February 16, 2006

Reading notes from Stephanie Young's Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises, 2005): The rhetoricals.

does this sound like waves crashing on the Berkeley shore? Was that my fantasy? Doesn't a poem in which the majority of lines begin with prepositions, not this poem, constitute a theory? is it right to be "in the world but not of it"? and you had the nerve to mis-heard me, "Is love bald"? Was the music coming from a piano? It is not easy, if not, I let go? Is this really so different from my behavior in the sleeping room? if he's here with us in Oakland tonight, what would he say? Is that wind? Are you raining in the trees? Will I find a good job? Should I say yes? Wil I marry a blonde? Is my love true? And the sun, golden, or what? Would you rather A: grow grain and corn and fruit or B: edit the diaries and notebooks of a famous person? Work the dock primarily and pursue the independence of shipping? At which part of the Canadian border shall I evade you? If I am only so tall as all that, can you cover me? Where's the little girl who becomes you? Dear north, are you there? Am I a liar? it hovers there, a kind of spare tequilla, and who could blame me? Am I tough enough? Now that we've united it what am I saying? Do you think I will be able to know your name when it changes? Would you like some sweet and sour chicken? But not having practiced enough, how should I set about to practice? so who's the pervert now? For what man even catching my gaze before he exits at the Powell Street station can save me for longer than the three minutes it took to write this down? Is there anything here that's NOT a robot? Was it only last Saturday that you procured me? Bird dog with a bird dog in her mouth? Two Innocent Pigeons? I know a mind that's been sitting in one place too long especially the wrist, do you? Did I think I was too busy for the war? Did I think I was too busy for the war not to be over? This much and no more? What am I supposed to do with this fine sense of the horrific? Do babies go to heaven when they die? Did the stars call out faintly, "Fuck you?" Were their pants so tight they found it difficult to move? What, in short, caused them to explode ... was that your face raining or your face in the rain? And may I have this opportunity? why should your hair not be very long and disingenuous? now to play detective to? If I am another thing what will not be surveyed how will it not be worked into a lather of originality, another thing above things happening? I didn't go shopping? What happens to the photo of a sponge in the afternoon of a viewing mystery? I mean later? Will I be forced to dribble always? where's waldo? Where are you star eight six? who is the misanthrope in the following sentence?