Susana Thénon – from Ova Completa (tr. Rebekah Smith)
The following poems come from Rebekah Smith’s forthcoming translation (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020) of Susana Thénon’s 1987 book Ova Completa. Ova Completa is Thénon’s final, most radical collection, and is a virtuosic performance of stylistic innovation, language play, dark humor, and socio-political insight. in her misuse, abuse, breaking, and recreating of language, Thénon confronts her moment in history with derision, discontent, and poetic brilliance. She writes obliquely of femicide, Argentina’s last dictatorship, the war with Britain over the Malvinas / Falkland Islands, the heritage of colonialism, drawing on surrealist tradition to fully inhabit the time and place in which it was written, while maintaining a perspective frame both by humor and terror.
Kikirikyrie
god help us or god don’t help us
or god half help us
or he makes us believe that he’ll help us
and later sends word that he’s busy
or he helps us obliquely
with a pious “help yourself”
or cradles us in his arms singing softly that we’ll pay for it
if we don’t go to sleep immediately
or whispers to us that here we are today and oh tomorrow too
or tells us the story of the cheek
and the one about the neighbor and the one about the leper
and the one about the little lunatic and the one about the mute who talked
or he puts in his headphones
or shakes us violently roaring that we’ll pay for it
if we wake up immediately
or gives us the tree test
or takes us to the zoo to see
how we look at ourselves
or points out an old train on a ghost of a bridge
propped up by posters for disposable diapers
god help us or not or halfway
or haltingly
god us
god what
or more or less
or neither
_____
you
who’ve read Dante in folio
you let yourself drift
through those little drawings
so-called illuminated miniatures
and you swallowed it all
all
from ay
to bi
but it’s a lie
that hellish bin of complications is pure rubbish
made on purpose to make you waste time
calculating in which circle
the bones of your soul
will end up
and you know something?
this famous inferno
has an admirable simplicity
it’s not for nothing, the master’s cunning
you get there and they tell you
you’re free
go ahead and do as you like
Y Vos También
there’s saccharine here the flock of albatross
or what do I know
I mean about albatross
dollars about albatrosdollars I never saw a bird pishing that’s not saying much
the canadians pish even if you don’t see it and the fish
the fish pish the sea
you’re a poet, no? or Sappho hecho en Shitland
poetess
don’t you see she’s a woman? come on woman and if you don’t get the chance to talk to God why ask him if I ever I’ll tell you honestly in fact at some time or other I’ve stopped adoring you
but English is more practical
you make plans all over in other words in the pudenda do it don’t
and even if you pronounce it poorly
they’ll still understand you do it don’t or express yourself with gestures
if you’ve seen how you do it
how you learn to do it
how you don’t get used to
how you make do how you want it how you don’t
Wasted arms, feeble knees,
eighty years old, hair thin and white,
cheek bonier than I’d remembered,
head bowed on his neck,
eyes open now and then he listened,
I read my father Wordsworth’s
Intimations of Immortality Ode.
‘Trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God who is our home.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ he said, ‘but it is not true.
When I was a boy,’ he continued, ‘we had
a house on Boyd Street Newark New Jersey.
The backyard was a big empty lot full of bushes
and whole grass. I always wondered
what was behind those trees.
When I grew older, I walked around the block
and found out what was back there, it was
a glue factory.’
Canadian author Margaret Atwood is facing a social media backlash after voicing concerns about the #MeToo movement and calling for due process in the case of a former university professor accused of sexual misconduct.
[He was given all due process. This is exactly how universities work. I spent 25 years working on a university campus and saw more than one misconduct process happen. From what is known about the case that concerns her, the way it was handled was appropriate, according to university policies. Does that mean I like university policies? Not really, but that’s irrelevant here.]
Writing in the Globe and Mail, Atwood said the #MeToo movement, which emerged in the wake of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, was the symptom of a broken legal system and had been “seen as a massive wake up call”.
However, she wondered where North American society would go from here. “If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers?” Atwood asked.
