'You're with me only in the past.'

Tonight I attended a poetry reading and Q&A with Christian Wiman (as one of two guests, see below). After being introduced, he stood behind a podium on the quaint stage and began by reciting - from memory - another person's poem.

Here is the end of the poem:

[...] These   

poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant   

as elm leaves, which if they love love only   

the wide blue sky and the air and the idea

of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,   

and not a beginning. Love means love

of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.   

These poems, she said....

                                       You are, he said,

beautiful.

                That is not love, she said rightly.

  

- from Robert Bringhust's "These Poems, She Said"  

via

That is not love, she said rightly.

I wrote that in my notebook. They were the first words I wrote today, well, this evening at least (I jotted a Bataille quote while at work earlier in the day, on the other side of the page). It's ridiculous and fascinating how much we need other people in this world, in this existence. How we value ourselves is often based off those connections or lack of connections. Or, and I mean this one especially tonight, those connections lost.

I've seen none of your faces! Never! None of you!

And the other first word. No, I've changed my mind. Instead, something I've never done before.
A scan of my journal:

A few transcriptions of my terrible handwriting:

[E]roticism, which is a fusion, which shifts interest away from and beyond the person and his limits, is nevertheless expressed by an object.  

- Bataille

~ ~ ~


(And from the conversations/poems read tonight:)

Does poetry assuage loneliness or does it highlight it?

- asked by Ange Mlinko

How much do you mean anything that just comes out of your mouth?

- Rae Armantrout answering a question on spiritual salvation

We're called to unbelief so faith can take new forms.

- C. Wiman also answering a question on spiritual salvation

I could almost speak the love I almost felt.

- C. Wiman, reading from one of his poems, I think it was "Prague." Good god, isn't that amazing?

They want to be you but can't, which is hot.

- R. Armantrout, from: this poem, which is hot in a messed up way.

I really don't make things up; I have no imagination.

- R. Armantrout, saying things I also feel to bone, to my bones

The very process of writing can obliterate the moment you wished to record.

- C. Wiman, talking about I don't know what because the statement put a knife in my belly with its truth