Poem Post: Eclipse with Object
Apr. 8th, 2024 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureToday's Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation is "Eclipse with Object" by Ann Lauterbach. I found the poem intriguingly elusive, as befits an eclipse poem, so I thought I'd post it here for discussion.
Eclipse with Object
Ann Lauterbach
There is a spectacle and something is added to history.
It has as its object an indiscretion: old age, a
gun, the prevention of sleep.
I am placed in its stead
and the requisite shadow is yours.
It casts across me, a violent coat.
It seems I fit into its sleeve.
So the body wanders.
Sometime it goes where light does not reach.
You recall how they moved in the moon dust? Hop, hop.
What they said to us from that distance was stupid.
They did not say I love you for example.
The spectacle has been placed in my room.
Can you hear its episode trailing,
pretending to be a thing with variegated wings?
Do you know the name of this thing?
It is a rubbing from an image.
The subject of the image is that which trespasses.
You are invited to watch. The body
in complete dark casting nothing back.
The thing turns and flicks and opens.
I'll describe here not what I think the poem means so much as the work the poem seems to be asking me to do, via its grammar and language.
To begin with, what do you make of the title?
If I see the word "object" in a title, I immediately begin to suspect we might be in the realm of subject-object relations, the grammatical and cultural difference between subject (the one who acts) and object (the acted upon). Often this is a gendered dynamic. (The subject is presumed masculine, the object feminine: the poet, presumably, will critique this.)
At this point, though, "it" could of course turn out to be an actual object, a vase or a tree, but then "object" would be an unusually vague word for the poet to use.
And indeed this poem feels like a machine for generating an ouroboros of object relations. I'll show you what I mean.
What is It?
I learned from PoemTalk to look at the work done by little words like "it" -- poets can do so much sleight-of-hand, so much scarves-into-rabbits, using that little pronoun.
So what happens when we chase "it" through this poem?
Let's look at the first stanza:
This all moves grammatically as though it is transmitting sense, but what is that sense?
What is "it?" At this point, "it" probably ought to refer to the most recent subject, "something." But I read "it" first as referring to the spectacle, probably because that's the most concrete option.
So this something (if it is the "it") "has as its object" --
(Meaning "acts upon"? It feels more like "describes" or "depicts" -- but usually we speak of the subject of an image, not its object.)
-- "an indiscretion." Several examples of indiscretions are given. (Does anything unite them?)
My attention is displaced from the initial concerns -- the spectacle, history, even the something added -- onto this object, the indiscretion.
It appears that the speaker is being put in place of the object (the indiscretion). And is obscured instead.
Yet if "the requisite shadow is yours," then the speaker is in (an equivalent of) the third position of an eclipse, the Earth, in shadow as the moon passes before the sun.
Is that the object position? It seems like it would be a third position, a kind of indirect object: the moon (subject) casts a shadow (object) onto me (indirect object).
A powerful image crosses over the next stanza break:
This "it" is "your shadow." The speaker is oppressed and diminished by this shadow, which is "yours" -- but who is "you"? The addressee, the reader? To me this figure feels like a specific you, though undescribed.
(And that comma. What is up with that comma?)
This makes me think of the Greek origin of planet, "wanderer". (And maybe the mythic "wandering womb" of early medicine? I'm really clinging to my feminist reading here, but I may be trying too hard.)
I love this stanza. We begin from a shared memory or image, recognizeable even for those who did not witness the original moon landing. A something that has entered history. Then, the absurdity of the prepared speech ("one small step") against the fundamental grammar of "I love you." The whole question of what actions and utterances are of value is cast up for our consideration.
Hoo boy.
Okay, the spectacle is back. I can imagine this may be (begin from) something as simple as a moon landing watched on TV, or an eclipse through a camera obscura.
These appear to be the facts:
The spectacle has an episode.
The episode is pretending to be a thing.
The thing is a rubbing from an image (that is, a copy of that image).
The image has a subject.
The subject is that which trespasses.
"That which trespasses" takes me right back to the "indiscretion." I feel like a circuit, an orbit of sorts, has transpired.
Holy transitivity Batman.
Is this "you" the same "you" that cast the shadow? I feel like no, like this "you" is now closer to the reader, an audience. We are invited to watch the complete occlusion of "the body."
(the speaker's body? The body as concept? I hear the echo of "celestial body".)
And then -- "the thing" (what thing?) "turns and flicks and opens," like a camera shutter, like the shifting of an eclipse. Whatever moment of witness this was, it has passed.
What do you notice in the poem? What catches you, moves you, confuses you?
A couple of useful quotations from Lauterbach, cited on her Poetry Foundation page:
{rf}
Eclipse with Object
Ann Lauterbach
There is a spectacle and something is added to history.
It has as its object an indiscretion: old age, a
gun, the prevention of sleep.
I am placed in its stead
and the requisite shadow is yours.
It casts across me, a violent coat.
It seems I fit into its sleeve.
So the body wanders.
Sometime it goes where light does not reach.
You recall how they moved in the moon dust? Hop, hop.
What they said to us from that distance was stupid.
They did not say I love you for example.
The spectacle has been placed in my room.
Can you hear its episode trailing,
pretending to be a thing with variegated wings?
Do you know the name of this thing?
It is a rubbing from an image.
The subject of the image is that which trespasses.
You are invited to watch. The body
in complete dark casting nothing back.
The thing turns and flicks and opens.
I'll describe here not what I think the poem means so much as the work the poem seems to be asking me to do, via its grammar and language.
To begin with, what do you make of the title?
If I see the word "object" in a title, I immediately begin to suspect we might be in the realm of subject-object relations, the grammatical and cultural difference between subject (the one who acts) and object (the acted upon). Often this is a gendered dynamic. (The subject is presumed masculine, the object feminine: the poet, presumably, will critique this.)
