word blurbs
derivative poems from my favorite works of literature
For a long time, my annotation style has followed a simple formula: shapes scribbled in lead, pen, colored pencils (and occasionally, lip liner) across the pages of many books over many years. It’s developed as an instinctive, linguistic method that influences both my reading experience and my own writing:
Underlines make note of resonant meaning
[Brackets] contain excerpts rich with conceptual intrigue
Ⓒⓘⓡⓒⓛⓔⓢ surround words I find sonically beautiful
My rules for note-making are loose and intuitive. What matters most is that marking a page does not interrupt any spontaneous, flow-state realizations that might emerge while reading.
There is frequent overlap between these categories, but whatever essential quality that determines how a piece of text is annotated and adorned arises in the fluid instant that I encounter it. Even if that means surrendering to a bit of human inconsistency, which is a flaw I have always loved about language.
I have moved around a lot in my adult life, and although carrying my many paperbacks across the world has not been characterized by any material lightness—nothing compares to the living scent and texture of a physical book.
My books have been passed down and around across borders and eternity. I’ve lent copies to friends, gotten them wet, found them crushed and creased in the bottomless abyss that is my purse.
What is already an inherently intimate artifact—an author’s confessions, perspectives, and their sense of devotion to birthing a story they deem important—is granted further life when chosen and read by a particular person. Some scorn poisoning the skin of pages with ink; others go as far as to destroy and repurpose passages entirely:
Some of my favorite books have sat untouched on a shelf for ages before the time was right for them to become my teachers. Meanwhile, others have taken me forever to leaf through. Many chapters have struck me in moments that made my slowness seem perfectly paced. Sometimes, the first page of a novel has swallowed my attention whole in one single sitting.
Bound between an artful (and if you’re lucky, the odd antique) cover of any given work of literature is life itself, written down to witness with wide eyes. Old worlds survive by these pages, as artefacts of our history and human experience.
When a ‘copy’ is taken into custody by any given individual, a story is regenerated and reborn. What begins as printed, portable text strikes a resonance that transcends the static world of the page. Words, without changing, are somehow born again—in interpretations.
The poems I have written below evolve these works even further into entirely new entities: the result of a process that was equal parts archival and regenerative.
The first step was to revisit the pages of some of my most beloved literary works, skimming along, meticulously logging the words I had circled long ago. I cataloged every instance on a separate sheet of paper, following a chronological, page-ordered pace.
Once I had documented all the necessary elements, my own creative participation was called in. I played around with the arrangement of this work bank of phrases. I observed and experimented with how slight changes, line breaks, and punctuation would elicit new meaning.
It became a process of poetic assemblage.
In Deleuzian philosophy, an assemblage is described as a constellation of singular elements that come together in a temporary configuration to produce collective meaning. He discusses assemblages mostly in relation to literal architectural structures, but alludes a way of seeing that I argue can apply to the scaffolding of language, too:
“A line may very well represent nothing at all, be purely geometrical, but it is
not yet abstract as long as it traces an outline… It is very much alive, living and
creative.”
My poems and the phrases they are made up of— words plucked out of context and curated amongst each other— trace out an outline of their origin: the book they came from. Though, they also extend further, to a place the book couldn’t have reached without my intervention. The singular instances of resonance, once circled and compiled, come together to reveal an unconscious pattern of my perception. The parts inform the whole and the whole informs the parts.
I call them ‘Word Blurbs’
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse The bleak euphoria of the cyclical journey: self oscillating, various and many-hued. The river of occurrences; the wealth of things worth knowing —uneasy but sweet. Constant arrival, this riddle: that i am alive, full of fellow feeling. The final pages of birth: union with the Absolute —this inner, utmost thing. Peace with an empty heart radiates a purity. Enfolded in belonging: smiling, Oneness.
A Spy in the House of Love by Anais Nïn
The sea’s incurable restlessness:
current of sensations,
the island of softness, the drug of sleep.
Erotic resonance,
Naked tenderness.
The homage of eyes:
fountains of desire.
Obsessions for truth,
the moon, the deaf
—the impassable goddess of desire.
