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Poetry Project Newsletter on Neighbour Procedure

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Poetry Project Newsletter on Neighbour Procedure THE POETRY PROJECT NEWSLETTER 29 BOOK REVIEWS that most often positions the white subject Philip also places West African names I find echoes in Susan Howe’s practices as the norm. at the bottom of each page of the first and it is interesting to think of these two section, literally “grounding” the narrative. women walking in the same garden. But Therefore, the language of the first sec- There is no process by which the Africans Philip’s project is loud, her pages are dras- tion of poetry necessarily revolves around can be exhumed, and contemporary Af- tically full, urgent. Zong! eventually insists “to be.” Philip repeats “is” but often leaves rican-American subjectivity, as well, must on song, rather than the sculpted silenc- out any predicate nominal or adjective. be exhumed from language mistakenly es and static that Howe finds in many of This outlines the central problem/ques- thought of as universal: the rationality of her white forbearers who were never so tion: who “is” and how, when some are law. In her two-part pages, Philip employs directly sanctioned by “to be.” property? Section one asks what crime a necessary fiction to honor the dead, but is actually committed—murder or decep- she also inscribes, in the poetry above, As if offering a hand to the reader who tion? The answer is both, and for both the failure of justice that presses down on has come through the poetry, Zong! con- crimes, language failed the Africans on those named persons. Such simultaneity cludes with a glossary, a fictional ship board. In Black English, then, it is no coin- is rarely enacted in public memorials. manifest, Philip’s essay, and a reprint of cidence that “to be” is a verb manipulated, the legal case. This testifies to “the book” forging richer connotations than the logic What is notable in section two is the in- as a more desirable medium, at times, of grammar and historical time will allow. conclusiveness of the language, with “any than film. Reading, we may always flip many two” repeated. This section uses back to the source document. This is not the open field of the page—words and unlike life. Racism and injustices persist syllables are dispersed all over, wildly. even as we move through and read the STRAW Language is reduced to sounds, many world. We never leave our subjectivities at GATE pages beginning with “w wa,” evoking the avant-garde gate, Zong! reminds us. the process of learning to speak. The History precedes and follows every project fragmentation continues, and as the of poetry, even if the sources are spectral. pages go beyond one hundred, I am Book as document of resistance, scored under water, and I am sure this is in- lament. I think this is how history, thank- tentional. I feel the failure of language, fully, demands poetry. the seeds of the postmodern lyric. The David Mills, The Dream Detective mix now is between many languages: English, Spanish, Latin, Portuguese, Jill Magi’s recent text-image works include SLOT (forthcoming, Ugly Duckling Presse) and Poetry Barn Yoruba, Shona, Dutch, Arabic, oth- Barn! (That let it roll where you want it.) (2nd Avenue ers. Some language is typeset and Press). She is the author of Threads (Futurepoem) and some remains closer to the body: Torchwood (Shearsman). handwriting. Inside this breakdown of language, Neighbour Procedure its hybrid remixing, and the rising up Rachel Zolf of sound from “the black Atlantic”— (Coach House Press, 2010) a site that Paul Gilroy argues, in The Black Atlantic, as being central to review by thom donovan modernity—I read as if I am decipher- ing code. Parts of words construct this: It is not as if an “I” exists independently over “can all that remains are words I do not here and then simply loses a “you” over there, own they tread water” which speaks to especially if the attachment to “you” is part of this state of being whole and partial, what composes who “I” am. If I lose you, under through and because of language. these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who “am” I, The final section is printed in grey ink, without you? —Judith Butler and Lydia CORTÉS, Tom SAVAGE, lines overlapping each other. Philip ex- Write open and unbounded gap Stephanie GRAY, Bill KUSHNER, plains that a printing error first produced what she calls “crumped” pages. It is Undone by the seal of the other Valerie FOX cacophonous, but the grey indicates You are what I gain through this disorientation leafscape.org/StrawGateBooks a lower register—a willful whisper and inevitable multiplicity. —Rachel Zolf 30 FEB/MAR 10 #222 BOOK REVIEWS Rachel Zolf’s second full-length book, ground for being numerous, some hope and “mad affects” inchoate within her ma- Neighbour Procedure, unsentimentally that understanding may eventually prevail terials. Zolf is overwhelmingly successful