Jacket 32 Contents page
Jacket Homepage
initial iii
the prediction
of having chosen all themes
radio music
the standard
we corrupt the new surfaces
with our own
recreated environment
artificially
the master, the technology
the choice between oblivion and recovering
sometimes that operation can be a plunder
no distinction
and the functioning of all that was plundered
it’s difficult to tell a real coercive situation from one that is not
evaluation
the chance to end life
tangentiality, tool, gag
the constant in front of which everything changes sign
and the maintenance
provision
as if all maintenance consisted
force the sunrise
abandon concepts used by all bibliography
without specifying their senses
the forcement of mistakes
their formation, coercion
maintain the position
to let die of cold
not wanting to admit
the own cruelty
till letting be bitten
defend from animals
being threatened by windows.
initial vii
to go out, exile, transplant
to exert violence
to overturn to nothing
vulcano
downwards the ashes fall from the snow
vapor
as if music wasn’t playing
the tree as a petrified swan that gave birth
to a little
Christmas pine
delete
how to exert violence within the impossible
the index
what pain points
to cleave the hack
the enunciation of abstraction
snow falls, with no dictionary
not even diction
to die in the snow
to reach vapor produced by snow
to walk like an insect and cram down
tree’s milk
with some soft and extreme fuzziness
easy prey tender beauty
a latticework of branches, a spider web
an endless number of similar comparisons
boring, possible
to go back with a grimace, it’s ice
white today, the target, the prey
the thread is red is thread
it’s lapses
the icon, the simulacrum of snow falling in the eyes
eradication, genocide, opera
violence for everything
the highest lack of interest
initial ix
it is a filigree the crystalline
the bucket continuous squall of frost
it melts by herself
property abolished
the luminous instant makes the copy
photocopy of the world
disappearance, exile, shelter,
animal
phosphorescent to the top of its tree
in that flash
movement is continuous and it is a slip
dramaticity of music
desires for hanger
the graphite
the night
is a miracle of terminology
crossing another space
inadmissible and imaginary
the unrecognizable calligraphy
handcraft
of vapor that crushes
huge, dense, overwhelming
wore out and incredible
finished but solid
ginger
it goes up like a mimetic flute
a mimoid
snow a fungus
pacific
alien
the surface of things delineated
like an X- ray
it admits the frost
as if changes were permanent
but it’s never like that
the calcareous waste of things
delays to pour off
the land the frost
petroleum has bad smell
organicity of decomposed elements
doesn’t respond to any clinic
any hygiene
and even that apparently not loosenable
it’s loosenable, of course
and buoyant, of course
a buoy that can pleasantly surprise us
that’s life, isn’t it?
why to have to understand craziness or flesh?
there’s a heat that emanates, a smell
certain happy pauses of the printed land
they admit the frost
the insufficiency of the whip
the boot
automatic devices are coercion devices
automatism coaches
mechanics produce effects,
it’s a technique
deliver memory from other possible points of view over personality
vocabulary in its display
bores
just as a full magnolia roof
or a mobile wall of grasshoppers
only less beautiful
magnitude of beauty keeps measuring
in quite standard levels
of unforeseeableness
domination of languages as a taboo
it is not a purely grammatical question
it occurres to me
suffocancy of a giant bed, influence, some weighs
danger of the flock
a girl shooting herself cinematographic images
and me who prints them when the baby needs to be taken care of
fear is a trigger
superposition of the layers and words that bury it
proud of grammar
valuation
devaluate the thing by the thing
the tautologic
to not know values, costs of things
immigrate and/or emigrate in a plain land
fault improvises slightly unpunishable questions
a shovelful of pseudo relations
why the pseudo
invades as a prejudice
the narrowness of rubber mouth of the funnel [1]
the events that here are represented
are these the following
the subjects all
have been through incomparable neurotic processes
the trapness of the trap
an unleadingness of the gate
the importance
what happens
the sugar thread
Initials is an unpublished book that was written approximately from October 2004 to May 2005. The poems here included are part of the first section of the book, which was written during a residency in Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada. I was there exposed to many differences of culture, technology, nature, comfort and above all, time. I mean, I was there to work only on my poetry (a situation that I’ve never lived and certainly can’t afford in my every day life). That availability of time allowed me to think, reflect about and put some distance of the many layers and frames that compound my approach to reality or experience. The results I think are mostly about “intemperie” (a word I could not find an equal in English but means something like being out to the weather, far from civilization or comfort) that was an issue I was suggested to write about by my friend Fernando Fazzolari (visual artist) and also about “memory”. I wrote most of these poems just before and after sleeping, when I found that I dissolve or regroup my personality in order to dream or rest, or in order to be awake and be social. Going to sleep demands suspension of memory, waking up demands construction of it or new connection.
Note:
[1] This verse is originally by Nestor Perlongher: "la estrechez de boca de hule del embudo" from poem XXIII of the book Aguas Aéreas (1990)
Romina Freschi, 2006
Romina Freschi, (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1974)as a writer she has published redondel (1998 y 2003), Estremezcales (2000), Petróleo (2002) Villa Ventana, illustrated by Fernando Fazzolari, and El-Pe-yO (2003). She is a MA and Literature professor (UBA), and is the editor of the review Plebella(www. plebella.com.ar). You can read her interview with US poet Deborah Meadows in this issue of Jacket.