From Pieces of Paper: A Selection

Preface

WHILE PREPARING FOR MY OWN contribution to the collection of "experimental transformations" gathered during the Bogliasco Seminars on Wallace Stevens in June 2019, I put together a portfolio with rather too many such attempts. What I presented in Bogliasco fell into four clusters: Rewrites & Updates; Centos; Translations; and Reformations. The first three of these were further subdivided into poetry and prose. For the present selection, it seemed better to surrender such divisions and dispense with the translations and reformations altogether. (The multilingual translations I omit with a touch of sadness, but they posed serious challenges of material reproduction.) What I'm retaining below has thus all been compiled from the first two clusters, with instances of both poetry and prose. Because it would do some of the minor, tongue-in-cheek efforts too much honor to present them as individual contributions, I decided to gather my thirteen experiments under a single title, shamelessly borrowed—like nearly all the rest of what follows—from Stevens. Having invented the assignment of "experimental transformations," I should add that I took the task quite literally. As a result, the following materials are very much grafted on Stevens's writings, which they seek to transform in various, more or less surprising ways. By the same token, they are likely to speak primarily, or even exclusively, to those readers who have a minimal understanding of the allusive play in which they engage. The collection is followed by a series of not entirely academic notes that provide pointers and backgrounds to the attempted transformations. It is my express hope that readers will turn to the respective notes only after having acquainted themselves with the texts, not beforehand. Much may be lost by reversing the order.

The Bark of a Dog

Art contracts and civil action is expected,As in a square in front of Lietuva.The dog barks.

It does not become a real-estate developer,Demanding privatization,Calling the cops.

Animal disobedience is absolute and without cinema,As in a square in front of Lietuva,When the traffic stops,

When the traffic stops and, over the heavens,The clouds go, nevertheless,In their direction.

So-and-So Collecting Dirt

Over breakfast, reclining on his elbow.This young lady, this apparition,Suppose we call her Putin's niece.

He floats in air at the level ofHer eyes, only half believable,Born, as he was, at twenty-eight,

All lineage and language, GreekTo the bone, every emotive gesture,Eyes behind shades, so much to share.

If just above her head there hung,Suspended in air, the hotel logo—Andaz London Liverpool Street—

The suspension, as in solid space,The suspending hand withdrawn, would beAn illegible gesture. Let this be called

The Road to Fame. To get at the dirtWithout gesture is to get at it asIdealist. She floats in thousands of

E-mails between Hillary and John,John and Hillary. He is half who made herUp. This is the final collusion.

The exchange contains the desire ofEither conman. But one confides in whatConceals its source. One relies on an

Oil consultant, accepts him as"Excellent guy." Good-bye,Mr. Papadopoulos, and thanks.

The Cosmic Snowman

One must travel four billion milesFrom the sun to encounter a reddishObject the size of Washington, D.C.,

Composed four and a half billionYears ago in the dark and deepFreeze of the solar system's

Kuiper belt, so as finally to seeHow in this godforsaken cornerOf the universe the most common

Things came into being as contactBinaries, spherical lobes attachingThemselves slowly to each other

Until they built a snowmanFor the spaceship reporting back to EarthNothing that is not there and the double O that is.

Botanist on Alp (No. 3)

Panoramas are back to what they used to be.Stevens has been dead a long timeAnd funiculars are forbidden in poetry.Nature has saved Marx,For the moment.

For myself, I'd rather leave these lives behind,So that crowds of refugees...