Chris Tanasescu: The Graph Poem (Four Poems & a Note on the Poetics)

Posted by Lidya Endzo Kun iLLa On 6:32 AM
[Chris Tanasescu is an active & highly regarded poet, critic, translator, and performer, writing in both Romanian and English. His poetry-performance/action-painting rock band Margento won the 2008 Romanian Gold Disc, & his most recent book in Romanian & English, The Book from the Court and 9 Other Topologies (Cartea de la Curtea) was published by Vinea Publishing, Bucharest, in 2010. His writing continues in a line from earlier Romanian poets like Tristan Tzara and Gellu Naum.]

Graphs are ways to understand and (re)generate language, society, and biochemical structures or entities. They literally are ways, paths that connect vertices. Vortexes. Overt axes.

Every poem, that is, every person, is a graph – of instincts, beliefs, phrases, and so forth (news everybody knows but wants to receive proof of) – and yet they may be read and then involved as a (set of) point(s) to start networks from or to connect through.

Even throughout the most remote hamlets of Romania, folk verse abounds in sea-related stories. From hundreds of miles away, through a network of memory and metaphor, the sea iridesces irrepressibly. Its dynamics permeate the language by means of the mathematical sublime.

At the physical limit of the infinity within the poem infinitely stands a person. A poem. A person. Persons are networks of language, and therefore poems, while poems are networks of people, and therefore persons.

Şi pasu-n urma-ţi zboară c-o tainică mânie, / Ca un smintit ce cată cu ochiu-ngălbenit, / Cu fruntea-nvineţită, cu faţa cenuşie / Icoana ce-a iubit... (Eminescu, “Amorul unei marmore”)
My flighty steps now follow you, all manic, stealthy, / Just like a mad man searching with his jaundiced stare, / His forehead bruised, his haggard cheeks gone pale as ashes, / The icon once revered…
(Eminescu, “Loving a Heart of Marble”)

Graphs are present in Simona Popescu’s reading of Gellu Naum’s oeuvre as a live network and in Deric Corlew’s neuroscientific approach to William Carlos Williams’s poems, where ideas are to be found only in things, indeed, since the latter themselves are part of an encompassing life-enmeshing reticule of nerves and synapses.

In my experiments with Margento I have explored a “groundbreaking” discovery that actually has always worked as confirmation of things ancient but perpetually common – namely that a poem ramifies by nature into music and painting/video and vice versa, and the graph thus growing generates a syntax of (artistic) language(s) and relationships, which can be then enriched into (cross-)cultural meaning, just as an abstract semantic graph can be constructed from a given abstract syntactic tree.

Yet such abstractions also have a heart and blood; their blood, each art’s specific language and means of expression, their heart, creative and interpersonal love.

[Note: In the fragments below the graph ramifications are marked by * and a variable number of ~ signs]

ROMANIAN ARTIST KIDNAPPED BY OAK TREES IN BERLIN
(from the longer sequence Europe. A Gypsy Epithalamium)

I passed the cathedral slowly heading to per
gammon – per-Mammon, as Tom loves to call it –
and noticed at last the oak trees there:
gigantic, thickets thick as tall as the spires, roaring;

They snatched me... here, my brains still rattle with their rustle.
Oh, but not exactly Ionesco’s childhood [*~]
experience of sudden luminosity,
I guess, said Tom, although he also felt
a sensation of floating off the ground…

Oh, no, replied Grigore, rather a pulsing
darkness... The milky light in the German
skies that came down sifting through the foliage elect
Ro-cuted me: a dream suddenly resuscitated glistened [*~ ~]
from behind my memory like a lake deep in my brains,
sucking me back into the museum, and slowly drowning me
through the branches into the market gate of Miletus…

[*~]
NOTES AND NODES FROM IONESCO
Part I

The Image of the world of the great mystics
is the same above and beyond every
century and above and beyond all geo
graphical location. One single in
tuition…Will I see France again next year?...

It is necessary to emphasize what makes us
identical, not what separates us. [19
67: That depends; sometimes the differ
(esse)nces are more interesting than the re-sem-
blanches. This is true, for example, in the case
of works of art.]
The brightest light, the light
of Italy, the purest sky of Scandina [*~ ~ ~]
via in the month of June is only a half-light
when one compares it to the light of childhood…
Even the nights were blue.
Too late.
In what depths
can this buried light be sought? Several life cycles
have gone by since then. Centuries and centuries.
Centuries separate me from myself.

