Brian Eckert is a graduate of the Master’s of Liberal Arts program at Johns Hopkins University and plans to complete a PhD in the future. Brian’s résumé includes bartending, landscaping, gravedigging, farming, and cooking. Brian is a poet, an avid hiker, and lover of books and bookstores. He hopes to pursue a career in academia.
essay
Defamiliarizing the Familiar: Queer Eco-Phenomenology in Aux/Arc by Cody-Rose Clevidence
Brian Eckert, Johns Hopkins University
Cody-Rose Clevidence undertakes an enormous project, both creatively and critically, in their book Aux/Arc Tryptich, which consists of three parts: Poppycock & Assphodel, Winter, and A Night of Dark Trees. After months of engagement with this text, each rereading provided a unique phenomenological experience in itself, with the text presenting a range of styles for potential analysis and discourse in phenomenological aesthetics, linguistic deconstruction and technology, and various topics in queer theory. Clevidence balances theoretical investigations with deeply tactile and sensory emotional reflections, which emphasizes the dwelled-in epistemology of these poems. Their work contains a maximalism that, almost certainly, ensures the reader will fail to catch every allusion, theme, and stylistic move, which reinforces the queer project of this work. Their use of epigraphs, references, and quotes provides the entry into this text for my analysis, which include David Abram, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as Classics such as Ovid, Homer, and other myths. Like Clevidence’s collection, the present essay will trace a circuitous path, covering traditional queer theory, linguistics, and language history, as well as traditional, eco-, and queer phenomenology to analyze the technology of language.
Aux/Arc begins with a poem titled “ORCHASTROHPE,” which itself begins with an unattributed epigraph “an ordinary error placed me here,” and includes several sets of quotations throughout the body.[1] During my first reading of this collection, I was also reading Jacques Derrida’s Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question which, in part, follows the journey of a quotation that Heidegger slowly adopted into his own writing over time, replacing quotation marks with italics, then eventually writing the quote in plain text, making no indication of attribution, which represents the concept of “crossing-through.”[2] Along with another intertextual reference to David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, this inspired a closer reading of the phenomenological themes in Clevidence’s collection. Abram provides a unique history of language and writing, heavily informed by phenomenology, that makes suggestions about how humans have become so disconnected from the natural environment.
One specific concept I aim to explore in Aux/Arc is the “crossing through” which Clevidence performs frequently. I first came across this concept in Derrida’s Of Spirit, wherein he explains various modes of erasure:
What does “avoid” mean, in particular in Heidegger? I’m thinking in particular of all those modalities of “avoiding” which come down to saying without saying, writing without writing, using words without using them: in quotation marks, for example, under a non-negative cross-shaped crossing out (kreuzweise Durchstreichung), or again in propositions of the type: “If I were yet to write a theology, as I am sometimes tempted to do, the word ‘Being’ ought not to appear in it,” etc. Now we know well enough that, at the date at which he said that, Heidegger had already made this word disappear while allowing it to appear under a crossing-out—which had thus perhaps set him going, and a long time since, on the path of that theology he says he would only like to write but which he does not not write at this very point, saying it’s not that at all, saying that that’s the last thing he’s doing and that he would have to shut up his thinking-shop if one day he were to be called by the faith. In saying this, is he not showing that he can do it? And that he could easily, even, be the only one who could do it?[3]
The strikethrough represents the partial erasure of a word, or an object, or even Being, in which it is still perceptible. Clevidence’s use of strikethrough text embodies and demonstrates this concept impeccably, emphasizing ecological and personal loss or degradation, phenomenological awareness, and visually conveying the ontological echo of Being. While Clevidence does engage in some erasure of quotes, including leaving many quotes unattributed,[4] more often, Cody-Rose queers Heidegger’s practice of erasure by leaving just the punctuation and erasing the words, instead of removing punctuation to make words their own.
This project does not intend to argue that Clevidence is engaged in any sort of theology or ontotheology, as Derrida argues about Heidegger; instead, Aux/Arc follows a similar phenomenological trajectory of creating meaning through erasure with a different outcome. The book transitions from a sparse, abbreviated first section—filled with erasure and redaction—to an overflowing final two sections of emotional and ontological depth. The first section serves as a linguistic palette cleanser—it defamiliarizes language for the reader, forcing close reading and attention, whereas the final two sections explore what this defamiliarization can provide in terms of renewed ontological and ecological awareness.
