I heard Leslie Scalapino read just twice, in person. It took my breath away, both times. The Euphrates River piece. I had read her, listened online, but being there. It was difficult to speak, afterwards. There was so much space in it, relentless attention, these jewel-like colours. Rose. Alongside the unbearable stakes of what was prising open. What was it to be a body speaking that. How much of a falling short was hearing it. In San Francisco she wore these beautiful iridescent colours.
Somewhere, I think on PennSound, she talks about Gertrude Stein being so much present, so like a rock, that questions of influence on her work were irrelevant. A question I guess she was often asked. I think Leslie’s work is similarly fundamental now, it has changed how writing might work, how a line is a line of pitched attention, its relation to event. It manages to be militant and fully present and calm at the same time. It holds writing to an act of risk, its rhythm, impossible to recoup, singular. Like here in New Time:
freezing sky — red slice — one, outside, travelling not existing
even — is not not rebelling — gap itself — as choosing the harshest
conditions — is the dawn
that is dusk freezing sky — is gap
grinding negative, as going down that’s dusk sky — per se — one’s
pushing wildly occurring (in one) events — as gap, (that’s dawn)
Something ‘catalyzed’, ‘one’s pushing wildly occurring’, and then the break or ‘wild gap’ ‘not so much the particular interpretation (of events) — but as (that) it happens at all’.
Being able to hear that wild gap, as (that) it happens at all, carried in her writing, still catalyzing.
She says, this
(written after travelling to hear Leslie Scalapino read for the first time)
They want you to be present, to the extent.
Voices call you out, keep you. In motion,
doors, please. The road is motionless, speed
keeps it in check. She says, this. Sound
is by itself, it is no memory. There is pressure
on the eardrums, as if we fell, to think. Otherwise.
A sneeze from another garden, sutures. So how
would you speak it, that gap. When she cries she
fights the air, there are no children here however.
She wrote. The crepiness of skin is an abstract
comfort, though it astonishes. Caught in the window,
who. Is that, not realising. Ferns die back from
the outside. What made her falter, it was what.
Came at her, I think, in words. A body has to work
to keep itself. Alert, but there is somehow abandon.
She has a quiet smile, wonder if people. Come at
each other as transparencies, ghosts, more fragile,
slower. When words are where matter is, also more
lasting. Residue of violence, still recovering. Sh
Shadwell. Machine stutters, ha harbour, take
all your belongings with you. Be be longings. You
would only find that. In England he said, waiting.
His briefcase. Yellow. What would you keep pace
with, knowing. Their use of colour, rose and gem
stones, and strewn bodies, is not pity. Reliquary,
maybe. Is this mine, without principles. Connecting,
a hum, to be cared for. Transport, not easily managed,
but today it is enough, she says. In its measure.
9 October 2006
from Occasionals: autumncuts
Carol Watts