Sarah Manguso - Ten Years
One thing I'm catching myself doing is noticing aspects of the writing within this issue of Unsaid that I don't know that I'd necessarily notice if the specific piece I was reading wasn't to be found within the confines of this particular issue. For instance, I'm sure Sarah Manguso wasn't hiding the fact that in a piece with 33 paragraphs (if it's a story) or stanzas (if it's a poem), that 24 of them start with the word "Realize" and the other 9 include it somewhere within. It leaps out at me here, though, after reading "Two Sentences" earlier and then "History" recently.
It's almost as if Manguso decided to write a story, and forced herself to utilize the word "realize" in every paragraph, as a challenge. If so, I think she succeeded in great fashion as there's still a solid story being told by the narrator; a story of relationships, and of art and of self.
Do you find yourself noticing things like this repetition of a single word, or writing a story in one sentence, or two sentences, while you read the initial time, or does it come to you after you've already enjoyed the work and are considering where to place it within the journal?
David: It always addresses me during the initial reading. And let me say I'm happy you are noticing such details via what is triggered from your attention to other Unsaid pieces. That is one of my great ambitions: To cultivate ways of seeing from an attentive reading of Unsaid.
Manguso is a very strong writer. Her multiple use of the word "realize" in this poem is no mistake. She understands that difference and repetition are key components to new and lasting writing.
She contracts the word "realize" to such a degree that a kind of
dialation occurs from it. Like the wringing of liquid from fabric, the
word "realize" becomes a repeated inward twisting that bleeds something
essential from the cloth.
Difference and repetition. Beckett lived and died by it.
Repetition provides an anchor for the motion that yields its
difference. It's simple in theory, but the composing of such a piece is
another matter altogether.
Something just crossed my mind. A kind of segue. Have you ever read Deleuze's Difference and Repetition?
Maybe you should. Or maybe not. Regardless, one question from that text
hits me now as perhaps the best that any writer might ask of his or her
work daily:
"To what are we dedicated if not to those problems which demand the very transformation of our body and our language?"
Deleuze and Manguso would get along.
very nice post
Posted by: danial | June 13, 2009 at 06:53 AM