___________
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| H |
| A |
| R |
| D |
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| [ HRt ] |
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| R |
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| E |
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| T |
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| U |
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| N |
|___________|
HARD [HRt] RETURN
[SHER05.01]
__________________________________________________________________
SHER05.01 and RIFT05.01 copyright (c) 1995. See below for full notice.
__________________________________________________________________
Kenneth Sherwood
RIF/T 05 Chapbook Extension
for The Recovery of the Public World
Vancouver, BC, Canada - June, 1995
This Chapbook Extension of Rif/t 05 was first published as a special,
paper-text edition of 150, bound with _Electronic Projection Poetries_
by Loss Pequeño Glazier. This version comes wired for sound.
_______________________________________________________________________
Sometime about 1202 a court writer--Niccolas de Senlis--
was asked to translate a formerly oral poem into
prose "in the vernacular, unrhymed." In the 17th
century a group of Quiche Mayan priests translated a sacred text, the
Popol Vuh, from the hieroglyphic into linear, alphabetic
prose--a technology introduced by the missionaries who were just then burning
the hieroglyphic books.
[HRt]
an ancient grid implication
that desire to permanence
friendly embrace of incision;
inscription leaves words
our tracks in substrata only advance
to confidence in systems reproduction
that we "put it to paper"
____________________
[SRt]
'Fragments are our wholes'--four round words ripped out of
context. Sound if hole can be health, not to heal against
the bitter patter of deaf words. Rationed bites of a genre
of closure. Talking back in frustrated response, where two
streams of words do not make a dialogue.
Poems admit begin in the pull of the waves withdrawal, tide
precedence. Rhythm of words makes a mind, if they have ears
like notes a riff of immense reconstruction. Articulation
means to letter the already there, wave pull centered about
a singular, but poesis.
Poem's play turning, word-sounds as one way more than we
must talk to each other. That there is a space for play, a
sound of saved.
____________________
[HRt]
one to a page and
each according
to her needs
thick enough for
simplicity symphony love
lighting up lettershapes
though X has its limits, meaning
in the older sense
___________________________________
[SRt]
Compositional influences: "It was a sorry day when the text
ragged around a chicken leg." Page break punctuates
imperceptibly, commas causing arrest of motion, froward [sic]
through soft returns that silently bell eyes' carriages to
left-page margin, signless, without moment. "The paper page
has a presence" but prose flows as the eye goes.
The form the text in translation occupies instances a
transformation of the poem; the gradual translation of
writing by electronic means of wordprocessor, even the
publishing of etexts, is often mistaken for transfer rather
than transformation.
_______________
[HRt]
divining for stray phrases
pocket-full of thick description
beg the vagaries of love habits
the very facts, which we cannot look
run credit checks that scent suspicion
faster and faster of rate hike
hands qualify the rush disasters past
in the secure despite of
feel-grabbing genius of genuine
______________________________
[SRt]
Prose are those shamefaced words that deny their upbringing,
hypocrites that'll perform anywhere for the right price,
filling the page in roman, courier, bookman, or gothic,
without the blink of an eye, returns sliding softly by and
aiming to seduce the eye out of format; the format of
electronic text where words are contained within
fields/paragraphs that shrink and widen to fill the screen,
where the soft-return is simply the nod to turn the other
way, nights when reading was the house and quiet was calm
_______________
[HRt]
designed obsolescence of edition, proposing
to get beyond words, stand-ins
the prosody of imminent intonations
where no text is an island
quite palpably, signed and numbered
as if there were no book
the reader leaning, conjure yellowed
__________________________________
When one composes by picking up one letter at a time
from the job case, "books are language and literature become
physical" (Charles Alexander). The poem inhabits particular
writing space, a surface of page, tablet, papyrus or screen,
that shapes the forms of its meanings.
[HRt]
pieces of [noun] that don't [verb],
conjunction circulate
more brung story to mouth,
on live hair of moment,
baiting a poetic finish that conspires
against photographic realism.
_______
All writing (techne) involves a technology of making.
Print technology is concomitant with the rise of a
particular sense of self, individuality, the rational-
autonomous reader of the prose essay, and the consequent
(anti-poetic) myth of a transparent writing. What we do is
to bring words back.
[HRt]
1:06 AM 9/28/94--to Loss
whitespace of days indeed
this loss as in: are you
there, a veritable option
for your function key, to
send out turns back on
whitespace of writing in
forms ap art from days
frameless with white and
grey these words do write
performing with the I
left out is this to write
L O N G days' whitespace into night indeed *
_____________________
(Final poem reviously published in the Experiodicist.)
________________________________________________________________
RIF/T: AN ELECTRONIC SPACE FOR NEW POETRY, PROSE, AND POETICS
EDITORS: Kenneth Sherwood and Loss Pequen~o Glazier Version 5.1
ISSN#: 1070-0072 Summer 1994
________________________________________________________________
SHER05.01 and RIFT05.01 are copyright (c) 1995. All rights
revert to author(s) upon publication. Texts distributed by
RIF/T, e-poetry@ubvm or the Electronic Poetry Center (Buffalo)
may not be republished for profit in any form without express
consent of author(s) and notification of the editors of RIF/T,
but may be freely circulated among individuals for personal use
provided that this copyright statement is included. Public
archiving of complete issues only, in electronic or print forms, is
permissible provided that no access fee is charged. Responses,
submissions, and queries to: E-POETRY@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU