John Lowther
from Correspondences
I do know the answers, but since knowledge is power I'm keeping them to myself.
You'll have to excuse me for not tending toward the end that this thread was.
So your measure of the times out of joint is whether you personally feel the bite?
Quite a delicious experience, this.
And I just got bogged down and decided to give up.
It is not high on the list of my priorities to follow up an unanswered follow-up letter.
Does that make you angry?
I think a lot of these garbled abstractions start floating around because decorum forbids naming
names and a discussion of personal relations.
It's too bad that you've turned your back on psychology and the unconscious.
I recognize that tactic.
I'm not sure if it isn't too broad a question.
It puts it all in boldface.
*
I have no idea what you're talking about.
This is a real problem.
While this miscommunication, as it were, results in our frustration, it is perhaps the essence of those
things which make us heterogeneous, individual, and perhaps beautiful.
Nope. But be my guest. The book just came out.
The fact that we misread each other's terms is natural, and allows us to be interesting, to an extent.
Actually, I should add that I have a problem, a certain kind of aphasia, where I read irony into
almost everything.
I spent a week in bed from it, whacked out on codeine, and got really bad anemia from all the
bleeding, so yesterday was really my first day back among the living.
I'll just reach out and grab random examples I have here at hand.
*
My lack of participation isn't so much a grand statement as it is a lack of time or need on my own part.
She checks her email regularly.
Not because I was looking for a clear-cut story, but because it was weird to exist for so very long in that
place she created.
When one critiques, one could ask whether it is important also to realize the subjective stance from
which one makes such judgments?
I'll leap in anyway.
I've never read them.
My set-up often translates attachments into garble.
I consider this background entirely sufficient for me to voice an opinion, even a strong opinion, on such
matters.
I say let's bust out.
The "theo" in the word suggests "news of the gods," doesn't it?
*
Yes I still want you.
We all have our little quirks.
You may have sent it to me, but I need a mental refresher on it since I am spacey.
I was crushed that last Tuesday was another repeat.
As you can see, I really really wanna know.
It went bust.
The thing is rather than not sleeping for a couple of nights I would prefer not to know about them
because in the long run they get in the way by frightening me off doing anything.
Behave behave behave! Show me the monkey, the one with pretty curls in his hair.
The philosophers, or some of them, think we're all in cages anyway.
Oh my, so many blunders.
Well I will shut up now.
Deep immersion cannot be expected in a discussion of this kind.
*
Your attachment, I couldn't get it erect, so to speak, does this mean I've gotta cut down on the booze?
It's difficult to reach back in time to retrieve that evanescent thought.
The word normally is used here as a reference to the so-called standard medieval gamut.
That much is, I think, basic.
But it seems to me there's something triple going on still.
If you have something to back it up with, an argument or a reference to some specific work which
makes such a claim, I'd be interested.
This is one of them.
Yeah it cuts both ways.
It helps me understand things, although often not the way they were meant to be.
I don't see any reason to respond at this time.
I have a sense that there's a strange thread running through it.
But the same ideas keep confusing me over and over again.
Event-plateaus reached and experienced without my being there!
Boy does it ever take the fun out of it.
*
I think they just want to let this run its course instead of making a big stand.
I am not welcome there. So my project as of late has been to try to find an argument that will
support my sympathies.
People are persuaded of the context by virtue of their very breathing, it would seem.
I was up for two days and two nights straight.
How bad is the hand?
She missed the flight by 25 minutes.
It's been sitting on my shelf for months, but I can't get through it.
It's a tough job, but someone etc.
The assumption is that mathematics and language use the same principles of logic to generate
conclusions...correct?
She is beautiful and wise. I won't be participating.
What was that quote from Alice in Wonderland about imaging impossible things before breakfast?
That is the core prob.
That's the thin line of avoidance one must commit to.
*
I know I have been an asshole most of my adult life and you can be a real prick too. Hot and imbedded.
I suppose we need a concept.
What's the worst experience you've ever had sending out?
This second one is just flooring me.
The software takes random data provided by things like keystroke frequencies, mouse position, etc.,
and uses an algorithm to generate an insanely large private key and a really huge public key.
I may be delusional but I think I'm just a step away from getting it.
The mynd doth wander over coals.
As for the juggling analogy, I'd just say that it seems to posit a sort of socio-cultural vacuum
that would be impossible to say really existed for any human being, even those raised by wolves.
The goods look good. You there today or what?
I have had so many dates that were a waste of our time over the last year.
I'm starting with decaf latte right now. But beyond that buoyant.
*
This disturbs me greatly. A lot of what ifs of all sorts.
