The Public World is admittedly impossible to render/comment on, and it is not for the faint reader. If ever there were a writer looking to reciprocate one really, she would write this. An aware mind (one at ease with paradox) with a curiosity/creativity about language will find the Public World challenging, exhilarating, smiling, comforting -- changing.
Here, writing (reading) is "As oneself seeing, inside one's flesh, not on the eyes -- one's seeing dye inside." This means there is reflection, there is series; yet also there is a dissolving of the reflective surface, of that being reflected, of there ever existing a series. I must admit that a reader will be invigorated in their reading if they have prior acquaintance with Buddhism (Nagarjuna especially) or any "doctrine" of "no-self" (not a "doctrine" at all: a destruction of all philosophical views, definitions, and procedures (Scalapino references this on the first page as an emphasis of her work)) -- "Authority is ignorance." (A suggestion:) search Amazon for authors Wei Wu Wei (or Ramana Maharshi) for one of many "modern" renderings of this "doctrine" -- though perhaps "The Public World" is a rendering itself?
Syntactically Impermanence is "As series which does not qualify itself, while simply continuing. In life. Action of theirs." Essays reflect on the nature of experience, 'sight'/seeing, time/writing, mind as phenomena -- seriality, events, causality, and structure. While certain essays/poems focus on certain phenomena (including a defensive of experimental poetry, using Creeley, Howe, and herself among others), upon completing the book one knows each threads are inseparable, and that each piece is pervaded with these themes. And above all, it is a reflection of/on/as the eyelidless eye seeing phenomena/seriality/self. The overall effect is spectacular, and genius. "(Parts don't refer back. They just start.)" -- the words embody.
Scalapino yearns for the present, emotionally and intellectually, each solely; she yearns for the Way, and (in my humbled opinion) she presents it. She challenges/asks us: "This occurs easily by simply giving up one's mind -- and the outside -- not hanging on. (Yet one has to hang on to write it?)" As a writer myself, and a student of the spiritual, this speaks directly to my heart (must "I" hang on to "this" to write "it"?) and if you are patient and willing to investigate 'your' reality, this collection of poetry from Scalapino will surely be a treat.
As Scalapino says, "the act of reading is not an illustration of the text's substance but itself a movement." This is a book about events and their relation or non-relation. I agree with Bernstein (commenting on back flap) when he says this book, "challenges us to rethink habituated forms of perceptions" -- a drastic understatement (I think), but precise. If one goes in, one will come in. This writing "is conjecture" and surely is doing "the work of philosophy." I thought the longer poems, "As: All Occurrence in Structure, Unseen--(Deer Night)," and "Friendship," are the shining highlights in many respects, and make this volume worth the purchase alone. But taken in its entirety, perhaps poured over, this book will freshen eyes, and not for your sake, but for 'sight' itself.
A blessing; this is writing one (may/must) let happen to one. All quotations here are from the book itself, my trying in vain to convey to a prospective buyer the magnanimity of even pieces -- be assured the book is a wonder for the wonderer. And I must end with an excerpt from "Friendship":
----
the mind going after oneself
seen for the first time before me
is formed even--
helping one seeing the isolated self
other one isn't in lines crawling
one isn't either being that other
one nor their not being there then
[at the same time]
----
other one isn't in lines crawling
or is
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2008
