Charles Alexander
AN IN- UN- AC- EN-COUNTER, or, How to Read a Poem (underwater?)
(on a Song by IO, or Io's Song, by Murat Nemet-Nejat)
[Here are my words for Murat, which turned out not to be a critical essay but a creative encounter. As such, I prefer the spelling and grammatical irregularities here remain as they are, which doesn’t mean a typo or two didn’t creep in, though I have gone over it a couple of times. And that’s bit by bit, not with the Microsoft word’s spell & grammar check, which for some reason is not working on my computer today.]
Io's Song comes at you like a pirouette, or a silhouette, but you must remember that a silhouette is really a silly hat, maybe Jackson Mac Low's Is That Wool Hat My Hat, but I imagine no one would want to be fucked through wool, or even imagine the discomfort, but perhaps I am just allergic to wool.
What can you do when Emily Dickinson is in jail? Move ahead on the vine, the wine, no . . . wind (dark sea).
Io's a myth Io's a moon, Io's a song, Eye is Oh! and some sang "High Ho, High Ho," it's into the lingua franca we go. But is it your language, or my language? — that's a pliable question, and ply is what Nemet-Nejat does, though with a wing and a word and a tilt, not a plow. The ground is somewhere in the distant past, though if you don't hang on, you might be grounded. But if you spring a leak, you might find out that a spring is the horizon. Vision is what we do, we poets of this moon landing. For myth is not something we inherit, but something we un-cover, dis-cover, re-cover, as we bob on the alien surface of words. I throw down my book, indeed, but I also plumbs its depths. What's an I/aye/eye, anyways?
We push water (you do, I do, anyone that moves) every day, but when do you ever consider water exhilaration as a kind of substantial distance, when at night I lay me down to sleep, or lay the guitar down and find the heart in need, in dread.
My desolation is pure — is your desolation pure? Is your water flat? Are your toes nails? Have you said "Oh" to your darling today? Is any desolation pure? Can it be otherwise?
The mask is damask (is it damasque?) in a hot bath tub, da mask not dumb ass, but asses all in the seductive hot bath house, in the mist that misses, or can't miss, on the edge of Occam's razor as it glides across the face, opening pores of skin to air.
Can you feel joy? In the bath asleep then awakening. Nothing in between. Nothing of one's past except in betweens. Pour it on, Pour it in, See the stars.
What comes of water and sunlight? What but rainbow, and rainbow may be Io (or Iris), the red of blood, orange of earth, yellow of sun, green of leaf, blue of sky, indigo of midnight, violet of one's gap. Violence of one's grasp. Violas on the grass, alas.
The stories never bore, and we are not Hermes, they are not Argus. We are opiate and hermaphrodite, warm with spume and bright with dream, woodland numph with soft hair moving in soft air, Aye O Aye O, the sound Pan (Pound) liked and could not imprison among the peacock feathers.
A E I O U -- these sounds are dangerous, and they procreate everywhere. To breathe is to sing, to utter is to sing, to sing is utterly transportive, full of light and water. The secrets of a language're hidden, in another language, or
oh, tantra
tantra
the secret of my heart!
Such an erotic liquid there, in the one language, in the other, in the tantric, in the secret, in the heart. You can't stop the leak, and you shouldn't want to. Water water everywhere and all drops to drink, to sleep, perchance to dream.
Black black black prick doing it in the snow old crone drinks the water young Augustus drinks the water we drink the water. In the same spot thirty years later a red virgin swims against the horizon. As in the Wizard of O's (of IO's). And if one eye only appears, Cyclops may be free falling. A friend, Benjamin Hollander, loses all sense of depth during the last weeks of life. Or gains all sense of death while still alive. Or dives through depths we can not see or know. Aye. Oh.
Follow the fellow, follow the flower, flower the following fields, the forces of flows, of souls, of fragments of language. What is there is what is revealed. What is awake is not asleep. Sleep now, lady, in that fragment of space that is a screen dispersing the eye into words, the eye oh the eye oh. Traces, flying, to or from, obliv / ion. IOn. Eye on us all, as we fall, as we flower, as we flow the language through.