Intending to do something is more of a development and a process than a straightforward – I intend X.
I have positive outlook even though no response.
Am I anticipating your feelings correctly?
The hands like lightning beat the conscious mind and retrieve hidden or inaccessible messages, prompts,
issues.
I could convert those.
I find myself in the moderate position of being on the side of the intentionalists, but feeling more
sympathetic for the hypothetical intentionalists than the actual ones.
We may just have to make you go stand in a corner of rain, until you feel like contributing in a productive
way to the class discussion.
Let's try!
But tell me first if you're still there, or if you bravely ran away.
*
Like... what if..? A bold statement.
We all have something to do with it.
I've already made one bad start of this letter.
I think that many of the qualities you observed in those paintings were accidental.
I'm not even sure that I'm the real one.
I think, I don't think you think, I think you know without words all is lost.
Will work until the last day of this month.
Though I guess I'm not really going to complain.
With all the evil in the world now, it's just perfectly fucked that an asshole like you thinks making
sense might help.
Respond as you see fit.
I am obviously unconfident in my utterances.
He's been calling several times a day, leaving messages regarding a plastic bag labeled "clothes
hangers" left at my place.
It is like saying, I am trying to swim, but I don't have anything to do with the water.
Too bad the damned thing couldn't find ice on the moon, it could have at least made something of itself.
But so long ago I've forgotten the details.
*
John Lowther’s work appears in the anthologies, The Lattice Inside (UNO Press, 2012) and Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (U of Alabama, 2003). Held to the Letter, co-authored with Dana Lisa Young is forthcoming from Lavender Ink in 2015. John works in video, photography, paint and performance. He’s writing a dissertation to reimagine psychoanalysis as grounded in the lives of intersex and transgender people so as to broaden our appreciation of subjective possibility.
https://lowtherpoet.wordpress.com/
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from Correspondences
I do know the answers, but since knowledge is power I'm keeping them to myself.
You'll have to excuse me for not tending toward the end that this thread was.
So your measure of the times out of joint is whether you personally feel the bite?
Quite a delicious experience, this.
And I just got bogged down and decided to give up.
It is not high on the list of my priorities to follow up an unanswered follow-up letter.
Does that make you angry?
I think a lot of these garbled abstractions start floating around because decorum forbids naming
names and a discussion of personal relations.
It's too bad that you've turned your back on psychology and the unconscious.
I recognize that tactic.
I'm not sure if it isn't too broad a question.
It puts it all in boldface.
*
I have no idea what you're talking about.
This is a real problem.
While this miscommunication, as it were, results in our frustration, it is perhaps the essence of those
things which make us heterogeneous, individual, and perhaps beautiful.
Nope. But be my guest. The book just came out.
The fact that we misread each other's terms is natural, and allows us to be interesting, to an extent.
Actually, I should add that I have a problem, a certain kind of aphasia, where I read irony into
almost everything.
I spent a week in bed from it, whacked out on codeine, and got really bad anemia from all the
bleeding, so yesterday was really my first day back among the living.
I'll just reach out and grab random examples I have here at hand.
*
My lack of participation isn't so much a grand statement as it is a lack of time or need on my own part.
She checks her email regularly.
Not because I was looking for a clear-cut story, but because it was weird to exist for so very long in that
place she created.
When one critiques, one could ask whether it is important also to realize the subjective stance from
which one makes such judgments?
I'll leap in anyway.
I've never read them.
My set-up often translates attachments into garble.
I consider this background entirely sufficient for me to voice an opinion, even a strong opinion, on such
matters.
I say let's bust out.
The "theo" in the word suggests "news of the gods," doesn't it?
*
Yes I still want you.
We all have our little quirks.
You may have sent it to me, but I need a mental refresher on it since I am spacey.
I was crushed that last Tuesday was another repeat.
As you can see, I really really wanna know.
It went bust.
The thing is rather than not sleeping for a couple of nights I would prefer not to know about them
because in the long run they get in the way by frightening me off doing anything.
Behave behave behave! Show me the monkey, the one with pretty curls in his hair.
The philosophers, or some of them, think we're all in cages anyway.
Oh my, so many blunders.
Well I will shut up now.
Deep immersion cannot be expected in a discussion of this kind.
*
Your attachment, I couldn't get it erect, so to speak, does this mean I've gotta cut down on the booze?
It's difficult to reach back in time to retrieve that evanescent thought.
The word normally is used here as a reference to the so-called standard medieval gamut.
That much is, I think, basic.
But it seems to me there's something triple going on still.
