Anne Carson reading text in STACKS © Michael Hart, 2008. Courtesy Jonah Bokaer Choreography.
88
PAJ 116
Stacks
Anne Carson
STACK OF THE SEAS OF THE MOON IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
- Mare Aliorum
- Sea of Others
Mare Ambulationis Mare Anguis
Sea of Walking Snake Sea
- Mare Australe
- Sea to the South
- Sea of Crises
- Mare Crisium
Mare Dormiendi Nuditer Mare Frigoris
Sea of Sleeping Naked Sea of Cold
Mare Humboldtianum Mare Humorum Mare Imbrium
Humboldt’s Sea Sea of Moistures Sea of Rains
Mare Lunae Quaestionum Mare Marginis
Sea of the Problems of the Moon Border Sea
Mare Moscoviense Mare Nectaris
Moscow Sea Sea of Nectar
Mare Nocte Ambulationis Mare Nubium
Sea of Walking at Night Sea of Clouds
- Mare Orientale
- Sea to the East
- Sea of Masks
- Mare Personarum
- Mare Phoenici
- Phoenician Sea
Sea of Flamingos Sea of Shame
Mare Phoenicopterorum Mare Pudoris
- Mare Relictum
- Sea of Detroit
- Laughing Sea
- Mare Ridens
- Mare Smythii
- Sea of Smyth
- Mare Spumans
- Foaming Sea
- Mare Tempestivitatis
- Sea of What Frank O’Hara Calls
“Cantankerous Filaments of a Larger Faintheartedness Like Loving Summer”
- Mare Vituperationis
- Sea of Blaming
- © 2017 Anne Carson
- PAJ 116 (2017), pp. 89–108.
doi:10.1162/PAJJ _a_00369
89
THUNDERSTORM STACK
A bird flashed by as if mistaken then it starts. We do not think speed of life. We do not think why hate Jezebel? We think who’s that throwing trees against the house? Jezebel was a Phoenician. Phoenician thunderstorms are dry and frightening, they arrive one inside the other as torqued ellipses.
90
PAJ 116
STACK OF THE DEFINITIONS OF
“STACK”
Large usually conical pile (as of hay) left standing in the field
Large quantity or number English unit of measure especially for firewood equal to 108 cubic feet
Vertical pipe (as to carry off smoke) Exhaust pipe of an internal combustion engine
Pyramid of three rifles interlocked Structure of bookshelves for compact storage of books usually in the plural
Pile of chips sold to or won by a player of poker
Collection of data of which only the most recently added item may be removed the latest item being at the top basic operations are “push” and “pop” sometimes known as a “last in first out” construction or LIFO
To fall over in skating
CARSON / Stacks
91
SHAME STACK
Shame requires the eyes of others unlike guilt. The eyes of Elijah the Tishbite saw in Jezebel a person with much to be ashamed of. There is a link between shame and mercy people who lack the one lack the other. No one could relax around Jezebel. Psychoanalysts say that shame ruins your capacity for reverie by making cracks in the mind where it is dangerous for thought to wander. In the end Jezebel’s own eunuchs throw her off the parapet. Her blood is on the wall and on the horses.
92
PAJ 116
SHAME STACK RESTACK
There is a link between psychoanalysts and eunuchs,
cracks no one could lack that say
blood others thought.
SHAME STACK RESTACK RESTACKED
Jezebel could crack psychoanalysts off your mind and ruin the lack of lack.
CARSON / Stacks
93
THUNDERSTORM STACK
I watch a thunderstorm play the piano it is Sviatoslav Richter. Don’t look away or an island where birds dive. Even on TV the piano keys can barely hang onto his hands.
ROCKSTOCKDOCK STACK
Do you need to repair your ship. Dig a trench exactly the same length as your ship. Haul your ship offside. Give the trench a base of solid rock. Put a row of stocks across the rock. Let water flow into the trench. Haul your ship back in. Now you are a Phoenician and have invented drydock. You can repair your ship from below. Drydock is not an example of a “last in first out” construction or LIFO.
