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Garrett Kalleberg
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Beautiful Methods (2003–the present)
The poems in Beautiful Methods attempt to further develop themes and techniques in Some Mantic Daemons, ranging across various terrains of skeptical apprehension and doubt—the uses of technology and reason, the unifying illusions of media, the meaning of daily experience, the images of memory. This movement is by contrast or opposition, by way of various rhetorical strategies, both within the poem and in the relationship between poems.
In allowing interiority to fracture while holding together the things of perceived experience—whether a magazine cover, a scene from the Discovery Channel, the recorded stuff that stands in for what memory is—I hope to personify a related whole. This for me is the ideal of the poem: a resolution in paradox—resolution in that it is an attempt to hold together, within the logic of the poem, the sense of being individual, and paradoxical because this experience can never itself be the whole.
A resolution, that is an attempt to hold together, within the logic of the poem, in the absence of anything to believe in.
Ranging over—towards what? Keep moving. Keep moving.
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Self-Portrait with Arm Twisted above Head
for Chris Benedict
Framed by the lover’s lipstick of irradiating heart
on the mirror in a now abattoir of abundance,
I am brilliant assays, solus ipse.
Again on a floor of tiles or tessera hospitalis
I am astonishing eels, ipso facto.
I am potent factotum, solitary
programmer of objects, subjectivist
for one and all and temporary
adjectival madness incised around personality
of tall vessels empty & full.
I am one of the big blond unhappy ones
from the north where
blond = gold and gold = silver
and the only value in this economy
is the gift, but it looks good on you Uncle Garrett.
I am, like you, Norwegian, yes
we talked about it, Will or
“the only Teutonic contribution to European culture.”
I am Irish and my flag is
green white and pink and kiss my boyfriend.
I am Catholic or cathectic or the Pathétique
hence universal. Which is why write.
I am Protestant thus say too little and too much.
I am Protestant and Nonconformist or
con artist of pretense and in really top form.
I am Protestant, yes thrice the mixture being
3 to 1, I told her, corazón
so my manias are incorrigibly serious.
I am bad and I am good, I told her
and I am very very bad,
this is your last warning before I love you to death.
I am American, well, more about that another time.
Let’s just say now I’m on the increase,
I can fill you as well as you can fill me,
empty vessel,
I can obey & command to be obeyed in equal measure,
empty measure
where trust = we hold these truths to be
like onions or tongues hence many-layered.
I belong to
and so own up to myself
giver of this quality or
property of myself
and so sole possessor
solus ipse
of all my faculties
namely Tooth and Tooth and Nail.
Still beautiful?
Still beautiful? like I saw you yesterday.
Still tough as nails? like we thought we were.
Still sharp, yes? still expert
in the sagittal splitting of hairs? like that time
in your bathroom with Ockham’s razor
practicing the edge localization of the emotions,
as if that would do it
until the whole being came to
days later. I’m sorry. Came to what?
Once I was looking for something in
An Illustrated History of Brain Function and
days later, fed pea soup and
given new powers of healing I would show you
these the last anatomical figures specially prepared
for a printed book
including the author’s self-portrait,
a Disease Man with halo of disease names
and hence holy.
(“Self Portrait with Arm Twisted above Head” was originally published in Crowd No. 7, Fall Winter 2006.)
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