The universe is screwed, but if we screw into it we may find ourselves in the theatre of mysteries, detected and undetected, yearning for love, ardor, radar, odor, door, drawers drowning us in hair. (I will plunge my head, passionately drunken, into this dark ocean . . . Livid hair, pavilion of tense shadow, you give me the blue sky, immense and round.)
Slash slash me, slash slash me, do not sadden me, do not make me brood, in this summer winter moon of our discontent. No lament, not today, no howl from a calf, no half howl, no hoof howl, no agon, no drifts, though eyes drift to lands, and gazes are signatures in the anorexic melancholy of loneliness. (ioneliness, lioness). Beauty is somewhat, beauty is unspecific, beauty is not alone. Love, oh love, filling this book, filling all books, not sensible, not skin, not democratic, but to the senses, the waters, the flowers on the shore, narcissus and narcotic and absent, amor. Rise, heat, from off me, rise, mother from off me, the fire inside the fire under.
Hmmm. Hmmm. That's the clock. That's a chime, and the Os are like thought baloons moving around the page, weep and deep and without wave or air, there she is, Aprodite, rise rise. I have seen the face before, and may never again, but everything has begun, from the pool to the air, the sparrow rising, disappearing. Opera is a roar upon us, is a proper roar beyond us, is over in a drowning. I am an O and a lie is almost a lied almost a lyre almost a song. Drop a letter from a name and an oleander appears, drop a letter from a song and another song is sung. The secrret of wings in the foliage, dropping leaves and letters, losing weight, allowing flight. Dear Ben, can you pry yourself loose from belief by your senses? I believe, Murat believes, we believe you have, you are, you can, you will.
Marvin Gaye asks, "what's goin' on?" The gray dawn asks, "what's goin' on?" Bees suck where I suck and nectar smears or shmears, the pollen plays, the year leaps, silence hollers or hollows, and pours. Pores. Poors. Poos and Moos and Io's Song.
Can you spot any pure white here? Four spots. Spot them. Drop them in the water.
The hallelujah chorus crosses rapture's rupture. Everything is present in the present, and everything is in the book, the captain's book, the world book, the book's book, Io's book. Colors appear, death's colors and sea skin's mind's colors, white cream, cock's dream, scream in stream. Lover and fever and river. Upstream or downstream, biting the wind.
Encounter and count her in the count in the blue count, zeus blue venezuela blue, dream blue, space spilling star drinking in the desire of blue. And it comes in, this encounter, like an annunciation, where silhouette and silly hat in the peace of night informs a body flying, a human goose ice block on which i crawl, on which IO crawls. Encounter, count her. All words are spiritual.
Kin and kind, kinky and kingly, never put Dickinson in jail. I cannot live with you there, I cannot rise with you there, I cannot fall with you there. The ocean is the slightly open door there, and that white sustenance, despair.
Relight the candle, implore the sisters to change, implore the reeds to yield, sigh in the soft air, and make a sound, make a sign, make a song, Io's song. Hi Hat's song, I sing the bodies electric, I sing I sing. Sing to the cloud that is clear and echoes/reflects the blood on the ground, modest cloud, modest blood, modest blush, immodest desolation pure.
Swans are wands, making spells as they move, pouring milk into a lake's bosom, sensitive to water, weeping in purple smock, bleeding through willow's reeds. A world of images, but only if your eyes are open and you can give and take a joke, water's joke with gods and pretty maids all in a row, and swans flying, kissing air, staining stars, blinding the night. Don't dream, don't pull back the lunar eyes, don't milk the swan's breast like children, just look, look at the necks suffused with light, look at the arrival under your window, wake up wake up humanity you sleep far too long, find the span of a swam, swim with the span, sing with the swim.
The real myth (real myth an oxymoron?), where Juno gave Io to Argus as a guard, the white heifer Io, the ion, the excess electron, the joke on us all by Zeus, hidden in an ionic cloud, iconic and ironic in the iron cloudiness. Hera will have revenge.
Change a letter. Seed allows see, and is seen in the instant, eye is ye, you, and you and I are two, minus two letters is O, Eye O, I O. Veiled, and seen. Cupid shoots the arrow, love wounds the letters. Innocence is no guard, perhaps an invitation, the descent beckons as the ascent beckoned.
