‘only relations exist’
— is presented as narrative ‘Frolic
Architecture’
almost illegible and other sources
‘layering and recopying’
‘evocative but evasive’ stark
small windows on pages disparate
modes and references what
combination allusions juxtapositions
intimacy resulting
‘but I wasn’t her’ shorn of gravitas
is entwined ‘Pain
is recorded, never directly
analogous ‘objective
correlatives tell the story’
proximity and distance
associations held at arm’s
length around [and] examined
are correspondent
to have [and to] hold
together ‘imagining himself in their positions’
mind extending participation outward
unlike things not tangential
only related relational as
interwoven with feeling
Questions details almost beginning
at pains ‘(and only in part)’
‘all three’ ‘And yet’
her life —- as ‘personal’ but not
‘authoritative’
‘self-revealing’ but not
‘unified’
already outlived
pull perplexing that cuts
to and probe probes
‘elusive’ my interest
I read those ‘interstices’ as the teeming
spaces crisscrossed and association
‘i for I’ starkness
under
scored by etymology idea of a letter’s
‘case’
choosing replacing
It is the sort of exchange
the construction of both
the deictic ‘that’ and
‘this’
this, that, I, you, we, etc.
are never only communicate
field word
other noun
chiastic and reciprocal of this expanded line echo
shifts
Questions details almost beginning
Indeed,
but at pains
In her shift
as well as in her use
of the page
links to the dead
leads to an object
‘as distant dream’
‘substitute’ ‘cord
attached’ ‘gives life
back’
In these lines I thought [of] you
Until I woke up back in myself
cord tie thread questioned across
at least the appearance
clude from logic
which is ‘false’ him
[in] bed contextually bound)
complicating ‘the way a cobweb
catches’ The original living
lines are not benign
‘I know I have several times seen’
‘little shining webs’ ‘glistening
strings’ ‘moving and floating’
quotation for connections such that
we must adjust ‘is the thing from somewhere else’
conscious despair absent ordering
‘Souls of the Labadie Tract’
trace the landscape and ideas
while a photograph a small square of fabric
opens visually just discernible against
stark white
It is the blueness
blueness visible
life and experience echoes of the blue sleeve sheathing
not woken not wake
will not receive methodically
not translatable
This scrap contends ‘says
nothing at all
nothing to us without being seen
it is seen first
housed ward opening
In this ‘furiously calm’ letter
The parallels are explicit
grieving dead position feeling
forceful not at all seamlessly
or voice instruct
I love to read metaphors and similes
Howe will go on to confess a cord
spun
put: instruction to extend it out
ward
surrounded its glistening potentially
legible
our place ‘appear as parts of it’ developed
albeit separate via his existential graphs
delineating heard and felt and looked ‘types’
or fictitious narratives Unlike similes and metaphors
thought to be
words ‘language to be learnt’ ‘learning’
with good taste or judgement
method and scope His [own]
compendium
It is [an] emotional practice altered
fancy welcome
ha[]ven earth
as full as language also
peered
prompting a reflective search scrim
overtly underscores
hues tones of color perceived able to write
out side o
pen ed
through her [existent] contemporary poetics [t]his
entry
generalizes repeated but once morning
in its entirety ‘objects change [but] then’ Day
can be [put
to] type terse
lines a ghostly agency
mentioned in the prior line
enacting a kindred activity ‘That’
shares closed quotes ‘non-
being’
‘this’ while her text performs
This second to
[the] last printed
page underscoring and syn
tactic
‘ark to’
‘day is’ in
—— a person made solitary
by cessation cord between
became constitute
us
As Howe longs
closed in trapped
focuses on touching it is a repeated
motif doing research The original
‘is’
untouchable providing the hinge
The seeming direct
line suggesting causing
things
to be
‘Let the garment be as it was made’
‘Let be, said he, my prey’
unremarked upon
performing words
are the same we attach that value
scrutiny and mobilization
the archival scrap in That
This
‘touch’
The Mirror and Sea
who we really are those little nervous things
least jarred edge of the world
argues that all real knowledge
on the clearness and distinctness and exceedingly
confused ‘feels when it touches’
‘Experience’ is most relevant
grief ‘People
grieve’ ‘we court
suffering’ ‘find reality’
‘sharp peaks’ ‘even pay the costly price’
‘we aim at and converse’
‘scene-painting and counterfeit’ But we may also
think ‘Experience’
That This ‘reality’ or ‘truth’
between us
through writing across
the windy,
tumultuous, particular
abyss
threaded with these webs.
marginalamericannotes.com 