How to Read the Hand
Writing: Andrew Levy’s Later Lines
Andrew Klobucar
One
expects curves in Andrew Levy’s poetry. After all, this has been one of the
more common tropes in his work over the past decade. Two of his recent works, in
fact, feature the very word in their respective titles: Curve (1994) and Continuous/Discontinuous
– Curve 2 (1997). Despite the
term’s more familiar associations with notions of smoothness, adaptability and
fluidity, Levy throws the reader few gentle cambers in his work, offering
instead a highly combative approach to language. Movement through these works is hardly fluid, but rather,
erratic, the flow of both logic and form, disjointed and outwardly incomplete. Yet still, the notion of a curve as a type
of movement ¾
in particular, a sudden increase in pace or velocity ¾
describes well Levy’s use of language, not just in these two books, but much of
his work in general.
Constant variation
and notions of change pervade Levy’s poetics; especially in relation to the way
he structures his language and forms of speech. Like many experimental and politically revisionary writers of the
last twenty-five years, Levy employs a dialectical methodology, counter-posing
contrasting views of writing as both a mode of representation and means for organizing
knowledge. Hence, few of
Levy’s lines sport the usual staples of narrative structure that stem, as they
do, from a more consistent correlation between objects of meaning and their
depiction. Instead, his work shifts
radically between numerous references and positionings: with every new
sentence, a new departure point, with every description, a variation in
epistemology. No single perspective seems to outweigh or offset any one other
for the simple reason that few of the points being made can be said to stem
from the same set of evaluative assumptions.
Behold the curve of language, that element in all writing that lies
outside of use ¾
i.e., language’s more autonomous, self-directed qualities.
No doubt, Levy’s
dialectics reminds readers of some very central issues in modern philosophies
of knowledge and epistemological relativity ¾
not to mention, avant-garde writing. In
fact, his appreciation of language’s autonomy in some ways emphasizes the
essential distance in his writings from his own personal experiences and
perspectives as well as those of his readers ¾
a view that is well supported by his experiments in form. The distance Levy accentuates between the
practice of writing, that is, one’s actual use of language, and its resulting
forms shines clear in the many ruptures and general lack of linear thinking his
poems evoke. To read Curve is to catch language bending ¾
usually away from the writer’s control.
Yet, amazingly,
Levy is more than present in his work, and this is the broad strength of the
poet’s critical appreciation of language’s limits as a structure ¾
in other words, of language’s curves.
Uninterested in defining anything remotely resembling an essential self
or position within his writing, Levy literally transforms each body of work, no
matter how fragmented, into a type of working body. Reading Levy effectively locates a very concrete sense of the
self, however incomplete it may appear within the text, as something essential
both outside and entwined within the discourse. To write otherwise, would
effectively sacrifice the material and ethical qualities of the work in
development to the linguistic and epistemological constraints of the medium in
which it is being developed. Hence, the importance of incompletion. What Levy
reminds readers is how poetry can use language to suggest, not just what is,
but what isn’t, in other words, that which remains exclusive or peripheral to
language — the many relations,
engagements what may not be rhetorically present, or even syntactically
complete, yet still part of the poem.
His latest work, Paper Head Last Lyrics (Roof, 2000),
follows well this view of language as a set of concrete limits, margins that
are as tangible or physical as they are cultural. Hence, the breakages and interruptions featured in this new
collection, the erratic shifts we encounter in Levy’s lines and syntax suggest
again the author’s own material context, his work, in other words, as a
physical act, his medium as practice.
In this way, Levy usefully dramatizes the complex interactions,
struggles and conflicts between the individual self and the structures of
language. The poem is not just written in this context; it is practiced. “They
are said to be in the book,” Levy begins the title poem, “but there is no book”
(9). Indeed, for Levy, the book, as a single, unique object does not exist.
Neither are “they” defined solely by the text. The writing may refer to “them,”
just as it does a variety of different lived moments and experiences,
collecting them together in a single volume.
