His engagement with the variable foot of William Carlos Williams gives a new spring and all to George Tysh’s remarkable collection The Slip. For much of the book, especially the haunting title poem, an isolated phrase appears, then the next descends, and then another, each open space miming the way breath appears in human speech, as an aid to understanding and an absolute electric charge—at times one of volcanic intensity. The “slip” between word and meaning shimmers, whitens, makes the page a visual playbook of repetitions and variation. Then there are the quotes, gems from recent reading, so that, as in Spicer’s later books, the poem becomes a latticework of the great poetries of many Western tongues. Pessoa, Patti Smith, Irigaray, Deleuze, Isaac Babel, Rancière, Maeterlinck, Laura Riding, beloved Reverdy, Freud, The Castle, Jane Eyre —an aleatory charge animates this work, like the old Merce Cunningham method of drawing slips of paper from a sack to reveal and define the next dance move. Finally I read slips between words, the way you might drop a letter from one word, add a new one, the word pivots and turns and reveals new facets of beauty, meaning, terror. “Pole/ rhymes/ with/ stool,” he writes, in “Crosswords. ” “A/ rebus/ for/ abuse.” He’s an anagram kid, like me; you would be too, perhaps, were your name Tysh. It’s a wonderfully young book, vivacious yet wise and vatic, like Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle. And my God, so beautiful. —Kevin KillianIn Paris in the '60s, George Tysh edited the journal Blue Pig with poet David Ball, and collaborated with conceptual artists Christian Boltanski and Sarkis. From 1980 to 1991, he directed LINES: New Writing at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and (with poet Chris Tysh) edited In Camera, a project devoted to works of the sexual imaginary. He teaches film studies and poetics at the College for Creative Studies, Detroit.Book Information:· Paperback: 100 pages · Binding: Perfect-Bound · Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] · ISBN: 978-1-60964-217-4$16
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THE SLIP
GEORGE TYSH
B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ] Buffalo, New York
THE SLIP by George Tysh Copyright 2015 Published by BlazeVOX
[books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
without the publishers written permission, except for brief
quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza Cover and
interior art by Janet Hamrick First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-217-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937798 BlazeVOX [books] 131
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The Slip sometimes set or whole a quiet fear wears sleeves of
death dancers au pair a piano sounding the song we wish to hear
"All Mysteries" rumbles in evening air of rain tracing snow trails
to which we turn and ringing interrupts the dance
18
"the separation of movement from steady rhythm" an embryo from
an impresario plowing salting and then no matter "far from breaking
up the whole, false continuities are" still there a quiet fear
wearing sleeves of death's elegance aprs tout
19
2. open palm above the cup emanate waves of oolong peripheral
glimpse of wool cap as letters arrive resisting the impulse to move
from a state of lesser to greater complexity accidentally a leg
posed on this narrow plane of sun we (incomprehend) in the space
between words tracing steps
20
3. pursuit and capture confinement and restraint the pleasures
of the spirit are inexhaustible: to be stolen from a room at night
and taken to a faraway land to be held down somewhere what love
that has such people if we have it to explain the surprise is
"dutiful" as it drifts into further reaches unspoken
21
4. quiet rains over nothing and back to solace save the mode
water falling on iron hills a dragon sips welcome peace its icon
arranged on the bottle a product of a particular malady that thus
one may fear the throes of a "moist sweet" muffled by clothes or a
distinct teardrop in underbrush a hailstorm through brambles the
sighing of a penis in some forgotten hell
22
5. what is it of the untried American partner that would lead
"at this evening hour" to unseemly delight "I will leave you by
yourself white dream," it seemed to say the words were hardly out
of place in our murmuring and "shut the closet to conceal the
strange, wraithlike apparel it contained" who would believe "now, I
thought" these wrappings this incessant rain of longing and
stirring
23
6. "stepping forth" (an angel on a sidewalk) from clouds the
not- yet-scandal of the thing shown its gai savoir of specters in
heels thrown into illicit becoming as they undo the "specimen
dream"
24
7. the top of his head flies off in response to some screams it
matters not that she inflates a divan with every breath their storm
widens across the tranquil earth the heart throbs before the screen
goes dark under formal eaves a fan turns slowly to bubbling brooks
of laughter what is it that she now knows more? "or perhaps she
rules through the beauty you sometimes mention" at night
25
8. abstraction soaked in vinegar 23 seconds smoking weeds of an
illusion rising with the sun in showers there is no doubt and
floods the heart
26
9. "sophisticated women" brush unthinkable hair and stare wildly
at calamity as if playing with moss "illusions are more common than
changes in fortune" says the lady who "would stop you as you went
by" and "continue painting after the end of painting" pink lips and
toes
27
Nothing by You strange brew smoky surface and mahogany depths
your love-lone-liness after midnight to hear it in my sleep "We
move with ease from one to the other" nothing by you omitted
without discomfort that aerosol in the face of thought (precisely
what occasions) a persistent odor of whatever you like between
women this our doing as night falls into night out of sleep
(gender, femmes, "race," etc.)
28
building casts a partial shadow there are cars and sun evidence
of ignorance hooks in stays a voice in darkness calling id to idiot
wanter to wanker to my place at the farther wall (modr) noble
sentimental supple elemental practiced joy "Along the way our
lives... repeatedly changed"
