Lost in Space

Amexane - Paths of Impossibility

Judith Gracie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429915871
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

'"The mares which bear me as far as my desires might reach ...": a piece of writing from two and a half thousand years ago catches the intent of this work. The author has etched a body of poetry that follows a trajectory not often encountered in the writings of the modern world.'- From the Preface by Bernard Burgoyne this is a stunning and original book that breaks new ground in the field of contemporary literature. Informed by Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, readings of Lacan, Freud and P. G. Wodehouse, its principal themes are maternal desire; the structure of tragic thought; writing itself, and the possibility of finding seemingly impossible pathways through the suffering of lived experience. It is, amongst other things, a love story, a philosophical inquiry, an artwork, a collection of poetry and - a book of jokes. The author writes an expansive, 'everyone welcome', style of epic, one which is proof for the urgent necessity of the poetic voice. Bernard Burgoyne provides the Preface and fresh topological etchings.

Part I

ANTIΓONE

(or stuff from the shed)

FREUD:	“Was will das Weib?”
ISMHNH:	“ἀλλ’ ἀµεXἁῳV ὲρᾷς”
LACAN:	“que peut être un tel désir, le désir de l’analyste ? … Dès maintenant, nous pouvons tout de même dire ce q’il ne peu pas être. II ne peut pas désirer l’impossible.”
APOLLO 13:	“Houston, we … have a problem” (!?)

(ἀµεXἁVῳV = lost in space)

book

and what of the wretched book, my love

that never could be writ

do we concede the truth my love

and make our peace with it?

there are too many words in the world, my sweet

but none are left for me –

I am losing my hold on words my love

they are slipping away from me …

oh – must we always fail in the mirror

all our noblest houses fall

gouge our body contours

though no thing stands at all?

I am left with a hole in the wind, my love

a hollow tug of the sea

a tear in the texture of night, my love

a burning I cannot be –

and the bones that break through the skin, my love

and the skin that brazes the bone

and the blood that glozes the brain my love

and the brain that grazes the stone.

– and so what of a hole and a tug and a tear

a burning that can’t be borne

and what of the bone and the skin and the brain

this body that can’t be worn?

will a burning braid with the bone, my love

see these hands that are quite blind –

will the brain be hemmed to a hole in the wind

by this bloody skein of mind?

and the skin will be stitched to the tug in the sea

and the stone to the tear in the night

and what ever is made in this way, my love

is all that I can write.

(for Claire and Bernard, in love and squalor)

thread

pot

Plant your head in a pot, my love | and grow quite twelve feet tall | train your knees to raspberry cane | or lean against the wall. || The earth will teach you well, my love | what never can be said | that deep black earth you breathe, my love | is how to feed your head. || And when you are quite mad, my love | not any human shape | take your head from the pot, my love | and see the wise men gape. jx

Is this you, my most marvelous friend? Cx

… hem, hem … cough, cough … splutter … (might be) … jx

You - are very, very, very, very good. To the power of the loop. Cx

poem-writing

responsibility

Dear judith,

You asked me to find a matheme that rendered the impossibility of being both a mother and a writer – this is the one I have come up with:

M: (H2 à H3) | W: (H3 à H2).

The “|” is a sign very beloved of C S Peirce: it stands for “not both” [you can produce all of the beginnings of logic with it]. The French has actually been inserted automatically by transposing the script from Word – I think it works though. The Hs are two of the three kinds of space that I talked about at the Tate. H2 spaces have neighbourhoods containing points where each locality has edge points; the Mother directs the child away from them, so that the child can take a position in the world of the men. The Writer reintroduces the edge points.

I hope the diacritics work in transmission.

dear Bernard,

It is a pretty decisive action, surely, when translating The Iliad, to determine whether to cast the first word as Sing or Rage from the opening µῆVIV ἄεiδε. I oscillate, depending on the prevailing configuration of my ψuXή … before receiving this, today’s translation would definitively have opened on the RAGE side of the question. You can see, now, that the mind has been changed and moved its position. SING! is how we begin. Thank you for that restructuring interpretation …

eleven ways of writing not-writing-writing

i. (non) compos mentis

ii. scraping

word bits from the bottom of the barrel (having voided said of its contents)

iii. sloughing

dead skin from the salt scrolls of the feet

waste writing: what else?

iv. caught in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Dedication
• In the beginning …
• Part I Writing
• Part II Lost
• Part III Tragedy
• Part IV Mother
• Part V Paths
• donc?
• Acknowledgements …