Letting the Fish Case its Own Shadow

Last year, poet Christodoulos Makris invited me to be part of 'States of Flux' an event for the Kildare Readers Festival, which took place in October 2021.  In a deviation from the usual reading & discussion format, he conceived this as an event where poets give a short talk on/ presentation of one of their own recent poems of their choice, looking at how it was made (raw material, inspirations, references, drafts/rewrites, its place within overall work & interests, practical/publication concerns or any other such things they might want to focus on) towards elucidating and demystifying the process.  I wrote and spoke about my poem 'The Vase'.  Below is the piece I shared about the poem, as well as some photos of the vase that inspired the poem (its mouth ajar) and a link to the event itself - we filmed it in person (at the time, a rather novel experience, as restrictions were still in place).  It was a real pleasure to share the stage with Kit Fryatt and Ellen Dillon (her 'Morsel May Sleep is exquisite!).
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I still have not read from my collection in person, live, in front of an audience - only every sitting down (I have thoughts on this - on sitting ), only ever through a screen (I have thoughts on this too).  It would be great to get a chance to.  
0: …the state of being connected with/in time… 

It is important to take stock of time (pay attention) – of one's relationship (the state of being connected) with/in time. The state of being connected feels like math to me & I like what it is implied: the relationship between one thing & another, as sum –  the sum of a thing, with & in time, & in space.  

To give something (the sum of a thing) attention, is to enter into a relationship between one thing and another, as a means to assess its worth – worth being sufficiently good, important, or interesting (enough) to be treated or regarded in the way specified (i.e., pay attention to/invest attention in).  Already, I’ve made a small shift in meaning – from with/in to in/to, & all for some sum of a thing: of it being worth it.

0: …the blackest of circles expands…
 
So, let’s begin here, then: it is good, and it is important, and it is interesting.  & that’s saying something.
 
Whatever (& whenever) I or my eye make of it, time passes.  My (my eye’s) connection to time will always be in flux, in motion (with|in the span of it); my eye, and more precisely, now, the poetic mind, dilates at this promise of transformation – the moment of movement from one state to another, in time.
 
I channel Lorca. 
 
The blackest of circles (my mind’s eye) expands; the eye (my eye) contracts & zeroes in, on it –:
 
If I describe it just like this, a fish,                             
can you see what I mean? Better, still: what if
I strike a match, draw inspiration from the
memory of bodies, the friction, so singular &
smoking hot, making light – the light to
light a candle. One small flame is always enough –
 
– The Vase

0: …the light to light a candle…
 
Having written elsewhere, in another time, about how I see the world, I won’t offer anything more than this, about seeing, here, now: how I see moves my hand; this movement is labour, and it takes labour to craft a line, one after another, again & again. The eye & the hand are connected; they are in relationship with and to each other, and this relationship, for what it’s worth, can make something good, something important, something interesting (this sum-thing, the sum of thing I have been alluding to). But, for something (the very sum of it) to be worth anything at all, the eye & the hand must be left to make of it what they will.  To put it plainly, bluntly, with feeling:
 
light a candle. One small flame is always enough –
enough to illuminate the world of a poem; enough –
enough to let the fish in this one cast its own shadow. 
 
– The Vase
 
0: … let the fish…cast its own shadow’…
 
Let’s pay some sum of attention in, invest in some sum of time to consider the following, for the instruction that it is (it is worth it):
 
‘let the fish…cast its own shadow’.
 
Everything and nothing expand & contract, soften and harden, open & close (in other words, things become transformed) around this idea of it (here, a fish) casting its own shadow & this creates the conditions for zero – a perfect zero on which to build a poem, in my book. 
 
It comes from a series of letters to Lorca, from Dalí; in one, he writes, ‘I am convinced that in poetry our efforts only make sense when they lead us to evade the ideas our intelligence has forged artificially, and give things their exact, real sense’.  In another, he goes on to express it even more plainly, and bluntly, and beautifully: ‘Let the things themselves decide where their shadows fall!’
 