As Derrida points out, in Heidegger’s weak refusal of theology, he proves his ability to complete it. Whereas Heidegger’s erasure and refusal was unyielding, Clevidence uses this as a method of immersing the reader in the same ontological process of re-orientation to language as preparation for the final sections, which ultimately provide a continued process of re-orientation to Being and the world as it is. Clevidence does not aim at an ontotheology but rather a re-oriented and renewed linguistic ontology that can use language to narrow gaps between beings and better understand the human bias, rather than perpetuate the “illness” of disengagement with further advancements in technology that ultimately facilitate environmental degradation.
The first section of Aux/Arc is titled Poppycock & Assphodel, which exemplifies the linguistic and thematic play of the poems. “Poppycock” literally means “nonsense talk,” whereas “ass-phodel” vulgarizes and satirizes a notable plant from mythology. These two words also juxtapose “cock” and “ass,” making a more direct reference to the queer themes throughout the text. This playful satire and queering of Heideggerian erasure are reinforced by the section epigraph “‘I am fond of hunting’ he said, ‘I know th / woods, but I have never seen such a shaft’ -Phocus, of some bro’s javelin, Ovid.”[5] A common move Clevidence repeats throughout this text is shortening words, and specifically cutting the article “the” to “th,” a prime example of the fragmented text used throughout the first section. Clevidence constantly shortens or abbreviates other words too, dropping letters, and using the kind of spellings that most readers would expect to see online or in the early days of text messages.[6]
[mooring
-ourning
oaring
,sore
] or,
“gloriole”]
lol[7]
In part, these fragmented, vernacular sections could be considered playful engagement with concepts from Jack Halberstam’s theory of Queer Art of Failure, which locates queer promise and redemption within modes of illegibility and refusal. Halberstam writes:
Here we can think about low theory as a mode of accessibility, but we might also think about it as a kind of theoretical model that flies below the radar, that is assembled from eccentric texts and examples and that refuses to confirm the hierarchies of knowing that maintain the high in high theory.[8]
Clevidence performs this by bringing down Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ovid, and Homer into the world of poetry, but also thumbs their nose at these philosophers/classics through their use of and queering of language. They use titles like “What Thy Fuck” and “I, Tiresias, Royally Fucked” and often challenge the difficulty and complexity of the ideas behind these ideas/texts with subtle asides.[9] They undercut their own invocations of high theory texts constantly by vulgarizing quotes, satirizing typically revered figures, and juxtaposing these topics with such casual language—“dude,” “lol,” “lit.”[10] The language includes both high lexicon vocabulary (“declension,” “extricable,” “parallax,” “passerine,” “theophanies”) and “lol,” “srysly,” and “mtns,” which blurs the distinction between high and low, while simultaneously bringing both to readers on the same page.
By combining both vernacular and theoretical jargon, Clevidence muddles the boundaries of poetic speech and enhances the sonic quality of their writing beyond the defined meaning of words.
…Behind th dawn there is another, bigger dawn.
When I have gone rapturous, before th fold,
when I have gone and gotten myself
fucked w th world, th worded-ness of th world
leaf-green, pheremonal, probably drunk, crawling with
such sensations… [11]
Lines such as these could be seen to vulgarize language and eroticize the natural environment, but this combination of language points towards the ecological awareness of the text: the environment is dirty and slimy and gross and fleshy and erotic, despite our human refusal to acknowledge those realities. This use of language also engages Halberstam’s examples from Queer Art of Failure: refusal and illegibility. Through the juxtaposition of vernacular, theoretical jargon, abbreviations, coined terms, and high-lexicon terms, Clevidence refuses one single mode of understanding, blurring the lines between high and low, speech and writing, even printed and digital text. They make frequent and creative use of punctuation, including brackets, quotation marks, and end marks, indicating revision, removal, or things that can’t be said in the text. The poems speak through negation, but the negation also leaves space for further interpretation. There’s something queer and uncanny about seeing “lol,” “mtn,” and other abbreviations printed in a book, but this unfamiliarity is what leads into the connection with David Abram’s work and phenomenology.
