Intro:
This isn’t going to be a standard book review, so much as a
small array of thoughts and feelings derived from partaking of its content.
Well, I guess the first part could be perceived as akin to a
semi-standard mini-review – but then the red part in the middle is focused on
personal divergence regarding female blood flow and clots and positive/negative
creative horrific overly personal goop – and then when the font color turns black
again, the two perspectives fuse together and end my review. I’ll go ahead and
number them into three sections, in case some people would rather avoid the
overly personal section two.
Part 1: (Mini- Review)
“There are ways to turn the orbs
inside out without having to break them."
Like most of j/j hastain’s poetry collections that I’ve
read, much of the content fuses visceral imagery with the mind’s perception of mental/physical
relationships, how the body responds and why.
The mind and body fusion is not just focused on the outer body, but also
inwardly. In “Secret Letters”, this
inward focus includes positioning, the liquids inside, and different kinds of
perception of (experimentation with) insemination and reproduction, both mental
and physical.
“I told them to tie me to the cross
that had never been forced upright."
The liquids inside could be explored as an attempt to
discover one’s own non-traditional mind/body connections and/or desires and/or spirituality
- to find oneself (and/or another variation of oneself and/or a partner for
oneself) on a deeper level.
“Digging in the moist meadow I
unearthed a set of swan wings that had been dyed red. The wings were
somehow animate and flapping without
them having a center”
Much of j/j’s work is described as having a cross-genre,
trans-genre focus and while I don’t disagree with that, most of the recent
content I’ve read by j/j strikes me as uniquely feminine, in which the primary
genre amalgamation seems womanly and earthly – female mind and body combined
with the ground, dirt, water, plants (transplants), animals, birds, and blood
flow. Underground, buried down, dug up, re-birthed,
renewed and open to more exploration.
***
Part 2: (Overly Personal Goop)
Of course not every male or
female or gender-perception or genre-perception (or everyone’s viewing of
gender and genre) is the same – but regarding how I view some of j/j’s content,
one way in which its bodily perception feels different from mine is regarding
female blood flow (or at least the way I interpret its perception of female
blood flow).
Here are a few more lines from
the “Secret Letters” and how they got my mind and body flowing:
“This morning I am
bleeding in the meadow, trying to read my clots, to perform translations by way
of them while on my knees.
I see lace ladders in
the red. I want these lace ladders to be edible to you”
My perception of such lines
could differ depending on my state of mind when I read it, but when I read it
the other day (and various other parts of the “Secret Letters” too), I initially
had a hard time with it, not because of its writing style, but because its body
based content seemed female blood flow positive to the point of desiring to
explore one’s own menstrual clots like edible art and share them with “you”.
Since I personally happen to be
in the midst of feeling uncomfortable with my own body (partly based on a
middle aged mini mid-life crisis, no partner, not even sure what appeals to me relationship-wise
or sexually anymore, and not enthralled by repeatedly exploring my own body by
myself), partaking of body based exploratory content caused me to feel even
more aware of/bothered by my own stomach, as if the lines were going straight
into my stomach and causing it to stick out more.
Those lines got me thinking
about menstrual blood and how I’ve never related on a personal level to how
some people seem to perceive the menstrual cycle/ovulation/fertility as an empowering
force field of womanhood, the choice to give birth, the choice to not give
birth, life/death power. It’s not that I
don’t understand that perspective, but I view menstrual blood as more akin to
horror movie gore art.
I desire to create art, but I have
never had any desire to give birth to another human being. For me personally, I
don’t feel stronger (or weaker) and more life (or death) force based than usual
when clots of blood are gooping out of my vagina and into the toilet bowl (or
inside or outside). I feel uncomfortable,
cramped, grossed out, and relieved I haven’t been impregnated by some other
bodily fluid spew. I’m not against the
idea of using one’s own blood as part of creating art, but if I used menstrual
blood in my art, it wouldn’t have a positive flow or a spiritual perspective –
it would be more like a queasy-licious horror gore abortion scene.