Another one, another sketch, a boyhood, a grimy scene, a grime seen, a crime scene, sex and murder in Harlem at midnight, a space between legs lost, a space in the mind lost, a dis-awakening, a fear and a close, everything closes. The rest is silence.
What next, I O, Oh, I, oh me, oh look, a rain bow I see, I see rain bowing I see colors arcing the sky, I am the sky the heart, the orb, the glow, oh I O oh rainbow!
I sing of arms and the man, arm of the man and the woman, the arms entwined, the barge on the Nile with entwined lovers, the love biting lips, the dolphin like delights in movement, in the rose, in the eruptions, the sweet bud the sweet c-l-i-t-o-p-e-t-r-a. Smile cupid, smile to bring the cooling wind.
And as the rainbow appears, as the lovers entwine, Io becomes again what she was. Hands and toes and fingers. A nymph again, a goddess, bearing a seed, Jove and Io's seed.
Take me to the islands now, to the after-word, to the afterlife, the Iovian autobiography, the open garden here, the rivers, the reason running, the watermelon wooing, the mark of pencil drawn down through the wind, arriving home, Io, home from the dark sea. Home among words and names and weasel games, home in the arms of the eternal, in the arrival and departure as one as river as mirror. As a fight with unseen windmills, as a para/dice on parade, ice, ice, IO. What do you think words are for, IO? Who do you think words are for? Are they for us, no we are for them, we are from them, we are them, and nothing comes and nothing leaves nothing or something found. Time is a tricky brick. Basho had a frog, a frog had a rock upon the water. If you remember, you bring it all back, shining. You are shining, Dear Ben, farewell.
The book is delirious the art is delirious, the swan and angels and demons and You are delirious, oh swan of snow, oh angels hiding in the light. Hiding in the horizon. That's how it is. That's how it was. A signal, a fish, a flower, yellow, two lips, tulips, no blanket, no candle, that's how it is.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame, or the melancholic water kisses a desert of vibrations, pools the infinite, reconciles the finite, thirsts and absorbs in a clarity of montage, a mist of yearning, a dialectic dials a hectic poem, a block, a step, to . . .
If you can't speak to the muse, chant the divine name, sing it, in the trees, through the roots, hold the ear to the grass, touch the mouth to the fruit, feel the moon's round, love round, love soft words fresh, love the pondering on allah's name, for names are as the breeze and fall upon the heart. Sing for us all, sing for Odysseus, the turning man, this man strange turning in the pushing water, the plundering man, the language we learn, the gravity of things, the gravity of water.
I have tried to write Paradise, he said, but it is small, infinitely small, turned diagonally, a so-so paradise of wind and wound. A disguise before a dog, an eternity unturned.
Knowledge is no ledge, is our ledge, is our precipice, do you know it? Do you know the migration of ions, the ionic onion sea, the impact of colonization of far lands. Do not celebrate the vile event of carnage, the trojans of our inward lives.
I am. I am here. I am a name. I am reintegrated, via th sword of Allah, again and again, Jews, Moslems, warriors, meek humans, stuttering brothers, clear speech, oh pray St. Peter. I am an enigma. I am arrested. I am fallen. I am a word, an initial, a start, an allowance. I stutter. I chafe. I tax and I fall to entropy and a heart and drift to a wife, an inspiration.
Too many cuckolds, returns deaths mists rains, too much pain. The infarctsis of the heart slashes all dialects, pulverizes all love, a kiss strikes a light through all darkness in the shared space of a single bed. Where are you, Ben, where are you, Nymphs, where are you words oh words, oh eye o I o lords words.
If there is a space in the cell for two, come then, and fuck me fuck me. The face, the body, the neck . . . the silhouette (the silly hat), passion's multiplications, the calf tangled in the tether. Brain cancer is the pain is the loss is, oh Ben, oh I I O, now cruising the wind, the wind, the sea.
these are my shapes . . .
pouring from one river to the other
In jellyfish moments we sense souls in light's descent, invisible souls made into ravished light of Degas's pigment. Let's make the pigment red, let's go to the red, let's go to the pomegranates, with our tongues, before the raven swoops. The tongue touches the world. The moonlight night is cold, the table beckons, the ground trembles, above our heads the world is translucent. We see the woman bathing, the soap, the curve, the leg, the disappearance of distance, the tongue.
