George Maciunas, Your Name Spelled with Objects, Kirsten Lundberg, 1977, Plastic box containing offset card and objects in various media, soverall (closed): 2 15/16 x 2 9/16 x 2 ¼" (7.5 x 6.5 x 5.7 cm)
Tag: naming
Those Graves in Rome, Larry Levis
The child died there, twenty years ago,
Of malaria. It was so common then—
The children crying to the doctors for quinine.
It was so common you did not expect an aria,
And not much on a gravestone, either—although
His name is on it, & weathered stone still wears
His name—not the way a girl might wear
The too large, faded blue workshirt of
A lover as she walks thoughtfully through
The Via Fratelli to buy bread, shrimp,
And wine for the evening meal with candles &
The laughter of her friends, & later the sweet
Enkindling of desire; but something else, something
Cut simply in stone by hand & meant to last
Because of the way a name, any name,
Is empty. And not empty. And almost enough.
Blanchot, from “Literature and The Right to Death” (full text here)
Anne Carson, from “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson, A Public Space, Issue 7 / 2008 (full text here)
Susan Sontag from “The Aesthetics of Silence”
Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar, 1659
Francis Bacon, Self Portrait, 1973.
Anne Carson, from Nox
Louise Gluck from Proofs & Theories
Anne Carson, from “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson, A Public Space, Issue 7 / 2008 (full text here)
from “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson
from A Public Space, Issue 7 / 2008
full text here
[…] One can love God, but it is only
By giving you a name: this name, stone, your name,
And taking you thus, with open eyes
Into our room of names, our refuge.
We cannot think
Toward the outside. We cannot
Conceive of that without name,
Without room for meaning,
This we cannot do, it would be for our feet
To trip over a cadaver in a tomb.
For it is death, in fact,
That alone does not signify,
It is death alone that, under each word, hides itself,
And if the sound at the bottom of a word catches us, sometimes,
When we stumble over one syllable,
If it is then something within us that suddenly
Does not speak, does not signify, is only a chasm,
We recoil from the rim of the chasm
Tottering, legs heavy with vertigo,
And we let ourselves fall
Into the dense grass of the world that we are.
And if God is only a thing,
Why would we desire him? He, the outside,
He who would ravage all our memories […]
Jacques Derrida, “Roland Barthes”
Little Bristling Soul 