If you have something to back it up with, an argument or a reference to some specific work which
makes such a claim, I'd be interested.
This is one of them.
Yeah it cuts both ways.
It helps me understand things, although often not the way they were meant to be.
I don't see any reason to respond at this time.
I have a sense that there's a strange thread running through it.
But the same ideas keep confusing me over and over again.
Event-plateaus reached and experienced without my being there!
Boy does it ever take the fun out of it.
*
I think they just want to let this run its course instead of making a big stand.
I am not welcome there. So my project as of late has been to try to find an argument that will
support my sympathies.
People are persuaded of the context by virtue of their very breathing, it would seem.
I was up for two days and two nights straight.
How bad is the hand?
She missed the flight by 25 minutes.
It's been sitting on my shelf for months, but I can't get through it.
It's a tough job, but someone etc.
The assumption is that mathematics and language use the same principles of logic to generate
conclusions...correct?
She is beautiful and wise. I won't be participating.
What was that quote from Alice in Wonderland about imaging impossible things before breakfast?
That is the core prob.
That's the thin line of avoidance one must commit to.
*
I know I have been an asshole most of my adult life and you can be a real prick too. Hot and imbedded.
I suppose we need a concept.
What's the worst experience you've ever had sending out?
This second one is just flooring me.
The software takes random data provided by things like keystroke frequencies, mouse position, etc.,
and uses an algorithm to generate an insanely large private key and a really huge public key.
I may be delusional but I think I'm just a step away from getting it.
The mynd doth wander over coals.
As for the juggling analogy, I'd just say that it seems to posit a sort of socio-cultural vacuum
that would be impossible to say really existed for any human being, even those raised by wolves.
The goods look good. You there today or what?
I have had so many dates that were a waste of our time over the last year.
I'm starting with decaf latte right now. But beyond that buoyant.
*
This disturbs me greatly. A lot of what ifs of all sorts.
Intending to do something is more of a development and a process than a straightforward – I intend X.
I have positive outlook even though no response.
Am I anticipating your feelings correctly?
The hands like lightning beat the conscious mind and retrieve hidden or inaccessible messages, prompts,
issues.
I could convert those.
I find myself in the moderate position of being on the side of the intentionalists, but feeling more
sympathetic for the hypothetical intentionalists than the actual ones.
We may just have to make you go stand in a corner of rain, until you feel like contributing in a productive
way to the class discussion.
Let's try!
But tell me first if you're still there, or if you bravely ran away.
*
Like... what if..? A bold statement.
We all have something to do with it.
I've already made one bad start of this letter.
I think that many of the qualities you observed in those paintings were accidental.
I'm not even sure that I'm the real one.
I think, I don't think you think, I think you know without words all is lost.
Will work until the last day of this month.
Though I guess I'm not really going to complain.
With all the evil in the world now, it's just perfectly fucked that an asshole like you thinks making
sense might help.
Respond as you see fit.
I am obviously unconfident in my utterances.
He's been calling several times a day, leaving messages regarding a plastic bag labeled "clothes
hangers" left at my place.
It is like saying, I am trying to swim, but I don't have anything to do with the water.
Too bad the damned thing couldn't find ice on the moon, it could have at least made something of itself.
But so long ago I've forgotten the details.
*
Author's Note: Correspondences is composed of 62 poems assembled while cleaning out personal email ahead of a swift termination date at an old job. It took 11 hours and 46 minutes. I don’t know why I timed it. I was thinking about my time there as congealed labor, though I didn’t do much of anything for 20 hours a week in my hidden cubicle. All lines are written by correspondents to me (and so “found” in a specific sense, perhaps “addressed” would be a better term). I normalized the punctuation and capitalization a bit for consistency of a sort. Only one line was taken from any given email. Many poets’ prose is poached here, but none of the Atlanta group (where I would read this material as soon as it was written).
As soon as it was completed I submitted all the poems in 10 submissions to 10 magazines and two batches were accepted — that was in 2007 — I’ve just made a spreadsheet with all the info and prepped the rest of them to start sending them out again.
A two page remix from Correspondences is published in An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology: The Lattice Inside (p.202-3).
John Lowther’s work appears in the anthologies, The Lattice Inside (UNO Press, 2012) and Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (U of Alabama, 2003). Held to the Letter, co-authored with Dana Lisa Young is forthcoming from Lavender Ink in 2015. John works in video, photography, paint and performance. He’s writing a dissertation to reimagine psychoanalysis as grounded in the lives of intersex and transgender people so as to broaden our appreciation of subjective possibility.
https://lowtherpoet.wordpress.com/
posted by mark young at 11:21 AM
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