[*~ ~]
ENVOI
(From the longer sequence “How Was Ion Iliescu NOT Assassinated”)

There once was a gifted girl, but a bit homely / a bit of sucker, a bit of a stutterer, called / Romania, and one day she woke up to find something / growing on her forehead, and it kept growing today / and tomorrow when the pimple became / a boil, and began to move, taking on life / becoming a little man stuck there / an beauty mark named Ilyich (Iliescu), and then the old / cancer relapses, infecting / the brain. Today, tomorrow, she endured /
pitiful girl—shouldn’t be pitied! / But finally she finds the courage and goes / one day to see the surgeon. There, / Ilyich (Iliescu): good doctor, look what’s grown out of my ass!

[*~ ~ ~]
From THE GREEN GLACIER EQUINOX

They say Eric the Red called it Greenland
to entice more colonists; “‘They’ being
the Vinland Sagas,” bantered our vocals.
This is the land of wine I thought almost

drunk on the thought. Dreamlike vineyards under the ice. / We get off the plane and I’m bashed / by memories of Basho, all of a sudden so cold: / Winter solitude – in a world of one
color, one sound, the wind. The heart
says Tove the waitress, the seal heart –
eat it raw and you will live long.
The frozen mouth fills up with hearty blood
from animals that animate the blood clots in your voice.
Nothing dies here, everything gets eaten alive by the living.

We’re going to strike roots, said Ralu, / when she saw another round of Greenland / brown ale coming. Yet Tom replies: At least that’s the bright side
of this global warming thing, they brew the beer with water taken / from the melting Arctic ice cap, 180,000 / years old! Indeed, but that doesn’t mean / we should spend the same number of years drinking here. Of course / not, we’ll do it in a flash: millennia drunk up in just one night…
Still, how could anyone grow roots in ice, / their mouth dead frozen, and dead frozen limbs?
And we all leaned on the bar like a clump / of Rosenvinge pine trees, ourselves also planted
here a century ago, from Europe.
Neruda: I can’t tell lips from roots…

“Unruly Neruda / under stones under snows / in the damp hole / look, there is no dead man
Pablo the child with Chilean voodoo / raised the coffin, whose coffin? / his father’s – he thought – up from the grave, / but out of the box there poured water, more water…”
I kept whispering into your ear but you couldn’t hear me / in the hell that had broken loose around us
Margento chimed in a conch shell held up to the frostbitten ear / like a glass bell full of the water we’d drunk back in Bucharest.
Outside – the glacier, and the winds screeching stuck in it… Inuit… / We get to be of the same blood – as we slowly chew the seal heart, half asleep.

[All of the above were written and/or translated into English by the author, except for “Envoi” – translated from the Romanian by Martin Woodside]

0 Response to 'Chris Tanasescu: The Graph Poem (Four Poems & a Note on the Poetics)'

Post a Comment

Tattoos Picture Page 1 Tattoos Picture Page 2 Tattoos Picture Page 3 Tattoos Picture Page 4 Tattoos Picture Page 5 Tattoos Picture Page 6 Tattoos Picture Page 7 Tattoos Picture Page 8 Tattoos Picture Page 9 Tattoos Picture Page 10 Tattoos Picture Page 11 Tattoos Picture Page 12 Tattoos Picture Page 13 Tattoos Picture Page 14 Tattoos Picture Page 15 Tattoos Picture Page 16 Tattoos Picture Page 17 Tattoos Picture Page 18 Tattoos Picture Page 19 Tattoos Picture Page 20 Tattoos Picture Page 21 Tattoos Picture Page 22 Tattoos Picture Page 23 Tattoos Picture Page 24 Tattoos Picture Page 25 Tattoos Picture Page 26 Tattoos Picture Page 27 Tattoos Picture Page 28 Tattoos Picture Page 29 Tattoos Picture Page 30 Tattoos Picture Page 31 Tattoos Picture Page 32 Tattoos Picture Page 33 Tattoos Picture Page 34 Tattoos Picture Page 35 Tattoos Picture Page 36 Tattoos Picture Page 37 Tattoos Picture Page 38 Tattoos Picture Page 39 Tattoos Picture Page 40 Tattoos Picture Page 41 Tattoos Picture Page 42 Tattoos Picture Page 43 Tattoos Picture Page 44 Tattoos Picture Page 45 Tattoos Picture Page 46 Tattoos Picture Page 47 Tattoos Picture Page 48 Tattoos Picture Page 49 Tattoos Picture Page 50 Tattoos Picture Page 51 Tattoos Picture Page 52 Tattoos Picture Page 53 Tattoos Picture Page 54 Tattoos Picture Page 55 Tattoos Picture Page 56 Tattoos Picture Page 57 Tattoos Picture Page 58 Tattoos Picture Page 59 Tattoos Picture Page 60 Tattoos Picture Page 61 Tattoos Picture Page 62 Tattoos Picture Page 63 Tattoos Picture Page 64 Tattoos Picture Page 65 Tattoos Picture Page 66 Tattoos Picture Page 67 Tattoos Picture Page 68 Tattoos Picture Page 69 Tattoos Picture Page 70 Tattoos Picture Page 71 Tattoos Picture Page 72 Tattoos Picture Page 73 Tattoos Picture Page 74 Tattoos Picture Page 75 Tattoos Picture Page 76 Tattoos Picture Page 77 Tattoos Picture Page 78 Tattoos Picture Page 79 Tattoos Picture Page 80 Tattoos Picture Page 81 Tattoos Picture Page 82 Tattoos Picture Page 83 Tattoos Picture Page 84 Tattoos Picture Page 85 Tattoos Picture Page 86 Tattoos Picture Page 87 Tattoos Picture Page 88 Tattoos Picture Page 89 Tattoos Picture Page 90 Tattoos Picture Page 91 Tattoos Picture Page 92 Tattoos Picture Page 93 Tattoos Picture Page 94 Tattoos Picture Page 95 Tattoos Picture Page 96 Tattoos Picture Page 97 Tattoos Picture Page 98 Tattoos Picture Page 99 Tattoos Picture Page 100 Tattoos Picture Page 101 Tattoos Picture Page 102 Tattoos Picture Page 103 Tattoos Picture Page 104 Tattoos Picture Page 105 Tattoos Picture Page 106 Tattoos Picture Page 107 Tattoos Picture Page 108 Tattoos Picture Page 109 Tattoos Picture Page 110 Tattoos Picture Page 111 Tattoos Picture Page 112 Tattoos Picture Page 113 Tattoos Picture Page 114 Tattoos Picture Page 115 Tattoos Picture Page 116 Tattoos Picture Page 117 Tattoos Picture Page 118 Tattoos Picture Page 119 Tattoos Picture Page 120 Luxury Villa and Home Page 1 Luxury Villa and Home Page 2 Luxury Villa and Home Page 3 Luxury Villa and Home Page 4 Luxury Villa and Home Page 5 Luxury Villa and Home Page 6 Luxury Villa and Home Page 7 Luxury Villa and Home Page 8 Luxury Villa and Home Page 9 Luxury Villa and Home Page 10 Luxury Villa and Home Page 11 Luxury Villa and Home Page 12 Luxury Villa and Home Page 13 Luxury Villa and Home Page 14 Luxury Villa and Home Page 15 Luxury Villa and Home Page 16 Luxury Villa and Home Page 17 Luxury Villa and Home Page 18 Luxury Villa and Home Page 19 Luxury Villa and Home Page 20 Luxury Villa and Home Page 21 Luxury Villa and Home Page 22 Luxury Villa and Home Page 23 Luxury Villa and Home Page 24 Luxury Villa and Home Page 25 Luxury Villa and Home Page 26 Luxury Villa and Home Page 27 Luxury Villa and Home Page 28 Luxury Villa and Home Page 29 Luxury Villa and Home Page 30 Luxury Villa and Home Page 31 Luxury Villa and Home Page 32 Luxury Villa and Home Page 33 Luxury Villa and Home Page 34 Luxury Villa and Home Page 35 Luxury Villa and Home Page 36 Luxury Villa and Home Page 37 Luxury Villa and Home Page 38 Luxury Villa and Home Page 39 Luxury Villa and Home Page 40 Luxury Villa and Home Page 41 Luxury Villa and Home Page 42 Luxury Villa and Home Page 43 Luxury Villa and Home Page 