But Levy, himself, does not set out to produce an exclusive, finished
work so much as an assemblage of references, notes — individual bodies at work, juxtaposing four separate
pieces together into a powerful, if indistinct, collage. The generic form of a book as object holds
these pieces in concert, but this form fails to capture them. Even the title defies enclosure. We read instead the possible elements of
Levy’s practice in no particular order: some “paper,” his “head,” the “last
lyrics” he has published. The line floats in between a variety of different
contexts, some suggested by imagistic fragments, others through half-completed
declarative statements.
A mirror flying across the sky
Shattered his
point-of –sale
Make a new life
Paper head
last lyrics (32)
The
fragments fail to capture anything significant in either voice or view point,
save for the fact of their inevitable collapse. The reader juggles multiple entry points, supplementary narratives
and commentaries, few of them even remotely suggesting a form of continuity.
The
most discursive piece in the collection, based in part on an earlier conference
paper, encourages the reader to consider ideas of continuity or essential
meanings in both thought and text together as “An Indispensable Coefficient of
Esthetic Order” ¾
or so the title runs. In this essay,
Levy is at his most exegetical concerning his attempts to mediate or represent
the writing process itself.
Sentences and lines themselves can posit similar relationships, almost. I remember a definite pause of a few seconds before the addition of the word almost. How many alternate paths? (89)
Levy is adept here at
convincing us how unconvinced he actually is as a writer, writing his self,
finding a language that expresses his own reasoning and experiences. The words he offers fade as quickly as they
surface, his logic straddling multiple pathways concurrently; yet, still this
work is pertinent, for his questions inevitably become our questions — in other
words, doubts that deftly remind us of our own processes of thought and efforts
at self-identity. Certain of little
beyond our own uncertainty, we become highly conscious of the practice of
writing as exactly that: a practice, an act of constant construction. The self or subject here re-emerges as a
being that is simultaneously constructing and being constructed: thought caught
in the process of thinking itself.
There’s nothing I’ve described that doesn’t happen every day in almost everyone’s life, It’s so common it’s missed. But then it’s not missed, either. It’s the place in which a sense of one’s own responsibility, taken personally, can matter. (90)
Indeed,
Levy considers himself hardly alone in this particular notion of being, of
thought and its impermanence. Not only does he use such meditations to help
define the composition of poetry in general, he draws liberally upon a wider
set of similar enquiries and reflections made in other poems he obviously
respects. Fanny Howe’s poetry, for
example, winds itself through the essay echoing many of Levy’s questions, as
does the work of Larry Price, Steve Benson, Guy Debord and even a few words by
Daffy Duck: “That makes no sense and so do I” (93). What holds these writers together (with the possible exception of
Daffy) is precisely their ongoing uncertainty regarding their own respective
writing practices. Here are texts,
notes, observations, etc., Levy insists, that propose a complex, often
unsettling relationship between human experience and its representation within
art. Forever detached from the
materiality they seek to capture, such writings are nevertheless politically
and culturally valuable, as they help shape a very distinct dialogue — perhaps
even a poetics — about context and content.
Levy even goes so far as to call it “a form of forgiveness, a
formlessness circulating through the illusions and disillusions that sometimes
overcome my mind, that help me to think I know in some small part how it is
that Andrew Levy goes about interpreting the world he lives in” (94). The ethical quality of these writings ¾ these poetic
questions ¾
is thus unambiguous. While the relationship between his work and the material
world is neither transparent nor able to reproduce the most general details of
everyday experience, Levy’s poetry constitutes a unique form of interaction
with the Real ¾hence
its value as “a form of forgiveness.” His sense of language’s innate opacity
constitutes an entire social reality in itself, evoking actual subject
relations beyond mere description.
Levy
further accentuates the ethics of his position by continuously emphasizing the
public quality of his work. The inter-textual structure of this very essay serves
to highlight how his writing, by its very nature, operates collectively, always
engaging with a plurality of voices, appropriations and other published
works. Here too, a reality suggests
itself indirectly rather than through the course of language. Poetry, conceived as such, inherently
implies multiple lives, subjectivities, etc., culminating, Levy notes, in
something akin to a “group phenomenology that shifts and subsides, one shared
and completely intertwined with a real, true world” (94).