In looking at the IO with the eyes and saying Oh Oh Oh, the moon, Zeus's or Jupiter's moon, one might say, with Olson,
Goodnight red moon
- - - - -
you set I rise I hope
- - - - -
I can die now I just begun to live
and begin all over again.
______
This encounter is hardly an accounting, but I have tried to allow a roaming count to show something of the wonder, of the amazement, of Murat Nemet-Nejat's work, how it might inspire imaginations to . . . imagine. How it might connect myth to thought to act, leave myth behind, come back to it, dance an erotic entanglement within and outside of daily life. It is a privilege to read Io's Song, and a joy to write with it. My text makes abundant use of Nemet-Nejat's text, weaving through and among his words, attempting to think along with him, to dream with him, and sometimes to ask him a question or two. His work has also brought me in touch with such as Jackson Mac Low, Emily Dickinson, H.D., William Shakespeare, Charles Olson, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Homer, Frederic Hölderlin, and the sorely missed Benjamin Hollander, for whom Io's Song is a sort of farewell love poem, grief poem. Thank you to all of them for embodying some of the spaces of the song Io sings, and thank you to Murat Nemet-Nejat for his compelling work of words and light and flight, ascent and descent, and trembling to the end.
In addition to all of the interweaving with Nemet-Nejat's words, there are a few other allusions, almost quotations, from the above-mentioned writers (and perhaps more. The lines from Charles Baudelaire's poem "Hair" are translated by Keith Waldrop, and the lines of the Charles Olson poem at the end are from "Moonset, Gloucester, December 1, 1957, 1:58 AM."
Here are my words for Murat, which turned out not to be a critical essay but a creative encounter. As such, I prefer the spelling and grammatical irregularities here remain as they are, which doesn’t mean a typo or two didn’t creep in, though I have gone over it a couple of times. And that’s bit by bit, not with the Microsoft word’s spell & grammar check, which for some reason is not working on my computer today.
(on a Song by IO, or Io's Song, by Murat Nemet-Nejat)
[Here are my words for Murat, which turned out not to be a critical essay but a creative encounter. As such, I prefer the spelling and grammatical irregularities here remain as they are, which doesn’t mean a typo or two didn’t creep in, though I have gone over it a couple of times. And that’s bit by bit, not with the Microsoft word’s spell & grammar check, which for some reason is not working on my computer today.]
Io's Song comes at you like a pirouette, or a silhouette, but you must remember that a silhouette is really a silly hat, maybe Jackson Mac Low's Is That Wool Hat My Hat, but I imagine no one would want to be fucked through wool, or even imagine the discomfort, but perhaps I am just allergic to wool.
What can you do when Emily Dickinson is in jail? Move ahead on the vine, the wine, no . . . wind (dark sea).
Io's a myth Io's a moon, Io's a song, Eye is Oh! and some sang "High Ho, High Ho," it's into the lingua franca we go. But is it your language, or my language? — that's a pliable question, and ply is what Nemet-Nejat does, though with a wing and a word and a tilt, not a plow. The ground is somewhere in the distant past, though if you don't hang on, you might be grounded. But if you spring a leak, you might find out that a spring is the horizon. Vision is what we do, we poets of this moon landing. For myth is not something we inherit, but something we un-cover, dis-cover, re-cover, as we bob on the alien surface of words. I throw down my book, indeed, but I also plumbs its depths. What's an I/aye/eye, anyways?
We push water (you do, I do, anyone that moves) every day, but when do you ever consider water exhilaration as a kind of substantial distance, when at night I lay me down to sleep, or lay the guitar down and find the heart in need, in dread.
My desolation is pure — is your desolation pure? Is your water flat? Are your toes nails? Have you said "Oh" to your darling today? Is any desolation pure? Can it be otherwise?
The mask is damask (is it damasque?) in a hot bath tub, da mask not dumb ass, but asses all in the seductive hot bath house, in the mist that misses, or can't miss, on the edge of Occam's razor as it glides across the face, opening pores of skin to air.
