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PROVOCATE

Texas/Lubbock Locals:

This Fri­day, Lubbock’s 1st Fri­day Art Trail will be politely invaded by a few pro­fes­sional (and a cou­ple unpro­fes­sional) artists seek­ing to chal­lenge the var­i­ous dog­matic social/political/religious stances that pre­vail in these regions. Click on the link to view our work, or bet­ter, come see us on Fri­day:  http://provocate.weebly.com/index.html

AS

OU philosophy conference

The sched­ule for the Uni­ver­sity of Oklahoma’s 2013 phi­los­o­phy con­fer­ence is now avail­able online, along with paper abstracts: https://sites.google.com/site/ougraduatephilosophyconference/papers

Please attend if you live in the region! If you don’t live in the region but are inter­ested the con­fer­ence top­ics, email me and I’ll try to hook you up with the papers that are being pre­sented. Mine is avail­able on my blog.

Cheers,
AS

 

Flag + Void: Postcard Series

Fol­low the link to read about Flag + Void (a new, rad­i­cal, online art and poetry journal)‘s Post­card Series, which “pro­motes inter­ac­tiv­ity, allow­ing for the re-sequencing of the poems within each vol­ume, or the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the vol­ume to friends and strangers, poem by poem, in the mail or on the street” -  http://flagandvoid.com/postcardseries. My poem “Arche­ol­ogy of Means” is a part of the first vol­ume, which you can order here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/125067977/flag-void-volume-two-postcard-series. Sup­port a poetic inno­va­tor and share the love! (Who doesn’t want poems in their mail­box??) Cheers, A x

Poetry, Sublimity, and Aesthetic Judgment

Hey all!

Sorry about the radio silence– these days I’m busy teach­ing and pound­ing out my the­sis, which should be ready to defend in a cou­ple of months (if all goes as planned!) In the mean­time, here’s another paper that I wrote for school– I posted an ear­lier ver­sion of it a while back, but it’s under­gone sub­stan­tive revi­sions so I’m post­ing it again. Look for more poetry come April! xx

(Con­tin­ued)

E·ratio [2 poems]

Two poems recently pub­lished by E·ratio: http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue16_Silbernagel.html

E·ratio Issue 16 (scroll down and click on “issue 16 pdf” to down­load): http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue16.html

What I pro­pose is to make poets and artists more crit­i­cal and vital to more peo­ple through using a mod­ern triv­ium, one that retains the clas­sic skills in gram­mar, logic, and rhetoric but that adds tech­nol­ogy as a fourth road.…This mod­ern triv­ium exem­pli­fies the power to think inde­pen­dently and write elo­quently rather than to think func­tion­ally and behave. Think­ing effec­tively with art and lan­guage, artists can help remake soci­ety rather than be aca­d­e­mic or orna­men­tal stars for soci­ety. In other words, art is to have at least as much effect for pub­lic minds as for elite con­cerns. Art then is not a spe­cialty for con­nois­seurs, but a foun­da­tion for civilization.

–Joseph F. Kep­pler, E·ratio con­tribut­ing editor

glowing in the dark is not a superpower (mixed by Andy N)

U.K. musician/poet/sound ter­ror­ist Andy N mixed the fol­low­ing track, which is part of the DIH 2012 Christ­mas album (happy belated!) Use the below links to down­load tracks from the album, learn about DIH and Andy N, and lis­ten to more of me and Andy N’s col­lab­o­ra­tions. Thanks, Andy!

glow­ing in the dark (xmas remix)

Lis­ten to/download the album: http://archive.org/details/DihAndFriendsChristmas2012
About DIH: http://www.digitalvomit.com/dih
Me and Andy N online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com/
Andy’s web­site: http://andyn.org.uk/

The Destroyer [2 poems]

Two poems recently pub­lished by The Destroyer:  http://www.thedestroyermag.com/text.php?author=amanda

The Destroyer Issue 2.1: http://www.thedestroyermag.com/text.php

The Destroyer is a bian­nual pub­li­ca­tion of text, art, and pub­lic opin­ion. It was offi­cially launched on 11.11.11.

We believe in an infi­nite uni­verse, not in lim­ited real estate. We rec­og­nize all edi­tors are biased, includ­ing our­selves. We cre­ated this pub­li­ca­tion to add our bias to the mix. We believe in the power of the Inter­net, and that the dig­i­tal isn’t infe­rior to the printed.

