32

That the 'voice of the poet' is essentially an argument.

31

That "the heart of poetry is fatigue" is a model proposition.

That "the heart of poetry is fatigue" must be false for this generation.

30

That the 'voice' of the poet comes to terms with the principles of the surface: superposition, original horizontality, lateral continuity.

Two Early Inventions

• Groundlings and mandarins
• Hatchlings from the high blue hat

29

That the poem will not suffer its camouflage.

28

That regardless its antic disclosures, poetry proposes with the velocity of a science.

"The origin of shells in high places."

Or, as Julia Lupton suggested, negative anthropology could be an account of culture where you subtract human beings. Think of all the artifacts that are not produced by human civilization, like beehives and seashells and things like that. Those could be the objects of a negative anthropology.


     ––Aaron Kunin, "Banish the World"


   ***


Regardless of the theoretical subtraction, does this still import a priori a rather optimistic theory of the human?

Where architecture and mechanism retain value as a shadow of some essential human work of event planning –– or, say, there is still self-flattery in the plastic spirit and autogenous stones of Kircher and Spinoza.

But more interesting: how the negative anthropologist does taxonomy, which may also be a way of studying religion in this modulo universe. Imagine some clever student beginning to rattle that cage––!

"Which is greater, the umbrella or the face?"

This Is Our Power

We can scramble the lost.

12.28.10

Dogs are beacons for the fantasist –– never reducible to mere appetite and exchange.

A purely transactional relationship with a dog is a draining curse.

Conditionals

'Sustainability' suggests permeable defenses, occulted valor and melancholy.

It's like the final opiate light ebbing in Altman's McCabe & Mrs Miller.

Mere Words

That minority is the life of poetry, and also its cruelty. We know this, while holding to the curse.

It can't possibly be an epithet –– but an essence.

27

That within the poem a coming to terms may also mean a refusal to concede.

26

That the poem may not observe through decorum.

Seven Words into Part One of Thomas Browne's Christian Morals

The word "funambulatory."

Like a silver thread through a laughing key.

25

That at the back of the thought that the poet is defeated by description there is a theory of labor.

One After Three After Racine

The fitness of an argument is its grimmer muscle.

One shouldn't come to argue for boundedness, as though for responsibility, unless to come for that laughter at stumbling over its tripwires.

Three After Racine

Honor, without honey, is a mere malady.

After honey is honor, and then malapropism.

Honor is too fit, yet sweet after the honey of an argument.

Gatherings

A thin, crimped stuff –– occasional friendship.