Monday, August 3, 2020

“Prelude to Bi / sym / me / try” by DENISE LOW

Prelude to Bi / sym / me / try
By Denise Low
(August 2020)
Size: 1-7/8” x 2.2.5”


I would rather be an artist, but my jerky hands cause poor handwriting and drawing ability. Words must suffice, most often. But still I desire to replicate my surroundings, and so from my teens I have kept journals with inelegant calligraphy, glyphs, watercolor washes, and rough sketches. They map the slippage between ideas and embodiment. The mistakes are my honesty. This tiny book for Eileen R. Tabios sits in a timeline among my other journals. All archive sediments of thought. Robert Smithson writes, “One’s mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion” (82). This is detritus. Inscribing paper is a process that follows principles of physics and geology. 



Twin pages of books parallel the mind’s cataloguing system of perception and memory, a continuous interaction. Louise Gluck has the brilliant lines ““We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.” The second and subsequent encounters with any experience are metaphorical. A  word approximates a category, with adjectives adding nuance. Each time I taste cinnamon, I recall all previous sticks of rolled bark, powders, granules, mixtures with sugar crystals, and the spice tins and bottles used as cinnamon containers. Poems are uneven reflections of reality, aligned somewhat like the bisymmetry of left hand and right (write?) hand. Mittens are bisymmetrical also. For the last 20 years I have worked with 19th century Northern Cheyenne texts formed with narrative, connotative glyphs. These influence this small book.


Layers of paper accumulate in a yellow folder by my desk. They often reference bisymmetry in all its guises—mirrors, Leonardo da Vinci’s coded handwriting, mementoes, hands, lovers, photographs, paintings. Mixed heritages in our family bloodlines is another reference—with use of some Tsalagi / Cherokee syllabary and much of the Roman alphabet. Excerpts from this collection appear here, altered by the requirements of physicality, in this case miniaturization and a Pilot pen. Bi / sym / me / try is an organic and inorganic project with false starts, approximations, antecedents, consequences, hopes. My mind is on this white page. Your mind is making some version of a duplicate as you read this. Greetings.


Bi
sym
me
try

By Denise Dotson Low
Fitch Mountain, 2020

for Eileen R. Tabios

Excerpts [from]:
Reflections on Bisymmetry

A shining
a mirror’s 
spinning face—

imparts
difference,
inexact
symmetry.

A movie is a seamless
mirror and false.

Reality has no beginning
and multiple endings
all hidden
but one.

“I have always preferred
the reflection of life
to life itself.”
Francis Truffaut

These inked 
letters
have
hinges.

Leonardo da Vinci wore
backwards script with
his left hand. In a mirror
the letters reverse to
normal order.
D.L.     L. D. 

Which of my
hands is
Lenape / Munsee?

Which of
my hands
is British /
German?

My heart on the left side
has a parallel heart
on the right side
too fragile to detect.

“We look at the world
once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.”
 Louise Gluck

At night I hear
lullabies from a 
second mother 
(Eve)     (Lilith)




Memento

Mother disappears past walls
of cut-up puzzles folded 
among jumbled heights—                
no lullabies but instead, pauses.

In the upstairs room under elms
stars pelt the glass.
Hunger returns. Under my chin
white ruffles loop endlessly.

The curved bassinet I remember 
to this day, its dusty pink,
how I breathed
within its woven wicker.

Later on the back porch
I saw where she stored it 
where generations later
I return.



69
Not a bisymmetrical     sex act
only simple     whole numbers

numeric anagram     flipped 
divisible by three     not a three-way

not equals     not touching.
not spooning     but nearly so

mathematics’     double entendre
shorthand     proposition

mated nude     stick figures
squiggle lines     curlicued

yoked figures     unconsummated
integers          always / never lovers     



Left Brain / Right Brain 

The right hand connects to the left hemisphere. Shazam!
left hand to the right with stained-glass tangerines
assembled by the wizard cranking my Oz brain.

The top of the heart connects to lower chambers,
a folded paperdoll with names of all my lovers
tattooed in cursive spider veins no one can read.

The body rises like a skyline tower, torso and left leg,
right leg. A chancy profile like cards: “The right-hand 
self / devoted to architecture / the left-hand self not.” 

The left hand cuts playing cards thick, beat ‘em quick. 
Cut them thin, bound to win. A left-handed cut for Tarot 
Arcana shows fate. A right-handed cut decodes the stars.

Tell the daydreams. Forget the nightmares. Travel and return
at a secret ratio hidden in all algebra problems. Tell me,
how fast does a three-pound brain speed into the next train?



[Excerpts from “Lost”]
Lost 1
Lover’s absence
            2 nights gone:
            streetlight as sun,
            moon, & friend.