Aside
from its socio-ethical dimensions, Levy’s interactive practice of writing
carries some interesting philosophical precepts, suggesting at times its own
functioning, if fragmented, ontology.
As we see, Levy continuously intertwines his arguments with various
other writings and statements, presenting a type of ongoing group discussion.
At one level, then, the poet appears to us, not as a single voice or viewpoint,
but rather through a set of multiple dialogues or forums. His work stutters along, shifts directions,
often openly interrupting itself, never actually concluding. At times, he appears all too willing to
subordinate his own perspective to the many others informing his work. In fact, as an active discussion, these
writings can seem perpetually in motion, often on the verge of disappearance,
forever sliding into a stream of undefined or incomplete tangents. Their
primary emphasis remains thus on the process of communication, not the product ¾ i.e., language’s
constructive, not reproductive, capacity.
Levy’s
critique of communication is, somewhat ironically, his clearest point: “Teach
me to listen to something beyond the literal, or that there is meaning apart
from what is said” (92). What else is
there for Levy to do after such an entreaty but fall silent. No actual analysis of language’s inherent
inadequacy follows; rather Levy surrenders the medium, steps back from the page
in deference to Fanny Howe with her own brand of poetic wanderings.
Moths in a meadow
Flutter like flowers — freed — their wings
Take the shape of their mind
the wind. (92)
Whether
Howe provides commentary for Levy’s work, or Levy for Howe’s is purposefully
vague. Howe exemplifies for Levy a creative, conscious use of in-exactitude in
communication, balancing, as she does, the various cultural tensions of
competing discourses and epistemologies.
Her language is disjunctive, consistently in motion, yet it does not
preclude self-awareness and, hence, her own development as a distinct social
subjectivity.
So it’s a spirit that keeps me
from breaking into pieces! The speed
would rip me apart without it.
(92)
Howe
thus declares both her physical and intellectual presence, despite — or
perhaps, because of — the complex, multiple structures of language that
permeate and inform the world around her.
Similarly, Larry Price associates, “[t]he world’s sheer inconvenience
[with] a tactical power of presence;” while later in Levy’s paper, Steve Benson
re-situates fragments of Rainer Marie Rilke’s poetry to evoke specific material
moments in his own life. The different
quotes and literary pieces circulating through Levy’s work may at first seem
unconnected, but such writing’s aesthetic and social aims, he informs us, are
quite comparable. Through each textual
fracture, a world appears — all of it, highly personal, even irrational. Moreover, the variety and number of
participants in the forum further emphasizes the importance of what is
inevitably excluded or left out of a single discourse. The density and intricacy of detail in this
type of communal interplay affirms Levy’s search for meaning outside any one
act of writing — outside, as Benson puts it, “what is said.”
Of
course, given this similarly dialectical approach to writing as both a form of
cultural and public interplay, the boundaries of Levy’s poetic community can be
seen to stretch well beyond the immediate set of quotes featured above. “Language,” writes Charles Bernstein in a
1980 essay culled in part from a series of New York poetry workshops, “is the
material of both thinking and writing” (“Thought’s Measure,” Content’s Dream 61). Bernstein’s sense of language as the very
means to a world evokes a similarly complex relationship between writing,
communication and human experience. To base writing in a formal system or
method of human communication seems hardly illogical, yet to connect thought
itself with a medium as such can appear overly deterministic, or at best an
exaggerated claim about the influence of communication systems on cognition. Conventional western concepts of reason and
perception tend to emphasize their thorough separation from any mode of
expression or external context.
Language may provide a structure of connotation through which experience
can be communicated, but the actual experience itself as well as the source of
its significance remains literally another matter. Even Levy’s emphasis in his work on the difficulty in capturing
or somehow transparently expressing individual experience seems at first to
follow this rationale. Yet, importantly,
Levy does not repudiate language’s ability to constitute such processes. Rather his interest is in the various modes
that claim to do so truthfully.