reconnoiters in perhaps the most loaded persists. This shared sense of vulnerability in this mode, whereof she remains re- socio-political conflict of our time: that of and loss forms what Zolf calls, citing But- markably faithful to her affective content— Israelis and Palestinians. By doing so, Zolf ler, a “tenuous we” (Butler, 20). an achievement appropriative poetries advances a poetics that reaches deep too often fall short on. By various textual into a radical Jewish tradition of explor- There are many ways that poets and and hermeneutic strategies (Gematria, ing ethics and politics in tandem, and that artists have approached the subject of search-engine collage, exegesis, one- seeks to deepen a readership’s senses of Israel-Palestine. Etel Adnan, Adonis, Mah- act play, erasure, scoring for voice), Zolf responsibility in relation to the conflict. moud Darwish, Emily Jacir, Walid Raad, investigates the stakes of Israel’s relation- and Jalal Toufic comprise but a few of ship with its neighbors, and its principle Zolf begins her book through a medita- Zolf’s Arab contemporaries who have neighbor, Palestine. What is at stake here tion on the grieveability of those disavowed attempted to make sense of the cultural concerns those who struggle with Israel as disasters of the Middle East in the late 20th by geopolitical conflict in the Middle East. st a nation versus Israel as an historical and Zolf’s investigation of grieveability takes and early 21 centuries. Zolf approaches culturally specific notion of ethical-polit- inspiration from the American philosopher her subject, as she also did in her 2007 ical struggle—“If Israel is not Israel” (Zolf, and cultural critic Judith Butler, who acts book Human Resources, through a doc- 7). It is also about reading the conflict in as a kind of guide and fellow traveler in umentarian’s sensibility (Zolf worked for Israel-Palestine non-fatalistically—“If some Neighbour Procedure. Through Butler’s years as a documentary filmmaker before are a community of fate” (Zolf, 9)—against book Precarious Life, the philosopher trying her hands as a poet) selecting, cut- the many reactive forces now operative in turned her attention to the fates of others ting, and rearranging language in order Israel and among Israel’s most persistent on the front lines of post-9/11 geopolitics: to reveal texts as sites of contested cul- allies. How to recover historical truth from detainees in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib; Pal- tural meaning. Zolf’s book also involves myth “if catastrophe becomes a passion”? estinians in Israel-Palestine; diasporic and a considerable amount of research. The (Zolf, 7) “If you are Hamas” and “one is stateless people throughout the world. In book was started in 2006, but became a Israel” (Zolf, 9) how to reconcile a collec- her book, Butler pursues crucial ques- research-intensive investigation following tive sense of belonging with the polarizing tions, which Zolf extends through her a trip Zolf took to Israel-Palestine in late forces of national autonomy and ethnic own: “Who counts as human? Whose December of 2008, of which Zolf writes: essentialisms? lives count as lives? […] What makes for a “I’m not sure if I ever can or want to put grieveable life?” (Butler, 20) into words what happened during my time in Israel-Palestine. Instead, I have inserted Zolf’s book approaches various indis- some of the journey’s mad affects into this cernible points and ambivalences of the It is of course those invested with power book.” (Zolf, 79) Israel-Palestine conflict. In “L’éveil” (“The who are ultimately “grieveable,” thus also awakening” or “the vigilance” in English, capable of being symbolized within cultur- Using source texts as raw material, Zolf though “éveil” obviously resembles evil al-historical narratives. In the first section chips away at language, articulating ideas and veil), Zolf reappropriates news cov- of Neighbour Procedure, “Shoot & Weep,” Zolf foregrounds disparities between the political and cultural status of Palestin- Announcing the Public Ati o n o f e d S A n d e r S’ ians and their Israeli counterparts. In the case of Palestinians, it is their names that are being forgotten, unrecognized by the America greater part of the world. Likewise, Pal- estinians risk losing their sense of shared a History in Verse,The 20th Century history and identity with Arab Jews with 5 volumes in pdf on one CD, each volume whom their names are often confused, as Ammiel Alcalay’s seminal work on histori- fully indexed. 2,000+ pages of text! cal confluences between Jews and Arabs $24.95 Available right now! in the Levantine brilliantly shows. Yet, as +$3 postage & handling Zolf and Butler also realize, grieveability— Order from Blake Route Press, a politics of grieveability—forms conditions Box 729 Woodstock, NY 12498 of possibility for transforming the politically Americahistoryinverse.com and culturally incommensurable.
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