|
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
|
Ron SillimanTjantingIntroduction by Barrett Watten |
||||||
|
Biographical note: Ron Silliman has written and edited 24 books of poetry and criticism to date, including the anthology In the American Tree. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry. Since 1979, Silliman has been writing a poem entitled The Alphabet. Volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, ®, Toner, What and Xing.
BIC Basic EAN13: 9781876857196
|
| 
PAPERBACK
| |
Short
description/annotation: Silliman’s major long poem published in a new edition and introduced by Barrett Watten. Tjanting abounds in a wealth of cultural reference and explores the strategies and procedures of constructing a reality in language. This classic text will delight readers and provide students of modern American poetry with a key work of the late 20th Century.
Main description:
Table of contents:
View excerpt as PDF:
Excerpt from book: Space heater. Writing gathers around the pigeons. This line leads to Uranus. Nun census. Silver fork upon a chippd blue plate. I saw sleeping bag, pillows in the Buick’s back. The companionship of refrigerator’s hum. This is beginning I again began not. Salt shaker tall as coffee’s mug. Dented Opel’s orange fender. Gray dawn. On the rain falls Spain mainly in the brain. Smudges forming fingertips on the back door’s windows. X-ray reads gold-leaf sign on the glass. First sound of roommates beginning to stir. Grey into yellow comes sky to the room. Each page, once tree, soon shall be ash. Leather chipping, flaking off the tatterd jacket. A woman who wears sweat pants. Detestimonialist. Don’t sneeze on cat. Predictable boots worn by Frye people. Potholders old & dark. Ridges by bridges. Knife blade streakd with butter. That bus coming back this way. Rough surface of cat’s tongue. Pin koans. Clutter of seeds, oils, spices atop the side board. Uganda Liquors. Pedestrians scamper across in the sun. Stake each sentence out. Call this 5 Corners. Knot this knot. Ball bounced into the panda plant. Cups fill the cupboard. Aliens from other planets are perfectly visible. Tamal is a half-name in the place of the name. The squeak of faucets. I was on the road discoverd. Ash “tray.” Yellow caterpillar tractor. Ashtray fills up. Waking is in each instant I am. Across, then down & across. Her tone to him thru long years of rough intimacy was at once tender & gruff. Begin each letter at the top. Not this. Pit bull’s spittle as it snarls. I saw a burgundy filling the clear vial at needle’s end, my blood. Liquid detergent. Ing the trap bears ed. Roach holder made of a matchbook. She never lookd this way, whose face I sought a glimpse of. Free write each day. My fingers counted between nine & eleven. Any symbol is a contrary seen in a positive light. A specific shape, complex & nameable, to each cloud. Sky pilot. Factory filld with sunrise. Scraping paper, leaving tracks. Forklift to timeclock of montage & cut. Call this tracing. 3 wooden rainwarpd chairs in the (back) yard. Fence is a verb. Scratch that. Each word in Max 3 meant polis. In the mind mines gape. Tell that to the Possum. Words tried to imagine. Coffee ground spilld on the stove top. Bare nap rugs on the cat. Mouth open, take a deep breath, say Ah. On the far gray bay side haze hued the hill. Rush of footsteps upstairs. Bathetic. In a middle that is not yet the middle. The mock coolness of the air-conditiond underground. Hours alter colors of the page. Grease sizzles, spitting on the stove top. Words vary. Swam past sand sharks. An idea of land’s end. Pale luncher. An eternal groove around record’s center. 4-tunneld city & 7 its hills. Owl light. Impaird eyes, desert rocks are attributed evenly throughout the pain. Red water. We saw on the sea sails. Stoppage makes the line. Translicity elects the voice. Cowabonga. But you dependent for what comes thru. Call it dogface. Know all blame, same difference. Doors “ajar.” I glimpse the machinery of the modern dentist thru windows. Pills on my Tarot. Shade throws the light lamp. Pacific Palisades. Write between light green lines. Beer in waxed cups. Noon’s rise mooning. Someone must make awnings. On the bus home from work, squinting at a thick printout. On a bus in dawn heavy fog, on my way to meet Taggart. Smouldering sienna. One ideogram, meaning lunch, middle or China. The familiar smell suddenly of balsawood & Testor’s in a hospital corridor. My nose, seen as a waterfall. Disfeel an ease. Cary Grant on the face of George Washington. Or the faces of watchers thru a window at sunset, their skin blue by the dim light of the telly. Once on the bus, took his shoes off. Detains, denotes detonation. His eyes enlarged by his glasses.
Review quote: It’s true we need another Allen Ginsberg. Unfortunately, I don’t see one on the horizon, unless Ron Silliman can get himself arrested. Keith Tuma
Review quote: Of all the Language Poets, Silliman’s express-line writing was and is the one that stuck to my ribs. It was so thingy, so specific, so formally radical, so hard-headed, yet witty, and now and then, in spite of itself, lyric. I liked his post-industrial music. I loved Ketjak and Tjanting and Paradise … And the reach – the compulsion to pull everything in. C.D. Wright
Review quote: Silliman’s writing is fun to read: Its pleasure lies in the gradual unfolding of intricate forms and in the mix of puns, declarations, sounds and sights from our daily environment, the range of references from philosophy to baseball. Hank Lazer
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Contact
us