After “Remember What I Came Here to Do to This World Very Little Actually”
Jen Currin
Genie Bottle
Identity heinous pity too clumsily
I keep trying to be honest in this glittering wind
The best poets who More real than
At four a book I rip
’84 poisonous
I guiltily inhale
Shaman-body, a soldier I love more than myself
So foolish as to
As to borrow a country’s empty-handed surprise
Did I ever
Did I equal
Women on the way
Authority to recognize (did I)
Imagination’s vivid graves
Difficult to complete Poor enough
So foolish a shape so human
I find you
A war in dream-form and caress
Presumed generous
A hate sequence of dried reason and influence
What else What else
“Remember What I Came Here to Do to This World Very Little Actually” is one of my favorite Alice Notley poems, and when Edmund asked me to participate in this project, I knew right away that this was the poem I wanted to work with. It is deeply moving, and some of its lines (“I was against all war and loved mostly soldiers,” “I keep trying to be honest in this glittering wind”) stay with me as meditations.
I also wanted to work with this poem because its form has also stuck with me, and influenced my writing. One poem I wrote a couple of years ago, not realizing at the time how much I was borrowing from this one, consists of a series of truncated thoughts/sentences that begin with “Because.” I thought of using it for this project, but I wanted to work directly with Notley’s language, to see if I could go deeper into the poem by “translating” it into one of “my own.” I’m intrigued by the cut-off statements in Notley’s poem; what is left unsaid haunts as much as what is said. I tried to capture this in a few of the lines, although I found that my translation became more and more fractured the longer I worked on it. Certain words or combinations of words seemed to want to stand on their own. A hesitant or halting breath emerged in response to Notley’s unfinished statements.
This poem is also a great example of Notley’s radical use of the “I”; she starts every line with it. “Identity” contains “I” and so seemed the perfect “in” when I started working on the poem. How to navigate a truthful, personal place in a world of such dehumanizing corruption and pain? How to stay “honest in this glittering wind”? In homage to Notley, and with gratitude for her important work, I have tried to address (or maybe just re-ask) these questions in my poetic response.
_____________________________________________________________________
Constellation: Alice Notley
[#] Birkbeck Centre for Poetics
[#] Openned Video Constellation of Readings
[#] Return to “Intercapillary Space” Notley Contents page
Genie Bottle
Identity heinous pity too clumsily
I keep trying to be honest in this glittering wind
The best poets who More real than
At four a book I rip
’84 poisonous
I guiltily inhale
Shaman-body, a soldier I love more than myself
So foolish as to
As to borrow a country’s empty-handed surprise
Did I ever
Did I equal
Women on the way
Authority to recognize (did I)
Imagination’s vivid graves
Difficult to complete Poor enough
So foolish a shape so human
I find you
A war in dream-form and caress
Presumed generous
A hate sequence of dried reason and influence
What else What else
“Remember What I Came Here to Do to This World Very Little Actually” is one of my favorite Alice Notley poems, and when Edmund asked me to participate in this project, I knew right away that this was the poem I wanted to work with. It is deeply moving, and some of its lines (“I was against all war and loved mostly soldiers,” “I keep trying to be honest in this glittering wind”) stay with me as meditations.
I also wanted to work with this poem because its form has also stuck with me, and influenced my writing. One poem I wrote a couple of years ago, not realizing at the time how much I was borrowing from this one, consists of a series of truncated thoughts/sentences that begin with “Because.” I thought of using it for this project, but I wanted to work directly with Notley’s language, to see if I could go deeper into the poem by “translating” it into one of “my own.” I’m intrigued by the cut-off statements in Notley’s poem; what is left unsaid haunts as much as what is said. I tried to capture this in a few of the lines, although I found that my translation became more and more fractured the longer I worked on it. Certain words or combinations of words seemed to want to stand on their own. A hesitant or halting breath emerged in response to Notley’s unfinished statements.
This poem is also a great example of Notley’s radical use of the “I”; she starts every line with it. “Identity” contains “I” and so seemed the perfect “in” when I started working on the poem. How to navigate a truthful, personal place in a world of such dehumanizing corruption and pain? How to stay “honest in this glittering wind”? In homage to Notley, and with gratitude for her important work, I have tried to address (or maybe just re-ask) these questions in my poetic response.
_____________________________________________________________________
Constellation: Alice Notley[#] Birkbeck Centre for Poetics
[#] Openned Video Constellation of Readings
[#] Return to “Intercapillary Space” Notley Contents page
