A Reading Diary

26 JUNE 1995 A comment made by Adriaan Peperzak at last year's annual Comp Lit conference sticks with me and comes to mind while trying to write about Lisa Robertson's XEdogue. Peperzak is a conventional, even stodgy philosopher in his 70s who has written on Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, and Levinas. During and answer period he shows a surprising and inspiring passion. Provoked, think, by his earlier confession of religious faith, he disburdens himself of one after another admonishing opinion-laughing out loud at his own audacity. Finally, asked about the of he immediately says, as if waiting for a chance, called 'the house of Being.' Well, everything is house of Being, but it's given to our epoch to frame everything in terms of language, so Heidegger calls 'House.' And we repeat this formula devoutly. But we're no closer to understanding either or Being when we do so. For too the of is fundamental. A nagging doubt nonetheless remains: are poems written in answer to this equally fundamental? mean, are they any more fundamental than any other kind of poem? am not so sure. Our language poets (and mean by this something more general than L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing) compose wonderful work, but wonder of it is often superficial. Still, it is a piety of our time that only those who address this question of are worth reading. Those who turn their attention to other questions-however fundamental, however profound answers-come to seem naive. Old fashioned. Hung up on content. Marginal to a fault. Rereading Michael Palmer this summer, came again on his diary entry about receiving first copies of Notes for Echo Lake-dismay, then sorrow, upon realizing that it was only a book. Yes, this is how it feels, even when you are only reader. Lisa's book has been a rumor for two years, but based on all have heard almost feel as though have read it. Now Joel returns from Vancouver and lends me a copy. Leafing through feel-what? Dismay? Sorrow? Not at all, but maybe a book is more exciting, more useful, as rumor than fact. Maybe that is why never tried to order a copy. Maybe-sad prospect-rumors are more inspiring than poems. think of Lisa's Manifesto mode-is this a way of staving off dismay and sorrow? A way of pretending that a book is not just a book? Talking to Joel, said her insistence on that mode gets boring, tone begins to annoy-the whole Giantess trip. couldn't possibly mean it, could she? It's so corny, so 'Cabaret Voltaire,' so...I don't know...so 1970s!' Later wonder if am not simply jealous. She is so good at writing that way. At top of her voice, as Mayakovsky would say. And why not? She wants to be heard. Deservedly. Later still read Eclogue Three: Liberty over and over again. try to gauge response as honestly as possible. decide that constant recourse to assertion, effective in short run for maintaining interest in argument, wears attention away in long run. case in point: What is this thought that refuses to reverse itself, that in cool shade of fantasy creates an institution? A useful question, oddly put. Then comes, in quick succession, grating, overweening, gratuitous, silly-my kilted wit, my perfect barbarity, the death of method, Utopia is dead, prim sublimity, I flaunt her. And then, right at end, played like a trump card, one perfect, purple twist of prose: She's lying in pagan flowers, sweet-faced in pompous velvet, swathed in crude luxury of rhetoric, strewn with petals of aptly faded hope. Not an answer but an antidote to her question, administered just in time. 27 JUNE At beginning of summer thought about writing an essay on three first books that use seashore as their organizing theme-H.D.'s Sea Garden, Rachel Carson's Under Sea-Wind, Pat Reeds Sea Asleep. …

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