Draft 72: Nanifesto
First appearance: "Draft 72: Nanifesto." ecopoetics
Insist on smallness.
Scale down clutter.
Critique monoculture.
Build of it, not on it.
Clamor alongside plethora.
Argue with archives.
Loop your vines between the trees.
Never forget the accidents, though they teach almost nothing.
Do not fail sadness.
Build tight baskets.
Explore the transverse torque.
Destroy the merely consumable.
Refuse to buy it!
Declare a program.
Begin beyond it.
Link the emergencies.
Examine the inexplicable.
Demand polyphony.
Live in empathy.
Cross the void as you imagine one particular atom does it,
wobbling and transgressive.
"Drink from your personal cow."
Saturate the imperfect moment with intransigent audacity.
Teach the law of unintended consequences.
Meditate air threads in angles of light.
Consider the mite, the mote, the mute.
Affirm the loosened whup, whup, whup of practice.
Sew and freshen, wipe and preoccupy.
Wash mirrors with white vinegar.
Seek dark matter.
Show conscious energy.
Persist in negative care.
And compare the properties of reeds.
Wake in poised glee and utter irascibility.
Respect honey, and even more, the bees.
Ject every jective.
Investigate wild asparagus, for it grows oddly.
Cry your heart out.
You are both tied and freed, therefore resist.
To smash the fourth wall does not change much.
Gather the residue; credit its vitality.
Foreshorten blab, but lengthen liberty.
Compost the clippings of Logos.
Step deep into your shuddering boat.
Work for reverberation.
Encourage the birds, perhaps by the homage of whistling.
"You must talk with two tongues."
You must also shuttle.
Demand accountability.
Display minority.
Encourage the mind-of-its-own.
Let it demand a second cello!
Card the tree-wool carefully, for we already live in the absolute,
in a passionate state, in a violent rage, in the now, thoroughly
impatient, this much comes clear at every bitter instant.
Scroll, and run after unrolling.
Work in anxious panic and implacable assurance.
Keep the rage complex.
Make somber portage over grounds of loss.
Stare down the guns. But still remember
in war "the one who aims the gun
is not the one who pulls the trigger."
Be brave. Stand equally on both legs.
Seek intransigently the smallest information.
Stop snoozing.
Credit your own complicity.
Acknowledge tiny jolts of motivating outrage.
Hike in strong boots to wherever a good there is.
Feather the interstitial room.
Dare compare the little with the large.
Slide the pipette into the wall
for refugees from the merely agreeable.
Convert no one. Do not seek to.
Plunge with any word under its surface.
Appreciate when things go swimmingly.
They converge even when they hardly join.
And let the handkerchief speak.
Produce, for the wobbling micro-tones, syntax and sedimentation.
Streak them with whatever happens.
Shed sidelights on the middle dawn in golden tree and through.
Refuse to design Futurist golf sweaters. Just don't do it.
Trip and stumble on the dot itself.
Take possession of its little space.
Express entanglement as you fall.
Engage in pentatonic insomnia.
Affirm complex responsibility.
Any platform. Any wort. The trace is exigent,
even if almost obliterated again and again.
May-July 2005
Notes to Draft 72: Nanifesto.
Actually what Kurt Schwitters did make, in his 1922 "Cow Manifesto," were suggestions about arranging things so that every person "can drink from the udder of his personal cow" (Schwitters, in Mary Ann Caws, ed. Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, 390). "You must talk with two tongues": Wyndham Lewis, "Vortex No. 1, Art Vortex." Blast #2 (July 1915), 91 (facsimile reprinted by Black Sparrow Press, 1981). Although he had been commissioned to write a string quartet, "The work seemed to acquire a will of its own," Einojuhani Rautavaara said, about his 1997 string quintet "Unknown Heavens"; "it wanted two cellos, clearly demanding a second cello." From notes for a CD produced by Ondine Inc, Helsinki. The artist Giacomo Balla did in fact design Futurist golf sweaters. Donor drafts are Little, Recto, Eclogue (15, 34, 53).