In Spell of the Sensuous, Abram draws connections between the contemporary, Western disregard for the environment and the “technology” (in a Heideggerian sense) that is written language.[12] Abram recounts early language history, starting with oral cultures, which began using hieroglyphics and pictographic writing as their earliest attempts at recording speech. These written characters were often directly related to the environment, resembling prey animals, plants, humans, and hybrid beings.[13] Writing then shifted to what Abram calls “ideograms” or “ideographs” which were a sort of hybrid letter between the more literal pictographs and what you or I would recognize as a letter, and this started the disconnection between the environment and language, both written and spoken.[14] The examples that Abram gives of the ideographic letters are their version of “A” which was inverted and resembled an ox. The name of the letter “A” was the word for “ox,” which it resembled, while the name of the letter “O” was the word for “eye.”[15] This type of letter was used in Ancient Hebrew and Ancient Sumerian and corresponded to objects and beings in the environment. These ancient languages also lacked the distinctions between consonants and vowels that modern language has, so these written letters were all consonants and the breath sounds were inferred through context. A common example is the Hebrew word for “God” which is spelled “YHWH,” often pronounced “yah-weh,” but the reader would have to infer those vowel sounds through context.[16] This required greater engagement from the reader than is demanded by modern languages, which is another feature that made these languages more intentional than contemporary languages. The direct correspondence between language and environment had an important impact on the ontological world-view of these cultures, and has or still does influence many indigenous cultures around the globe, of which Abram provides a more detailed history than is relevant to the present essay.
The phenomenological connection between Abram’s work and Clevidence’s poetry relates to Heidegger’s concept of technology. Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology” describes the history of what he considered “technology” and his distinction with “modern technology.” Whereas Abram describes ancient languages, and more recent indigenous languages, as being deeply engaged with and directly related to the environment and specific locations, modern language is more like a mirror, simply reflecting back upon the speaker, as Abram[17] and Sara Ahmed[18] attest. By this I mean, in English, the words and sounds do not correspond to anything physical or material or even sonically. The word “dog” has nothing to do with any actual, living dog or an idealistic dog (think Platonic forms or Kantian idealism), or even the sound dogs make. So when someone reads “dog,” their recall of knowledge about dogs is spurred without any direct reference to an actual dog or its attributes. This phenomenon of modern language, combined with fixed vowel sounds, results in modern language requiring far less engagement, attention, and active contextualization than ancient language, allowing disengaged readers to skim over texts.
Heidegger invokes the history of teleology as an influence on the rise of technology and, as a result, this epidemic of “illness” that is inauthentic Being.[19] He argues that since Descartes, causality has transitioned from giving relatively equal attention to Aristotle’s four causes (material, efficient, formal, final) to an almost exclusive focus on the material and final causes. To give a brief example, think of a silver cup. The material cause is the silver out of which it’s made; the efficient cause is who or what made the cup from the silver; the formal cause is the shape, or idea, or design of the cup; and the final cause is the purpose of the cup: drinking, holding liquid, being a vessel.[20] Heidegger describes technology as a “bringing-forth” or “revealing” of things, beings, or objects.[21] He makes the distinction with modern technology as an even narrower focus on “bringing-forth,” or creating reserves and stockpiles of ready-to-use materials, goods, and products.[22] Not only does modern technology aim towards a stockpile of natural resources, but also a stockpile of finished goods, ready for consumption. This leads to an “illness” of Being which, in Heidegger’s terms, is inauthentic Dasein.[23] The modern individual is no longer authentically expressing Being through language, as Abram’s work shows ancient cultures once did, and this over-reliance on technology has spread disillusioned inauthenticity into all other facets of modern life.[24]However, Clevidence’s use of language points readers toward a “cure” by demanding more authentic, engaged, active reflection on language that re-orientates readers toward a more authentic mode of Being.
