Ingeborg Bachmann

What drove Ingeborg Bachmann’s writing, she once told an interviewer, was an  

Harlem

The clouds unbuckle the wooden beams
as rain seeps through the shafts and drains.
It ricochets down fire escapes
and strums a box of music.

The ebony city rolls her ivory eyes.
She turns a corner and flees the world.
The rhythm of rain infiltrates the silence.
The rain-blues are all left behind.

                            Translated from German by Paul Weinfield

Eugène Guillevic

 

Parallel Lines

We go out, the space is vast.
We walk beside each other.
We want to talk.

But what each one relates,
the other already knows.

For from the beginning,
blotted out, forgotten,
it has been the same adventure.

And in our dreams, we meet.
We love, we complete each other.

But no one ever journeys farther
than into himself or another.

                                            Translated from French by Paul Weinfield

Isidore Isou

 

Isadore Isou

B Innovation I 

Destruction of WORDS for LETTERS

ISIDORE ISOU    Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants 
		  the development of transmissions where nothing is
                  lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By 
		  the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves.
ISIDORE ISOU    Begins the destruction of words for letters.
ISIDORE ISOU    Wants letters to pull in among themselves all desires.
ISIDORE ISOU    Makes people stop using foregone conclusions, words.
ISIDORE ISOU    Shows another way out between WORDS and RENUNCIATION:
                   LETTERS. He will create emotions against language, for the
                   pleasure of the tongue.
          	It consists of teaching that letters have a destination
		   other than words.
ISOU            Will unmake words into their letters.
                Each poet will integrate everything into Everything
                Everything must be revealed by letters.
POETRY CAN NO LONGER BE REMADE.

ISIDORE ISOU IS STARTING
     A NEW VEIN OF LYRICISM.
           Anyone who can not leave words behind can stay back with them!




C Innovation II: The Order of Letters 

This does not mean    destroying words for other words.
               	      Nor forging notions to specify their nuances.
                      Nor mixing terms to make them hold more meaning.
But it does mean      TAKING ALL LETTERS AS A WHOLE; UNFOLDING BEFORE DAZZLED
               		SPECTATORS MARVELS CREATED FROM LETTERS (DEBRIS FROM 
			THE DESTRUCTION);
               	      CREATING AN ARCHITECTURE OF LETTRIC RHYTHMS; 
		      ACCUMULATING FLUCTUATING LETTERS IN A PRECISE FRAME; 
		      ELABORATING SPLENDIDLY THE CUSTOMARY COOING; 
		      COAGULATING THE CRUMBS OF LETTERS FOR A REAL MEAL; 
		      RESUSCITATING THE JUMBLE IN A DENSER ORDER;
               	      MAKING UNDERSTANDABLE AND TANGIBLE THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 
		        AND VAGUE; CONCRETIZING SILENCE;
                        WRITING THE NOTHINGNESS.
It is                 the role of the poet to advance toward subversive 
                      sources.
                      the obligation of the poet to advance in the black and 
		      burdened depths of the unknown.
                      the craft of the poet to open one more treasure-room 
		      door for the common man.
There will be a poet's message in new signs.  The ordering of letters is called:
            LETTERISM.
      It is not a poetic school, but a solitary attitude.
      AT THIS MOMENT: LETTERISM = ISIDORE ISOU.
      Isou is awaiting his successors in poetry!
      (Do they already exist somewhere, ready to burst forth into history 
      through books?)
EXCUSES FOR WORDS INTRODUCED INTO LITERATURE
      There are things which are existent only in the strength of their name.
      there are others which exist, but lacking a name are unacknowledged.
            Every idea needs a calling card to make itself known.
            Ideas are known by the name of their creator.
      It is more objective to name them after themselves.
            LETTERISM IS AN IDEA THAT
            WILL BE LAMENTED BY ITS REPUTATION
      Letterics is a material that can always be demonstrated. 
      Letterics seeds already existing:
            NONSENSE WORDS;
            WORDS WITH HIDDEN MEANINGS IN THEIR LETTERS;
            ONOMATOPOEIAS.
      If this material existed before, it didn't have a name to recognize it by. 
      Letterics works will be those made entirely out of this element, but with
            suitable rules and genres!
      The word exists and has the right to perpetuate itself.
      ISOU IS CALLING ATTENTION TO ITS EXISTENCE.
      It is up to the Letterist to develop Letterism. 
            Letterism is offering a DIFFERENT poetry.
            LETTERISM imposes a NEW POETRY. 

            THE LETTERIC AVALANCHE IS ANNOUNCED. 

Isadore Isou

 Still from the Orson Welles 1955 documentary film Around the World with Orson Welles, showing Maurice Lemaître (left) Isidore Isou (center) and Welles (right), photo by the author.

MANIFESTO OF LETTERIST POETRY

A Commonplaces about Words

Still IV WORDS allow psychic alterations to disappear.

Speech resists effervescence. Notions require expansion to equivalent formulas. WORDS Fracture our rhythm. by their Assassinate sensitivity. mechanism, Thoughtlessly uniform fossilization, tortured inspiration. stability Twist tensions. and aging Reveal poetic exaltations as useless. Create politeness. Invent diplomats. Promote the use of analogies Substitute for true emissions. Pathetic V If one economizes on the riches of the soul, one dries up the left-over along with the words. Still V Prevent the flow from molding itself on the cosmos. Form species in sentiments. WORDS Destroy sinuosities. Result from the need to determine things. Help the elderly remember by forcing the young to forget. Pathetic VI Every victory of the young has been a victory over words. Every victory over words has been a fresh, young victory. Still VI Summarize without knowing how to receive

Yannis Ritsos

 

In the Depths

He saw the diver stir deep down in the water
with soft, carnal movements. Beyond 
he saw the clay penis and the statue's feet  
stepping firmly on the sea floor. And he also saw
the clay woman spread out, waiting,  
one knee slightly raised, with a red,
totally red fish on her belly. Except 
that the seaweed didn't move, there was no seaweed,  
and the coin they threw in from above descended slowly
until it stopped a hand's width from the woman's mouth.  

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990): In the Depths, 1971, from The Wall Inside the Mirror, translated by Edmund Keeley in Yannis Ritsos: Exile and Return, Selected Poems 1967-1974, 1985

Yannis Ritsos

The Time Dimension

Hallway, door, hallway, door; half-light; afternoon leaning toward dusk. All the doors
open to the far end. People made of plaster, bent over,  are sitting alone, each to a bench. The last, 
in the innermost hallway, barely distinguishable  like the head of a pin:
......................................................................................"Distance," he was saying, "neutralizes   

volume, maybe pain as well." That's what he was saying.
Nobody believed him or even paid attention to him. On the right,  through the dust-covered, barred window,
you could see, passing by under artificial noon sunshine,  a tall, immense bus full of people on an excursion,
plaster boys, plaster girls with spearguns,  with those long plastic flippers,
very blue or yellow, hanging in the windows.

(Was the absence of a conclusion, then, the essence?)

                                                                                            translated by Edmund Keeley

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1980): The Time Dimension, 1971, from The Wall Inside the Mirror, 1974, in Exile and Return: Selected Poems 1967-1974, translated by Edmund Keeley, 1985