Noise That Stays Noise: Essays

Seeing Reading: Susan Howe’s Moving Margins

Seeing Reading Susan Howe’s Moving Margins “Why read?”—I heard this question put forth the other night by someone who is both a poet and a literature professor . In the context of the discussion at hand, it meant, “Why are we continuing to base education on reading? Is there any real advantage to reading as opposed to getting infor mation from DVDs, videos, films, or other media?” In sho t, why do we, as a culture, privilege reading—in theory, at least, if not in practice? Reading is generally considered an “intellectual” activity , thus “wor thy,” while watching TV, for instance, is considered lazy—why? It’s a good question, and I was surprised by how many answers came to mind over the next few weeks. The first but per haps the most enduring thought was that reading is unique because of the verbal-visual fusion it demands; this is fundamental to reading, and itis something, it does something; it makes something happen in the brain that has a physiological ef fect. Words on a page, or on any other sur face, constitute a different event, on the one hand, from words presented audibly , and on the other, from other lines and forms that could appear on a sheet of paper or other two-dimensional surface. Poetry amounts to a particularly heightened instance of this event because, with its attention to line break and page space, it accentuates the visual aspect while, with its equal emphasis on sound relationships such as rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration, it also accentuates the oral, thus equally engaging our two main senses, seeing and hearing. Furthermore, poetry that works to maximize these two modes can deliver an experience that is 100 percent aural and 100 percent visual, which results in an overload, an overflo , which spills into another zone of perception, creating an active hybrid between the two senses. And it is above all the “between” 32 itself that is created and that is full of cultural and creative promise. “Betweens” are a particular focus of Susan Howe’s work, and she activates them both within the poems and through their margins, using them to work toward a fusion of perceptions. Howe’s interest in “betweens” is apparent in her titles, which often focus on gaps or boundaries or bridges: Hinge Picture The Western Borders Secret History of the Dividing Line Speeches at the Barriers Singularities Frame Structures Each of these evokes an edge, a limit, a spatial definition tha is in some way ar ticulated, or connected, and in each case, the connection itself is given more weight than the elements it connects . Secret History of the Dividing Line,1 for instance, focuses entirely on the line of division, saying nothing about what is being divided. Parameters have greater importance for Howe than do the areas they define. A ma gin is a kind of parameter , but a very particular kind in that it not only defines an area, but als constitutes its own separate space. It’ s the dividing line made extra-dimensional, inhabitable. Margins, as the articulations between text and world, are crucial sites for writers. The word “margins” dates back to the fourteenth -century Middle English mergyns and is derived from the Latin marginibus,2 which means edge, border , frontier, and is related to the word “march,” as in “to walk in a stately , deliberate manner.”3 So, while margins carry implications of the out-ofbounds , beyond the organizations and restrictions of the spaces they enclose, constituting a space in which one not only can but must create one’ s own version of order , they also necessarily include an unsettled quality , a restlessness that is nonetheless patterned, thus offering order without stasis, which embodies a model transitional zone, which mar gins always are. Mar gins negotiate not only the transition from the ordered to the random , but also that from the symbolic or the ideal to the actual; 33 they are the air-lock through which the distance of writing stepby -step becomes the immediacy of lived experience. Though today, for the most par t, they are intended to be ignored , margins have an intricate and active histor y. They developed in the Middle Ages as text and or nament became increasingly separate. Consider , for instance, the highly worked “carpet” pages of the Book of Kells or the Lindisfarne Gospel, in which text and ornament are fused. These...