As shown in the previous example from Poppycock & Assphodel, the language in the first section is sparse, fragmented, heavily punctuated, and often redacted in some way. This serves as forced engagement for the readers insofar as it refuses skimming, quick reading, or perusal, yet lines and stanzas can be pulled out of context and stand alone in many cases.
[tickle / me
// pink izzit
mtns rise //
so sun // so]
.
[x squelch & suckle//
x cripple & hive]
.
[x 4x4xplorer
x 4x4xplored
I x I imp
lore x
x I xp lore /
I ode]
.[25]
The spacing may be off, but this piece highlights my point about Clevidence’s use of speech. In my first several readings, I read this section a different way each time, unsure of what was intended by these fragmented words. The repeated “x” provides several different ways of interpreting the letter as a phoneme, such as being pronounced as the sound “ex” in “explore,” or as the word “by” in “4x4” referring to four-wheel drive, which led to other considerations of how it could be read. Could “x” mean “and,” or is it a form of negation, another crossing-through? Does it stand in for something else entirely? Is there a pattern to the sounds it represents? This section of Poppycock & Assphodel specifically pointed me towards David Abram’s book and that ancient technology of highly phonetic, ideographic speech because it forced me to slow down, infer, and reflect on the relationship between letters, speech, signs, and symbols.
Admittedly, Clevidence is not intentionally using phonemes as I originally hypothesized in this section, which I learned when they visited a graduate course I took. However, many of their fragmented words are reduced to the phonetic components, which is what inspired this research into Abram’s work and phenomenology. This queer use of language, both the word choices and fragmentation of words, forces the reader to engage with speech and its phonetic components in a way that non-experimental texts do not. This heightened engagement embodies several phenomenological concepts from both traditional philosophers and the more recent Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed. As previously mentioned, Clevidence’s poetry and specific use of language is pointing readers toward more authentic modes of Being, but this shift is a representation of what Sara Ahmed describes as “re-orientation.”[26]
In phenomenological terms, the use of language in this first section of Aux/Arc, and slightly less so throughout the rest of the book, defamiliarizes language for the reader in a way that challenges them to more fully and authentically engage with the text. The defamiliarization of common objects, such as the table at which you are likely reading this, allows for phenomenological investigation, more authentic engagement, and a more complete understanding of perception and the world. In our everyday life, many objects and processes are simply lost in the background. Does anyone consider the raw materials that go into a smart phone, or computer, or motor vehicle before they use them? Does anyone consider each of the industrial processes that transformed those raw materials into parts, or the assembly line on which those parts were put together, or the people behind those processes? Does anyone consider this every time they use any one of those objects? Now what about the individual letters in all of these words? None of the phenomenologists cited here advocate for that kind of constant, intensive, vigilant awareness towards causality and objects; but on a spectrum of awareness, far too many people are at the extreme end at which none of this is ever considered. Defamiliarization allows individuals to re-orientate themselves to the complex intricacies of modern life. Clevidence accomplishes this through their queering of language and their combination of vernacular and jargon, defamiliarizing language for readers in a way that forces re-orientation to language.
This re-orientation to and enhanced engagement with language advances beyond language to defamiliarize emotional and personal awareness in the second section, Winter. This section shifts away from physical, linguistic, and visual fragmentation to the emotional embodiment of fragmentation—loss, grief, sadness—while maintaining a phenomenological perspective. Clevidence uses highly phenomenological language throughout all of Aux/Arc, which includes personifying/embodying non-human and non-living material (i.e., landscape, objects, ideas), and this selection specifically emphasizes the embodied sensation of these emotions throughout Winter.
when I can walk one acre
of sorrow
through sorrow
sorrows gift
to walk one acre
without stumbling
when I can call forth myself
from the shadows of my self
to be in the acre of sorrow
as a man is, in the tall grass
of sorrow
in the shallows of my heart[27]
This provides an example of Clevidence’s engagement with the tactility of emotion and embodied emotion that this section emphasizes. Specifically, this could be understood through Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh. Beyond the body, Merleau-Ponty understands flesh to encompass all perceptive and perceptible material, objects, and matter, far beyond the individual human body.[28] This notion could be understood as a form of animism, but regardless, it indicates a more engaged, ontological perspective opposed to seeing the world as a collection of raw materials and finished products for consumption.[29] Clevidence’s descriptions of emotion and the environment throughout Winter engage with this idea of an embodied, feeling world, but they take this view beyond a physical sensuousness to assert that the world is also emotionally sensuous.
th sharp edges of the dark limbs, th
particular sensation of each season,
th wonder of being an organism that seeks its
needs
[] that stands alone in the acre of its heart)[30]
At other times they focus on the materiality of self, the environment, and embodied emotion to emphasize this ubiquitous flesh.
mine eyes mine eyes th rougher gaze
2 put a polish on.