Insist on smallness.
Scale down clutter.
Critique monoculture.
Build of it, not on it.
Clamor alongside plethora.
Argue with archives.
Loop your vines between the trees.
Never forget the accidents, though they teach almost nothing.
Do not fail sadness.
Build tight baskets.
Explore the transverse torque.
Destroy the merely consumable.
Refuse to buy it!
Declare a program.
Begin beyond it.
Link the emergencies.
Examine the inexplicable.
Demand polyphony.
Live in empathy.
Cross the void as you imagine one particular atom does it,
wobbling and transgressive.
"Drink from your personal cow."
Saturate the imperfect moment with intransigent audacity.
Teach the law of unintended consequences.
Meditate air threads in angles of light.
Consider the mite, the mote, the mute.
Affirm the loosened whup, whup, whup of practice.
Sew and freshen, wipe and preoccupy.
Wash mirrors with white vinegar.
Seek dark matter.
Show conscious energy.
Persist in negative care.
And compare the properties of reeds.
Wake in poised glee and utter irascibility.
Respect honey, and even more, the bees.
Ject every jective.
Investigate wild asparagus, for it grows oddly.
Cry your heart out.
You are both tied and freed, therefore resist.
To smash the fourth wall does not change much.
Gather the residue; credit its vitality.
Foreshorten blab, but lengthen liberty.
Compost the clippings of Logos.
Step deep into your shuddering boat.
Work for reverberation.
Encourage the birds, perhaps by the homage of whistling.
"You must talk with two tongues."
You must also shuttle.
Demand accountability.
Display minority.
Encourage the mind-of-its-own.
Let it demand a second cello!
Card the tree-wool carefully, for we already live in the absolute,
in a passionate state, in a violent rage, in the now, thoroughly
impatient, this much comes clear at every bitter instant.
Scroll, and run after unrolling.
Work in anxious panic and implacable assurance.
Keep the rage complex.
Make somber portage over grounds of loss.
Stare down the guns. But still remember
in war "the one who aims the gun
is not the one who pulls the trigger."
Be brave. Stand equally on both legs.
Seek intransigently the smallest information.
Stop snoozing.
Credit your own complicity.
Acknowledge tiny jolts of motivating outrage.
Hike in strong boots to wherever a good there is.
Feather the interstitial room.
Dare compare the little with the large.
Slide the pipette into the wall
for refugees from the merely agreeable.
Convert no one. Do not seek to.
Plunge with any word under its surface.
Appreciate when things go swimmingly.
They converge even when they hardly join.
And let the handkerchief speak.
Produce, for the wobbling micro-tones, syntax and sedimentation.
Streak them with whatever happens.
Shed sidelights on the middle dawn in golden tree and through.
Refuse to design Futurist golf sweaters. Just don't do it.
Trip and stumble on the dot itself.
Take possession of its little space.
Express entanglement as you fall.
Engage in pentatonic insomnia.
Affirm complex responsibility.
Any platform. Any wort. The trace is exigent,
even if almost obliterated again and again.
May-July 2005
Notes to Draft 72: Nanifesto.
Actually what Kurt Schwitters did make, in his 1922 "Cow Manifesto," were suggestions about arranging things so that every person "can drink from the udder of his personal cow" (Schwitters, in Mary Ann Caws, ed. Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001, 390). "You must talk with two tongues": Wyndham Lewis, "Vortex No. 1, Art Vortex." Blast #2 (July 1915), 91 (facsimile reprinted by Black Sparrow Press, 1981). Although he had been commissioned to write a string quartet, "The work seemed to acquire a will of its own," Einojuhani Rautavaara said, about his 1997 string quintet "Unknown Heavens"; "it wanted two cellos, clearly demanding a second cello." From notes for a CD produced by Ondine Inc, Helsinki. The artist Giacomo Balla did in fact design Futurist golf sweaters. Donor drafts are Little, Recto, Eclogue (15, 34, 53).