94
PAJ 116
SMOKESTACK
Question about what words are.
Think of an inscription cut in stone.
Would you say words are the cuts in the stone or words are the stone around the cuts?
Think of a page in a book.
Are the words the ink or the paper containing the shape of this ink?
Think of a face, no you can’t engrave a face.
Think of a sentence written as Homer might say on the tablets of your mind.
Does Elijah in virtue of being a prophet have a mind that is one big cut so that the word Jezebel falls through it like fiery roofbeams collapsing all at once at a surprise party?
CARSON / Stacks
95
STACK OF ANIMAL RIGHTS
A Phoenician first recorded the word “gorilla.” This was Hanno the Navigator who voyaged from Carthage along the West African coast in the 6th century BC.
His logbook contains this entry: We came to an island of savages.
Most of them were women with hairy bodies whom our inter- preters called “gorillas.” We chased them but could not get any males they being good climbers. We got three women who bit and clawed. So we killed them and flayed them and brought their skins back home.
Pliny the Elder attests that gorilla skins were exhibited in the temple of Tanit in Carthage until the Romans destroyed it.
According to linguists the word “gorilla” renders a KiKongo term for “powerful animal that beats itself violently.”
96
PAJ 116
CHEAPJACK STACK
The Phoenicians were a commercial people, they traded metals, weapons, ostrich eggs, shoelaces, whistles, nuts, panthers, letters of the alphabet.
They invented the alphabet.
They invented alphabetical order. They used these inventions for commercial transactions which were scribbled on the back of envelopes and vanished from history.
From the Phoenicians the Greeks stole the alphabet, added a few letters and sat down to write the classics of Western civilization.
Cold clear and blue was the morning.
Jezebel is filed between ice cream and karma.
CARSON / Stacks
97
THUNDERSTORM STACK
A lolloping wind pours out the trees and night. Boughs work at the window. Feet stain on the stairs. Doors slam, tables fall, ghosts fling their clocks from the balcony. Hand me mine! said Jezebel. A sentence afloat will you listen growing old by its sound in a fraction.
98
PAJ 116
CHEAPTHUNDERJACKSTORM RESTACK
Feet vanished from history. Lolloping vanished. The Phoenicians traded me said Jezebel growing old at the window.
CARSON / Stacks
99
STACK OF WHAT MADE JEZEBEL JEZEBEL
Adrenaline.
The threadlike pressure of small social conditions.
Her father his terrific purple eyebrows.
An historical mistrust felt by people in the west for anything that comes from the east or by people in the north for what comes from the south and so on.
Again the picking of small stones out of the rice.
This streaming of existence within me (she said).
Elijah’s prophecy that ‘s blood would end up being licked by dogs which it did.
The gold smoke of her Buick at dawn against a frozen sun.
100
PAJ 116
THUNDERSTORM STACK
Who cares about thunder.
Problem of making a sound.
To make a sound while we live. Emily Brontë’s surname was an invention you can tell by the fake umlaut.
Bolt. Crack.
Wrong accent.
Who cares.
If I don’t make a sound.
If you don’t hear my sound.
Her father invented it.
BRONTE being the ancient Greek word “thunder” the other
Emily listened.
“What an afternoon for heaven when Brontë entered in!” (she wrote).
Heaven is not an example of a “last in first out” construction or LIFO.
CARSON / Stacks
101
GRANDSTACK
Dido the tragically famed queen of Carthage whom you may know from Virgil or from Purcell was a Phoenician, grand daughter of King Mattan of Tyre and grand niece of Jezebel. I find it hard to think of Jezebel as anyone’s grand aunt. One thing we can say for pretty sure is that she was not the kind of grand aunt who has a drawer in the kitchen labelled “bits of string too short for use.”
