In particular: Poems, new and selected

by Cid Corman

First printing, a trade paperback, not issued in hardcover. Poems by the founder and editor of Origin, one of the pioneers of the Objectivist lyric. Afterword by Gary Geddes. 110 pp. Cover from an etching by Otto Graser.

Unknown Binding

First published May 1, 1985

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

. . . a love of human expressiveness, of language, particular speech, its trickiness, vivacity, penetration.
- (pg. 60)

The new and selected poems of In Particular may not represent Cid Corman at his best ("best" is relative). Whether or not the poems of In Particular are Corman's best, however, is superfluous. Gary Geddes (editor), in his afterword, states that he intended to "introduce [Corman] to a new generation of readers". And, as an introduction to Corman's work, In Particular succeeds in offering a range of poems - a range in quality, in length, in profundity, etc....

The gold café, or
gilt at least. The edge
of mosaic tile
sea-green, and mirrors.

The place to be seen,
where one feels beyond
seeing what's outside,
dismissing it as

propaganda. What,
after all, isn't?
To sit and be served,
like gentleman, or

(move rarely) ladies,
and talk politics
over espresso
and gesture for glass

to reflect upon.
Fresh candies, liqueurs.
The levers pumped down
ease up and ooze out

the demi-tasse brew.
Dregs continual-
ly banged our against
a sheetmetal sink.
- La Calamita (pg. 53)


Blessing are
at hand

Empty
receives most
- Untitled (pg. 61)


In that
cold he is
known by

like his
friend the wind
sweeping

shadows
along a
summit

laughing
at himself
laughing.
- The Poet (pg. 71)


The quietest
poem I like
best. And you think -

If so - wouldnt
silence do? No.
And we know why.
- Untitled (pg. 78)


I have learned
of the breath

of words the
true order
- Untitled (pg. 97)

What's more, Geddes offers extracts from Corman's collected essays, Word for Word and At Their Word ). Extracts in the form of blurbs. These extracts, more than representing the other side of Corman's work, break up the poems and bring a structure to In Particular that it wouldn't otherwise have...

For everything matters: no thing needs feel itself neglected (the attender is fully attended): everything is always 'in play,' at stake. Every word is a cast of the dice. Every word, the last word.
- (pg. 5)


But it is difficult in America for the quiet note to be heard and the value of sheer noise is inflated. Quietness is taken as complacency or smugness or dullness or lord knows what, as though each man has not to suffer what he lives, or as though there were some special grace in imposing one's own misery on others and making it pay off too as an 'art.'
- (pg. 21)

One piece stood out, in part because it was the only prose piece to be presented in its entirety (disregarding the excerpts from Word for Word and At Their Word ), and in part because the content of the piece demonstrates, in its complexity, the depth of Corman's vision, a depth only alluded to in Corman's poems...

I am here. and so are you. We are here, in effect, together. Both are here by choice, though the choice is not quite the same. You presumably came to be diverted and possibly to be made more aware by me, or through me. And I m here presumably because I am an actor and this is my business.
You will notice, perhaps to your chagrin, that I am saying what is only too obvious, bu if I were to "act" - and the word is in quotes - you would realize that no matter how stirring the action might be, would still remain an "act." It is in this sense alone, then, that I am an actor.
The other thing you will have already noticed - likewise to your chagrin - is that if I keep on saying the obvious, as I am, you are not only likely not to be diverted, bu you stand an excellent chance of being bored. And whatever awareness is exerted upon you may be more in the way of an imposition than an elucidation. And in any event you didn't come to be lectured to or edified.
I could, of course, do all manner of things, within the range of the words given me an the director's discretion and my own imagination. The binding situation, however, remains the same: an actor, the actor, myself as it happens, on a stage facing an audience, you as it happens, here.
Is this a "situation"? And if it is, what does it mean to either or both of us (all of us here involved) and in this situation what can I do - what is given to do - that will completely concern you so that we may mutually benefit from the trouble we have gone to to be here, or the trouble that was gone to for us - whether wittingly or not - so that we are here together now?
If I go on speaking, even as I do, I might as well, you'll say, be acting out any script for the words I am saying are words that have been provided for me to present to you and, to that extent, I am actor as interpreter. But you are interpreters too and each will read my actions, interpretations of another's ideas, in his own way and may well, in the end, dispute what the show was all about at the end or anywhere along the way. And my being the interpreter - or the author being the author - will by no means mean that any of us can act as authority about what is going on - assuming as we do that something is going on - even if only the act of an actor seated on a stage before a seated, more or less listening, audience, each waiting for something to happen that is either happening or life itself is less than a play.
My acting as an actor apparently is more than analogous to your acting as an audience, for the act of listening - and inwardly sharing moment is a vital conjuct of speaking to myself. It is, then, reflection in the sense of reflection as thinking. The act of theatre becomes an act, mind you an "act," of thinking the common situation through together.
You can say, naturally enough, that the words are given and that is in itself terribly restrictive - but whatever words occur - even at liberty - would be only those words and no other and, in effect, they would be or become the script. The point is, rather, that whatever words occur, whatever "acts," they remain part of a situation that is being shared and how they are being shared, precisely, concerns us.
I don't mean by this that I have come here to tell you how to behave - but haven't you come with a rather clear idea of how I, as an actor, should behave and isn't it this "misbehavior" on my part that is more dimaying in the situation to which we are not mutually exposed? I don't know what you will do. As an actor I am supposedly more disciplined, trained, accustomed to, the theatrical (play) situation and, as a result, should be prepared for whatever response might occur to you.
The situation still binds us - so long as you and I let ourselves remain in it, part of it - bu it only releases us - and surely this is the crux - insofar as we decisively give ourselves to it.
We might all say that we are awaiting the proper inspiration to really let go. As if, in an older jargon, we waited to be "attuned." Against my words there is much greater weight of your silence, that silence which we share here as instrument. The instrument, as ancient legend relates to us, will not play at our command, but only our of the lives we have brought to it, the life we confide to it. All we can do is hear it and hearing it find an accompanying song. That song is sometimes realized in silence.
The situation in which we find ourselves is as long as life and as quick as death. The distance that rests between us is less than the speed of light; it is the distance between the lover and the beloved. The language that has been given me to bridge it is - by intention - the language of love, which is faster than light and holds fast life. It does not define life and it does not defy life - or death. It comes of the life that has thought of itself as life and finds itself loving it.
It acts only as we have acted, all of us who are here, in being here, by whatever "act" of choice. It is true only as anything is true, as a form of the human imagination that can only confirm that is is by saying it is.
The situation is that we are here to affirm each other as "actors" in a theatre, palpably, decisively. An the scene only changes from the indoors of outside to the outside of indoors - as we shift ourselves. Both in and out. Every motion becomes an "act" of love and love itself, if so obvious a matter needs the redundancy of saying, is an "act".
It is not, then, that I am here - centred on a stage - and you are there - at the centre of your each universe - but that we revolve around each other, are related and - by being here, by some choice - are dearly related. The darkness between us, which might as well be light and will be soon enough, keeps us from seeing perhaps more clearly that we are "home," in a certain place, given to ends beyond our knowing and given, as at this moment, to beginnings of any ends - so that the play does not stop when the lights go up bu only then does the "act" open out, enter again the specific world that each of us must enter.
That we have met here and that you have let my words, the words that have been given me to say, come unto you becomes the fullest affirmation of each of us being once at least together. And once is always enough.
- The Actor enters and takes his seat at center - facing the audience (pg. 99 - 101)