Voice-Over

by Equi, Elaine

• ISBN13: 9781566890786
• ISBN10: 1566890780
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Coffee House Pr

Summary

Synthesizing twenty years of influences, from pop culture to gender to literary heroes, the author constructs a collage of voices - undoubtedly American, exquisitely her own.

Table of Contents

PART I	15	(20)
Spirit Photography	15	(2)
Detail	17	(2)
Self Portrait As You	19	(3)
The Lost Language	22	(1)
Pink Shutters	23	(1)
The Heroine	24	(3)
Thesis Sentence	27	(1)
Beauty Secret	28	(3)
Monologue: Frank O'Hara	31	(4)
PART II	35	(22)
Class Reunion	35	(1)
Table Of Contents For An Imaginary Book	36	(1)
Totem	37	(1)
Cake, Hat, Pillow	38	(2)
Bartlett's Quotations	40	(1)
Second Thoughts	41	(4)
(an) Object	45	(1)
Sign	46	(2)
Not So Fast	48	(1)
Armani Weather	49	(1)
Remorse After Shopping	50	(1)
Someone Is Trying To Call	51	(1)
Desire In Winter	52	(1)
Shield	53	(4)
PART III	57	(16)
Wang Wei's Moon	57	(2)
Almost Transparent	59	(2)
Cupboard / Shrine	61	(1)
In May	62	(1)
From Lorine	63	(2)
Fennel	65	(1)
Starting To Rain	66	(1)
Another Wall To Walk Through	67	(2)
Letter Of Recommendation	69	(1)
Night School	70	(3)
PART IV	73
Little Landscape	73	(1)
Voice-Over	74	(5)
Karaoke Poem	79	(2)
Hinge	81	(1)
Revelation	82	(1)
Like Robinson Crusoe	83	(1)
Gold Sandals	84	(1)
Edward Hopper	85	(2)
The Origami Of Time	87	(1)
Jerome Meditating	88	(3)
Mine	91
NOTES

Excerpts

Excerpt

    SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

Where do we reside--

in our beer commercials

or somewhere outside of theme?

Culture's mirrors

are all one way,

but if the soul

were photographed

would it really be

so predictably vague

and out of focus?

Look, there is the ghost

of a hand,

a family of shadows

stepping out of the sea.

Romantics--

where there is only smoke

we all find someone we know.

Yet the clearly visible

is more mysterious by far.

Our own breasts, arms,

legs, mouths--

unrecognizable

bodies

we can no longer see.

             DETAIL

Not the mansion

but the gate.

Not the cloth

but the crease.

Not the face

but the nose.

Not the speech

but the tone.

Not the pomegranate

but the seeds.

Not the nest

but the egg.

Not Ophelia

but her bouquet.

Not the torso

but the arm.

Not the ship

but its sail.

Not Courbet

but his dog.

Not all of Kerouac

but certainly parts.

Not Madame Bovary

as a whole

but as a collection

of individual details

textures, perfumes

that the mind carries off

one at a time.

And always, always

there is the eye

separating, isolating,

calculating difference

like profit and loss.

    SELF PORTRAIT AS YOU

Always receding

you are

what I come out

to see.

You

    "multi-you"

who shuffles the cards,

who never comes forward

but simply appears

on a roller coaster

or looking at the waves--

the static poses

in which I multiply myself.

In a sense you are

what happens to me,

speaking through events

or when you choose

through aura's last residue

of touch--

the product that says "buy me,"

the object that glows.

When I understand

I see

and when I am tired

or confused, I have

nothing to show

that sliver of the whole

that is just you being you--

a new moon which grows the old

again and again, but different

each time. Tonight's heavy as

an enormous peach

drooping over a side street.

The light a fragrant slant

that lingers through next day

changing

as you yourself shift

from lover

to father or mother,

from singer

to silence,

then back to song.

In you

I view myself

at a distance

yet from there

you always seem

more real than me

more able to move

or think or speak

while I can only

write you off,

dreaming of a conversation

where voices don't match faces--

Heidegger's words

in Marilyn Monroe's mouth.

Today seventy percent

of the population believes

in angels, but I don't think

of you in such sentimental terms,

except at times

you seem like a woman,

at times a man.

Impossible to determine

sex, age, race, height--

the answer enfolded,

enveloped somewhere out there

in the head-over-heels blue.

What is the sky anyway,

but a reply to the earth.

(Continues...)

Copyright © 1998 Elaine Equi. All rights reserved.