Lorinne Niedecker with some friends at Pleasant Lake
from “Advice to Myself”
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.—Louise Erdrich
(Happy b-day, L.E.)
They had agreed that the sign was particular precisely because arbitrary
and that it included the potential for (carried the sign of) its own dis-
solution, and that there was a micro-syntax below the order of the sen-
tence and even of the word, and that in the story the subject disappears it
never disappears. 1963: only one of the two had the gift of memory.
Equally one could think of a larger syntax, e.g. the word-as-book propos-
ing always the book-as-word. And of course still larger.
Beginning and ending. As a work begins and ends itself or begins and re-
begins or starts and stops. Ideas as elements of the working not as propo-
sitions of a work, even in a propositional art. (Someone said someone
thought.)
That is, snow
a) is
b) is not
falling - check neither or both.
“Not That Lake,” by Dara Wier.
(Source: thecontinentalreview.com)