Article
On Syzygy
September 14, 2011
For me, poetry was political, and had to be in not only what was said, but how it was said. Syzygy is an activist poem and also an act of resisting poetry. It engages with the concrete, the figurative, the lyrical and the rhetorical. I was especially interested in an ‘activism of the page’, in the sense that I felt all parts of the poem spoke to one another, in the field of the page, but also between pages, and across the entire book. Parts of the poems were boxed, others were blocked, still others were determining a relationship with the poem as a whole.
Syzygy was written not ‘about’ addiction, but out of addiction. Each section of the poem was written entire in itself, but with a ‘wanderer’ narrative driving the whole. It had a beginning and an end, but I literally used a Burroughs Naked Lunch technique of compositing at least parts of the whole. This was early days in terms of PC composition, and that was part of it, though most of the poem was handwritten first. The cut-and-paste was literally cut-and-paste. Play with form became a thing-in-itself, and my intention was to actually ‘offset’ what I thought Language poetry was doing, while making an image central to every rhetorical gesture.
As I usually do, I went out with my field-book and collated images and observations over a long period of time, and let the discursive build in response. I was involved in anti-logging, anti-nuclear and other ecologically orientated actions at the time, and these became part of the poem. But so did a crisis of aesthetics, and the poem clearly delineates this. For me, much of what was considered ugly was beautiful, and vice versa. I would explore this theme closely in works that followed. Also, there’s an engagement with disruption of pastoral motifs that was vital to me – at the time, I was also spending a few days each week living at my brother’s place down on a large farm (‘Happy Valley’!) next to the great Dryandra Forest.
In some ways, it’s an enactment of a vegan poetics within an anarchist framework, not only on the level of what and how something is said, but regarding the implications of any ‘word itself’. A single word is capable of inflicting great harm. And run together? How do stopping points, hiatuses, jumps, departures, sections, stanzas, repetitions . . . form itself . . . contribute in terms of a possible harm? Poetry for me was not benign.
In the end, the poem is an engagement with the ‘theory’ of poetry, with the ordering of a Western poetry that I found false and imposed: a colonisation of poetics. Whether it was rejecting Eliot, or Pound, or even Olson, it was also an engagement with them, living in unsplendid isolation, scoring drugs, battling fierce addiction, trying to preserve a relationship and raise a child, living on the dole or labouring on farms, and being incensed with what I perceived as the injustices of the world, especially with regard to how environment was treated and indigenous peoples disrespected. Ponge became an important touchstone for me: a bridge between a concrete ‘nature’ and a construct (the word I used back then) of words. I was interested in how he said what, I thought, didn’t really need saying, because it was already speaking for ‘itself’. I had my very odd ways of reading poetry that fascinated me.
But Syzygy, taken out of astronomy, is also a scientific and empirical poem interested in calibrations and gradations of the measurable world; it is very specific, and layout matters a lot. It takes about forty minutes to perform, with the first eight sections read in a few minutes (literally), and one word further on taking almost thirteen minutes to read. I am often asked: how do people know it’s read that way? Well, that’s a personal interpretation, but I do think the ‘codes’ for reading are therein, if people are interested.
I wrote a couple of follow-ups that ‘deal’ with many of the questions I’ve been asked about this poem over the years (especially within the two years after it was published): ‘Syzygytics’ and ‘Syzygytics: reprised’ (both appeared in my book of poetry Erratum Frame(d), late 1995). When it appeared, it created a little drama locally, and one associate from my past actually went to the publisher to claim it was evidence of my insanity and demand action be taken.
The irony is, I wrote Syzygy in a totally specific, planned, and orderly way. There was nothing random or unpredictable or ‘out of control’ about it. It went through many drafts. Even its ‘randomness’ was planned. To me, it was the sanest of poems.
Syzygy was written in 1992/1993 and published as a saddle-stitched book in 1993. It was written and constructed in a suburb on the edge of the city of Perth, at the base of the ‘hills’ (the Darling Scarp), that was built on a swamp and has since been renamed in an effort to make it more appealing. It was (and is) a working-class suburb where there is considerable (if hidden) poverty. Not far from there, up into the hills, the great jarrah forests begin, forests my father grew up in and my grandfather held in a kind of state fiefdom as a head state-forester. The area is still known as Kinsella on forestry maps.