What this means, in real terms, poetically, for me, amounts to the following lines (from I to eye to hand, I laboured over them for the better part of 4 months, some time ago):
 
See it?  The shape of human calf muscle. Just like
an anatomical drawing, the vase is strung out between
two points: from the zero of the fish’s open mouth,
the lower leg expands out & muscle makes slow curves
from both sides, into space: left side, right side,
like the left side & the right side of the heart; left,
then right – in time with the left lung & the right lung;
left & then right, left & then right – one foot
in front of the other, left & then right – left, right &
the space between fans out, from zero, like a fish’s tail.
 
In letting the thing itself (the vase, shaped like a fish) cast its own shadow (thank God for the candle, its light!) a relationship forms between it (the vase, shaped like a fish) and what it transforms in|to, from with|in: the calf muscle strung out between two zeros retains some shadow of fish (which in turn recalls the vase, always); the slow curves into space establish, in the poem, some space for orientation -  the left and the right (heart, lung, foot) expanding and contracting, in time with each other, and space, again, between one foot and another, fanning out – rooting the poem, its movement between one state to another in time, back into fish (and vase, always). In the space and span of 10 lines, the poem comes full circle.  At its center, some sum of a thing comes in|to light: heart, lung, foot –
 
Between two zeros, muscle narrows to tendon.
From tendon to bone to foot – the hold holds steady.
 
& the hold (the mind’s eye, the blackest of circles) holds steady on the body, the hold holds steady on the body, the hold holds steady on the body, until –  
 
0: …steady until…
 
In time with my heart the light holds steady
& my lungs, left, then right, in time with my heart,
left & right, in & out, in time with my heart, in & out,
in time with the light, holding steady & the light – 
all that brightness in that half a foot-length extending out
from the soft wax of your body, all that light casting its
singular hard shadow, holding steady, holding steady, steady,
in time with my heart, holding, holding on, steady until: 
 
Having read these lines out loud (and it is good, and it is important, and it is interesting to do this – to read lines out loud) a shift has occurred (a shift will always occur if one decides to bring a poem into the body).  Bringing the poem into the body results in the displacement of zero, the very zero point of the poem – from within the interior of the poem (the vase, shaped like a fish, casting shadows) to the exterior (of the poem) – & into the very centre of the body of the reader.  Reading out loud brings the body, the heart, the lungs into a relationship (that sense of being connected, in time) – & a transformation occurs between what is written & what is performed – and it is should become clear now, if not before, that the labour involved in crafting each line aligns with the labour involved in living, being, existing, in time – the breathing in and breathing out, in and out, in and out, in & out…
 
the lungs, left & right, in & then out, taking in & then
fanning out, the lungs suck in & the light shakes, flickers
& the hold spills free –
 
From this point on, until the very end, the poem reorients itself around the body – and the body becomes zero, a new zero point, in the world, as described by Merleau-Ponty: ‘visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it sees and moves itself, it holds things in a circle around itself.’
 
The body sees (I to eye) and the body moves (the hand labours) and the body breathes, in & out.  The body breathes in time with the poem, in and out, in and out, steady, until:
 
from bright light to foot to shadow to fish,
the vase is reeled back in, hangs in space (the space between
inspiration & expiration) like a fish from a hook. 

And just like that, the vase returns, and we (another shift – I to we, because, after all this time, we are in this together: connected, as reader and listener, making another circle – and we observe the vase transform – round and round from fish to calf to foot to lung and heart (left and right, in and out) to foot to fish to vase again), and in so doing, we are ourselves transformed, towards some sum of a thing – a thing among things):
 
Holding steady, my body is only the left side &
the right side of my heart now, in time with my lungs
& this vase, holding steady like a dead fish, its mouth
ajar.
 
0: ...to sum up, then...
 
Is it worth it? 
 
Come, let’s you & I, & all of us make a circle, & let us (a word that is just a circle) sum it up, together (another word that is also a circle).