When little clots of dark red
goop drip out of my body, I’m not feeling proud to be a powerful woman with a
monthly flow of vaginal blood. I’m leaning more towards blood bath and how
maybe it looks like I’m oozing out tiny, grotesque, misshapen alien body parts which
will soon be flushed down the drain – but then in a month, that mini creature
will rebirth itself inside me like an ongoing mutilated suspension cord
brimming with on & off cramping horror clots for more than 30 years until
the egg sacs finally dry up and I lose my wet cunt sex drive. Not that I’m
looking forward to losing my sex drive. I’d
rather deal with clotted cramp horror movie alien life form vaginal goop for
another 30 years.
But I don’t feel inclined to
explore my own menstrual flow (or non-menstrual flow) and the idea of literally,
physically giving birth sort of grosses me out too. If I don’t relate positively to natural
reproduction, is there something unusual about my physical and mental organs? I
am willing to question my mind’s contours and I am willing to try to expand
them and I am willing to engage in certain kinds of body experimentation, but I
am not willing to literally give birth with my body.
With my body, I tend to feel overly
bothered/borderline disturbed by any parts of it that are not small and tight -
overly bothered by the parts of my body that naturally get loser as I get
older. Any part of my body that stands out too much, sticks out too much, is significantly
increased or decreased by consumption bothers me. It doesn’t bother me much if
my clothes stand out, because those can be easily removed and replaced – but
not my own body parts, both the visible parts and the visceral crevasses. I
don’t desire them to suddenly expand or contract beyond my control, except for during
orgasm (and I think it took me longer than average to desire that, because it
involves letting go of yourself – but only temporarily – and usually I don’t
even like temporarily letting go of my body if it’s just a casual fuck – and who
in the fuck are you supposed to trust your body with? I don’t want to give mine
to someone who would take any body they could get.)
On a less than temporal level, I
can analyze what’s going on inside my mind – but how am I supposed to analyze
what might be going on inside my body?
Since I can’t, I feel uncomfortable with bodily changes beyond my
control. Perhaps I should be interested
in attempting to explore my own uncontrolled body more, but I don’t usually
enjoy uncontrolled exploration. It reminds me of how my stomach sticks out
right after I eat. I feel like it’s either
a matter of keeping my eating under control or increasing it and not caring very
much about my own stomach anymore.
Granted, in “secret letters” j/j’s body-based imagery seems to involve
being in control in unique, creative, chosen ways and/or experimenting with a (dear secret)
someone/something, so I’m not sure why I suddenly got so focused on notions of
experimentation beyond my control .
Also, stepping away from my own overly grossed out
self, me saying I don’t particularly relate to a positive perspective on red
clots doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate j/j’s perspective. I like the exploratory slants and I like
those lines I quoted, especially the “lace ladders in the red”. Part of me also desires to be oddly and
uniquely edible to someone (certainly not everyone, but someone), even the
parts of myself that I view as negative and/or inedible.
I appreciate divergent possibilities,
which is part of the reason I appreciate j/j’s creative work, even if some of
it makes me uncomfortable. Heck, some of
my OWN creative work makes me uncomfortable too, in a different way. Eliciting discomfort
and thus causing one to explore and consider and re-consider and question one’s
thoughts and feelings is part of the creative process – and part of the
creative flow, bloody or not.
***
Fusion Mix Finale:
“I have been pressing additive hearts
onto the middles of dark trees, forming ulterior organs out of fruit pulp”
Maybe our different approaches on body and blood flow is
part of the reason why the collaborative poems that j/j and I have been working
on for months involve a hemorrhaging plethora of dark red goop and paradoxical body
based offerings. Positive healing fetish violence
intertwines with negative stabbing fantasy/reality (sexy, queasy, girly, womanly,
queer). Visceral splatter paint gets revised into different shapes and sizes
and contours and body based positioning and varied divergent life forms with
their own vows.
j/j
certainly seems to be in honor of divergence, after all:
“mixing the old, new and imagined
shapes into divergent symmetries.
Rain falling both inside and outside
of the glass, I court contraries in order to learn to couple with you.”
I truly appreciate that j/j’s content provokes me in different
ways, even if some of the thoughts it provokes are sometimes troubling for me.
I very much liked the never-ending, ending final lines in
this collection of “secret letters”:
“a
she becomes a he becomes a she
being buried re-occurringly to upkeep obscure
shrines. This is a place that, when it is added to, is so
dense that it will never dry."
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