2 Poems by John Marvin
Bergson Joyce and All That Jazz
In this [Bergsonian] conception of time almost all the strands of the texture which form the stuff of modern art converge: the abandonment of plot, the elimination of the hero, the relinquishing of psychology, the "automatic method of writing" and, above all, the montage technique and the intermingling of temporal and spatial forms of the film.
written by Arnold Hauser in The Social History of Art v. 4 Naturalism, Impressionism, The Film Age London 1962 p. 226 and quoted in Louis Armand technē: James Joyce, Hypertext & Technology Prague 2008 p. 20
moss
Thales claimed the cosmos was all wet
designed purely by accident to be all wet and thus perfectly resonating with cosmic rays sneaking into the abyss smiling like a happy cat improvising his life away on roof hot or cold or even tin above the heads of movie stars and mars bars speaking of the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy by George
nothing more is more than nothing less
regress redress duress
re: ess
sometimes strings of signs are so deeply rooted in the bow shock of a particular individual's encounter with well maybe la durée or maybe spacetime or maybe crisscrossing plasmas and paths of glory
inextricability sweating latent dollops of cosmetic doll ups
as in some beautiful universe on the other side of here comes everywhere
every witch way but oops
when collapse into a geometric point requires phenomenal expenditures of energy pushing all buttons over the rainbow way up high where pretty little bluebirds fly so why oh why
can't everyone sing
singularities
in a tender
pace and
stamina
"To make a political discourse bear this problematic chain, is that to limit the extent of this chain? Is that to narrow the field of a general question elaborated after all in other places?" (Glas 51 A)
is that to swoon over even this spider and this moonlight this spoonlight alight aright in a glimmer of a night
a role of a die will never stop a god from fucking around with what passes for reality in human narratives regarding hopes dripping with blood sweat and fears
so Joyce made mad chamber music a penny a pop
"Isobel, she is so pretty, truth to tell, wildwood's eyes and primarose hair, quietly, all the woods so
wild, in mauves of moss and daphnedews, how all so still she lay, neath of the whitethorn, child of tree, like some losthappy leaf, like blowing flower stilled, as fain would she anon, for soon again 'twill be, win me, woo me, wed me, ah weary me! deeply, now evencalm lay sleeping" (Finnegans Wake 556.16 - 22)
what can one say in a language that has military force beyond cliché and under moons of Juniper planet of the spruce heather and thither waters of nicht yes I said nicht is what one can say or write day or night
"And I'd lie as quiet as a moss" (Finnegans Wake 626.23)
falling slowly but gravely or gravelly limpid and never the sane river cross the bay of the hounds
under thunderworlds of that which they had greatly peered always slithering from view too soon
pickin up lots of
forget-me-nots
then resting on a bed of
moss
Chimney Swift Tub
Querelle des Modernes
et des Postmodernes
Flyers of the footless family
fuck in midair and live in soup
but let us not forget
we’re all vertebrates
and let us not forget homage
to our ancestral home
in the city of perpetual spring
on the war road to Burma
where flowers always bloom
along the shores of Dian Chi
for whom we mourn in guilt
for centuries of shit poured
into sparkling pearl waters.
If the footless fucking flyers
caravanned across the world’s roof
through the friendly skies
lately scrubbed clean of ozone
and down the dusty road of silk
lately scrubbed clean of ancient statues
and proceeded by a commodius vicus
across the land of chalky cliffs
they might see Gulliver’s papa
on his way to spinning parodic tales
bobbing like barrels on waves
or particles complements
of the uncertain tax of time
and all those stars
so near so far.
John Marvin is a teacher who retired and subsequently earned a Ph.D. in English at SUNY Buffalo. He has poems in scores of journals, and literary criticism in Hypermedia Joyce Studies, James Joyce Quarterly, Pennsylvania English, and Worchester Review. His book, Nietzsche and Transmodernism: Art and Science Beyond the Modern in Joyce, Stevens, Pynchon, and Kubrick, awaits a publisher.