<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><div dir="ltr"><div style="text-align:center"><b><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><i>The Differences </i>(Pressed Wafer Editions) by Patrick Morrissey</font></font></b></div><div class="gmail_quote"><br><div dir="ltr"><div style="text-align:center"><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> Reviewed by Shamala Gallagher</font></font></p></div><div style="text-align:justify"><p><br></p></div><div style="text-align:justify"><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif">
I believe in poetry because it is a refuge for the quiet aspect of
awareness. It does not follow the rules of the rest of the spectacle. It
does not dazzle in the conventional sense, and it has small and dubious
traffic with that flip side of dazzle, money. “The peculiarity of
poetry appears to us to lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a
listener,” wrote John Stuart Mill in “Thoughts on Poetry and its
Varieties.” This is a Romantic notion and, in our age of high dazzle,
perhaps an anachronistically romantic one. But it still describes the
poetry I find most potent: address so intimate it is no longer address,
speech so intense its closest relative is silence. <br></font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> <font size="2">The tongue occupies<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> a silence at the heart<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> of the sentence,</font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><br><br>writes
Patrick Morrissey in “Variable Songs.” Morrissey’s is the kind of
utterance I favor—a strange variant of speech intent on articulating
what speech normally withholds.</font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> Morrissey’s <i>The Differences </i>is
a tiny book, smaller than the book I make with my palms if I place them
side by side to open and close. Each cover bears a simple pattern of a
grass-green circle and a half on a white field. Each poem occurs in
small sections, rarely longer than nine lines, each on its own page and
thus cut with bareness, whose wind whistles through. Here are the lines
from “Variable Songs” again, because this book is full of stanzas I want
to read twice:</font></font></p></div><div style="text-align:justify"><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> <font size="2">The tongue occupies<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> a silence at the heart<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> of the sentence. If I<br><br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> look long enough my mouth<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> opens to expose a sung<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>negative: <i>if</i> I, <i>if</i> I. Syll-<br><br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> ables fall into a small <br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> heap of conditionals,<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> so many attempts to see. </font><br><br>The
lovely “l” and varying “o” sounds of “look long enough” constitute an
imperative important to this poem. “Looking long enough” is not only a
visual endeavor but also a sonic one, and, further, an embodied one—its
“attempt to see” is the attempt to bring the wholeness of being into the
present space of attention. When the second stanza catches up the
hanging “<i>if</i> I” from the end of the first, the poem opens itself willingly to the uncertainties integral to any moment.<br><font size="2"><br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>How much can happen in<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> a given room during any <br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> one hour of a particular<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> day,</font><br><br>begins
the book’s first poem. Its title, “In a Room,” suggests the book itself
as the offered room. By way of welcome, Morrissey reminds us how an
instant in lyric work can attune us to life’s infinite and minute
transactions. Thus the first page is a passage of white space that leads
us into a chain of moments—of disparate locations and characters
connected by the diaphanous fabric of attention. We spend one flicker of
time with a painter leaning toward a canvas: <br><font size="2"><br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>... A series of<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>proposals and refusals—thus<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>he bears down on the surface.<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>A form surfaces, a momentary<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>declaration trembles there.</font><br><br>After
that, we don’t know where we are except that we are inside the
trembling of the moment’s declaration, inside a scene of hesitation.<br><br> <font size="2"> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>Moving the furniture, taking</font></font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>a walk—ongoing doubt</font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font></font></font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> and then the fact of going</font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font></font></font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> on at all. There is always</font></font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> someone saying no. The sheer </font></font></font></p><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font> materials as real as a stranger. </font><br><br>The
existential looming in these lines turns a moment of consciousness into
a shared terrain. In doing so, it undoes the strange, intense fact
central to Western existence: that consciousness is experienced in
solitude, that each person’s experience of the world takes place within
the boundaries of an individual mind and body. It makes palpable a
portion of the poet’s interior—and, by extension, of my interior—that
was previously not knowable. In the poem’s space of heightened feeling
and perception, I experience subjectivity as if it is interchangeable,
as if there is, at least temporarily, no difference between self and
other. “We stutter <i>us</i> into it,” writes Morrissey in a love poem. <br><font size="2"><br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>We stutter us into it<br> </font></font></font><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><font size="2"><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"> </font></font>this place we make and make.</font></font></font></p></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><span><font color="#888888"><div style="text-align:justify"><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><br></font></font></p></div><div style="text-align:justify"><p><font size="3"><font face="Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif"><br></font></font></p></div><br clear="all"><br></font></span></font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br clear="all"><br></font></span></div>
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