Noise That Stays Noise: Essays

Quand le corps est une phrase

Quand le corps est une phrase à venir Claude Royet-Journoud Grammar on the horizontal one of the bases of common to say it is moving, and then, as in the old song, “Let me count the ways.” in the public gardens, which is where, naturally, he These issues are raised again in each book—a body sur faces more thoroughly, a more thorough sur face that moves toward continually; the page becomes fluid, refusing dete mined direction and offering space in which living could take place, a space that responds to the motion of visual as well as verbal language. You say (for instance ) fragile (and it cracks outward in those shapes that incite associates. You said fragility two or three simultaneous readings and not only refusing stasis seen Though he can say, “It is also a work of suppression. Which is not to say that there is under the text another text lacking.” 151 “and the world becomes legible” “finally what interests me is this myste y of the literal.” a glance, spliced between two opposing and moving windows and there he is doing kind things, single, small, so kind they’re uncommon. Literal smile tangible seal. “what I think about accident” And the “myster y of the literal” leads inexorably to a poetics of banality , to a progressive stripping away of artifice, giving him an unremitting contact with the su face. Tangible text. Such contact includes the paradox that though the surface is completely visible, it is never completely seen because it is never completed. Text that battles entropy, that tendency for ener gy as well as difference within a closed system to dissipate. His work battles it simply by remaining open, by a moment’s dislocation within the system, a misplaced distance, a voice from the street filtere through glass. “I think about accident” In place of narrative or imagistic continuity, a particular type of motion animates the sur face of his page, making the page into a body, which in tur n incorporates first the body of the write and then that of the reader into its world. mains innombrables (If sound were salt) en avance sur sa propre main, il tour ne le dos (No argument this fine, this sieved, nor would proof la main prise dans la page 152 (All remains is) la main passe A man in a park blends in with the trees. I watch him at a slight distance while he does not know that anyone is watching him there is nothing there to watch a man thus caught in the world of the trees there seem to be various men who refuse the distinction of the seam between the body and the world and the body and the trees and the world becomes legible. main intarrissable He’s waiting for someone to come back with cof fee, two shots, each one in its tiny white plastic cup with its tiny white plastic oar submer ged and emer ging, watching the children playing and now the playing and the sitting and the watching and they’re growing and you can’t see them in the photograph though there seems to be a disturbance or per haps a stir ring would be a better word there in the air. Comme si dans la pierre circulait une main vive. Tous les gestes qu’on oublie In another description of his working process, he has used the example of ichnology, the science of traces, which is used to re-create the bodies of long-extinct animals from a few shards of bone or from fossilized footprints. Similarly , in his work, the reader is in the presence of evidence, which always operates as positive indication of an absence. The ichnologist’ s project is that of a detective. And is particularly drawn to the American “hard-boiled” variety , in which the detective operates single-handedly between the separately authoritative realms of the police and criminal worlds, often arriving at a solution that avoids submission to either. (When seen from a distance, the person is a shape with its own idiosyncratic grace and never static but might shift as you stand at the edge of the line of trees with the two steaming cups 153 in your hand and watch the way one shape balances against another , the others, the ones that move.) appuyée contre les deux images in between ce visage qui brusquement...