102
PAJ 116
COUNTSTACK NOT COUNTING RESTACKS
afternoons analogies animals
137bodies of water blames
34 2brand names cold things deaths
33504
- 3
- Detroits
dry things Elijahs
131 3ethnicities fathers
81female wantonness generalizations hot things
495imperatives inventions Jezebels
13 712
- 2
- lies
- LIFOs
- 1
liquids not seas mornings
72non-LIFOs nouns
4458
- 8
- Phoenicians
seductions slant rhymes sudden silences thunderstorms unrelated injustices verbs
260715 145
- 4
- weather reports
writing surfaces X ratings
14 3zealous actions zeros
812
CARSON / Stacks
103
STACK OF THE REAL PRICE OF EVERYTHING
For $28.95 per acre you can purchase property on the moon. Go to 244
Fifth Avenue (suite 1070) home of REAL MOON, earth’s’ leading lunar real estate agency. The agents will recommend you buy a piece of the Mare Imbrium
(Sea of Rains) located right next to the Bay of
Rainbows or the prestigious Mare Tranquilitatis $37.50 limited time offer. Your ownership package includes an engraved parchment deed, satellite photograph and geographical fact sheet. The moon is fast becoming a
“last in first out” construction or LIFO.
“Why the Thief ingredient accompanies all Sweetness Darwin did not tell us”: Emily Dickinson letter to Mrs. Holland 1871.
You have a one in three hundred chance of being struck by lightning, which always accompanies thunder, in your lifetime.
When the Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter was instructed by Soviet authorities to play a short mournful piece at Stalin’s funeral in 1953 he substituted Bach’s prelude and fugue in E minor and was dragged offstage. At least this story is repeatedly told about him. Richter says it’s a lie.
My aunt and I were having a good time talking about Proust but she kept pronouncing the names wrong and in order not to shame her I was pronouncing them wrong too and I began to feel utterly lost.
All the garbage in Detroit is burned every day in an incinerator at the heart of the city that cost $478 million to build and needs $70 million per year to maintain. In 1991 the city could not afford to maintain it and sold the incinerator to the Philip Morris Co., which will sell it back to Detroit in
104
PAJ 116
2009 when the bonds are paid off. Although it’s been running since 1988 the incinerator has not yet had an official opening because it annually fails the state toxicity test that is a prerequisite for an operating permit. The stack emits arsenic, cadmium, carbon monoxide, chromium, dioxins, lead, mercury, sulfur dioxide and toxic ash. When it was in its planning stage the Wayne County Pollution Control Commission calculated it would add 500 deaths per year to Detroit’s mortality rate. This was deemed an acceptable collateral expense. The Philip Morris Co. will receive an estimated $200 million in pollution tax credits for owning the incinerator from 1991 to 2009.
Really to forget something you have to forget you have forgotten it.
At Rikker’s Island she met women whose faces were terribly scarred. For their whoredom and sorceries they had been cut by their pimps with a wire coathanger heated in the fire.
“And when they went to bury her
(Jezebel) they found no more than the skull, the feet a nd the palms of the hands”
[2 Kings 9.35].
CARSON / Stacks
105
FINAL REALPRICE RESTACK
At least the palms of the hands.
At least this story is repeatedly told (Jezebels
$37.50 engraved).
And you have a one in three hundred chance of hanging onto ruin.
Sudden
silences
zero
.
ANNE CARSON is a poet, essayist, and translator. Among the many books of the distinguished author and MacArthur Fellow are Float, Nox,
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera, The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, Autobiography of Red, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry. As a
classics scholar, her translated works include An Oresteia, Grief Lessons:
Four Plays by Euripides, and If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho.
106
PAJ 116
STACKS © Michael Hart, 2008. Courtesy Jonah Bokaer Choreography.
CARSON / Stacks
107
![Near Taruntius Crater Appears to Be Relatively Young (~1 Ga) [14]. of >80](https://docslib.b-cdn.net/cover/4100/near-taruntius-crater-appears-to-be-relatively-young-1-ga-14-of-80-1994100.webp)
