It isn't fame or failure
   just so many books to read
   so many words to write
   and the backyard garden is
   Paradise. I could spend
   all day naming things and all night
   breaking promises
   -David Meltzer

Ed Ruscha’s notebook.

(Ruscha is a poet)

"Between us a wound in paper”
-David Meltzer, from “Entries"

MANIFESTO OF LETTERIST POETRY by ISIDORE ISOU
A Commonplaces about Words

Pathetic I   	The flourishing of bursts of energy dies beyond us.
	      	All delirium is expansive.
    		All impulses escape stereotyping.
Still I  	An intimate experience maintains curious specifics.
Pathetic II  	Discharges are transmitted by notions.
       		What a difference between our fluctuations and the 
		brutality of words.
       		Transitions always arise between feeling and
		speech. 

Still II      	The word is the first stereotype.
Pathetic III  	What a difference between the organism and the sources. 
         	Notions - what an inherited dictionary.  Tarzan learns 
		in his father's book to call tigers cats.
       		Naming the Unknown by the Forever.
Still III     	The translated word does not express.
Pathetic IV   	The rigidity of forms impedes their transmission.
       		These words are so heavy that the flow fails to carry 
		them. Temperaments die before arriving at the goal 
		    (firing blanks). 
          	    No word is capable of carrying the impulses one
          	    wants to send with it.
Still IV     	WORDS       allow psychic alterations to disappear.
       		Speech      resists effervescence.
       		Notions     require expansion to equivalent formulas.
   WORDS                    Fracture our rhythm.
     by their               Assassinate sensitivity.
     mechanism,             Thoughtlessly uniform
     fossilization,         tortured inspiration.
     stability              Twist tensions.
     and aging              Reveal poetic exaltations as useless. 
                            Create politeness.
                            Invent diplomats.
                            Promote the use of analogies
                            Substitute for true emissions.
Pathetic V    	If one economizes on the riches of the soul, one dries 
		    up the left-over along with the  words.
Still V         Prevent the flow from molding itself on the cosmos.
       		Form species in sentiments.
     WORDS      Destroy sinuosities.
                Result from the need to determine things.
                Help the elderly remember by forcing the young to forget.
Pathetic VI     Every victory of the young has been a victory over words. 
        	Every victory over words has been a fresh, young victory.
Still VI        Summarize without knowing how to receive.
        	It is the tyranny of the simple over the long-winded.
     WORDS 	Discern too concretely to leave room for the mind.
        	Forget the true measures of expression: suggestions.
        	Let infrarealities disappear.
        	Sift without restoring.
Pathetic VII    One learns words as one learns good manners. 
        	Without words and manners it is impossible to appear in
		      society.
        	It is by making progress in words that one makes progress
                      socially. 
Still VII       Kill fleeting evocations.
        	Slow down short-cuts and approximations.
SPEECH  	Is always vice-versa for not being identical.
        	Eliminates solitary individuals who would like to
        	rejoin society.
        	Forces men who would like to say "Otherwise"
        	      to say "Thus."
        	Introduces stuttering.
Pathetic VIII 	The carpentry of the word built to last forever obliges men
         	      to construct according to patterns, like children.
        	There is no appreciation of value in a word.
Still VIII    	Words are the great levellers.
Pathetic IX     Notions limit opening onto depths by merely standing
         	      ajar.
Still IX 	Words are family garments.
        	Poets enlarge words every year.
        	Words already have been mended so much they are in stitches.
Pathetic X    	People think it is impossible to break words.
Still X  	Unique feelings are so unique that they can not be 
		      popularized. Feelings without words in the dictionary
                      disappear.
Pathetic XI     Every year thousands of feelings disappear for lack
                      of a concrete form.
Still XI 	Feelings demand living space.
        	How remarkable the poet's disheartened absorption in words. 
        	Things and nothings to communicate become daily more
		      imperious.
Pathetic XII    Efforts at destruction witness to the need to 
         	rebuild.
Still XII       How long will people hold out in the shrunken domain of
         	      words?
Pathetic XIII   The poet suffers indirectly:
                Words remain the work of the poet, his existence, his job.



