponge selected poems 1994

national poetry month begins with the mollusk...

since april is national poetry month, the first post of april should, of course, be a poem. i've had francis ponge's selected poems on my nightstand for about a year now, and i still feel i hardly know them. i was happy to discover through the wonderful art of memory blog (where they've been obsessively posting on bresson for over a week now) that ponge knew bresson (!). their works certianly share a kindred spirit of austerity, and a deceptive sense of simplicity.

there are a ton of gems in ponge's oeuvre, but my recent favorite is a short poem called 'the mollusk' (which also reminded me of jean painleve's films, which feel very much in the spirit of much of ponge's writing, particularly the messy edges between science and poetry - knowledge and wonder...). the mollusk has one of my favorite things i've ever read... the idea of a mollusk being like paint without the paint tube.

the mollusk is a being - almost a quality. it doesn't need a
skeleton, just a rampart; something like a paint tube.
nature has abandoned all hope here of shaping plasma. she
merely shows her attachment by carefully sheltering it in a jewel
case, more beautiful inside than out.
so it's not just a gob of spit; but a truly precious reality.
the mollusk is endowed with terrific energy for self - closure.
strictly speaking it's nothing but a muscle, a hinge, a door-closer
and its door.
a door-closer that has secreted the door. two slightly concave
doors constitute its entire dwelling.
the first and last dwelling. it stays on even after it dies.
no getting it out alive.
the slightest cell in the human body clings just as tightly to
language - and vice versa.
but sometimes another being violates the tomb, if it's well-made,
and takes the place of the deceased builder.
as is the case of the hermit crab.

the translations are by c.k. williams. i don't read french (the book is bilingual), but i do believe these english versions are quite beautiful.