Retallack’s “narrative”—an account of breakfast in the Ramada Inn with
Paul and Doug—is a story that goes nowhere, except on the page, but on the
page there is plenty of verbal “action.” If Waldrop and McCaffery adjust
spacing so as to meet the demands of the justi¤ed right margin, Retallack
begins with a speci¤c constraint, 35 characters per line, including spaces that
function as rests. When a sentence reaches the margin formed by this ¤rm
rule, the word in question must be spliced, giving us such items as “ordere /
d,” “noteboo / k,” “w / ith,” “Dou / g,” “br / ing,” “t / heir,” “a / ll,” “wasn /
’t.” The left margin thus becomes a letter column, vertically producing words
like “eke” and “pee.” How strange, the poet suggests, word formation really
is. Throughout, Paul’s making of the photogram (“he said when the sen /
sitive paper turns pale the images / are developed”) is analogous to the poetic
process itself, where words are endowed with a new life by their decomposi-
tion and placement on the “light sensitive” page. Decisions: what to order
for breakfast, what to do to the paper—these come together in quirky ways
as the woman who speaks expresses her disappointment that “the waitress
didn’t br / ing me a whole banana,” an item that somehow becomes con®ated
with the potential misogyny of her two male companions. Like the photo-
gram (which can’t be called “a Rayograph for pol / itical reasons,” evidently
to avoid reference to the inventor of this art form, Man Ray, Retallack’s
“memento mori” memorializes not death but everyday trivia: “I realiz / ed I
didn’t want the orange juice I / had ordered, but I drank it any way.”
My fourth and last example is taken from Kenneth Goldsmith, No. 111
2.7.93—10.20.96, chapter II:
A door, à la, a pear, a peer, a rear, a ware, A woah!, Abba, abhorred, abra,
abroad, accord, acère, acha, Ada, ada, add a, adda, adore, Aetna, afford,
a¤re, afore, afyre, ah air, ah car, ah ere, Ah Ha, ah ha, ain’t tha, air blur, air
bra, airfare, alder, all ears, all yours, alla, Allah, aller, allya, alpha, alswa,
ama, amber, ambler, AmFar, amir, amor, Ana, ana, and ka, and uh, and war,
anear, Anka, Anna, anvers, apes ma, appeere, aqua, ara, arbour, archer,
ardor, ardour, are our, are there, Are there?, Are uh?, arm bears, armoire,
armor, armour, arrear, as far, ashore, asper, ass tear, asthore, atcher, atma,
au pair, au poivre, auntre, aura, austere, Auxerre, aw arrgh, aw awe, aw
war, award, aware, awed jaw, Ayler, bazaar, baba, babka, bacca, baga,
bagba, bagger, baiter, bamba, bancha, baner, bang your, bania, banker,
banter, bar burr, bar straw, barbed wire, barber, barbour, bare rear, bare
tears, Barère, batter, baxa, be here, be square, Beans Dear?, beau-père,de Campos’s Galáxias and After 191