Murat Nemet-Nejat
What Is the Future George Quasha's Poetry Lives?
Thoughts around verbal paradise / preverbs
When a poem is all here it is living its future[i]
I.
"Resistance to dying holds secret what darkness tells..." (vp. 26)
In the sixties, I watched a W. C. Fields skit in which Fields is involved deeply in conversation with someone while they are playing billiards. Every time Fields prepares and sets his cue to hit the ball, another thing comes to his mind and he starts talking again. Then he sets his cue again, chalks it, and in the last second, rises up and starts talking to the guy once more. By the end of this skit, twenty minutes in, I was ready to crawl the wall. I never got to view it again, in any venue, after that. But, of all Fields's performances, this is the one that sticks in my mind indelibly.
II. Preverbs: Living the Future Now is Infinite Boredom, the Future Drags
Living in Infinite Space
By delaying the act, Hamlet is living in infinite space,
for four acts, then in fifth the ultimate (act)ion occurs;
he dies.
His death.
In the first scene, Hamlet sees his father's ghost.
Then it dis-appears (appears as non-existing). the scene
ends.
then one hears.
then one hears.
the titillation of doubleness.
Hamlet is snoring.[ii]
Any word carries untold emptiness equal to what it says. (vp 26)
In "pre-play," in the introduction to Verbal Paradise, the first published book of preverbs, this is what George Quasha writes:
Preverbs precede themselves so to speak, with hidden trap doors … . (vp viii)
or:
Future postponed—grammar's hidden tense. (vp 2)
or:
What is written to be read backwards is complete from the start, unendingly. (vp 3)
In other words, where something is its own cause--aka divine—a space of darkness, the home place of non-existent or unsaid, is created—a contingent space of fall, or the exquisite point of equilibrium at the precipice of a chasm, the singularity before (or after) chaos. That is "Living in Infinite Space" of language.
The infinite possibilities before a specific act takes place.
That is the "hidden tense" of darkness—along the precipice—where Quasha's poetry lives.
A saying [or striking a ball] is the end of an existence flicker. (vp 11)
This is how shape feels, her action at a distance and curving gently away [Zeno's paradox of infinity]. (vp 9)
A shrill bird never heard startles time. (vp 13)
Now here,
. . . . Nowhere near staying.
Hearing before it is said. (vp 53)
Anything possible to say is leaked possibility, said and gone, instant. (vp 11)
III.
The single line is the unit of Quasha's poetry because the trap door of the hidden present is open only for an instant, when the future slips back into present: "It's not waiting when you see it coming." (vp. 15)
IV.
Longing: Quasha’s Axial Stones, Axial Words, Axial Instants
It’s so tricky to specify a domain of sustained singularity--
of the state generative of what recreates itself beyond, of
what is continuingly pre...."[iv]
Stones crave falling. (vp 1)
Lyre of stone. (vp 39)
Access beyond right under your foot.
Or:
watching the wave peak at its infinite (infinitesimal) ledge. (vp 37)
The wave as axial stone].[v]
Precarious balance is the prayer of the edge. (vp. 36)
No line is too long that lengthens in longing. (vp. 33)
So why drag along a story so long?
It longs. (vp. 42)
Poem—endless in longing however long it lasts. (vp. 31)
Longing is dynamic frustration. It's dynamic emptiness.
Already the line is washing away and moving beyond the edge. (vp 18)
This is the next instant, already in tow bearing the coming. (vp 24)
It is in the long long longing for that "said and gone" (vp 11) instant that the future is dragged into the "hidden trap door" and where Quasha's poetry lives. Longing being all magnetic—the future slips to now.
Delay is a ray
from unreal-
ized
space.[vi]
V. Poetry
wind shreds things alive. (vp p. 32)
No slamming up against limits but the song goes long, even when short. (vp. 38)
Longing is dynamic unrequited desire—an embrace of that absence. Words, embracing that absence. "Lyric abstinence presses its hungry nose against the pane." (vp. 38)
Imagining death is before all image(-ining) the eye’s absence
the absent soul tracing these transformations
...
a writing of the eyes’ movement disappearing,
its calligraphy[vii]
VI. Axial Stones: Towards Chaos
In his Foreword to Quasha’s Axial Stones, Carter Ratcliff focuses on the unity in Quasha's sculptures:
At first glance, it looks as if Quasha has found a batch of wildly eccentric natural objects. Then one realizes, with a start, what one
is seeing. In each case, not one but two objects have been joined at precisely the point that turns them into a unity.... The axes of
the axial stones are different: clear and for the moment stable but charged with an air of contingency. [viii]
What Ratcliff partly underplays is that, more than a moment of achieved unity, the axial stones are liminal structures on the edge of chaos: an infinite "pre" moment on the precipice of chaos. Each axial-stone is a mirage of oneness on the edge of disappearing—precariousness (not achieved unity) creates them.
Eternity's hinted at because the act remains pre: the contingency of a future fall, experienced now—that is the presentfuture (the verbal axial moment) on which Quasha's poetry stands, and lives. The "pre" moment in the poems—an act longing to occur, but never occurring—corresponds to the sense of contingency that imbues the axial stones. The dynamic of longing extends to the natural world also, unifying all in their vulnerability:
"Stones crave falling" (vp 1).
[i] George Quasha, Verbal Paradise (preverbs). Tenerife: Zasterle Press, 2011. p. 26.
[ii] Murat Nemet-Nejat, “Living in Infinite Space,” unpublished poem and a portion of Camels & Weasels, a long poem in progress.
[iii] Verbal Paradise (preverbs), vp. 26.
[iv] Quasha, “pre play,’ the Introduction to verbal paradise (p. xi)
[v] Continuous axial moments at "(infinitesimal) ledge," followed by falls/ descents, are hinted at in the Turkish poet Sami Baydar's meditation on the flight of a bird on the surface of the sea:
A Sea Bird
Towards the apex of the wave created on the
surface of the ocean, the bird
draws an arc, first is on the right side of this wave
its breast grazes the water
lifting, then the wave slides right
the bird reaches above the apex
and in the space relinquished by the wave
weaves to the highest point reached by the
cresting wave
hitting it on a tangent returns
belly first the bird is now entering the vault of the arc
scaling down in the left side of the wave
the wave progressing and passing this arc
draws a circle completed
by the bird’s belly on the surface of the water
or adding the waveless emptiness of the moment between two waves joining
to the arching vault
there is always a crest left back
by a slightly sliding wave
the surface of the sea
is full of these circles of witchery
traced in the air
as a sea bird lingers on the wave
until the wave completes its circumferal motion
between two waves adds to itself
the emptying circle
of the previous wave.
(Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry, edited by Murat Nemet-Nejat. Jersey City: Talisman House, Publishers, 2004, p. 277.)
Already the line is washing away and moving beyond the edge. (vp. 18)
This is the next instant, already in tow bearing the coming. (vp. 24)
[vi] Murat Nemet-Nejat, Animals of Dawn. Northfield: Talisman House, Publishers, 2016. p. 36.
[vii] Murat Nemet-Nejat, The Spiritual life of Replicants. Greenfield, MA: Talisman House, Publishers, 2011.
[viii] George Quasha, Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance. For. Carter Ratcliff. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2006. http://www.quasha.com/axial-art/axial-stones.
Thoughts around verbal paradise / preverbs
When a poem is all here it is living its future[i]
I.
"Resistance to dying holds secret what darkness tells..." (vp. 26)
In the sixties, I watched a W. C. Fields skit in which Fields is involved deeply in conversation with someone while they are playing billiards. Every time Fields prepares and sets his cue to hit the ball, another thing comes to his mind and he starts talking again. Then he sets his cue again, chalks it, and in the last second, rises up and starts talking to the guy once more. By the end of this skit, twenty minutes in, I was ready to crawl the wall. I never got to view it again, in any venue, after that. But, of all Fields's performances, this is the one that sticks in my mind indelibly.
II. Preverbs: Living the Future Now is Infinite Boredom, the Future Drags
Living in Infinite Space
By delaying the act, Hamlet is living in infinite space,
for four acts, then in fifth the ultimate (act)ion occurs;
he dies.
His death.
In the first scene, Hamlet sees his father's ghost.
Then it dis-appears (appears as non-existing). the scene
ends.
then one hears.
then one hears.
the titillation of doubleness.
Hamlet is snoring.[ii]
Any word carries untold emptiness equal to what it says. (vp 26)
In "pre-play," in the introduction to Verbal Paradise, the first published book of preverbs, this is what George Quasha writes:
Preverbs precede themselves so to speak, with hidden trap doors … . (vp viii)
or:
Future postponed—grammar's hidden tense. (vp 2)
or:
What is written to be read backwards is complete from the start, unendingly. (vp 3)
In other words, where something is its own cause--aka divine—a space of darkness, the home place of non-existent or unsaid, is created—a contingent space of fall, or the exquisite point of equilibrium at the precipice of a chasm, the singularity before (or after) chaos. That is "Living in Infinite Space" of language.
The infinite possibilities before a specific act takes place.
That is the "hidden tense" of darkness—along the precipice—where Quasha's poetry lives.
A saying [or striking a ball] is the end of an existence flicker. (vp 11)
This is how shape feels, her action at a distance and curving gently away [Zeno's paradox of infinity]. (vp 9)
A shrill bird never heard startles time. (vp 13)
Now here,
. . . . Nowhere near staying.
Hearing before it is said. (vp 53)
Anything possible to say is leaked possibility, said and gone, instant. (vp 11)
III.
The single line is the unit of Quasha's poetry because the trap door of the hidden present is open only for an instant, when the future slips back into present: "It's not waiting when you see it coming." (vp. 15)
IV.
Longing: Quasha’s Axial Stones, Axial Words, Axial Instants
It’s so tricky to specify a domain of sustained singularity--
of the state generative of what recreates itself beyond, of
what is continuingly pre...."[iv]
Stones crave falling. (vp 1)
Lyre of stone. (vp 39)
Access beyond right under your foot.
Or:
watching the wave peak at its infinite (infinitesimal) ledge. (vp 37)
The wave as axial stone].[v]
Precarious balance is the prayer of the edge. (vp. 36)
No line is too long that lengthens in longing. (vp. 33)
So why drag along a story so long?
It longs. (vp. 42)
Poem—endless in longing however long it lasts. (vp. 31)
Longing is dynamic frustration. It's dynamic emptiness.
Already the line is washing away and moving beyond the edge. (vp 18)
This is the next instant, already in tow bearing the coming. (vp 24)
It is in the long long longing for that "said and gone" (vp 11) instant that the future is dragged into the "hidden trap door" and where Quasha's poetry lives. Longing being all magnetic—the future slips to now.
Delay is a ray
from unreal-
ized
space.[vi]
V. Poetry
wind shreds things alive. (vp p. 32)
No slamming up against limits but the song goes long, even when short. (vp. 38)
Longing is dynamic unrequited desire—an embrace of that absence. Words, embracing that absence. "Lyric abstinence presses its hungry nose against the pane." (vp. 38)
Imagining death is before all image(-ining) the eye’s absence
the absent soul tracing these transformations
...
a writing of the eyes’ movement disappearing,
its calligraphy[vii]
VI. Axial Stones: Towards Chaos
In his Foreword to Quasha’s Axial Stones, Carter Ratcliff focuses on the unity in Quasha's sculptures:
At first glance, it looks as if Quasha has found a batch of wildly eccentric natural objects. Then one realizes, with a start, what one
is seeing. In each case, not one but two objects have been joined at precisely the point that turns them into a unity.... The axes of
the axial stones are different: clear and for the moment stable but charged with an air of contingency. [viii]
What Ratcliff partly underplays is that, more than a moment of achieved unity, the axial stones are liminal structures on the edge of chaos: an infinite "pre" moment on the precipice of chaos. Each axial-stone is a mirage of oneness on the edge of disappearing—precariousness (not achieved unity) creates them.
Eternity's hinted at because the act remains pre: the contingency of a future fall, experienced now—that is the presentfuture (the verbal axial moment) on which Quasha's poetry stands, and lives. The "pre" moment in the poems—an act longing to occur, but never occurring—corresponds to the sense of contingency that imbues the axial stones. The dynamic of longing extends to the natural world also, unifying all in their vulnerability:
"Stones crave falling" (vp 1).
[i] George Quasha, Verbal Paradise (preverbs). Tenerife: Zasterle Press, 2011. p. 26.
[ii] Murat Nemet-Nejat, “Living in Infinite Space,” unpublished poem and a portion of Camels & Weasels, a long poem in progress.
[iii] Verbal Paradise (preverbs), vp. 26.
[iv] Quasha, “pre play,’ the Introduction to verbal paradise (p. xi)
[v] Continuous axial moments at "(infinitesimal) ledge," followed by falls/ descents, are hinted at in the Turkish poet Sami Baydar's meditation on the flight of a bird on the surface of the sea:
A Sea Bird
Towards the apex of the wave created on the
surface of the ocean, the bird
draws an arc, first is on the right side of this wave
its breast grazes the water
lifting, then the wave slides right
the bird reaches above the apex
and in the space relinquished by the wave
weaves to the highest point reached by the
cresting wave
hitting it on a tangent returns
belly first the bird is now entering the vault of the arc
scaling down in the left side of the wave
the wave progressing and passing this arc
draws a circle completed
by the bird’s belly on the surface of the water
or adding the waveless emptiness of the moment between two waves joining
to the arching vault
there is always a crest left back
by a slightly sliding wave
the surface of the sea
is full of these circles of witchery
traced in the air
as a sea bird lingers on the wave
until the wave completes its circumferal motion
between two waves adds to itself
the emptying circle
of the previous wave.
(Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry, edited by Murat Nemet-Nejat. Jersey City: Talisman House, Publishers, 2004, p. 277.)
Already the line is washing away and moving beyond the edge. (vp. 18)
This is the next instant, already in tow bearing the coming. (vp. 24)
[vi] Murat Nemet-Nejat, Animals of Dawn. Northfield: Talisman House, Publishers, 2016. p. 36.
[vii] Murat Nemet-Nejat, The Spiritual life of Replicants. Greenfield, MA: Talisman House, Publishers, 2011.
[viii] George Quasha, Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance. For. Carter Ratcliff. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2006. http://www.quasha.com/axial-art/axial-stones.