44 Luxury Villa and Home Page 45 Luxury Villa and Home Page 46 Luxury Villa and Home Page 47 Luxury Villa and Home Page 48 Luxury Villa and Home Page 49 Luxury Villa and Home Page 50 Luxury Villa and Home Page 51 Luxury Villa and Home Page 52 Luxury Villa and Home Page 53 Luxury Villa and Home Page 54 Luxury Villa and Home Page 55 Luxury Villa and Home Page 56 Luxury Villa and Home Page 57 Luxury Villa and Home Page 58 Luxury Villa and Home Page 59 Luxury Villa and Home Page 60 Luxury Villa and Home Page 61 Luxury Villa and Home Page 62 Luxury Villa and Home Page 63 Luxury Villa and Home Page 64 Luxury Villa and Home Page 65 Luxury Villa and Home Page 66 Luxury Villa and Home Page 67 Luxury Villa and Home Page 68 Luxury Villa and Home Page 69 Luxury Villa and Home Page 70 Luxury Villa and Home Page 71 Luxury Villa and Home Page 72 Luxury Villa and Home Page 73 Luxury Villa and Home Page 74 Luxury Villa and Home Page 75 Luxury Villa and Home Page 76 Luxury Villa and Home Page 77 Luxury Villa and Home Page 78 Luxury Villa and Home Page 79 Luxury Villa and Home Page 80 Luxury Villa and Home Page 81 Luxury Villa and Home Page 82 Luxury Villa and Home Page 83 Luxury Villa and Home Page 84 Luxury Villa and Home Page 85 Luxury Villa and Home Page 86 Luxury Villa and Home Page 87 Luxury Villa and Home Page 88 Luxury Villa and Home Page 89 Luxury Villa and Home Page 90 Luxury Villa and Home Page 91 Luxury Villa and Home Page 92 Luxury Villa and Home Page 93 Luxury Villa and Home Page 94 Luxury Villa and Home Page 95 Luxury Villa and Home Page 96 Luxury Villa and Home Page 97 Luxury Villa and Home Page 98 Luxury Villa and Home Page 99 Famous People Page 1 Famous People Page 2 Famous People Page 3 Famous People Page 4 Famous People Page 5 Famous People Page 6 Famous People Page 7 Famous People Page 8 Famous People Page 9 Famous People Page 10 Famous People Page 11 Famous People Page 12 Famous People Page 13 Famous People Page 14 Famous People Page 15 Famous People Page 16 Famous People Page 17 Famous People Page 18 Famous People Page 19 Famous People Page 20 Famous People Page 21 Famous People Page 22 Famous People Page 23 Famous People Page 24 Famous People Page 25 Famous People Page 26 Famous People Page 27 Famous People Page 28 Famous People Page 29 Famous People Page 30 Famous People Page 31 Famous People Page 32 Famous People Page 33 Famous People Page 34 Famous People Page 35 Famous People Page 36 Famous People Page 37 Famous People Page 38 Famous People Page 39 Famous People Page 40 Famous People Page 41 Famous People Page 42 Famous People Page 43 Famous People Page 44 Famous People Page 45 Famous People Page 46 Famous People Page 47 Famous People Page 48 Famous People Page 49 Famous People Page 50 Famous People Page 51 Famous People Page 52 Famous People Page 53 Famous People Page 54 Famous People Page 55 Famous People Page 56 Famous People Page 57 Famous People Page 58 Famous People Page 59 Famous People Page 60 Famous People Page 61 Famous People Page 62 Famous People Page 63 Famous People Page 64 Famous People Page 65 Famous People Page 66 Famous People Page 67 Famous People Page 68 Famous People Page 69 Famous People Page 70 Famous People Page 71 Famous People Page 72 Famous People Page 73 Famous People Page 74 Famous People Page 75 Famous People Page 76 Famous People Page 77 Famous People Page 78 Famous People Page 79 Famous People Page 80 Famous People Page 81 Famous People Page 82 Famous People Page 83 Famous People Page 84 Famous People Page 85 Famous People Page 86 Famous People Page 87 Famous People Page 88 Famous People Page 89 Famous People Page 90 Famous People Page 91 Famous People Page 92 Famous People Page 93 Famous People Page 94 Famous People Page 95 Famous People Page 96 Famous People Page 97 Famous People Page 98 Famous People Page 99 Famous People Page 100 Famous People Page 101 Famous People Page 102 Famous People Page 103 Famous People Page 104 Famous People Page 105 Famous People Page 106 Famous People Page 107 Famous People Page 108 Famous People Page 109 Famous People Page 110 Famous People Page 111 Famous People Page 112 Famous People Page 113 Famous People Page 114 Famous People Page 115 Famous People Page 116 Famous People Page 117 Famous People Page 118 Famous People Page 119 Famous People Page 120