Zones of
a Non-Linear Discourse on the Red Seal
Non-linear because I want to draw you into the circle of reflection and consideration and trial and error of this process I’ve been working on for several months now.
1
RED SEAL
red seal records
re/a/d seal
seals of Donegal
a seal in Galway harbor
2.
COMPOSITION IS RESEARCH
3.
caves of the Dordogne and the Pyrenees
are topological extensions of our minds
brains calvaria
where we find scratched on the wall
ONLY what we are prepared to read
The decipherments of rock scratches
Sobin, Eshleman et al.
4.
read the impressions on the mind
read the fissures folds
for the brain also is a process of creases and folds
cerebral cortex cork rind of our tree
to write on bark
beech bark smooth beech = Buche = buch
5.
to make the mind disgorge
its buried darknesses
to make the dark speak
without trying to turn it
into the presumptuous light
like honoring the dream
by carrying it around by day
by reading/re-reading it
not by interpretation
but by dwelling with
because reading a book is dreaming someone else’s
I mean to enter the caves ― whether Lascaux or language ― and come out with a decent dark thing, a word or poem,
That does not presume to interpret what was found down in there
But is itself the fruit of that sweet encounter with the, in the, dark.
Anthrôpos pantôn metron said the Greeks,
The human is the measure/means of all things,
What was carved on the rock wall
Speaks in us now.
6.
BREATH is the light that illuminates the word
…hence the world.
Variation on Cocteau: Un seul souffle éclaire le monde.
7.
read seal
= radix too,
the radical,
passing a little intersection in a Boston suburb
and seeing it was called Red Square
(not far from the courthouse where Sacco and Vanzetti were persecuted and destroyed)
Red Square
Red sign
The radical
Interpretation
A word is radical, is root
A word is radical, so we have found the roots
And spoken them
8.
Don’t expect any person to do two lives at you.
The poem is a treatise
And sometimes the poet uses prose as a disguise
(like Lorca’s wonderful plays, or Olson’s wonderful essays)
the poem is a treatise that can never be made obsolete by subsequent research
because the poem is the prime investigation of its world disclosed.
9.
Red Seal records,
Records then were disks with grooves on them,
In wax, shellac, vinyl later,
As now the optical gleams refract from the whirling CD
Grooves of light
Light refracted, light concentered,
To find the center of light.
Let all thought leave a mark
On some wall,
then invent a system to read it,
this reading system is called writing.
(Now I read it to you and you write by hearing)
10.
The oldest sign
The red hand on the wall
Read what someone thought,
Read how someone leaned
Her hand against the wall.
28 November 2000
Home address:1266 River Road, Red Hook, New York 12571
Office address: The
Writing Program, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
Tel. 845-758-7205 | Fax: 845-758-6549 | E-mail: kelly@bard.edu