Nada Gordon, born in California, studied alternative poetries in the Bay Area (at SFSU and beyond), and wrote an M.A. thesis on Bernadette Mayer at U.C. Berkeley. In 1988, she moved to Japan, where she taught English, wrote textbooks, sang in a band, studied butoh, and co-edited a magazine, AYA. She moved to Brooklyn in 1999. Author of More Hungry, lip, Rodomontade, and Koi Maneuver, she incorporates elements of movement, song, and vocal manipulation into her performances. Forthcoming works include foriegnn bodie and Correspondence (with Gary Sullivan).
Working Notes
Dear Reader,
I’m essentially an entertainer. Yeah, a troubador. ENTERTAIN comes from entre and tenir — a holding between … the legs? Or ears? Or is the enacted creative a sacred limbo between persons like the internet, an intersubjective field of poppies? My dictionary sends me to TENABLE from the etymology for ENTERTAIN, and the synonyms I find there are DEFENSIBLE and REASONABLE, and now I’m thinking, ha! this is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Poetics, how I love poetics, those glass conservatories filled with giant lotus leaves and banana trees and the smell of unusual mildews. The tropical becomes tenable as the rain that foments it, and the more tropical a poem is the better I like it (moist heat). Our challenge: how to live among all these tropes, every life a trope as we are figures…of speechflesh … and we are constantly turning … over in bed or towards or away from each other … or towards the sun or finally into the soil …. Poetry drips with (these) movement(s), each word meaning kaleidoscoping into an aromatic delirium of philosophy. I want to be there with you.
Love,
Nada
"2008" (after AN)
Am I the same one, that
spontaneous mucilage seeming
hollowed out from the loam but
pictorial or untrained element?
My dwarf the one of little faith living thing
grows increasingly aromatic of
civilization I’m too exquisite for it, tuneful
alloy of critique thus rent asunder
by intervals, can the Eighties be over?
by appendages and kosher studies of truth
Annihilation Seraphs over again?
Sovereign of line on the face seaweed he warbles
fastidiously lavish and fluent
Maybe epithelium cleaving monk near at hand
asymmetrical because of special varieties
of pedagogic hollow cube stylus white gold
they are growing old together into
archetypal generation which is a dwarf star
or effulgence, I am
frivolous or debilitated with cold feet so I
vocalize like a sweet but am unchaste like
a vibratory pose the ornaments
passing above a smooth as glass inky repose
to enchant sirocco and surf I
become a claw-shaped husk, one
without a synagogue
I ensnare the pacific I get moustache blossoms
and heartache generators which love me back for
the bubbling of it, kingdom come debris are the
decided spiritual beings on the wireless
a second’s tatami waste a
cylinder drizzle then back into life sex.
She disentangles a framework of the senses
the law of smash the redoubled claw
closes into the motif S for the person in question or
robust chagrin or hovel or unshorn
the flesh flesh tolls the will will
signals the flesh will widens
with scrutiny the rhetorician addresses witnesses
and they are each other
idolatry of all moving pictures and optic receivers (eyes).
Yang and Yin
My beauty is avuncular
to myself, standing there bearded
with a protective arm
and if I am loved
as if with a toothy mace
then let it be as a thinking form
think of content as material --
IN a glass not air or water
but glass itself, and my white thighs
smoother pastures of resentment
yes, this is a paid advertisement
for a field of poppies
that next month will be a lavender field
overrun with ferrets
It taunts me and disappoints
that red lip on my forehead
a rap on my knuckles
a small bomb to glow the room
orange light fades to peach
to steel gray like sunset
but at the same time hopeless
drying, my skeleton
brings in the paper:
bullfights, pandemonium, flower festivals,
freaks, trinkets for sale
and in the center of everything
my lovely hysterical grin
gums showing little fangs
eyes as smiling slits
nose like a bat’s
think white hand + black insects
or tea rose + mildew --
YIN TRAVELS, you might say
through fingertips:
I’m not going anywhere
but my ROOM.