The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence [Hardcover]

Leslie Scalapino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 1999

A new collection of essays and poetry from the poet Library Journal called one of the most unique and powerful writers at the forefront of American literature.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Long one of the most influential of the "left coast" language poets, Scalapino (New Time, Forecasts, Apr. 26) adds to her already considerable oeuvre with this, her third book of essays and hybrid poem-plays. While the book is divided into two sectionsAwith eight "essays" in the first and three longer "works" in the secondAthis distinction is rendered highly permeable by Sccalapino's resolutely non-normative, or non-academic at least, prose style. An intricate weave of cross-references from text to text heightens the interconnectedness of the book, and allows the nomadicAand dedicatedAreader to describe a sort of productive rebus throughout the book. The book is also surprisingly engaging, as Scalapino discusses the early foundations of Zen (Nagarjuna's Seventy Stanzas) and the works of some of her peers, particularly Philip Whalen, Susan Howe and Robert Creeley. In their "demonstration of no-procedure" ("Deer Night" is a "total rewriting" of The Tempest and King Lear), the essays indirectly suggest a comparison between the temporal indeterminacy of many Zen texts and Gertrude Stein's notion (from William James) of the "continuous present," and aim to resist easy cultural absorption. Agrammatical title and all, this is critical writing as restless as it is beautiful, in which poetry is boldly proclaimed as constituting "society's secret interior." (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Scalapino's work is at the forefront of American poetry today. Each of her books challenges us to rethink habituated forms of perception, not in the sense of her writing about this as a theory but through her compositional methods that bring us as readers to experience new modes of perception." (Charles Bernstein ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 158 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; First. edition (August 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819563781
• ISBN-13: 978-0819563781
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,983,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "lines crawling on a mountain to eat at night", June 12, 2008

By 

Tim Lavenz (Iowa City, IA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence (Paperback)

The Public World is admittedly impossible to render/comment on, and it is not for the faint reader. If ever there were a writer looking to reciprocate one really, she would write this. An aware mind (one at ease with paradox) with a curiosity/creativity about language will find the Public World challenging, exhilarating, smiling, comforting -- changing.

Here, writing (reading) is "As oneself seeing, inside one's flesh, not on the eyes -- one's seeing dye inside." This means there is reflection, there is series; yet also there is a dissolving of the reflective surface, of that being reflected, of there ever existing a series. I must admit that a reader will be invigorated in their reading if they have prior acquaintance with Buddhism (Nagarjuna especially) or any "doctrine" of "no-self" (not a "doctrine" at all: a destruction of all philosophical views, definitions, and procedures (Scalapino references this on the first page as an emphasis of her work)) -- "Authority is ignorance." (A suggestion:) search Amazon for authors Wei Wu Wei (or Ramana Maharshi) for one of many "modern" renderings of this "doctrine" -- though perhaps "The Public World" is a rendering itself?

Syntactically Impermanence is "As series which does not qualify itself, while simply continuing. In life. Action of theirs." Essays reflect on the nature of experience, 'sight'/seeing, time/writing, mind as phenomena -- seriality, events, causality, and structure. While certain essays/poems focus on certain phenomena (including a defensive of experimental poetry, using Creeley, Howe, and herself among others), upon completing the book one knows each threads are inseparable, and that each piece is pervaded with these themes. And above all, it is a reflection of/on/as the eyelidless eye seeing phenomena/seriality/self. The overall effect is spectacular, and genius. "(Parts don't refer back. They just start.)" -- the words embody.

Scalapino yearns for the present, emotionally and intellectually, each solely; she yearns for the Way, and (in my humbled opinion) she presents it. She challenges/asks us: "This occurs easily by simply giving up one's mind -- and the outside -- not hanging on. (Yet one has to hang on to write it?)" As a writer myself, and a student of the spiritual, this speaks directly to my heart (must "I" hang on to "this" to write "it"?) and if you are patient and willing to investigate 'your' reality, this collection of poetry from Scalapino will surely be a treat.

As Scalapino says, "the act of reading is not an illustration of the text's substance but itself a movement." This is a book about events and their relation or non-relation. I agree with Bernstein (commenting on back flap) when he says this book, "challenges us to rethink habituated forms of perceptions" -- a drastic understatement (I think), but precise. If one goes in, one will come in. This writing "is conjecture" and surely is doing "the work of philosophy." I thought the longer poems, "As: All Occurrence in Structure, Unseen--(Deer Night)," and "Friendship," are the shining highlights in many respects, and make this volume worth the purchase alone. But taken in its entirety, perhaps poured over, this book will freshen eyes, and not for your sake, but for 'sight' itself.

A blessing; this is writing one (may/must) let happen to one. All quotations here are from the book itself, my trying in vain to convey to a prospective buyer the magnanimity of even pieces -- be assured the book is a wonder for the wonderer. And I must end with an excerpt from "Friendship":

----

the mind going after oneself
seen for the first time before me
is formed even--

helping one seeing the isolated self

other one isn't in lines crawling

one isn't either being that other
one nor their not being there then

[at the same time]

----

other one isn't in lines crawling

or is

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars don't forget the Buddhism, February 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence (Hardcover)

Surfing through Amazon I noted with surprise that neither of the existing reviews mentions the explicit influence of Buddhism in this book, especially the work of the ancient Indian teacher Nagarjuna. Aside from its (very high) value of delineating the poetics of a major American poet, the book is an excellent introduction to Nagarjuna's thought, and to the issues of language/mind/world that underlie both much of contemporary (and, admittedly, but perhaps not as explicitly, other than contemporary) poetics and millenia of religious philosophy, especially (but, again, not exclusively) in Asia.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Leslie Scalapino, October 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence (Paperback)

I like this book because it presents criticism of it's own work (criticism and work, as one various work) in a single volume. By doing so, Scalapino beats any critic to the page, thereby forcing a new kind of criticism, an exponential eye.