Cheryl Pallant
Below is the writing about my process of creating my book of poetry, UNCOMMON GRAMMAR CLOTH, which is based on CI. Several from the collection have already appeared in literary journals in the U.S., and the book is scheduled for release either later this year or early 2001.
Visceral responses to self, other, and the environment are familiar experiences for a practitioner of CI. While dancing, the body reveals itself in play with the many impulses that move in, out, and around its flesh. A devotee of this dance form for over 14 years, I let it take me to the edges of what I know and launch me into great mysteries, altering me in the process. CI being a dance about relationships between bodies, I have been continually challenged by its influence on one relationship in particular, my writing.
Repeatedly throughout college, I was told that writing and dancing exist in separate worlds and never the two shall meet. This hasty dismissal set into motion my need to disprove this claim. Since then, I have merged the forms in performance art, performance poetry, ritual, and writing. The latest result of my explorations is UNCOMMON GRAMMAR CLOTH (UCG), a collection of experimental poetry. I wanted the bliss that often accompanies my dancing CI, my senses heightened from a concentrated awareness of each moment. I wanted writing that was immediate and pliant, not distanced from experience. I did not want to chase thoughts or feelings, which contributes to disembodiment, but to let each word arise from my body like sweat. In the same way that my dancing body directly responds to and reflects its many impulses, I wanted embodied words that leap and bend with a similar visceral spontaneity, to achieve, in effect, an improvisational dance in words. The writing had to be the experience itself.
Typically writing is one step removed from experience. We write about an event or feeling, for instance, from last year or an hour ago. In UCG, the writing is the event itself, rooted in an improvisational awareness of the ever-changing moment. It is not a translation of an experience, but writing arising closer to its primal beginning, to our felt and fleeting self.
When dancing, I balance between allowing and guiding, being not doing. My aim is to reveal the moment in its becoming and not move the dance to a preconceived notion. In CI, our bodies press, roll, lift, fly, spiral, at any moment slowing, speeding, or changing direction. The language of UCG moves similarly, playing with patterns of sound, meaning, and imagery. Expected language patterns turn suddenly, embracing spontaneous associations. Meaning may be one thing, or it may be many. Thought may be linear or polyvocal. Words follow their own order, riding on breath, pulse, pause, and play.
13.
wanting something more. wanting something more is less than what is haved as two. wanting having. having had wants more. having had rarely satisfies. taste dissipates, bowels evacuate emptying to void check it out, void make it out, void wanting want. like your lips like your sips, like your liking liking me. i despise being in need, being having been. i despise being needing when having need rarely satisfies. to put it another way, to place it in a separate drawer, to separate the drawn from the written, the past tense present in ease of being. be all you can having been. rearing all passing tensely into easily in the left lane bowled down. bow before the magistrate, roaring your better side rowing in the splash. lash out as by necessity without frump without pulling in the butt ox pulling cart it away. many roads later many paths now. many roads later many paths now. tiptoe. skip. lay flat grounded in cool clover a cool lover a soon to be. rock on, amigo. rock on.
when too long having been needs by necessity and hasn't had, the i which may have been ceases and fades into someone's nostalgia. like in a photograph, like in a journal of one's undoing done in ink smeared into blurry lines dropped into thoughts evaporated. having been ceases. having been once or twice, remembering liking like yesterday's folded pajamas, like a hot fudge saturday, like elbowing me where it likes to like wanting by necessity by biology by hormonally the twain shall meet. but i missed the twain, heard it choo-choo away, or i dismissed the meet needing taking me elsewhere. so heart to figure, like, go, dude and duddettes with your raisins in the sun with your noses in air conditioned orifices. catch my drifting away. catch my cold outside. catch my thrust up imperious salutation.
can't always be a smile. can't always be having had when wanting needs less difference, less indifference, wanting needs stark yes unblanketed and unflanneled. can you cover me when i'm left out. can you cover me when breezing in. can the clover left outside brought in be here be now be here now without ouch pinch squeeze. without ouch pinch squeeze. without ouch pinch teasing the here and now. or maybe, maybe capitalize OUCH to repeat as often as OUCH, to mince meet often, to often upon occasion when not occupied with done. some despise livers, except when dying, except when their own salvation depends, when needs reduced to minimum, when everything is exactly not needed by necessity. that's where i need to get. that's where gotten halves into whole. in the tomorrow of today, in the twilight of brilliance, the sleep of waking, my eyes knowing only open.