Lost 2
Lover’s presence:
            2 nights returned
            sun lights streets,
            diamonds, & moon.



[Excerpts from] First Contact 

Vineland     Markland     Forestland
Anno / Domin / i     Domin / ion     Domin / ate

(My     Lenape / Munsee     blood runs     blends.)

Start with     first blow     first     bellow.

Irish     traveler     not even      the first.
Saint Brendan     512-520 A.D.
Vines suitable     for wine,”     he wrote.
milch / milk     traded for furs     before they     would leave.
“Skraelings,”     those who     wear skins.
New     Found     Land.

Two worlds     [oceans between]     my grandfather     spanned.
“They     encountered     one another     and fought,”     Erik the Red.



[Excerpts from “Hands”]

Hands 1
Chaco Canyon: 
The hand’s thumb protrudes left of a line
bisecting vertically the palm.

Hands 2
Remember     Sequoyah     So-whi-li     George Gist     [Cherokee]
He assembled     the Tsalagi [Cherokee]     syllabary
and was     prosecuted     as a witch.     As punishment
they cut off     his fingertips     but left     his thumbs.

Hands 3
My wand releases     spells of letters.

Hands 4
I hold a hand mirror     to reflect the past
exactly halfway.

Hands 5
My stubby thumb     is a 2nd tongue.
How are you? Do-i-ju? [Cherokee]
Comment allez     vous?      ¿Como esta? 
My clumsy plume says     hello.

Hands 6
Its pale knuckle     wrinkles smooth
when my thumb     reaches around
the pen to a     cradle of fingers—
automatic stab-glide-loop
of cursive and dots. . . .




[Excerpts from] “Kaw Valley Wings”

Kaw River Wings 1
My armspan     is a forgotten     measure
line a cubit—     half-length     of a hand.

Kaw Valley Wings 2
Below live     the mussels     Ouichita     Pink Paper
with wings     of thin shell.

Kaw Valley Wings 3
Buzzard shadows     stencil fog
overlapping     an eagle’s     black wings.

Kaw Valley Wings 4
My shoulderblades     are scaffolds
for matched     wings.

*
My grandmother’s grandfather
Big Miller fought Lenape /
Munsees and killed.

My Lenape /Munsee great-
grandfathers / uncles killed
Big John Miller.

*
I mourn
my [Lenape] relations
killed at Gnadenhutten, Ohio,
March, 1782.
*
I mourn
Big Miller
killed in Ohio, 1784.



Ambidextrous
Let my left eye solve quadratic equations
and my right eye parse Picasso.
Let me sign the check upside down with my right hand
rightside up with my left.
Let me read traffic signs blindfolded.
No, just kidding. Let me brake left-footed or right.
Let me track two rabbits to the compost pile
Let me aim left-eyed and shoot right-handed.
Let me watch sunrise and offer tobacco smoke.
Let me offer tobacco smoke at moonrise.



[Variations on] What Line

Within my child’s palm
cross: life line
     love line =
croix mystique
     X

What moment did you grip
     my hand and not let go?

These I hold onto”
     gray Sonoma rocks
with porcelain threads
     shot through

Earthquakes     gently rock
The Geysers’     crazed
fractures in     land from
the San Andreas     strike-slip
fault line     throughway
North ←     South     →

What line     changes
our side     to theirs?



[Untitled]
Electrical     current     pulses—
my     heartbeats.



Variations on Keening
"We would watch him look up and his face go keen.”
William Stafford

My father’s face went keen. Cicadas droned as
darkness walled us in. His eyes were echoes

on fire. He spoke kennings, his wise irises
cobalt blue. Second-sight prophet’s eyes

proved his cutting tools. Dark fathoms 
lay buried in river mud. His eyes pierced.

Father was a fisher of meat. We ate animal kin
darkening love with tang. Beauty snares eyes.

A sunfish reddens under a keen-bladed knife. 
Sequin scales flake. Its eyes darken into a stare

beyond ken. I keen. My father’s twin-star eyes 
gaze equally into and out of the dark. 




[Excerpts from] Portal
                                    after Louise Gluck

Enter Solstice
“What follows the light
is what precedes.”
Cross the threshold
of ghosts incarnate.



Lost
Lost? Yes, again the stars fall
on 13th Street where a house, now demolished,
was my home. I was young.

Funeral dirges sound from the building
and hearses ferry the dead. I was young
and swung on the backyard tire swing

one late October afternoon under red leaves
drifting like red stars to my feet.

I was young and then was gone like the house.
An old woman remains in my place.



[Variations on] Buffalo Jump

The cedar-lined hill is a kill 
site where giants died.

At the buffalo jump past Topeka
we are almost home.

below lie scattered bones
cross-hatched by flint
knives and scrapers.