On the Involuntariness of Faith

Here’s one I wrote for school… I post it here to share with those who have an inter­est in reli­gion, phi­los­o­phy of reli­gion, and/or the nature of reli­gious faith… (Con­tin­ued)

the story of the youth who set forth to learn what fear was

the story of the youth who set forth to learn what fear was (remix by Andy N)

 

So much depends

on whether the self is

a carousel

glazed with red rainwater

beside the white

cop cars, turning

out songs gone

demented, gone sinister

when a gang fight broke out

on the fairground,

killing sev­eral innocents.

Let fairy­tale characters

lay low, come back

coun­ter­feit. Say

your com­mit­ment issues

from your wicked stepmother,

from the staggering

roller­coast­ers on which so

many boys held her

hostage. Say what does not

move does not stun

can­not help us, should not be

com­mit­ted to memory.

Shud­der, say nothing.

I am perpetually

car­ry­ing within me

what I most wish to flee:

all these bleed­ing bodies,

my team of unicorns

not bul­let­proof but not sentient

either— black and blue

clouds blow over, roll over

another lover leaves me

naked and awake: a sandman

sus­pended in mirages

as you cruise my desert cities

look­ing for answers

beneath a splen­did umbrella

of dreams.

 

Lux Continua

Lux Con­tinua

I

I steal things I’m too ashamed to bor­row:
the hours at the end of your day
you inhabit so grace­fully; your glance, that place

Where elec­tro­mag­netic waves go
entan­gled, go to war. My inde­pen­dence dete­ri­o­rates
with my opti­cal fibers, fireworks

Seizure on the nerve-screen and I mean,
if you need to make noth­ing out of some­thing
you should say it to my face.

Was our love not hand­cuffs, was what held us together
not your hate-dread of the other
rac­ing pulses I’ve felt flut­ter­ing inside me?

I let them all get away
and was sen­tenced to the page, which for a time
at least gave my crimes meaning.

II

The things I steal / I rarely savor: her body forms
a lump on my retina as my brain
leaves the restau­rant. I’m afraid of what my hunger will do.

At some point the cones must take sides:
If blue is heaven, red is soli­tude.
A ten­sion builds that will inevitably be broken

Between the under­stand­ing and its object.
A shud­der grows that must be released
between the shoul­ders as the spirit remem­bers

(I remem­ber) why the Gothic archi­tect Suger had a name
for each turn light takes as it enters a sanc­tu­ary:
Lux when it pours unim­peded from the sun

Lumen when it streams through stained win­dows
Illu­mi­na­tion when it fills the believer.
Remem­bers what it was, but couldn’t stay.

III

Call the mem­ory of color sub­lime: call it despair.
The lover comes and goes like a recur­ring night­mare
where the face goes white, the eyes swollen

The soles of the feet slice open on the boul­ders
when the tide rolls in—comes and
goes between trial and error, I do and do us part.

If I were trapped in a cathe­dral on this dark­est night
of the drought and cried out to The God
I doubt he would hear me. When I was the cruel word

Scrawled across sand­pa­per, strapped to a mis­sile at 30,000 feet,
you were cac­tus limbs strewn around my shel­ter
in the nuclear fall­out. When my name became Tantalus

I made you my rain stick: shaved glass tum­bling through
thorns turned inward: a secret storm
no light could enter, with­out first breaking thee.

 

 

conditions of resurrection

I’ve been shut up
for mil­len­nia in this ward
with a ter­ri­ble ques­tion
on my tongue, I’ve been
ret­i­cent stricken and bound
by insom­nia because
dream-language smacks
of drunk slurs and I’ve
had my fill of those. Believe me
when I say that heaven is this
world, and this world is
a the­ater where pau­pers go
to don them­selves splen­did
and ren­der hope pos­si­ble,
because we’re all just
deus ex machi­nas tak­ing turns
with the sus­pen­sion cables.
Believe me when I say that
I know that beauty is in
the noose through which
the gaze shoots its arrow
acci­den­tally hit­ting a spar­row
fly­ing crooked against the wind
a split sec­ond before
your foot slips. But it’s more
than that, and less: it’s the dark
fig­ure pen­du­lum­ing under
the meteor shower / between
two Judas trees. See, I’m attempt­ing
to explain how I know that feel­ing
is the kick-away foun­da­tion
of belief, but on good days
belief is a paper boat that sets sail
in a gen­tle stream, in hopes
of dis­in­te­grat­ing before it
reaches the water­fall.
All I’m ask­ing is why this is
a bad thing. Why when dan­de­lions
dis­sem­i­nate a wish that took all
of ten sec­onds to for­mu­late
I’m filled with a dread
that could move moun­tains,
the very moun­tains
through which my broth­ers
and sis­ters are tun­nel­ing
their way toward the light.
Why noth­ing, absolutely noth­ing
is so com­pli­cated as that silence
that bewitches the mind
just prior to cre­ation, or so sim­ple
as the one that fol­lows
the end of the world. Because god knows
we’re addicted to these inter­vals,
and for this, like god, we’ll be judged.
But like god the author
is not sorry and offers
no expla­na­tion as to why
my poems give rise to more
eye­brows than jihads,
and dares whom­so­ever
has never sat down to write
a let­ter to the uni­verse
and couldn’t find the words,
who’s never strapped a bomb
to their per­son just to feel it
det­o­nate, and spent the rest
of their life at the river’s edge
alone, con­tem­plat­ing
not death, but the con­di­tions
of res­ur­rec­tion—
to cast the first stone.