[Red herring. If women assert that they’ve been treated badly, and a few men lose their jobs, all western civilization will fall. How many times have we heard that? The same has been said about people of color getting “uppity”, about LGBTQIetc. people asking for a baker to make them a cake, about Muslims in Europe and the US, about people who aren’t Xtian, etc etc. If this is the best you have, Atwood, you have nothing, nothing at all.]
The 78-year-old author of The Handmaid’s Tale drew a parallel between these concerns and those who accused her of being a “bad feminist” after she signed an open letter last year calling for due process for a University of British Columbia professor facing allegations of sexual misconduct.
The university’s administration released few details on the case against Steven Galloway, the former chair of the creative writing program, saying only that he was facing “serious allegations”. After a months-long investigation he was fired, but the official findings were never released. The faculty association said in a statement that all but one of the allegations, including the most serious allegation, were not substantiated.
[If the official findings were never released, how does the faculty association know this? Hmmm … there is something in this that simply doesn’t compute.]
In her piece, Atwood pointed to the university’s lack of transparency around the allegations and noted that Galloway had been asked to sign a confidentiality agreement.
“The public – including me – was left with the impression that this man was a violent serial rapist, and everyone was free to attack him publicly, since under the agreement he had signed, he couldn’t say anything to defend himself,” she wrote. “A fair-minded person would now withhold judgment as to guilt until the report and the evidence are available for us to see.”
[No. He CHOSE to sign an NDA. A fair-minded person would say he didn’t have to sign if he didn’t want to. And then conclude that they don’t know why he did, but the university and he agreed that both they and he would keep their mouths closed. And a fair-minded person would understand that reports in such cases are not made public to protect BOTH the accuser(s) and the accused. And would then assume that the details of the case are none of their business.]
She likened the affair to the Salem witch trials, in that guilt was assumed of those who were accused.
[Witch trials, all of them, not just the Salem ones, WERE conducted according to law and due process. This is a horrible and ignorant example, which doesn’t help her case any. The fact that we no longer agree with the way the law worked at that time does not mean anything more than times change and don’t. I say they don’t because Atwood’s bringing up the witch trials here essentially equates #MeToo to the Inquisition and the judges in Salem, etc. Given how we now feel about the Inquisition and those judges, she has just made monsters of #MeToo. People who compare this to a witch hunt or witch trial are doing to women just what the Inquisitors, etc. did.]
This idea of guilt by accusation had at times been used to usher in a better world or justify new forms of oppression, she wrote. “But understandable and temporary vigilante justice can morph into a culturally solidified lynch-mob habit, in which the available mode of justice is thrown out the window, and extralegal power structures are put into place and maintained.”
[I used the term red herring above re this argument, please see above.]
Many online took issue with her view. “If @MargaretAtwood would like to stop warring amongst women, she should stop declaring war against younger, less powerful women and start listening,” wrote one person on Twitter. “In today’s dystopian news: One of the most important feminist voices of our time shits on less powerful women to uphold the power of her powerful male friend,” wrote another.
Some accused Atwood of using her position of power to silence those who had come forward with allegations against Galloway. “‘Unsubstantiated’ does not mean innocent. It means there was not enough evidence to convict,” read one tweet.
Others defended Atwood. “Genuinely upsetting to see Margaret Atwood attacked for pointing out that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is the key to a civilised society. That has to still be a thing, yes? How can that suddenly be a bad thing?”
[The professor was fired. He wasn’t thrown in jail. The university felt it had cause. He signed off on it. If he hadn’t he could have sued them. It seems that this has nothing to do with “innocent until proven guilty.” So far, since #MeToo has arisen, about 10 rich and powerful guys have lost their jobs. Oh woe, oh woe. It’s the end of the fucking world.]
In a statement to the Guardian, Atwood pointed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, echoing an earlier tweet in which she defended her view by noting that endorsing basic human rights for everyone was not equivalent to warring against women.
Her opinion piece, she said, was meant to highlight the choice we now face; fix the system, bypass it or “burn the system down and replace it with, presumably, another system”.
