matrix

by LIZ HOWARD

A bit of Men Deft Men in Café Noir on boulevard Saint Laurent then full birth on the economy bus from Montreal. Fluid strands of lyric like quipu, a messenger, my gender wavering to Ontario, Iroquois land of “beautiful water” from La Belle Province? The reason I am is this journey, of course the river is different – stolen from the bones
of glaciers, what is this asphalt anyway? Mixed heritage, tongue thrashing the obvious chasm, I am leaving with Robertson and it is my mitochondrial DNA,
threshold of want as I dredge my cognitive landfill stone upward to progress-smiling.

“They do not call themselves feminist, but they want to have real access to agency, and they want to be constructing the terms of their own agency” – Lisa Robertson, Prismatic Publics

Here. We have slice of pulse, tempo of the palpable inquiry: how to navigate a literary and intellectual heritage which hefts its influence from an axis of, what? How does female hover over the scrawl of prescriptive verse?

the muse

a study in “problematic politics” (p. 9)

so then even more than just so.

Here. A lyric book.
sense subversion

Not just the subject     reflected back splayed out innards steaming     in fall air

something else

(for example, “What we refer toas any/Communication we begin to perpetrate/A priori for this man the men/Want less and no less than the/Holding and thus a spree/Of men (p. 11)”)

“A priori” a knowing independent of experience do we hold masculinist thought
templates within us even before we encounter physical and fuse perception into
words?

Or wandering. “ I venture
from my style/Against style” (p. 44).

infer the identity of

speaking from a position that
could entertain them as object.

a clear invocation can
throw my empirical dart

. “…man makes deft wounds makes/women and disquietude and something from what I am” (p. 12), make women but the speaker is not lumped into that signifier.

Please orient me to an appropriate passage
where the gender

white-line fever blurred into recursive lengths, my absurd stone wobbling.

Empiricism. Robertson,

“I speak of men as they appear to me

Not of men in themselves

I have only experience

And no knowledge.”

shows us her/our limitation

–
we only know the growth planted in us from society

how we conceive the Other, whomever that may refer to. Have The Men spoke of Other from a position of known, fact irrevocable.  What does addressing limited experience mean in this text?

“I’m 39” (p. 10, 53, 55).

Top 5 Google results for “I’m 39” – November 10^th, 2009

I’m 39 and Holding!

I’m 39 weeks pregnant, baby is dropped 1cm dilated whn [sic] i can…

Re: Well, I’m 39 and I’m about done too!: Canon SLR Lens Talk…

I’M 39 TODAY!!! on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

Yahoo! Canada Answers – I’m 39 weeks pregnant and drink Castor oil…

Mythology of the “woman of a certain age”
.
Anxiety is salient in our culture
in regards to conceptions
era of media-infused “aging gracefully”

does the politicking of language
and avant-what-have-you writing address

who took the bomp? Why the Prismatics quote? Robertson was responding to a question about the place of feminism in experimental poetics and spoke of young women she has encountered in her practice. So many intelligent women in my cohort reject this label and its necessary agenda, who took the bomp? Why do so many just swim in the men, can we go beyond the body – has this caused stasis? Here. Is a body swinging limbs and jacked to mind formed experience. I want to shake, but I need access to the vocables and so begin climbing.

There are men, and within myself a stone rolling, dancing beautiful as we “fall upwards bleating” (p. 31). Always and Thank You. What a river.