Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy

This is what did not happen to happen to be this brother

to his brother to his father to his father to be left to his mother

to his father.^22

“Successions of words,” remarks Stein at the opening of “Arthur a Gram-
mar,” “are so agreeable” (“How to Write” 35). And so they are in the faux-
narrative above, which alludes mysteriously to a “they” who are “little” and
have been “left” to “be killed,” possibly by their father and/or mother, but
then again mother and father are themselves evidently there to be killed. We
“see” these verbal con¤gurations before we take in their meaning—no doubt
because, for Stein, narrative is not nearly as interesting as description, and
here the wholly reductive vocabulary—there are only eight different words
in this 131–word paragraph—forces the reader’s eye to dwell on the visual de-
sign produced by the ceaseless conjunction of little and killed, little and left,
with father, mother, and especially the word be placed at key junctures of
the word square.^23 The only punctuation Stein uses here is a period, and in
the paragraph before us, there are only two sentences and hence two peri-
ods. Accordingly, when the second paragraph introduces a succession of new
words—“This is what did not happen to happen”—followed by reference to
another new word, brother, the “plot” thickens, almost as if Stein were about
to recount the tale of Cain and Abel, only to “sacri¤ce” these characters to
her abstract and minimalist grid.
Haroldo de Campos has clearly learned from both Joyce and Stein. Here is
the opening text of the Galáxias, “e começo aqui,” as translated into French
by Inés Oseki-Depré and into English by Suzanne Jill Levine.^24

e começo aqui e meço aqui este começo e recomeço e remeço e

arremesso e aqui me meço quando se vive sob a espécie da

viagem o que importa não é a viagem mas o começo da por isso

meço por isso começo escrever mil páginas escrever

milumapáginas para acabar com a escritura para começar com a

escritura para acabarcomeçar com a escritura por isso recomeço

por isso arremeço por isso teço escrever sobre escrever é o futuro

do escrever sobrescrevo sobrescravo em miluminoites

milumapáginas ou uma página em uma noite que é o mesmo

noites e páginas mesmam ensimesmam onde o ¤m é o comêço

et ici je commence et ici je me lance et ici j’avance ce commencement

et je relance et j’y pense quand on vit sous l’espèce du voyage ce

184 Chapter 9