[That’s the first intelligent thing she said. The system should be burnt down. I’d suggest she do a little reading to see why. She could do worse than to start with Maria Mies’s Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (1986), and Women: The Last Colony (1988)]
All the way in with Zeitgeist Spam on this. Wonder what she thinks of military law wherein a defendant is considered guilty until proven innocent. Wonder if she forgot about how Anita Hill was verbally abused by Congressional hearings that chose to dismiss her testimony against Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice. – Donna Fleischer
I know, my reach should exceed my grasp, blah, blah, but I can’t even reach these days. I would love to be able to go all Sean Bonney and talk about suns falling into the otherwise burning freezing streets, etc etc, but I’ll leave that to Sean, he does it better than I ever could. I have friends who find ways to turn bad energy into good (here’s looking at you, Richard), but not me, I can’t. I’m just sick. I’ll just say this.
These last weeks, with DACA rescinded, another attempt to leave tens of millions without healthcare, especially women, the basic ignoring of Puerto Rico and the Virgins Islands, two US colonies (we still have colonies people), and then that -is there an insulting term that I can apply strictly to one person without insulting others?- Trump and his attack on black people who do NOT like being murdered speaking up about it, followed by the massive cowardly response of the NFL teams who refused to take a knee, the amazingly cowardly response of fans who refused to take a knee … because it would insult the vets and the flag (more on which on the next paragraph), well, I have no words. As for why I don’t leave this country if I hate it so much, well, I hate every other country, too. I love many people, but I hate the human race. I hate it.
OK. The whole flag and vets thing. The accusation of disrespecting the flag and veterans is the current equivalent of the accusation of disrespecting white women that got Emmett Till and so many others killed. Anyone, black or white or any other color, who thinks that this is about the flag or who feels the need to say something nice about this country, or about veterans, is, knowingly or not, a white supremacist, or at least filling the role of one. Period. I don’t care who you are and what your background is. This has as much to do with all that shit as Emmett Till’s death had to do with white women. This is another way of killing black men. Uppity ones, as the expression went. And excusing the deaths of any others who might die at the hands of the police. This is not about you, vets, and you know it, but to the degree you think it is, you might as well be wearing a KKK hood.
The attempt to shift the discussion to black on black crime, whether Jim Brown does it or anyone else, is another fall into that same white supremacist logic.
It all makes me sick.
And … if I hear one more word about the veterans who gave their all defending our freedoms, not that that’s relevant to anything, I’ll puke. Not one vet has died defending our freedoms since I was born, and that was 1950. Those who have died have died defending or extending our capitalist empire, period. There has not been one war for our freedoms in all that time. Everything else is a lie. I will explain this to anyone too stupid or should I say ignorant to understand me. Does that mean we don’t have enemies, no it doesn’t. Our enemies also want empires. Whether they be jihadis, whether they be Russians, whether they be Chinese … etc etc … name an enemy. Every fucking country wants to rule others. Our vets are either conscripts who joined because of poverty or the absence of choices, or pure mercenaries. As for the former, I feel some sympathy, as for the latter, none. Sorry. You took money to kill people. Were you lied to and tricked into thinking that was ok? Probably. For chrissakes, learn to THINK.
I make my poems to save the world. I don’t want to save it. Today I root for global warming. I have no words for poetry. I’ve taken up weaving. Maybe I’ll write again, or collage again, if I can figure out how to channel this rage.
Sean Bonney, “After Rimbaud (For The Administration)”, “Letter on Poetics (Saturday, June 25, 2011)”, “Letter on Silence (Tuesday, August 30, 2011)”, in All This Burning Earth, at Ill Will Editions;
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keeping in mind the words of the poet Pierre Joris, ". . . I make the arrogant claim that the poet is possibly the last, in Robert Kelly’s words, ‘scientist of the whole… to whom all data whatsoever are of use.’ . . . The prerogative of the poet is to steal directly whatever is of use, without needing to theoretically kowtow via analysis, explicatio, critical cloning or proof of pc allegiance."
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