At this point, though, "it" could of course turn out to be an actual object, a vase or a tree, but then "object" would be an unusually vague word for the poet to use.
And indeed this poem feels like a machine for generating an ouroboros of object relations. I'll show you what I mean.
What is It?
I learned from PoemTalk to look at the work done by little words like "it" -- poets can do so much sleight-of-hand, so much scarves-into-rabbits, using that little pronoun.
So what happens when we chase "it" through this poem?
Let's look at the first stanza:
There is a spectacle and something is added to history.
It has as its object an indiscretion: old age, a
gun, the prevention of sleep.
(emphasis mine)
This all moves grammatically as though it is transmitting sense, but what is that sense?
What is "it?" At this point, "it" probably ought to refer to the most recent subject, "something." But I read "it" first as referring to the spectacle, probably because that's the most concrete option.
So this something (if it is the "it") "has as its object" --
(Meaning "acts upon"? It feels more like "describes" or "depicts" -- but usually we speak of the subject of an image, not its object.)
-- "an indiscretion." Several examples of indiscretions are given. (Does anything unite them?)
My attention is displaced from the initial concerns -- the spectacle, history, even the something added -- onto this object, the indiscretion.
I am placed in its stead
and the requisite shadow is yours.
It casts across me, a violent coat.
It appears that the speaker is being put in place of the object (the indiscretion). And is obscured instead.
Yet if "the requisite shadow is yours," then the speaker is in (an equivalent of) the third position of an eclipse, the Earth, in shadow as the moon passes before the sun.
Is that the object position? It seems like it would be a third position, a kind of indirect object: the moon (subject) casts a shadow (object) onto me (indirect object).
A powerful image crosses over the next stanza break:
It casts across me, a violent coat.
It seems I fit into its sleeve.
This "it" is "your shadow." The speaker is oppressed and diminished by this shadow, which is "yours" -- but who is "you"? The addressee, the reader? To me this figure feels like a specific you, though undescribed.
(And that comma. What is up with that comma?)
So the body wanders.
Sometime it goes where light does not reach.
This makes me think of the Greek origin of planet, "wanderer". (And maybe the mythic "wandering womb" of early medicine? I'm really clinging to my feminist reading here, but I may be trying too hard.)
You recall how they moved in the moon dust? Hop, hop.
What they said to us from that distance was stupid.
They did not say I love you for example.
I love this stanza. We begin from a shared memory or image, recognizeable even for those who did not witness the original moon landing. A something that has entered history. Then, the absurdity of the prepared speech ("one small step") against the fundamental grammar of "I love you." The whole question of what actions and utterances are of value is cast up for our consideration.
The spectacle has been placed in my room.
Can you hear its episode trailing,
pretending to be a thing with variegated wings?
Do you know the name of this thing?
It is a rubbing from an image.
The subject of the image is that which trespasses.
Hoo boy.
Okay, the spectacle is back. I can imagine this may be (begin from) something as simple as a moon landing watched on TV, or an eclipse through a camera obscura.
These appear to be the facts:
The spectacle has an episode.
The episode is pretending to be a thing.
The thing is a rubbing from an image (that is, a copy of that image).
The image has a subject.
The subject is that which trespasses.
"That which trespasses" takes me right back to the "indiscretion." I feel like a circuit, an orbit of sorts, has transpired.
Holy transitivity Batman.
You are invited to watch. The body
in complete dark casting nothing back.
The thing turns and flicks and opens.
Is this "you" the same "you" that cast the shadow? I feel like no, like this "you" is now closer to the reader, an audience. We are invited to watch the complete occlusion of "the body."
(the speaker's body? The body as concept? I hear the echo of "celestial body".)
And then -- "the thing" (what thing?) "turns and flicks and opens," like a camera shutter, like the shifting of an eclipse. Whatever moment of witness this was, it has passed.
What do you notice in the poem? What catches you, moves you, confuses you?
A couple of useful quotations from Lauterbach, cited on her Poetry Foundation page:
I’m much more interested in a more difficult kind of sense-making, and I mean difficult in the sense of complexity, and obscurity, but not willful obscurity, just the fact that there are certain things we cannot penetrate and do not know, we can’t know, we may never know.
I began to give up the use of classical syntax, the logic of cause and effect, of an assumed relation between subject and object, after my sister died. The narrative as story had been ruptured once and for all; I wanted the gaps to show.
{rf}
no subject
Date: 2024-04-08 05:16 pm (UTC)It has as its object an indiscretion: old age, a
With that fierce enjambment, I'm tempted to read this as "objet ... a" in a Lacanian sense...
no subject
Date: 2024-04-09 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-09 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-11 06:09 am (UTC)pretending to be a thing with variegated wings?"
makes me think of an angel. Why an angel? A thing with variegated wings could be a bird. But trailing, trailing is something angels do.They're always trailing radiances and glories.
If the thing being added to history is an angel, then I start thinking about the Angel of History in Laurie Anderson's "The Dream Before":
She said, What is history?
And he said, History is an angel
Being blown
Backwards
Into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel
Backwards
Into the future
And this storm, this storm
Is called
Progress
I know that Laurie Anderson is referring to something Walter Benjamin wrote about a painting by Paul Klee, and I have gazed at the painting, but reading Walter Benjamin is beyond me.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-11 12:39 pm (UTC)Re-reading the Lauterbach with Anderson in mind, yes, I really like how bringing those two works into proximity sharpens my reading. Oo. I will be thinking about that.
For some reason, I thought of an insect for those variegated wings, but now I see an angel. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-11 06:02 pm (UTC)