Cinema of the Present

Lisa Robertson

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781770563919
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Robertson proves hard to explain but easy to enjoy.... Dauntlessly and resourcefully intellectual, Robertson can also be playful or blunt.... She wields language expertly, even beautifully."— The New York Times

What if the cinema of the present were a Möbius strip of language, a montage of statements and questions sutured together and gradually accumulating color? Would the seams afford a new sensibility around the pronoun "you"? Would the precise words of philosophy, fashion, books, architecture, and history animate a new vision, gestural and oblique? Is the kinetic pronoun cinema?

These and other questions are answered in the new collection from acclaimed poet and essayist Lisa Robertson. The dazzling new collection will feature three different back covers (designed by artists Hadley + Maxwell).

A quorum of crows will be your witness.

And if you discover you were bought?

You note the smell of rain, bread, and exhaust mixed with tiredness.

And if you yourself are incompatible with your view of the world?

And what is the subject but a stitching?

Once again you are the one who promotes artifice.

At 2 am on Friday, you burn with a maudlin premonition.

And rankings and rankings and badges and repetitions.

Lisa Robertson 's book Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip was named one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010 and was longlisted for the 2011 Warwick Prize. Her other books include Debbie: An Epic, The Men, The Weather, and Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. She is the 2014 Bain Swiggett Professor at Princeton University.

What is the condition of a problem if you are the problem?

You move into the distributive texture of an experimental protocol.

A bunch of uncanniness emerges.

At 20 hertz it becomes touch.

A concomitant gate.

At the middle of your life on a Sunday.

A dove, a crowned warbler in redwood, an alarm, it stops.

You set out from consciousness carrying only a small valise.

A downtown tree, the old sky, and still you want an inventory.

You were an intuition without a concept.

A gallery, a hospital, an hypothesis.

Pure gesture.

A gate made of carpet tape.

Even to prolixity you strayed.

A gate made of weatherproof tar.

Within the concept of the present, the figure-ground relationship effaced itself.

A gate made of a brick.

You are the silence they exchanged.

A gate made of a plinth.

It was a wide and empty Pacific place in too-strong light, with a general appearance of low-grade lack.

A gate made of a sofa bed and light bulbs.

You tried to see how the sky in 1972 comes up absent.

A gate made of artificial plants, vinyl, hinges and pins.

Smudgy, thick, cold.

A gate made of badminton shuttlecocks.

Is this a city?

A gate made of bejewelled barrettes, artificial peaches, a rotary phone.

And this too?

A gate made of bread and screws.

You believe women exist.

A gate made of buckets.

Nature mocks you.

A gate made of cotton, nylon, rubber and leather.

I see it on your face.

A gate made of exit signs, metal mesh, payroll sheets, chrome walkers.

I keep asking about the facts: tiredness, procrastination, doubt.

A gate made of flo...