Syzygy is a deconstructive poem in the literal sense – of that place, and place in general, and how place and language construct each other. It is a poem of sounds, in which words blur into sonic units, the inspirations are free jazz, punk, hardcore and thrash metal. An old friend had given me a tape with a recording of a bunch of saxophonists playing their instruments as they walked up and down spiral staircases. That was a trigger. At the time I was totally absorbed by Language poetry, especially the work of Lyn Hejinian, Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews and Ron Silliman, and I took from them resistance to a status quo of expressivity, of predictable syntax.For me, poetry was political, and had to be in not only what was said, but how it was said. Syzygy is an activist poem and also an act of resisting poetry. It engages with the concrete, the figurative, the lyrical and the rhetorical. I was especially interested in an ‘activism of the page’, in the sense that I felt all parts of the poem spoke to one another, in the field of the page, but also between pages, and across the entire book. Parts of the poems were boxed, others were blocked, still others were determining a relationship with the poem as a whole.
Syzygy was written not ‘about’ addiction, but out of addiction. Each section of the poem was written entire in itself, but with a ‘wanderer’ narrative driving the whole. It had a beginning and an end, but I literally used a Burroughs Naked Lunch technique of compositing at least parts of the whole. This was early days in terms of PC composition, and that was part of it, though most of the poem was handwritten first. The cut-and-paste was literally cut-and-paste. Play with form became a thing-in-itself, and my intention was to actually ‘offset’ what I thought Language poetry was doing, while making an image central to every rhetorical gesture.
As I usually do, I went out with my field-book and collated images and observations over a long period of time, and let the discursive build in response. I was involved in anti-logging, anti-nuclear and other ecologically orientated actions at the time, and these became part of the poem. But so did a crisis of aesthetics, and the poem clearly delineates this. For me, much of what was considered ugly was beautiful, and vice versa. I would explore this theme closely in works that followed. Also, there’s an engagement with disruption of pastoral motifs that was vital to me – at the time, I was also spending a few days each week living at my brother’s place down on a large farm (‘Happy Valley’!) next to the great Dryandra Forest.
In some ways, it’s an enactment of a vegan poetics within an anarchist framework, not only on the level of what and how something is said, but regarding the implications of any ‘word itself’. A single word is capable of inflicting great harm. And run together? How do stopping points, hiatuses, jumps, departures, sections, stanzas, repetitions . . . form itself . . . contribute in terms of a possible harm? Poetry for me was not benign.
In the end, the poem is an engagement with the ‘theory’ of poetry, with the ordering of a Western poetry that I found false and imposed: a colonisation of poetics. Whether it was rejecting Eliot, or Pound, or even Olson, it was also an engagement with them, living in unsplendid isolation, scoring drugs, battling fierce addiction, trying to preserve a relationship and raise a child, living on the dole or labouring on farms, and being incensed with what I perceived as the injustices of the world, especially with regard to how environment was treated and indigenous peoples disrespected. Ponge became an important touchstone for me: a bridge between a concrete ‘nature’ and a construct (the word I used back then) of words. I was interested in how he said what, I thought, didn’t really need saying, because it was already speaking for ‘itself’. I had my very odd ways of reading poetry that fascinated me.
But Syzygy, taken out of astronomy, is also a scientific and empirical poem interested in calibrations and gradations of the measurable world; it is very specific, and layout matters a lot. It takes about forty minutes to perform, with the first eight sections read in a few minutes (literally), and one word further on taking almost thirteen minutes to read. I am often asked: how do people know it’s read that way? Well, that’s a personal interpretation, but I do think the ‘codes’ for reading are therein, if people are interested.
I wrote a couple of follow-ups that ‘deal’ with many of the questions I’ve been asked about this poem over the years (especially within the two years after it was published): ‘Syzygytics’ and ‘Syzygytics: reprised’ (both appeared in my book of poetry Erratum Frame(d), late 1995). When it appeared, it created a little drama locally, and one associate from my past actually went to the publisher to claim it was evidence of my insanity and demand action be taken.
The irony is, I wrote Syzygy in a totally specific, planned, and orderly way. There was nothing random or unpredictable or ‘out of control’ about it. It went through many drafts. Even its ‘randomness’ was planned. To me, it was the sanest of poems.
© John Kinsella
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