________
*Pub­lished in The Destroyer

Aerobe

Aer­obe

Tell me what you breathe again, and why we’re so dif­fer­ent
as to not attract the same types of virus or com­mit
the same hyper­graphic slips of the pen—
You’re right—I left.
Strange logic I keep
between these hemi­spheres: equa­tor into which
col­lapse my wildest fan­tasies
of deca­dent crys­tal chan­de­liers crash­ing
at the end of the world party table
when eat­ing is futile as try­ing to rea­son
with your ex. Rays of light
stream from a cliché, an abused
source of energy we’d meant to keep
ambigu­ous, rid­dled with petals of an unknown sea­son and bruises
we didn’t watch form. The last time we talked it was over
an herbar­ium writhing with foliage refus­ing to update
its endan­gered status—and I’ll never for­get the way you looked at me
like I was the Sun, as if to say tell us
what laws will still apply when you’re gone, when what rules
the world has no use for my scent, or for my lungs.

 

Creation Story

This much is given: a set of organs, an infi­nite set of needs.

be wary of those who fear inti­macy: who priv­i­lege the need to be taken seri­ously over the need to be taken, full stop

This much you’ll take with you to the grave: heart, lens, cer­tain neurons.

the sever­ity of whose night­mares can be mea­sured in slips of the tongue, at dawn or in broad daylight

With these, you will walk through the val­ley of deci­sions, mak­ing shad­ows of which you are ter­ri­fied, despite your hav­ing made them.

whose offspring—petals on a wet black bough—are con­ceived in under­ground sub­ways that read “save me from myself—”

Three times you’ll deny hav­ing made them: thus your migraines will mul­ti­ply, your labor pains made thrice-excruciating.

whose bru­tal­ity implies sin, or worse, doesn’t; who turn a blind eye toward Jerusalem, a blind eye inward

Your pupils will be per­pet­u­ally at war with your mind: threat­en­ing to flood it, and by turns, to cut it off from the light-source.

who view the heart as not a four-leaf clover, but a com­pass rose; its direc­tion not dis­cov­ered but for­ever self-imposed

Your shame you will braid into a noose for lack of bet­ter instincts, for lack of forgetfulness.

whose pic­ture omits a thou­sand words; who slide unno­ticed through the night: three times, Peter, three times

Tear­ing up while tear­ing out some pages, you drowned in your own wound-salt: richer than you’d ever been, or be.

who deny that in cell years seven is the turnover rate—after which it’s anyone’s guess who’s counting.

Between the needs of the body and the virtues of the mind // fall the upright, for­ever lost in translation.

Cyan coins of dusk rushed through my chest as I fell to the East // As I fell to the West—

My spine shone and you promised to make me shine brighter than any known star, laser, or halo.

What was I sup­posed to say? How was I sup­posed to age? I’m no human, and god knows you’re no angel.

Do what you will, I said, and I’ll go where I go. Cut my umbil­i­cal cord. Com­mit me to the flames.