~
this deep low groan triumph—
drink dusk till scour, this.
~
[having sandpapered my soul w gin I take
it up to a finer polish
on this fine particulate dusk—[31]
Texture and materiality play a role not only in the embodiment of the flesh of earth but also in the senses of both the perceiver and the perceived. This texture is not a fixed facet of flesh but rather changes with the seasons, “w gin,” and as perceptive lenses change (i.e., maturing, leaving and returning to a place, loss or grief).[32] These examples explore the emotional depths of phenomenological interaction and the potentialities of this interaction. Clevidence shows the ability of not only language but also of world-view and emotional awareness, to enrich perception and the experience of Being.
Whereas the first two sections are demonstrative in their engagement with the aforementioned topics, the final section takes a more direct approach in citing and explicitly stating the connections that affirmed many of my conclusions in this essay. A Night of Dark Trees begins with three epigraphs: one from David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous, one from Jean Grosjean, and one that is unattributed, which I believe is a reference to the song “Ask” by The Smiths—“Nature is a language can’t you read.”[33] The poems in this section have epigraphs from a variety of figures, including Ovid, Nietzsche, Tennyson, Blake, the Book of Psalms, and Merleau-Ponty. Many of these figures are invoked to be queered or satirized in a nuanced fashion, such as the example from the initial epigraph “Phocus, of some bro’s javelin, Ovid,”[34] but this section seems more serious in its playfulness than the first section and not quite as emotionally rich or focused as Winter.
Although what follows is a long quotation, it engages many of the concepts brought up in this project, directly and indirectly, including from the previous section about defamiliarization as an entryway to more authentic Being, while also exemplifying the stylistic balance between the first and second sections:
THIS SUNNY DAY TH CREEK of my heart glinting this
hung crown bore down each bud or thorn in me
do you hive then, do you swallow throve & orchid
then, do you take me for a fool. we are always
already in a world of meaning, new constellations, th
peril of th day contained inside us, like a cliff
edge so high up, that if you were to look over it it would be
an endless plummeting, plummeting gaze—th angels
of my heart, hungover, saying “mercy, mercy”—in which
Virgil is insistent that the violence of man ruins
th very fabric of nature, in which Nietzsche forgets that, neither
ghost nor plant, our bodies are always & foremost creatural,
in which Elaine says “what a fucking liar. I hate him I hate
cowards.”—In which I say what is this quartet struck up in me,
I did not ask for it & Dallin says “all bodies respond to spring”.
Damasio says th sense of self arises from th act of knowing,
objects perceived imply a perceiver. but what if what's in you
has come unbound, & the green, & th rushing go bounding off
inside you, in search of stranger pastures.[35]
Phrases such as “we are always / already in a world of meaning” and “our bodies are always first & foremost creatural” and the last lines “what if what's in you / has come unbound, & the green, & th rushing go bounding off / inside you, in search of stranger pastures” all reinforce the concepts outlined in this project through direct, plainspoken language: phenomenological perception, bodily senses, strangeness or defamiliarity, as well as multiple perspectives within these concepts represented by the distinctive voices.[36] This style is representative of many poems in the final section, in which the language is much less queer in terms of fragmentation and abbreviation; but this section also provides a synthesis of many other concepts demonstrated in the first two sections.