Can you feel joy? In the bath asleep then awakening. Nothing in between. Nothing of one's past except in betweens. Pour it on, Pour it in, See the stars.
What comes of water and sunlight? What but rainbow, and rainbow may be Io (or Iris), the red of blood, orange of earth, yellow of sun, green of leaf, blue of sky, indigo of midnight, violet of one's gap. Violence of one's grasp. Violas on the grass, alas.
The stories never bore, and we are not Hermes, they are not Argus. We are opiate and hermaphrodite, warm with spume and bright with dream, woodland numph with soft hair moving in soft air, Aye O Aye O, the sound Pan (Pound) liked and could not imprison among the peacock feathers.
A E I O U -- these sounds are dangerous, and they procreate everywhere. To breathe is to sing, to utter is to sing, to sing is utterly transportive, full of light and water. The secrets of a language're hidden, in another language, or
oh, tantra
tantra
the secret of my heart!
Such an erotic liquid there, in the one language, in the other, in the tantric, in the secret, in the heart. You can't stop the leak, and you shouldn't want to. Water water everywhere and all drops to drink, to sleep, perchance to dream.
Black black black prick doing it in the snow old crone drinks the water young Augustus drinks the water we drink the water. In the same spot thirty years later a red virgin swims against the horizon. As in the Wizard of O's (of IO's). And if one eye only appears, Cyclops may be free falling. A friend, Benjamin Hollander, loses all sense of depth during the last weeks of life. Or gains all sense of death while still alive. Or dives through depths we can not see or know. Aye. Oh.
Follow the fellow, follow the flower, flower the following fields, the forces of flows, of souls, of fragments of language. What is there is what is revealed. What is awake is not asleep. Sleep now, lady, in that fragment of space that is a screen dispersing the eye into words, the eye oh the eye oh. Traces, flying, to or from, obliv / ion. IOn. Eye on us all, as we fall, as we flower, as we flow the language through.
The universe is screwed, but if we screw into it we may find ourselves in the theatre of mysteries, detected and undetected, yearning for love, ardor, radar, odor, door, drawers drowning us in hair. (I will plunge my head, passionately drunken, into this dark ocean . . . Livid hair, pavilion of tense shadow, you give me the blue sky, immense and round.)
Slash slash me, slash slash me, do not sadden me, do not make me brood, in this summer winter moon of our discontent. No lament, not today, no howl from a calf, no half howl, no hoof howl, no agon, no drifts, though eyes drift to lands, and gazes are signatures in the anorexic melancholy of loneliness. (ioneliness, lioness). Beauty is somewhat, beauty is unspecific, beauty is not alone. Love, oh love, filling this book, filling all books, not sensible, not skin, not democratic, but to the senses, the waters, the flowers on the shore, narcissus and narcotic and absent, amor. Rise, heat, from off me, rise, mother from off me, the fire inside the fire under.
Hmmm. Hmmm. That's the clock. That's a chime, and the Os are like thought baloons moving around the page, weep and deep and without wave or air, there she is, Aprodite, rise rise. I have seen the face before, and may never again, but everything has begun, from the pool to the air, the sparrow rising, disappearing. Opera is a roar upon us, is a proper roar beyond us, is over in a drowning. I am an O and a lie is almost a lied almost a lyre almost a song. Drop a letter from a name and an oleander appears, drop a letter from a song and another song is sung. The secrret of wings in the foliage, dropping leaves and letters, losing weight, allowing flight. Dear Ben, can you pry yourself loose from belief by your senses? I believe, Murat believes, we believe you have, you are, you can, you will.
Marvin Gaye asks, "what's goin' on?" The gray dawn asks, "what's goin' on?" Bees suck where I suck and nectar smears or shmears, the pollen plays, the year leaps, silence hollers or hollows, and pours. Pores. Poors. Poos and Moos and Io's Song.
Can you spot any pure white here? Four spots. Spot them. Drop them in the water.
The hallelujah chorus crosses rapture's rupture. Everything is present in the present, and everything is in the book, the captain's book, the world book, the book's book, Io's book. Colors appear, death's colors and sea skin's mind's colors, white cream, cock's dream, scream in stream. Lover and fever and river. Upstream or downstream, biting the wind.