B Innovation I 

Destruction of WORDS for LETTERS

ISIDORE ISOU    Believes in the potential elevation beyond WORDS; wants 
		  the development of transmissions where nothing is
                  lost in the process; offers a verb equal to a shock. By 
		  the overload of expansion the forms leap up by themselves.
ISIDORE ISOU    Begins the destruction of words for letters.
ISIDORE ISOU    Wants letters to pull in among themselves all desires.
ISIDORE ISOU    Makes people stop using foregone conclusions, words.
ISIDORE ISOU    Shows another way out between WORDS and RENUNCIATION:
                   LETTERS. He will create emotions against language, for the
                   pleasure of the tongue.
          	It consists of teaching that letters have a destination
		   other than words.
ISOU            Will unmake words into their letters.
                Each poet will integrate everything into Everything
                Everything must be revealed by letters.
POETRY CAN NO LONGER BE REMADE.

ISIDORE ISOU IS STARTING
     A NEW VEIN OF LYRICISM.
           Anyone who can not leave words behind can stay back with them!




C Innovation II: The Order of Letters 

This does not mean    destroying words for other words.
               	      Nor forging notions to specify their nuances.
                      Nor mixing terms to make them hold more meaning.
But it does mean      TAKING ALL LETTERS AS A WHOLE; UNFOLDING BEFORE DAZZLED
               		SPECTATORS MARVELS CREATED FROM LETTERS (DEBRIS FROM 
			THE DESTRUCTION);
               	      CREATING AN ARCHITECTURE OF LETTRIC RHYTHMS; 
		      ACCUMULATING FLUCTUATING LETTERS IN A PRECISE FRAME; 
		      ELABORATING SPLENDIDLY THE CUSTOMARY COOING; 
		      COAGULATING THE CRUMBS OF LETTERS FOR A REAL MEAL; 
		      RESUSCITATING THE JUMBLE IN A DENSER ORDER;
               	      MAKING UNDERSTANDABLE AND TANGIBLE THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE 
		        AND VAGUE; CONCRETIZING SILENCE;
                        WRITING THE NOTHINGNESS.
It is                 the role of the poet to advance toward subversive 
                      sources.
                      the obligation of the poet to advance in the black and 
		      burdened depths of the unknown.
                      the craft of the poet to open one more treasure-room 
		      door for the common man.
There will be a poet's message in new signs.  The ordering of letters is called:
            LETTERISM.
      It is not a poetic school, but a solitary attitude.
      AT THIS MOMENT: LETTERISM = ISIDORE ISOU.
      Isou is awaiting his successors in poetry!
      (Do they already exist somewhere, ready to burst forth into history 
      through books?)
EXCUSES FOR WORDS INTRODUCED INTO LITERATURE
      There are things which are existent only in the strength of their name.
      there are others which exist, but lacking a name are unacknowledged.
            Every idea needs a calling card to make itself known.
            Ideas are known by the name of their creator.
      It is more objective to name them after themselves.
            LETTERISM IS AN IDEA THAT
            WILL BE LAMENTED BY ITS REPUTATION
      Letterics is a material that can always be demonstrated. 
      Letterics seeds already existing:
            NONSENSE WORDS;
            WORDS WITH HIDDEN MEANINGS IN THEIR LETTERS;
            ONOMATOPOEIAS.
      If this material existed before, it didn't have a name to recognize it by. 
      Letterics works will be those made entirely out of this element, but with
            suitable rules and genres!
      The word exists and has the right to perpetuate itself.
      ISOU IS CALLING ATTENTION TO ITS EXISTENCE.
      It is up to the Letterist to develop Letterism. 
            Letterism is offering a DIFFERENT poetry.
            LETTERISM imposes a NEW POETRY.
            THE LETTERIC AVALANCHE IS ANNOUNCED.
         					1942.

-Excerpts from Introduction à une Nouvelle Poésie et une Nouvelle Musique. 
Paris: Gallimard, 1947. (Edited and translated by David W. Seaman)

 

“No word is capable of carrying the impulses

one wants to send with it”
-Isidore Isou

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
― Émile Zola

   What's given up

   given out into her

   her page whose bones

   fan apart.

   -David Meltzer

Families standing in the flooded Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, holding photos of their disappeared, 1983. Photo by Daniel García. From the exhibit: Losing the human form.

I have been thinking a lot about something David Meltzer once wrote. It hangs around my throat like a noose:

“The deception of a new typewriter ribbon
gets him going another few years.”

The beautiful things you make yourself believe.
Just to get by. To survive yourself.

How else do people survive themselves?