Although this final section of Aux/Arc does not engage with queer theory through deconstructed language as extensively as others, Clevidence explores other queer themes through direct engagement and pondering, dialectic speech. One common theme is what Jack Halberstam describes as “wildness” in his book Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire. Halberstam cites a variety of examples to argue that “wildness” and “the wild” are not what the average Westerner might think of: their local bike trail through a forest, or even many National Parks. These two examples are manicured, built, infrastructured environments that scarcely resemble the true “wildness” of the environment and reinforce colonialist ideologies. Halberstam references Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak for his initial arguments, and he outlines “wildness” in the introduction.
All at once, wildness appears in the book as a mark of exclusion, a place of exile, and it reveals the violence required to maintain radical separations between here and there, home and away, human and wild things. Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire explores the wild not simply as a space beyond the home but also as a challenge to an assumed order of things from, by, and on behalf of things that refuse and resist order itself. Wildness names simultaneously a chaotic force of nature, the outside of categorization, unrestrained forms of embodiment, the refusal to submit to social regulation, loss of control, the unpredictable. This sequence suggests a romantic wild, a space of potential, an undoing that beckons and seduces. But, obviously, the wild has also served to name the orders of being that colonial authority comes to tame: the others to a disastrous discourse of civilization, the radicalized orientation to order, the reifying operations of racial discourse (wild “things”). For this reason, to work with the wild is also to risk reengaging these meanings. I take the risk here because wildness offers proximity to the critiques of those regimes of meaning, and it opens up the possibility of unmaking and unbuilding worlds.[37]
This theory is also in conversation with Joyelle McSweeny’s concept of the “necropastoral,” which she defines as
[A] political-aesthetic zone in which the fact of mankind’s depredations cannot be separated from an experience of “nature” which is poisoned, mutated, aberrant, spectacular, full of ill effects and affects. The Necropastoral is a non-rational zone, anachronistic, it often looks backwards and does not subscribe to Cartesian coordinates or Enlightenment notions of rationality and linearity, cause and effect. It does not subscribe to humanism but is interested in non-human modalities, like those of bugs, viruses, weeds and mold.[38]
McSweeny takes a slightly different view of the natural environment, but both she and Halberstam share this interest in “non-human modalities” and looking beyond human-built infrastructure for solutions to current environmental degradation and destruction, from within the environment. Clevidence engages with these ideas throughout the collection, with many subtle and overt references to the environment and non-human beings, but this engagement often achieves a similar defamiliarization as their queer fragmentation of language.
Several poems from A Night of Dark Trees demonstrate these themes, but only “THESE BROKEN ROUTINES OF THE EARTH” is short enough to include in its entirety.
“th true method of knowledge is experiment”
-BlakeI'm trying to find a workable paradigm among all th fields of
thought & desire. Honeysuckle (Lonicera sp.)—it hybridizes,
here. Trepid-ation of th 1st meadow, sprung be to for me, my form
th same, hwy 264, across from th rock quarry, o th truth is it de-
scends to its own damp greenness, th sandstone shaped over Ever,
going down, I drop a rock, watch it fall— here where quartz is,
here & there strewn, th fields a tangle, to seek where th soft grass
is. to plumb th depths. poppy-bud such a light green, ooze of
whitish droplets pearling on th surface, where it was scored, with
sureness & also trepidation— profuse— even th rocks grow moss
here. in summer you can't stop th bloom, th incessant buzzing.
O arkansas— I profess— to have some real strength
in th heart—where ‘th sun
don’t shine’ o go down deep
into th ringing field, & find th right call-note—
I've always thought a hummingbird, o nectar
is not so sweet— o th terror is not
so bad, as all that, “disastrous”—I need
a new thought, lay me
down, in a new field
atremble, but, in truth
familiar… th passionflower
vines come up only after th
honeysuckle, black
locust blooms, etc—eventhough summer's late this year.
it's not that I want to find a field
in which things happen
out of order, or even
in which there are new things. I love
these things, th colors of them,
their chemical compositions, how I choose what
to water & what to let just, like, go—. it's enough to be curious,
th internet says, about what happens next. I'm resisting
a metaphor abt th path a small rock might take
into th deeper green, th plummet of it, th
way its falling is constrained by th shapes
of th vessel formed over Ever.