Encounter and count her in the count in the blue count, zeus blue venezuela blue, dream blue, space spilling star drinking in the desire of blue. And it comes in, this encounter, like an annunciation, where silhouette and silly hat in the peace of night informs a body flying, a human goose ice block on which i crawl, on which IO crawls. Encounter, count her. All words are spiritual.
Kin and kind, kinky and kingly, never put Dickinson in jail. I cannot live with you there, I cannot rise with you there, I cannot fall with you there. The ocean is the slightly open door there, and that white sustenance, despair.
Relight the candle, implore the sisters to change, implore the reeds to yield, sigh in the soft air, and make a sound, make a sign, make a song, Io's song. Hi Hat's song, I sing the bodies electric, I sing I sing. Sing to the cloud that is clear and echoes/reflects the blood on the ground, modest cloud, modest blood, modest blush, immodest desolation pure.
Swans are wands, making spells as they move, pouring milk into a lake's bosom, sensitive to water, weeping in purple smock, bleeding through willow's reeds. A world of images, but only if your eyes are open and you can give and take a joke, water's joke with gods and pretty maids all in a row, and swans flying, kissing air, staining stars, blinding the night. Don't dream, don't pull back the lunar eyes, don't milk the swan's breast like children, just look, look at the necks suffused with light, look at the arrival under your window, wake up wake up humanity you sleep far too long, find the span of a swam, swim with the span, sing with the swim.
The real myth (real myth an oxymoron?), where Juno gave Io to Argus as a guard, the white heifer Io, the ion, the excess electron, the joke on us all by Zeus, hidden in an ionic cloud, iconic and ironic in the iron cloudiness. Hera will have revenge.
Change a letter. Seed allows see, and is seen in the instant, eye is ye, you, and you and I are two, minus two letters is O, Eye O, I O. Veiled, and seen. Cupid shoots the arrow, love wounds the letters. Innocence is no guard, perhaps an invitation, the descent beckons as the ascent beckoned.
Another one, another sketch, a boyhood, a grimy scene, a grime seen, a crime scene, sex and murder in Harlem at midnight, a space between legs lost, a space in the mind lost, a dis-awakening, a fear and a close, everything closes. The rest is silence.
What next, I O, Oh, I, oh me, oh look, a rain bow I see, I see rain bowing I see colors arcing the sky, I am the sky the heart, the orb, the glow, oh I O oh rainbow!
I sing of arms and the man, arm of the man and the woman, the arms entwined, the barge on the Nile with entwined lovers, the love biting lips, the dolphin like delights in movement, in the rose, in the eruptions, the sweet bud the sweet c-l-i-t-o-p-e-t-r-a. Smile cupid, smile to bring the cooling wind.
And as the rainbow appears, as the lovers entwine, Io becomes again what she was. Hands and toes and fingers. A nymph again, a goddess, bearing a seed, Jove and Io's seed.
Take me to the islands now, to the after-word, to the afterlife, the Iovian autobiography, the open garden here, the rivers, the reason running, the watermelon wooing, the mark of pencil drawn down through the wind, arriving home, Io, home from the dark sea. Home among words and names and weasel games, home in the arms of the eternal, in the arrival and departure as one as river as mirror. As a fight with unseen windmills, as a para/dice on parade, ice, ice, IO. What do you think words are for, IO? Who do you think words are for? Are they for us, no we are for them, we are from them, we are them, and nothing comes and nothing leaves nothing or something found. Time is a tricky brick. Basho had a frog, a frog had a rock upon the water. If you remember, you bring it all back, shining. You are shining, Dear Ben, farewell.
The book is delirious the art is delirious, the swan and angels and demons and You are delirious, oh swan of snow, oh angels hiding in the light. Hiding in the horizon. That's how it is. That's how it was. A signal, a fish, a flower, yellow, two lips, tulips, no blanket, no candle, that's how it is.
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame, or the melancholic water kisses a desert of vibrations, pools the infinite, reconciles the finite, thirsts and absorbs in a clarity of montage, a mist of yearning, a dialectic dials a hectic poem, a block, a step, to . . .