Erosions of the personality:
a teasing, evanescent challenge.The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion “I love you more than even one more day.” Another delicate construction, sense of moment entertaining visions. Transparent happiness: webs of intact associations and rituals of domestic life. Were faith and grief the same thing?
Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector
Ah, force of whatever exists:
chronological spaces, created material
—ceaselessly forward.
We make it together:
the faltering mobile reality.
On my journey to the mysteries
I felt the the patient brutality:
the oblique life, the dense jungle of words
rudely alive, aflame,
uselessly sincere.
These jostling words of mine:
malign nature, carnal desires,
& confused beauty.
This actual perishable instant,
rigid and fatal destiny
—nobody’s freedom.
The pain of separation,
fasting from oneself.
Strange glory: the theme of my life,
curious about itself
at the living and soft centre.
The Grandeur of the nothing,
animal vigor ready for the great silence of death...
A secret nostalgia of mine,
both majestic and simple.
The madness of sincerity
in the beyond of my thoughts
existing miraculously and materially.
I am so simple. Spending by Mary Gordon
There’s all kinds of pleasure :
the tenderest hint of pink, nourishing light
at the end of one more precious summer day.
Endless sunshine, endless days
of easy inspiration, joy
at the insanity of the world.
The absence after death or after sex,
the serenity of the artisan
and unqualified, uncomplicated loves.
The imparting of delight
into the blurry world of yearning:
a heaviness after love.
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
All wandering mankind:
a sweetly conceited establishment.
The shortness of life and the longness of eternity:
a queasy dream.
There was peace and plenty forever.
The mingling of awareness
—that happiness is mine.
The cruel deception of a mirage.
People in high places who are stone cold dead.
His voice turned tragic:
Listless life
Hideous want
Intolerable beauty
Metallic authority
Unrelieved villany
Cosmic loneliness
I kissed her sacredly:
no wiser than before,
my history for a pillow,
the ragged rim of oblivion.
‘Lucky me, lucky mud.’
‘I love everyone.’ The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac
Apocalyptic angel, or saint
of the subterraneans?
Spontaneous vision,
little secretive intimacy.
Salvation of her thighs.
Drowsy sun,
infancy of our love.
Not that I'm hung-up on the earth.
Thinking like angry social ideals:
my breast, my prize, my woman.
And as always
some majesty of her pen:
I am full of strange feelings,
relieving and refashioning
many old things
I am going to sleep
to dream,
to wake
Forgive the conjunctions
and double infinitives
and the not said. Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector
My rich interior nothing:
an intimate command.
Cascade — waterfall,
the warriors repose.
Sprout into thought,
intimate meaning
—the fatal thing.
The dense forest of deception.
The way i dream words:
urgent and emergent,
entangled in terror.
My remote mysteries,
the performance of my obligations,
of forced mental hygiene
—this vital absence.
The transparency of your gaze:
a naked subconscious,
a source of dreams.
The vital breath,
your velvet caress,
the abundance of myself.
Nervous ecstasy
fills the being:
this soul that’s always surprised by the novelty of feeling.
Touch of aching melancholy:
a luminous aura of silence,
an inconsequential lightness.
The intimate life I have within myself
—something of my own, something of my heart.
Glory of love,
Glory of existing.
Vague meditation,
a serene tase for living.
The silence of the mute moon,
the sensation-idea:
Sun-gold.
The unity of beings,
free of time.
The delicate happiness they inspire in me.
The element sky-air and the element earth-love;
the concretely possible
immanescence of nature.
My ecstatic soul
dizzy with pleasure,
relative eternity.
i am Brilliant nature:
fluttering, light, happy, a little crazy.
Miracles within myself,
fertile earth,
the great energy of the world.
My foolish and fertile mediations:
a clear and delicate silence.
The pearl of my heart that is shaped like a bell of pure silver,
generous as the sea
from the shells of my hands.
This project is an extension of the linguistic experiment I conducted in my previous post, ‘love language’ where I constructed two poems using words that commonly appear before and after the word ‘love.’
Beautiful and intriguing! Loved this piece.
this piece is not just conceptually and mechanically intriguing, but also beautifully cathartic. as with everything else i’ve read of yours so far,, great stuff!!