I am trying to find a new paradigm
among all th fields of thought
& desire, & also trying to plow
th damn meadow over, & under,
& from th side until
th quartz, th vines,
th clear water
come up w a new
hue & leak
their sap
into this
flask,
my palm[39]
This poem demonstrates, contemplates, and praises the “wildness”[40] of nature and of the environment, actively acknowledging the effort required to accept this new, possibly unfamiliar perspective: “I am trying to find a new paradigm / among all th fields of thought / & desire… // & also trying to plow / th damn meadow over, & under.”[41] However, Clevidence does not seek a clean, safe, manicured environment; rather, they express a desire to understand the environment as it is, “poppy-bud such a light green, ooze of / whitish droplets pearling on th surface, where it was scored, with / sureness & also trepidation—” and “ I've always thought a hummingbird, o nectar / is not so sweet— o th terror is not / so bad, as all that, ‘disastrous’” or the final lines that conclude “leak / their sap / into this / flask, / my palm.”[42] Their methodology also favors passive, observant experimentation: “it's not that I want to find a field / in which things happen / out of order, or even / in which there are new things” and continues “how I choose what / to water & what to let just, like, go—. it's enough to be curious, / th internet says, about what happens next.”[43] Clevidence provides this re-orientated way of Being, which need not always be difficult or exhausting; it’s enough to observe and witness, to be curious and experiment. But this requires a re-attuning away from modern technology, back towards the surrounding environment.
The specific language Cody-Rose uses in “THESE BROKEN ROUTINES OF THE EARTH,” and throughout A Night of Dark Trees, reinforces my earlier claim that this collection aims to defamiliarize language, and emotion and perception more broadly, to re-orientate or re-attune the reader with authentic modes of Being. At this point, I will substitute “re-attune” for “re-orientate” to emphasize the analogy of ringing and sounding Clevidence maintains throughout the text. From the most recently cited poem, they use the line “o go down deep / into th ringing field, & find th right call-note—.”[44] They reference ringing, resonance, or specifically “this bell in me” repeatedly throughout the text.[45] This analogy emphasizes the phenomenological re-orientation that the text reaches toward,[46] which is supported by Abram who concludes “Linguistic meaning, for [Merleau-Ponty], is rooted in the felt experience induced by specific sounds and sound-shapes as they echo and contrast with one another, each language a kind of song, a particular way of ‘singing the world.’”[47] Not only does re-attuned Being require heightened awareness, or more thorough engagement, it also requires an attuned dialectic in which the individual finds some harmonious mode of resonating with an environment, or locality, both listening and sounding. This deep attunement requires the kind of listening that allows one to play their own song in harmony with the existing cacophonic symphony of the environment—what Sara Ahmed would categorize as aligning, or lining up with, an existing line,[48] albeit the crooked and curved line of “wildness.”[49]
A few final examples will provide further affirmation of these interpretations and also specify how this re-attuned Being can be alternatively expressed. One alternative example to the previous paragraph involves intimate knowledge of the environment, but through naming rather than attuning to others rhythms. From “OF TH UGLIEST,” Clevidence writes “—2 become particulate: 2 go from ‘shuttup bird’ to ‘shut up yellow-throated warbler.’”[50] Again, this quote exemplifies their playfulness, but also the underlying desire and urging of these poems to live and be more authentic, intimate, and aware. They crescendo in their explicit affirmation of the themes outlined above in “WHICH EVEN NOW I DO” with lines such as “I recognize th bird by its wingbands, flight pattern, time of night— name I already call you in secret,” expressing an intimate knowledge of their environment and its specific patterns through observation.[51] From the same poem, they write: “to speak only consonants, knowing / th vowels to come.”[52] Here is, what I believe to be, a direct engagement with the ideogramic/phonetic language described by David Abram and brought up in relation to the fragmented language in the first section, which initially defamiliarizes language for readers. The final example, which affirms the connections to queer failure and engagement with low theory, and rejects the notion that these poems could be theological, comes from “MY HEART COMMANDS ME TO FIGHT.”