If you can't speak to the muse, chant the divine name, sing it, in the trees, through the roots, hold the ear to the grass, touch the mouth to the fruit, feel the moon's round, love round, love soft words fresh, love the pondering on allah's name, for names are as the breeze and fall upon the heart. Sing for us all, sing for Odysseus, the turning man, this man strange turning in the pushing water, the plundering man, the language we learn, the gravity of things, the gravity of water.
I have tried to write Paradise, he said, but it is small, infinitely small, turned diagonally, a so-so paradise of wind and wound. A disguise before a dog, an eternity unturned.
Knowledge is no ledge, is our ledge, is our precipice, do you know it? Do you know the migration of ions, the ionic onion sea, the impact of colonization of far lands. Do not celebrate the vile event of carnage, the trojans of our inward lives.
I am. I am here. I am a name. I am reintegrated, via th sword of Allah, again and again, Jews, Moslems, warriors, meek humans, stuttering brothers, clear speech, oh pray St. Peter. I am an enigma. I am arrested. I am fallen. I am a word, an initial, a start, an allowance. I stutter. I chafe. I tax and I fall to entropy and a heart and drift to a wife, an inspiration.
Too many cuckolds, returns deaths mists rains, too much pain. The infarctsis of the heart slashes all dialects, pulverizes all love, a kiss strikes a light through all darkness in the shared space of a single bed. Where are you, Ben, where are you, Nymphs, where are you words oh words, oh eye o I o lords words.
If there is a space in the cell for two, come then, and fuck me fuck me. The face, the body, the neck . . . the silhouette (the silly hat), passion's multiplications, the calf tangled in the tether. Brain cancer is the pain is the loss is, oh Ben, oh I I O, now cruising the wind, the wind, the sea.
these are my shapes . . .
pouring from one river to the other
In jellyfish moments we sense souls in light's descent, invisible souls made into ravished light of Degas's pigment. Let's make the pigment red, let's go to the red, let's go to the pomegranates, with our tongues, before the raven swoops. The tongue touches the world. The moonlight night is cold, the table beckons, the ground trembles, above our heads the world is translucent. We see the woman bathing, the soap, the curve, the leg, the disappearance of distance, the tongue.
In looking at the IO with the eyes and saying Oh Oh Oh, the moon, Zeus's or Jupiter's moon, one might say, with Olson,
Goodnight red moon
- - - - -
you set I rise I hope
- - - - -
I can die now I just begun to live
and begin all over again.
______
This encounter is hardly an accounting, but I have tried to allow a roaming count to show something of the wonder, of the amazement, of Murat Nemet-Nejat's work, how it might inspire imaginations to . . . imagine. How it might connect myth to thought to act, leave myth behind, come back to it, dance an erotic entanglement within and outside of daily life. It is a privilege to read Io's Song, and a joy to write with it. My text makes abundant use of Nemet-Nejat's text, weaving through and among his words, attempting to think along with him, to dream with him, and sometimes to ask him a question or two. His work has also brought me in touch with such as Jackson Mac Low, Emily Dickinson, H.D., William Shakespeare, Charles Olson, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Homer, Frederic Hölderlin, and the sorely missed Benjamin Hollander, for whom Io's Song is a sort of farewell love poem, grief poem. Thank you to all of them for embodying some of the spaces of the song Io sings, and thank you to Murat Nemet-Nejat for his compelling work of words and light and flight, ascent and descent, and trembling to the end.
In addition to all of the interweaving with Nemet-Nejat's words, there are a few other allusions, almost quotations, from the above-mentioned writers (and perhaps more. The lines from Charles Baudelaire's poem "Hair" are translated by Keith Waldrop, and the lines of the Charles Olson poem at the end are from "Moonset, Gloucester, December 1, 1957, 1:58 AM."
Here are my words for Murat, which turned out not to be a critical essay but a creative encounter. As such, I prefer the spelling and grammatical irregularities here remain as they are, which doesn’t mean a typo or two didn’t creep in, though I have gone over it a couple of times. And that’s bit by bit, not with the Microsoft word’s spell & grammar check, which for some reason is not working on my computer today.