31.
to write one cannot think. to sleep one cannot drink. to write one two three blend sounds me out off centered marginally by millimeters measured without spoonful of sugar the medicine drowns me. this sweet imagining. this neat chaos of blur frowns and scoffs and wading between reefs and thighs, churn of circadian rhythms. bowing before the crown of this process. stop. open to the flow of this recess receding and advance, commence, and tweet, tweet, tweet. stop. go. go on. go off hesitantly. hands in pockets, skirting hiking up.
no one here but homegrown. no one spared but moan as loud as can, as proud as man pounding chest, as planet circling ego or however you go, have gone before, have placed it on the mantle, have carried it off the mantle, have carried it off with such finesse that no one questions and many imitate, hoping for a similar scope, sloping down their own valley to view the tiny people, the spineless people, those pining for brighter skies, fuller bellies, larger cars. park you habits at the door. hold your rabbits by the ears. mark your calendars with off color remarks. white out later. fight it out latter. find out latter the extended damage extending your life shortening your breath shortening your hair a cut above the shoulder, a cut above the rest it on the mantle or carry it to the rest home, the best home, the hone in on the prairie and canary my thought, be wary of the onslaught of images sublime from medieval times, from somewhere between evil and goodness gracious. thanks and welcome and arrivederci and pontiac and rutabaga. whasa' matta'? got corn between your toes, string between your teeth, strung out between a rock and a heart place, a hearth flaming wildly and one long cooled, so cool, dude, like a frozen pot pie, like a husband and a why not, a tied knot, a sly drifter, a cry from the passage of time, a knock upon awareness's door which floors you.
open windows to draft a new message, to craft in the gentle waves or the turbulent engine revving, striving, combusting. a compost of the mind is thought from every where, all hairs, pointing fingers, easy strides and less extreme fractures of significant ribbing me where it counts, tickling skin, shimmy and shine, shimmy and shine. this, a matter of posture. this, a matter of putting to pasture thoughts dead-ended, hairs split, borrowings shelved into forgotten origins, wheat never harvested, crops rotted, cops spotting erroneous displays of disingenuity, an engine stalled, tires flattened or rubbish, rubbish, rubbish piled high carpet, an eye sore, an earth sore, eventually a musical score for off off broadway, those thinking they're on to something, put off by typical turn on, those left in the right of center stage, those staging their fears, those careening careers, tired, excited, or open windowed, cooled by the craft.
92.
his my. the wetness of dry. the tension in tenacity and release of braided hair. we wept. we lingered in shadow to no longer conceal the hidden, to voice the forgotten and muted, to unravel the twine. her my. the moisture of heat. the ease of giving in, giving away, surrendering every last first, each middle and final start, cotton and suede, shouts whispering misgivings, the caress of yes. we plummeted, fell from the highest peaking, sinking into the deepest feel as casting out, net again, to outlive the habitual burn, the scar that refuses, the toppled tree. he tipped me a twenty dollar bill. she bullied him with kindness. they yinned and yanged, zipped and zoomed, hippity hoppity how. oh, shekinah of delight, oh buddha body, oh twirled dervish. we as they devour the caress and light up the moon. they as we slice pieces into fragments to make whole holy. who can believe such deceptions when stream rants otherwise in weedy glory, in needless desire of restless sleep and dreaming awake. our we. they together it alone. slam softly into hope and bounce off wailing the unspeakable mention, pardon me who is her to him against the wail sleeping in bedlam and peace. i greet you in farewell. you goodbye to returning and leave impressions, residual sounds, echoes, vibrations that color these pages and maintain the want of earthsky oceanrest.
Cheryl Pallant lives in Richmond Virginia and teaches in the dance and English departments of Virginia Commonwealth University. Uncommon Grammar Cloth is due out this year through Turtlemoon Books. Cheryl can be reached at cpallant@titan.vcu.edu
vol 6 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3&4 - 2003 vol 5 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2002 vol 4 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2001 vol 3 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 2000 vol 2 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 1999 vol 1 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3 - ed 4 - 1998 |
e m a i l - <Proximity> |