The Poetry Project

Who Drives the Pen? – Notes and Poems

Isa Guzman

Prompt (Week 1): “After some reflection [on this quote], please write a few sentences / lines / stanzas / whatever and be ready to share tomorrow.

MY GOD, MY GOD WHO AM I WATCHING? HOW MANY AM I? WHO IS I? WHAT IS THIS GAP BETWEEN ME AND MYSELF?

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

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My Response: And a gap between reflections xxx my god, the fire escapes along an infinite wall
with infinite abuelitas smoking an infinite amount of cigarettes and cigars
y hollered down the who are you in storms of ash xxx and just plain storms
thundering who xxx who xxx who xxx my god, who xxx y eyes como estrellas stuck
en el medio de meses xxx & the children who I am watching xxx yo xxx yo mismo
everything is me between Kept and Hooper Street xxx y todo desaparece por la noche
except for the loud crying of a cat o curtains xxx hungry xxx hungry xxx hungry

Notes (Both personal and during class)(Week 2):

Readings: “to the other Wanda Coleman - with apologies” (Coleman), “Borges and I”(Borges), “Writing”(Paz).

I have only sat with these pieces for a little while, but I am quite interested in how the subjective “I” is speaking. As if the “I” contained multitudes of varying perceptions. The perception of others, the perceptions/judgements one has on themselves, and the perceptions of a society (social roles). For me, it calls back to “To Julia de Burgos” - which is more of a declaration that the writing is “Theirs”.

-“To the other Wanda Coleman - with apologies” is especially interesting here. The self is always multiple, never singular. The fact that it is "with apologies" interests me the most. Who is she apologizing to, and which she. Perhaps, if we look back at Burgos, we get a simple answer - we are doubled because of our desire to persist: “the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger.” Instead of just two though, the writer and the one who writers, there are multiples, as Octavio Paz seems to indicate: “HE writes to anyone, he calls nobody, and to his own self he writes, and in himself forgets, and is redeemed, and becoming again me.” It may be only a slight implication, but it brings to my mind a few varying concepts: the inner child, the present (“real”) self, the desired (“ideal”) self, and all the others selves we tend to create in given circumstances. My parents don't know I am transitioning, for example, so I often have to mask - a negotiated self between my idealized self and their idealized version of me. Or we all know about the concept of the “retail voice”, which is a different self.

[In class]

There is an alienation. The self is alienating the self. Is there even a self?

[So, either there is a multitude of selves or a null self?]

Both the inner self and the outside self point to art creating - “to language and tradition.”

This higher view, viewing themselves everywhere - is it part of Borges or a larger thing? God? [Jorge was Catholic as fuck, right?]

Spirits that guide the form / the page and the writer has to be submissive to that guide. (There is a comfort in it?) The body is a vessel. “My body is a cageeeeee… which keeps me from dancing with the one I love, but my mind holds the key” (Arcade Fire).

The speaker being trapped inside the vessel or stuck outside of it or both or none.

How does one integrate themselves in the inner or the outer or…

Residue of the self and others…

(These are the things I am sick with myself about! That's an interesting reading. Could easily be a prompt, too)

What is salvation without justification?

How does healing involve itself in all of this? The page is a strategy of care. (STRATEGY… is that all that writing is and does it matter?)

”Falsifying as an act of care”

How do you care for the self you put on the page?

Conduit:
a channel for conveying water or other fluid.

etymology: c. 1300, conduyt, ”conduct, guidance, an escorting party” (a sense now obsolete in this word but preserved in its doublet, conduct), from Old French conduit (12c.) “escort, protection; pipe, channel,” from Latin conductus “a leading, a pipe,” noun use of past participle of conducere “to lead or bring together; contribute, serve,” from assimilated form of com “with, together” (see con-) + ducere “to lead” (from PIE root *deuk- “to lead”).

Vessel:
a hollow container, especially one used to hold liquid, such as a bowl or cask.

c. 1300, “container,” from Old French vessel “container, receptacle, barrel; ship” (12c., Modern French vaisseau) from Late Latin vascellum “small vase or urn,” also “a ship,” alteration of Latin vasculum, diminutive of vas “vessel.” Sense of “ship, boat” is found in English from early 14c. “The association between hollow utensils and boats appears in all languages” [Weekley]. Meaning ”canal or duct of the body” (especially for carrying blood) is attested from late 14c.

Writing is an unknowning laborious task to take upon the Self.

The audience, real or imagined, takes over the process of your work as it circulates.

Does the writer self exist if the writing isn‘t shared with an audience?

Surveillance… (this is an important concept here… and something I want to talk about. How does others surveil me and how I surviel myself.)

Salvation: 1.
preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss.
“they try to sell it to us as economic salvation”
Similar:
lifeline
preservation
conservation
means of escape
a source or means of being saved from harm, ruin, or loss.
noun: one's salvation; plural noun: one‘s salvations
“his only salvation was to outfly the enemy”

2.
THEOLOGY
deliverance from sin and its consequences, believed by Christians to be brought about by faith in Christ.
“the Christian gospel of salvation for all mankind”
Similar:
redemption
deliverance
saving
help
reclamation

Wanda Coleman:

Disconnected is in connection with the phone of the beginning.

Both the selves are interrupted by the external world: the phone, the disconnect, the dreaded moment.

Danger – a man... and in relation to apologies… An apology to the self about the world? Apology for the society in which someone is born in and have to interact with.

“There is a danger in the gender, perhaps” – I like that idea.

Dread. Dread is in the body. A heaviness. “I have to be perceived and that feels dangerous.”

- The desire to persist adds onto the dread of the self. There is always a multiplicity within a person. Does the dread come from the confrontation with this multiplicity of the self. Is that multiplicity always going to be cut off, especially in the face of genderized / racialized / environmental violence. How does the self fare in the city?

The separating of one's writing from one's self (culture, etc). Are writings just objects? “What does my body do in this space?” Space… performance, the page, etc.

Writing prompt: Write to the other Isa.
Response:

We remember the fantasies of bullets through the window
XXXthe shattering of glass that could be heard randomly
XXXon a Saturday nightXXXxxxexcept it is here now
XXXin your head and I envision the bullet driving through
XXXboneXXX& the sudden darkXXXthe absence of the self

XXXXXXWe are exhausted in this space of vigilance

parents fighting in all directionsXXXat every block in every hour
XXXsun

XXXXXXxxxand i try to be not IXXXI can't see anything
XXbut in words

XXXXXXxxxdreadfully the body drops tired into bed as I try to grasp
a last moment of consciousnessXXXXXX"This ain't it"
XXXXXXXXXXXXwe both sayXXXas if some prophetic incantation
XXXthe "I can't with you" present driving through each thought

XXXXXI wish I could erase every word you refuse to write

Work from Who Drives the Pen? Meditations on Mirrors, Thresholds, and Selves with Gabrielle Octavia Rucker

Elsewhere