none of us have a god
at our backs to hold up
the dawn for us, like you, Odysseus, and so I go,
to th river without you, enduring
th interweaving of my own
patience & impatience, distilling
something heavy from th heavy air, drink
warm beer on th hood of my truck
& watch th blue dark sky change,
reflected in th surface of th water
between th dark line of trees
dense w tiny flashes of light
& th river & th sky
like two corridors that meet
between them, never touching,
both sinking down & down
to a deeper,
darker dark.[53]
This intertwining of rural activities with invocations of Odysseus and contemplations of god epitomizes the depth and range of Aux/Arc. Clevidence summarizes their collection best with the line “this is not a condemnation, but neither is it a prayer,” which once again demonstrates their rejection of theology and engagement with queer failure in the form of refusal.[54] This line, like the text, refuses one reading, or interpretation, or even a simple description—it is much quicker to say what it is not than what it is. The text does so many things, so many different things, and it demands the requisite attention to express each and every one.
Part of both the maximalism and exceptionalism ofAux/Arcis how many potential entry points the text provides for readers, especially those readers who are open to a challenge. From a thematic perspective, Clevidence references and directly engages with ecology and eco-poetics, queer theory, phenomenology, classical mythology, religion, and theology, among others. Formally, they have such a wide range of formatting, language, writing style, and even voice that readers have many, varying entry points in this sense as well. Whatever their starting point, Clevidence provides opportunities for all readers to engage with this text and, subsequently, with more authentic modes of being: through language, observational awareness, and sensuous
Notes
[1] Cody-Rose Clevidence, Aux/Arc Trypt Ich: Poppycock & Assphodel; Winter; A Night of Dark Trees (New York: Nightboat Books, 2021), 1.
[2] Ibid., 1-2, 23-32, 52-55, 83.
[3] Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987/1989), 2.
[4] Clevidence, 1, 77, 91, 127
[5] Ibid., 5.
[6] Aux/Arc makes use of spacing and punctuation in ways that are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to replicate in this text. I do my best to replicate the poems as accurately as possible, but specifically spacing between stanzas and across the page will be challenging. In some cases I will use “~” to indicate that I shortened space between stanzas.
[7] Clevidence, 9.
[8] Jack Haberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 16.
[9] Clevidence, 116, 104.
[10] Ibid., 5.
[11] Ibid., 111.
[12] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More Than Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1997/2017), 86-91.
[13] Ibid., 96-97.
[14] Ibid., 97-99, 131-132.
[15] Ibid., 100-101.
[16] Ibid., 194-196.
[17] Ibid., 113-115.
[18] Sarah Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 46-47.
[19] Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” trans. William Lovitt, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Perennial, 1977/2008), 313-318.
[20] Ibid., 315.
[21] Ibid., 318-320.
[22] Ibid., 323-329.
[23] Ibid., 331-335.
[24] Ibid., 339-341.
[25] Clevidence, 21.
[26] Ahmed, 1-2.
[27] Clevidence, 69.
[28] Abram, 68-69.
[29] Heidegger, 339-341.
[30] Clevidence, 70.
[31] Ibid., 75.
[32] Ibid., 75.
[33] Ibid., 91.
[34] Ibid., 5.
[35] Ibid., 100.
[36] Ibid., 100.
[37] Jack Halberstam, Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 3-4.
[38] Joyelle McSweeny, “What is the Necropastoral?,” Poetry Foundation, accessed May 8, 2023. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2014/04/what-is-the-necropastoral.
[39] Clevidence, 106-107.
[40] Halberstam, 3.
[41] Clevidence, 106-107.
[42] Ibid., 107.
[43] Ibid., 107.
[44] Ibid., 106.
[45]Other examples include: “‘we are call-notes in th coming-forth’” (105), “where I have fallen / into a deep well ringing in me—” (83), “I do not accept / this bell in me” (87), “this bell in me—” (74), “but th wild boundlessness is a ringing thing in you / while you try to hold | th fuck still | in th stillness” (77), “deep w their own bells / where mine was ringing / as I fell” (82), among others.
[46] Clevidence, 99.
[47] Abram, 76.
[48] Ibid., 16.
[49] Halberstam, 3-4.
[50] Clevidence, 102.
[51] Ibid., 109.
[52] Ibid., 108.
[53] Ibid., 126.
[54] Ibid., 148.