Emerging
out of the wellspring of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetics, Bernstein presents a view of
language as much more than a medium of communication. In language, Bernstein sees a complete mode of reasoning and
evaluation. “Meaning” itself, he notes, exists “only in terms of language,”
suggesting that the form or structure of the verbal cannot be separated from
its content. Such a concept, not
surprisingly, provokes an equally complex and inclusive practise of writing.
Far from evoking any kind of truthful or even accurate channel onto human
experience, feelings, sensations and the like, Bernstein forgoes all aims of
precision for a strongly self-reflexive, opaque style of verse. As Bernstein writes, “…the ordering internal to the movements of
the mind/perception, provides a model for writing in sharp contrast to common
expository and representational modes by focusing in on other types of
movements from one thing to the next, allowing for writing to be put together
in continuously ‘new’ ways ¾
how various shapes and modes and syntaxes create not alternate paraphrases of
the same things but different entities entirely” (“Thought’s Measure,” Content’s Dream 68). In much of Bernstein’s own poetry it is
exactly this drive for constant invention and re-construction being
emphasized.
The
best picture
of a picture
is not a picture
but the negative.
The negative pictures
the picture
just as I
picture you
without ever seeing
the picture
(“Stele for Lost
Time,” from Shadowtime)
The
above poem operates at cross-purposes, both as an image of writing and this
image’s negative or potential image. In this way, the poem’s structure
resembles a type of undeveloped Polaroid snapshot. Reading it, we are literally witnessing its coming into being, as
it effectively writes itself on the very page or screen being used. Each line, while anchored to the word
“picture” ¾
an elusive term at best ¾
presents an abrupt change in detail, almost as if the word itself functions as
a type of narrow portal through which too many separate ideas or movements in
thought have appeared simultaneously.
Yet, again, the poem is perhaps still in development. Reflecting on its
lively juxtaposition of texts, the reader sees how meaning in Bernstein’s
language stems from its ability to constitute objectivity, not reproduce
it. If the narrative above rouses some
kind of sensual reassurance in a separate reality, an anchorage, so to speak,
in the material world, it stems in part from its negative capacity as a
rationally ordered medium of facts. By
suggesting a sort of negative order, the poem indirectly encourages the reader
to imagine what is not contained in the poem, i.e., its multifarious contexts
and subjectivities: the you outside the picture.
As
his methodology shows, Bernstein’s view of language remains rooted in
dialectics and, hence, in modern western metaphysics. When Bernstein qualifies what is believable in any mode of
representation or expression as the “stuff” of writing, he is referring in part
to its authenticity ¾
in other words, how well writing can evoke or convey material experience. It is the law-like tendency in any discourse
of traditional metaphysics to show an integral continuity between all physical
processes ¾
or what modern thinkers often describe as “rationality” itself. The difference
for Bernstein, as with many other L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, is that the material
experience is not so much reflected through language as created by it. Here, language as a mode of communication
effects an autonomous rationality by the very fact it can be understood. To make sense is merely to communicate
something effectively, not reveal separate truths.
In
Bernstein’s view, however, this capacity does not originate in a common
structure informing both the content of what we see and how we express it, but
rather a distinct political context in which the rationality and objectivity of
language are pursued as distinct ideological choices. Thus the growth of the importance of authenticity within
representation remains firmly linked to the socio-political evolution of
bourgeois ideologies and secular thinking. One recent critic, John Tagg,
follows a similar argument in his book, The
Burden of Representation, when he associates to modern visual culture with
a “regime of truth” advanced through capitalist ideology “in which photographs
functioned as a means of record and a source of evidence.” [cite?]
He
borrows the term “regime of truth” from Michel Foucault, who coined it to
describe modern power structures that place a high value on objective
knowledge. The modern, capitalist state
operated, for Foucault as a highly decentralized network of control apparatuses,
organized as knowledge resources as opposed to disciplinary institutions
(prisons, asylums, etc.) In
communication systems, information networks, etc, Foucault theorized various
structures of power able to govern both bodies and minds of its subjects
directly. Language thus exemplified how
modern behaviors of social integration and exclusion proper to rule could be
interiorized within the subjects themselves.
