Jen Hofer is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in Mexico City where she is editing and translating an anthology of contemporary poetry by Mexican women which will be published by University of Pittsburgh Press and Ediciones Sin Nombre in 2001. Her translations, essays and poems can be found in recent or shortly forthcoming issues of Explosive, Facture, Lipstick Eleven, Tripwire, West Coast Line and in the a+bend press chapbook "as far as." Duration Press will be publishing her translations of the Chilean poet Soledad Fariña in its Fall 2000 chapbook series. Recently, she and her fiddle have joined forces with the visual artist Melissa Dyne to form Groundzero Telesonic Outfit International.
Formal Negotiations
Objects are. And emotions where objects are and shifting changeable be, is. And are. And are thought. The world doesn’t need us to express it, though in our expression (the face we show the world and the words with which we face the world) it is a different world. Always in words and in the world a different world.
What question can be honestly answered the same way again and again?
During a recent and rare good night’s sleep in Guadalajara, I dreamt that George Oppen died. The dream tears are not real tears though I believe, tearless, the dream is real. So the dream’s tears are in the dream real as the dream abuts the real in moments of overlap we might call "writing" or we might just call. When I say "dream" I certainly don’t mean only sleeping, and certainly never asleep. We read and speak to wake.
What question can be honestly answered the same way again and again? Doesn’t a formally same answer suggest (impossible, happily) a sameness of question, impulse, pressure?
It’s not a question of existing outside a market (there’s no there there), of dodging the negotiations in favor of some beautiful walk in the woods. Nor is it a question of reifying the dividing lines as if "the one" and "the other" have no overlap, are not, as processes, made of and in the overlap. It’s a question of exigencies, of paying attention (and to what), of necessary appreciations and necessary deprecations. Of measure, and all in good measure.
What question can be honestly answered the same way again and again? Doesn’t formal conformity obscure nonconformity of content? Or smooth the discontent so as to soothe the unsuspecting reader? Can we be lulled into subversion?
It’s a question of which exigencies are most compelling in a given circumstance, a question of how to write the exigencies of the circumstance most compellingly. The pressures of the poem–what I consider as a standard or measure, a fuel–resist any kind of taking for granted. So a phrase like "this is how it’s done" would simply have no place in any action, exploration or expedition approached as poem. It’s a question of belief and question, a question of attitude or stance, of position. A question of posit and not answer, of essay and not statement. Of what is this world, and again what is this world.
What question can be honestly answered the same way again and again? And who if truly compelled could answer it thus? (It is in the act of speech that sight resides and flight takes, in the act of act that the play shimmers. As a beginning, wanting seeing and feeling, to do, do over and all other. As a beginning, asking to ask.) Is not the answer, the question, to ask?
corporeal manifestoes
"Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing"
(a page pretends to stand in: sans red velvet curtains: oh can you imagine it: say can you: providing a pleated frame or content: or content)
About kindly about wind (remembered argument) about wind kind kin (forget it, angel) unkind spectacle about glasses stylish expectorate, about spreading and perhaps borrowing whether or not and there is some use. There is about use, angel, forget kindly to convince: what is the use, etc., "what is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure" no about faces or kitties if there is no substance no recitative no je sais quois if there is no pleasure "no pleasure in not getting tired of it."
"The best thing to do is wear it (there is no bargain is there) and then be reckless and then be reckless be reckless and resolved on returning gratitude. Gratitude return (hair windy in predictable paths yet wind nonetheless gives sight direction) and then the box becomes. Then the box becomes wood stained green and dust tells us skin softly. Another kind of hair kindly. No disgrace in care but the uses of the letter a. A letter a plan of action a hum so as the mind’s mind to distract, attract, punctuate. Not like but like. Asked but done. Truncate so quicker kinder to glitter upon. In the eye of.
Who does not want a finer fancy present. Close quote. Want it finer and fancy present and fancy with no error but her erroneous diligent diligence. Subtract audacity and only the blind no carafe. Mercenary questions extract flutter relief. Shutter release the tongue makes it strange. Willful erroneous or kind. Any kind. Q & A and Ps & Qs and Q & U and mind yours in persistence or play it again, this time with kindness.
About spreading and picking up speed to tremble end over end the difference is a silver triangular box from Oaxaca and a rectangular wooden box from New York. The difference is of memory enticement and use value, as the value is not equal but measurable. Frames order the arrangement, style the system to blueprint a suggestible hazard. Not mercenary necessity but things come out of the box that you can count. In reference to a staircase. Keys with locks long lost, one ring, one watch long stopped fit for a princess when the weather says cozy up incontrovertible. Held aloft against a sky provides a ground or a view to transparency.
To take the thing to turn to turn the thing a view from not new from every angle cut glass angled to turn the thing yet not all at once as turned in a hand take it in and turn then turn return.
A place is pale in comparison but tin in the teeth does not deceive. Deceit being the least measure, ratchets do come in handy, and hook and eye, engine and a service economy we cannot but benefit from. There are exceptions. Exceptions are windy and fluttery and heartfelt which means something.