Blue Cat
Thinking about condensare, and thrift, and Niedecker. That wobble (in one’s writing) between excessive, unfurling the words to the winds, and incisive, cut to the bone. How capture the Chiclets-colored lozenge that marks the wing of the black-throated blue warbler without hauling in the whole ineffable surround, brushy and scant though it be? Niedecker: “For me, when it comes to birds, animals and plants, I’d like the facts because the facts are wonderful in themselves.” Meaning, out with that “Chiclets,” one must admit. Dilemma is, what makes frisson equal to the white mark itself (there flitty in the scrub) is the gummy overlay, that sudden recognition of relation, similarity. To cut that, makes a starker thing. (I think to add: “denying a whole wilderness of history, and subjectivity . . .”)
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In some notes regarding haiku, Bill Knott refers to Toho’s Sanzoshi (Three Booklets) wherein, presumably, is found a kind of philosophical definition of haiku, that is, recording “the mind that goes off and returns.” Obliging, thus, history, the self, and the beyond in one impacted moment, or motion? Justifying my peevishness (sense of lack) in confronting the skinned-down thing, that object?