A Northern Cheyenne elder
told us the land changes—
just more slowly.

In recent years more cedars
grow here & unbroken
stands of bluestem.

At nightfall the Milky Way spiral 
releases all the ghosts.

Afternoon sun hunkers
on a single line
of fallen sky. Forever.





Geographic Cure

Take me to bed where we no longer repose.
I left to go hiking the beach’s
intricate crisps.

Pinking-shears cut hippy Brazil
to fit Africa’s curved Atlantic harbor
one smooth coast.

The Arctic and Antarctica 
shadow each other. Winter is summer,
summer winter.

I touch your everyday skin of netted pores 
A quick flip I touch wet plum: 
your inside mouth

Fractals of mollusks litter a shoreline.
Trace the sanded ledge where
we once settled in salt.




[Excerpts from] Bisymmetry
*
I open a map     scaled one-to-one,
read it as fast as I can but     cannot
catch up with     Jorge Luis Borges
*
Press my torso     into garden mud
for a full imprint.     Voilà.
*
Scatter Pompeii     ashes over a vase. 
Wait 2000 years.     Voilà.


*************
Notes: 
*Excerpts from “Reflections on Bisymmetry”: Lenape and Munsee are bands of Indigenous people also known as Delawares. Three federally recognized Delaware nations exist, a number of state-recognized, and many unaffiliated in the diaspora of this great people originally located in places now known as New York and New Jersey. My memoir The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) describes my heritages. The quotation from Louise Gluck is from the poem Nostos, from her book Meadowlands (Harper Collins).
*”Left Brain / Right Brain” incorporates a quotation from Karla Kelsey from her book Of Sphere Essay Press), p. 13.
*Excerpts from “First Contact”: The Saga of Erik the Red quotations are from the 1880 translation by J. Sephton from the original Icelandic ’Eiríks saga rauða’.https://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en . It was published as “First Contact: Interglacial Sagas” on Joe Harrington’s blog Writing Out of Time: Creative Writing & Climate Chaos (Dec. 16, 2019).
*Excerpts from “Hands”: The history of Sequoyah / So-whi-li being punished for creating a written form of Cherokee / Tsalagi first came to me in an oral story by an elder., I have read of this mutilation in Traveller Bird’s Tell Them They Lie: The Sequoyah Myth (Los Angeles: Westernlore Publishers, 1971, p. 11) and further discussion in “America’s Histories Revisited: The Case of ‘Tell Them They Lie,’” by Susan Kalter, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 25, no. 3 (Summer 2001): pp. 329-351. A previous written form had been misused by a group of Cherokees, which made this new form a possible danger.
*Gnadenhutten is one of many massacres of Delaware peoples during their four-hundred-plus years of contact with Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, French, British, and U.S. settlers. My fifth-great grandfather John Cornelius Miller and his wife Hannah (Nancy) Ross’s relatives had ties to the Washington County, Pennsylvania militia who enacted the outrage at Gnadenhutten against pacifist, Christianized Delawares, some of whom may have been my relatives. Two years later, Delawares killed John C. Miller, whom they called “Big Miller.”  
*”Variations on Keening”: The quotation from William Stafford is from “Listening,” The What It Is: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf, 1998), 63.
*Excerpts from “Portal” respond to Louise Gluck’s poem “Solstice,” The Seven Ages (ECCO, 2001), p. 10.
*Excerpts from “Bisymmetry” references an idea expressed by Jorge Luis Borges in "On Exactitude in Science," a short story published in A Universal History of Infamy (translated by Norman Thomas de Giovanni), Penguin Books, London, 1975. Wikipedia has a useful discussion of its antecedents in Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno Concludedand other publication history. 

*****

Denise Low, former Kansas Poet Laureate, has won recognition for her poetry from Red Mountain Press, Kansas Notable Books (3 awards), 6 Pushcart Prize nominations, Best of the Net nomination, Poetry Society of America, and others. She has recent verse in The Sun, New Letters, Chariton Review, Numéro Cinq, Virginia Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, Apogee, and numerous anthologies. Recent books are from the University of Nebraska Press, Red Mountain Press, and  Spartan Press. She is featured on websites of the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud (NEA selection for 2018-19), and Academy of American Poets. Low teaches in Baker University’s School of Professional and Graduate Studies. From 2008-2012 She served on the executive board of trustees, including one year as president, for the Associated Writers and Writing Programs. www.deniselow.net  

~~

The Miniature Book Library is grateful for her gift-book!








1 comment:

  1. Wow, Denise,what innovative ideas.The way you blend your Lenape/Munsee and British/German heritages into bicameral mind theory impressed me. Wish I would've written this. :)

    ReplyDelete