The civic values and epistemological limits such structures project in
their bid for social control parallel exactly the norms and standards commonly
respected in most professional and everyday language use — values like
authenticity, integrity, logic and accuracy among others. Yet, as apparatuses of discipline that
internally animate social behavior, these values tend to appear as unmediated,
in other words, as integral, vital functions of one’s individual life rather
than mere aesthetic categories. As
Foucault says, “Life has now become…an object of power” (“Les mailles du
pouvoir,” Dis et ecrits, 4:182-201,
1994). The highest function of language is not to represent, but to create.
Bernstein
understands experience in his writing as a form of continuity in social
discourse. What is authentic in his
writing is the structure of his language, not the events or objects being
described:
“You say I’m like a Jewish
mother, but the kid
Is losing weight.” Turning by
turns as though
Turns would make it
different. Sunny
With shallows all about, the
solvent
Flush of fiduciary abandon
(book? 61).
The
tone is personal and reflective, the content typical at one level of everyday
conversation. The speaker is
complaining to a close friend about his or her son’s supposed weight problem. The message may at first seem carry the
context forward, leading the reader to expect a casual, yet perhaps pointed
commentary on working class and/or ethnic dialects. Continuing further, however, something quickly appears amiss in
the structure of the ensuing conversation.
The alliterative play on the word
“turn” seems to describe the poem’s own movement, turning towards
different contexts, one line after the other.
Of course, even this summary doesn’t quite capture what seems to be
occurring here. The line “sunny/ with
shallows all about,” initially appears consistent in describing the poem’s
erratic fluctuation in narrative, but that is only because the word “shallow”
suggests the more logical term, “shadow,” symbolically qualifying the work as a
single, revealing light upon objects with many dark corners. If this were accurate, the poem might in turn make sense metaphorically; yet,
its structure doesn’t allow metaphor to come into play. In fact, few references in the poem lead
anywhere outside its framework — a mode of composition that complies with
Bernstein’s view of language in general.
Similar
philosophical imperatives appear in Levy’s work. Just as in Bernstein’s poetry, a strongly personal,
character-driven set of references guides much of the tone and structure of
each individual creative piece. Like
Bernstein, Levy too is reacting to the type of moral interventions accompanying
much current social discourse with his own active critique of cultural
authenticity. Aware of the determinant subjectivities produced within
contemporary cultural networks, Levy works to counter such political ontologies
with an effective sense of material experience in his writing. The attempt here is to go beyond
continuities, or at least to suggest that significant realities and experiences
exist past “the zone that files you somewhere / every diet pill you took,”
beyond “Money on the sacred wheel of fortune,” outside a defined “tyranny as
being the man of pen” (9). Of course,
Levy is also “a man of pen,” constructing, in many ways, his own moral
intervention. Rather than answer
hegemonic cultural discourses with his personal voice of authenticity, however,
like Bernstein, Levy presents a more discontinuous set of responses, many of
them only half articulated or expressed.
His lines focus on breakage and fissures in discourse, ultimately
suggesting a rich set of alternative experiences beyond the confines of
conventional language.
In
the breaking of both political and cultural continuity, the structural
framework of Levy’s poetry attempts to convey a different type of agency,
showing within mainstream discourse its many ruptures and paradoxes, voids and
points of crisis.
Overall, response is “perverse”
It is work wild with
astonishing craft
that screams through
the early
Audrey says, a man engulfed by the flames,
stands still
as if accepting
his own
demise.
crickets quietly sing
them to sleep (17)
Continuity
in language, as Bernstein shows us, follows a distinct sensibility. Ever dependent upon the structures and
frameworks, not to mention, promises of information, we ¾
as subjects ¾
come to expect a firmly integrated, wholly functional social environment. When writing as an act of comprehension
supposedly conveys an immanent sense of rational structure, experiments in form
become, by default, experiments in continuity or identity. For his critique of this mode of language,
Bernstein labors to make its conditions opaque, in effect stripping the
structures of their rationality, their claim, in other words, to epistemological
certainty. As readers, we may lose the
finer points of comprehension as well as the ability to identify any
characteristic purpose in a description, but we subsequently disturb the
ontological pretence of our own political subjection. Bernstein challenges us, in this way, to re-think the very basis
of communication. He brashly asks what
does it mean to share language when the medium itself is doing most of the
talking. How can we, as subjects, think
that we have complete control over our efforts at communication?
