Anne Carson reading text in STACKS © Michael Hart, 2008. Courtesy Jonah Bokaer Choreography.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 Stacks

Anne Carson

STACK OF THE SEAS OF THE MOON IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER Mare Aliorum Sea of Others Mare Ambulationis Sea of Walking Mare Anguis Snake Sea Mare Australe Sea to the South Mare Crisium Sea of Crises Mare Dormiendi Nuditer Sea of Sleeping Naked Mare Frigoris Sea of Cold Mare Humboldtianum Humboldt’s Sea Mare Humorum Sea of Moistures Mare Imbrium Sea of Rains Mare Lunae Quaestionum Sea of the Problems of the Moon Mare Marginis Border Sea Mare Moscoviense Moscow Sea Mare Nectaris Sea of Nectar Mare Nocte Ambulationis Sea of Walking at Night Mare Nubium Sea of Clouds Mare Orientale Sea to the East Mare Personarum Sea of Masks Mare Phoenici Phoenician Sea Mare Phoenicopterorum Sea of Flamingos Mare Pudoris Sea of Shame Mare Relictum Sea of Detroit Mare Ridens Laughing Sea 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.  89 doi:10.1162/PAJJ _a_00369

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.”

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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 a- float will you listen growing old by its sound in a fraction.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 CHEAPTHUNDERJACKSTORM RESTACK Feet vanished from history. Lolloping vanished. The Phoenicians traded me said Jezebel growing old at the window.

CARSON / Stacks  99

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.”

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 COUNTSTACK NOT COUNTING RESTACKS afternoons 1 analogies 3 animals 7 bodies of water 34 blames 2 brand names 3 cold things 3 deaths 504 Detroits 3 dry things 131 Elijahs 3 ethnicities 8 fathers 1 female wantonness 4 generalizations 9 hot things 5 imperatives 13 inventions 7 Jezebels 12 lies 2 LIFOs 1 liquids not seas 7 mornings 2 non-LIFOs 4 nouns 458 Phoenicians 8 seductions 2 slant rhymes 6 sudden silences 0 thunderstorms 7 unrelated injustices 15 verbs 145 weather reports 4 writing surfaces 14 X ratings 3 zealous actions 8 zeros 12

CARSON / Stacks  103

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 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.

S u d d e n

s i l e n c e s

z e r o .

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.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 STACKS © Michael Hart, 2008. Courtesy Jonah Bokaer Choreography.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00369 by guest on 01 October 2021 STACKS © Michael Hart, 2008. Courtesy Jonah Bokaer Choreography.

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