Tuesday, January 24, 2006

A few new links at right, including an experimental webzine new to me: zafusy. In honor of Zukofsky's birthday(s), I'm pleased to point to "Zukofsky's A - 23/ a start at an antonymical transliteration" by Stephen Vincent: a brilliant topsy-turvy sort of close reading. Here's the original for comparison purposes:
An unforeseen delight a round
beginning ardent; to end blest
presence less than nothing thrives:
a world worn in whose
happiest reins preempt their histories

which cannot help or hurt
a foreseen curve where many
loci would dispose and and's
compound creature and creature together.
Each lamp casts its shadow

after its lampshade—concentric—flared-
flower—hurricane chimney—midnight blue
hair of intermittent allayed water
most of such gossamer scarcely
moved in spirit to word

what hurries? why hurry? wit's
but the fog, the literal
senses move in light's song
modesty cannot force, blind call
its own, nor self-effaced fled

to woods perpend without pride
stone into lotus
. The least love
lasts, the troubled heart foregoes
its sigh .. upon a time ..
going a way is here

as if a child sings
a li'l bit of doggy
heaven
, teased by nestling eyes
of white little furry cat
their toy fascination of lazulite

crystal, sunlight of sunlight, older
desire chances naming, thought smiling
no more than hungerpang aged
eating cures
: it persists, acts
whiteness with—without—sweetness or

invoked equisetum—horse + bristle
(field horsetail)
research won't guarantee;
tongues commonly inaccurate talk viable
one to one, ear to
eye loving song greater than

anything—unhappiness happiness moves too
susceptible, and in extended world
where does the right thumb
throb—how far from a
room's wall, from its floor—
Vincent's antonyms discover a more fleshly Zukofsky in "A-23"—not that Zuk isn't always concerned with the senses, but it's astounding to see "moved in spirit to word" become "The slow deprived mute tongue" or "happiest reins preempt their histories // which cannot help or hurt" become "Walloped, unloosed, flesh one's future: // The bluff, ridges red, rib boned." (And Zukofsky's horses become John Ford's horses on that red ridged bluff.) Vary intestining, as Pound might say.

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