Levy
is not so much interested in revealing the linguistic conditions of identity as
he is in challenging all cultural frameworks in general as being inherently
fractional. The title poem, as
excerpted above, presents from its beginning a relentless flow of textual
fragments — their contexts as varied as their individual tones. Literary reviews interweave with narrative
description, followed in turn by lyric phrases. As readers, we are denied continuity in the text, but Levy makes
it clear that such interruptions originate in the very format of this
book-length poem and its inability to contain fully the multiple readings and
numerous engagements with language writing it has provoked. Looking at the format of the book traditionally,
that is, as a highly codified medium of production and communication, Levy
cannot ignore its singular cultural integrity. The book is practically the most
common symbol in western culture of knowledge and rational study. However, Levy is also interested in
conveying how the actual practice of writing one inevitably disputes such
terms. Evoking writing as process over
product, few statements in Paper Head
Last Lyrics suggest much in the way of objective reasoning. Similar to Bernstein’s work, here too the
reader can expect little certainty in identity. Nothing is finished.
Structures break apart before comprehension can occur. In all, despite its claims to structural
integrity and strong cultural status as a mode of knowledge, the book signifies
first, in Levy, a highly erratic, fractured process of communication. Its
complex, unreliable development over discontinuous periods of time scarcely
resembles the cohesive medium that supposedly results.
This
dichotomy between continuity and discontinuity in the very practice of writing
appears through most of Levy’s work, again, most notably in his “Curve” series,
Curve and Continuous/Discontinuous – Curve 2. In the opening piece of
Curve (1994), “Salvage Device Plants,” Levy presents a complex set of
verbal fragments, which together suggest a more formal poetic narrative. Yet, the genre of the long poem here does
not present itself as a project, but as resistance, as a
counter-narrative. Reviewing Levy’s
poetry over the last decade, it is easy to see that it is this revisionary view
of literary genres as modes of resistance that remains the most singular, most
continuous feature in his work. Just as
continuity in a text is not a quality, for Levy, to be produced or culled from
the more discontinuous — hence, inferior —, physical process of writing,
ruptures in language do not necessarily signify an incomplete mode of
reproduction.
As
we’ve seen, there is continuity in this work.
It resides, however, neither in the material conditions of writing nor
its various structures and genres, but in the constant confrontation between
the two elements of communication. In
this manner, Levy’s writing openly invites us to reconsider the contradictory
structure of language as both a medium and a social force. It is Levy’s aim to make visible this
contradiction in contemporary language structures and thus contest the degree
of total ideological control in everyday socio-cultural networks. But Levy is not just presenting political
commentary. What makes this work
interesting is that Levy offers more than a symptomatic “schizophrenic” reading
of the increasingly fragmented state of our objective identities and
perspectives. Within these different
texts and text fragments, we find, not just the interruption of continuity, but
also its re-conception into a form of subjectivity in itself, complete with its
own distinct mode of interpretation, its own point of view. The result is important for Levy, for it
makes it possible to conceive both an effective poetic response to ideology and
the actual social conditions necessary for its continued re-conception. Levy consistently alludes in his work to the
context in which he has framed his questions and subsequent perspectives,
mapping for us a very tangible picture of his own writing practice. Here, Levy looks beyond technique, towards
personal engagement ¾
once again, towards the “curve” in writing alluded to previously: the ongoing
shift in language between human experience and its cultural
reconstruction.
In
Levy’s hands, the curve indeed has much poetic potential, indirectly revealing
the very prospect of community inside our attempts at communication. And again, this engagement is not undertaken
alone. The effort to communicate
remains exactly that: communal. Of
course, this image of community in Levy’s work can be at times drastically
harsh, built as it is amidst the ruins of contemporary civic life. Importantly, though, within these limits,
there remains both political and aesthetic possibility. The elements are there, listed before us: Paper Head Last Lyrics; with them, Levy
challenges us to re-envision the very conditions of agency.