Swensen - Goest

N OTE TO THE R EADER Alice James Books encourages you to calibrate your e-reader device settings using the line of characters below as a guide, which optimizes the line length and character size: had she only been a Christian, was seized in the street, stripped and shredded Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. Doing this will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accomodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems may be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the line break will be marked with a shallow indent. Acknowledgments My warm thanks to the editors and staffs of the following publications in which these poems first appeared (sometimes in earlier versions) for their generous support of this work and of contemporary poetry in general. American Letters & Commentary: Things to Do with Naphtha, The Development of Natural Gas Aufgabe: Future White Bellingham Review: What the Ventriloquists Intended, The Origin of Ombres Chinoises, The Discovery of Bologna Stone Canary River Review: The Game of Balls and Cups Colorado Review: Others, Five Landscapes Conduit: The Invention of Automata, The Invention of the Pencil, The Invention of the Hydrometer Conjunctions: The History of Artificial Ice, The Lives of Saltpeter, Lacrymae Vitrae Crowd: The Razed Cities, The Invention of the Weathervane DIA Foundation: White Cities Electronic Poetry Review: The Invention of Streetlights Idiom: The Future of Sculpture Iowa City Arts Council Poetry in Public Project: The Girl Who Never Rained Ploughshares: The Invention of the Night-watch, The Invention of Mirror, The Invention of Incised Glass Shiny: Five Landscapes Vagant (in Norwegian translation): The Invention of Streetlights, The Lives of Saltpeter And many thanks to the Pushcart Press for choosing Five Landscapes for a Pushcart Prize, and to Bruce Beasley for nominating it.

I would also like to thank Cal Bedient and Nicole Terry for their invaluable feedback, and Stefanie Marlis and Cort Day for the same. Section Two is based on A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins by John Beckmann, 4th edition, published by Henry Bohn, London, 1846. Most of the italicized passages in The Future of Sculpture and The Future of White are taken from the titles of or inscriptions on Cy Twomblys sculptures. My thanks to him for these words, and for every aspect and each instance of all of his works. Table of Contents

Every night on the answering machine there is, among the others, one blank call, at least thirty seconds of nothing; if it ever stopped, youd have to start calling up and leaving it for someone else. Theres a set of identical twins who communicate through prime numbers, and certain figures in medieval paintings whose extra fingers can only be seen at a glance. Once there was a man who wrote a symphony based entirely on the arrangement of birds on the power lines outside; its called solmifyingto solmizate in the infinitive; transitive: to sing any object into place. In the crowded subway, a stranger stands behind you with one hand firmly, warmly, on the small of your back. Niepces first photograph, which was the first photograph, was of a scene of roofs so blurred they were often mistaken for sails. Or people passing on the other side of frosted glass, a woman at the opera is talking in her sleep.

Once there was a man who sang in his sleep. Four out of five living things are insects. Five LandscapesOne Green moves through the tops of trees and grows lighter greens as it recedes, each of which includes a grey, and among the greys, or beyond them, waning finely into white, there is one white spot, absolute; it could be an egret or perhaps a crane at the edge of the water where it meets a strip of sand. Two There is a single, almost dazzling white spot of a white house out loud against the fields, and the forest in lines receding, rises, and then planes. Color, in pieces or entire; its presence veneers over want; in all its moving parts, it could be something else half-hidden by trees. Three The trees are half air. Three The trees are half air.

They fissure the sky; you could count the leaves, pare time defined as that which, no matter how barely, exceeds what the eye could grasp in a glance: intricate woods opening out before a body of water edged with a swatch of meadow where someone has hung a bright white sheet out in the sun to dry. Four A white bird in a green forest is a danger to itself. Stands out. Shines. Builds up inside. Five The air across the valley is slightly hazy though thinning though patches remain between the groves of trees that edge a clearing in which stands a single house. Five The air across the valley is slightly hazy though thinning though patches remain between the groves of trees that edge a clearing in which stands a single house.

A child in a white t-shirt has just walked out of the house and is turning to walk down to the lake. The Future of Sculpture Cy Twombly, Sculptures, National Gallery, Washington DC, 2001 The Future of Light Give the box back to the weal (the sun peeled) to a line, which is thin, to a dim Give it back to him. As the white brush brushes over you again you are counting time run into the sun (until it equals) Throw the sun into the box. The box is painted white. By your own hand the sun was hauled into view and proved to be a pale thing off which the paint is flaking.