The Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Mackey's "Song of the Andoumboulou"

Abstract

thought of Being guards word and fulfills its functions in such guardianship, namely care for use of language. Out of long guarded speechlessness and careful clarification of field thus cleared, comes utterance of tire thinker. Of like origin is naming of poet ... since poetry and thinking are most purely alike in their care of word.--Heidegger Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.--Wittgenstein What does 'Language is a fruit of which skin is called chatter' mean? asks one of Nathaniel Mackey's pre-Dogon, pre-human Andoumboulou travelers of his companions as they sat in Wrack Tavern, Inn of Many Monikers, Long Night Lounge.... flesh eloquence, I put in, the seed good sense, added what book went on to say. But he dwelt on skin, having sat so long and said only, So, rattled by wisdom's visit, bits of glass puncturing his lips as he spoke. (Song 19 104) (2) If asker pays a price for his wisdom--bits of glass/puncturing his lips--it seems to some he has been had. How is one to make sense of koanesque enlightenment of his companions? Pretty sounding phrases, but is there a coherence to be gleaned from flesh eloquence and the seed good sense? The asker finds some sense of his own on entrance of a female counterpart: thigh, he asserted, belly, sophic butt.... Sophic he found himself taken out by, entranced by her impudent midriff plump lower lip, caress of his neck, calling him the apple of her eye. (104-05) Though for reader uninitiated in either Andoumboulou's flawed world of abortive language or in Mackey's poetics, these answers are only slightly more understandable than question itself; for both migrant Andoumboulou and experimental Mackey answer is wrought in body. Mackey's poetry, particularly The of Andoumboulou (hereafter Song), a sequenced, on-going epic about a pre-figuration of human beings from West Dogon mythology, addresses anthropomorphism of language into a physical form, bringing it into world as a thing, as a human body. And readers who know a rumba beat is being laid down on other side of sound proof glass when they see sway of rumba dancers, those same readers can pierce Mackey's language only when they feel music it lays down. The laying down of this music--or this wind, as Mackey names it throughout Song--from breath to text is reification of language to body, ink on page being as really real as skin that chatters for Andoumboulou. This process, this reification, this writing is imperfect and flawed, but meaning emerges in errors, in what Mackey persistently theorizes as textual creakiness. The answer is beyond words; it is lost in human utterance; it is something to be determined as a trace from human existence--or, in Mackey's words from Song 23, As of a life sought/beyond letter (73). Thus body, or book/text, becomes starting point, often unreliable, in our quest for wisdom, not authorized dispenser of it. (3) I. An Explosion of Stammers In this essay, I want to situate Mackey within contemporary poetic geography and to understand his place as influenced by and influencing contemporary poetry. To achieve this, I will look at how his poetry is emblematic of tradition of avant-garde American poetry of last half-century, and by extension, of American poetry in general. To consider Mackey's ontogeny is to gain some understanding of phylum of contemporary avant-garde poetics--a classification that seeks to move ahead of intellectual/academic necessity of definition so that any, once established, becomes outdated. It is precisely because of mutability of language that very need to render language as a body is necessary. …