Hi everyone,
I, like many of us, was grappling with Hejinian's poem, "From Writing is an Aid to Memory" and I picked up on a pattern that may be useful for deciphering meaning. Although I'm not sure what it means. The structure of the poem seems erratic at first and that is what I thought. However, the poem is structered according to the first letter in each verse. The verses have been placed where they fall. Example:
GRID:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
apple is shot nod
ness seen know I around saying
but perhaps utter errors direct the point to a meadow
Each verse is placed in alignment with the grid according to the first letter of that verse. Although this may not be the key to uncovering the inner-workings of what's going on, it is something I noticed and thought could perhaps spark further ideas. What are your thoughts?
Calogero A. Miceli
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I just saw what you meant. In "From Writing is an Aid to Memory", she only allows a and b to begin lines as far left as would be 'expected' in lyric. In 2. she adds c and a little bit further in, d (but always a few spaces in). The later in the alphabet a letter occurs, the further into the page it is indented when it starts a line. Maybe she is suggesting something about what stays concrete in memory, only the beginning of things? Or perhaps it has something to do with the current, the 'this is happening'..? Craig Dworkin does state that her poetry is filled with etymological play...
ReplyDeleteI like your suggestion that the indentation has somthing to do with memory, though I do not subscribe to the notion that the beginning of memeory stays concrete.
ReplyDeleteWhat do others think? Trish?
Calogero A. Miceli
I think that by the beginning of memory I mostly meant the outline of a memory; you can sort of picture where the moment starts but it's never perfectly clear. Using just the beginning of the the alphabet to start lines seems like it coooould be a purposeful suggestion of that relationship to memory.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting and thoughtful discussion Calogero, Hannah. Building upon what you've been saying, another way to think the alphabetic grid is through Jacques Lacan's famous dictum, that the unconscious is "structured like a language." For Lacan this has to do with, among other things, the notion that the unconscious is a kind of grammar and syntax -- it is meaningful precisely as a system of organization. In Writing is an Aid to Memory, perhaps we can see Hejinian offering a literal inscription of this principal. Memory/text is placed on the page not in relation to a logic of narrative or breath but rather to index its place in the (arbitrary) sequence of the alphabet. After all, why does "A" come before "B" and "B" before "C?" Whatever historical reasons there may be, we learn the order not in relation to logic but in relation to rote repitition, i.e. memorization.
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