The Diverse Arts Project [1 poem]

Click on the link to see my poem “Alla Prima” in issue four of The Diverse Arts Projecthttp://www.thediverseartsproject.com/summer-2012/2012/6/20/alla-prima.html

About the jour­nal: “The Diverse Arts Project (The DAP) is an online lit­er­ary jour­nal and art/cultural space. We view art as a social cre­ation, a func­tion of and con­trib­u­tor to soci­ety and pol­i­tics. Art is a socially fluid form whose def­i­n­i­tion and value depends upon who (or what) is talk­ing about it, cre­at­ing it and engag­ing with it. It is our goal to explore the var­i­ous def­i­n­i­tions and exclu­sions within the art world by expand­ing the num­ber and type of peo­ple who are included in the art world’s dia­logic and pro­duc­tive spaces. This is our project to diver­sify the arts.” — The Editors

Enjoi! –AS x

glowing in the dark is not a superpower

glow­ing in the dark is not a superpower

But some­thing we do daily. By day I mean only the shrink­ing doily
of light through which a whole black hole must squeeze before our eyes
can adjust, before the dream seam­stress drifts off at the wheel
before blow­ing out the can­dle, before the child in the sky can cut stars
from the singed scraps of cloth she sal­vaged from the burn pile.
Love of my life, cause of my insom­nia, some­times when dusk snows its dark
wool down on us, I search your face for the sheep you counted
as lost, and won­der if I’m one of them. But I still take com­fort in the night’s small
cer­tain­ties: in the tiny move­ments mus­cles make when the rest of the body lies par­a­lyzed
with dread; that I’d wake, here, again, for the last time; that you can love some­thing
and still shake its soot from your feet. Restore to mean­ing the plas­tic aster­isks on which
I wished my ado­les­cent life away. Don’t pass over. Lie me to sleep.


Archeology of Means

Arche­ol­ogy of Means

Try to remove your things from their graves with­out wak­ing them. Do not ask “what shall we eat?”

And “what shall we wear?” See there, a blan­ket belong­ing to a girl who’d been thrice-starved—

Once by The God, twice by her own voli­tion. Take it: it shall serve as your cape.

And here, the doll’s head, resem­bling a radish, attached to a feed­ing tube now dan­gling freely from her lips

Will bring you luck on your jour­ney. You threw a match into these fields once, now raise it: build a fan with your lungs.

Her hills will rage and her trees will orange as your vital gusts blow through them. This is not voodoo: this is tough love:

For it there is no anes­the­sia. There is a red flag flick­er­ing off in the dis­tance, mean­ing “peril.” Take it

To mean “free asso­ci­a­tion.” Run past the police with your mouth on fire and fol­low the crowd

Of sur­geons down to the sea-hell where the youth are trad­ing seashells for aloe and the mer­maids are singing

Each to each. Steal from them accord­ing to your abil­ity. Sing with them accord­ing to your need.

________

*Pub­lished in Flag + Void’s “Post­card Series”

 

on deviance, conformity, and the anorexic subculture

Hey y’all (says the coun­ter­feit Texan…) The fol­low­ing paper is a bit aca­d­e­mic (because I wrote it for school) but the issues addressed I think are important–mental health, iden­tity con­struc­tion, social deviance and social normativity–so I’m post­ing it any­way. Happy reading…

(Con­tin­ued)

time-lapse resolution

time-lapse res­o­lu­tion

I want to be in love and of it, to live
in a post­war, radioac­tive city
or on a ship at the bot­tom of the ocean
because I’m just that invinci­ble, my force field’s just that bomb.
I want to know God, to approach him
with no puns intended, with a gun to my head,
to be beside myself, out­side myself,
to crave the unspeakable—I want my voice to
explode in my dream with­out wak­ing me and when
the alarm clock goes off on the hori­zon
I want my body to stay pros­trate as my fake one
runs through strange streets soaked with blood and maybe gaso­line,
and Flame, I want that rush to the head
of but­ter­flies fore­telling our impend­ing destruc­tion
and sub­se­quent mass pro­duc­tion of hate mail
and fran­tic prayers for halos—I want to be in dan­ger of believ­ing
every­thing they tell me, of tak­ing the prophet on the sub­way
for a ter­ror­ist, reli­gion for pro­tec­tion, quan­tum entan­gle­ment for proof
it’s not just me and my deci­sions. I want to believe
every word of it—and laugh. I want my life back.

_________
*Pub­lished in The Destroyer

ditch [4 poems]

Hello all,

Click on this link to see four of my poems recently pub­lished by ditch - http://www.ditchpoetry.com/amandasilbernagel.htm .

Happy read­ing! AS x

killer covers

Thanks to Jaime Jensen for grant­ing you (and me) priv­i­leged access to the fol­low­ing inter­pre­tive per­for­mances of my poems, “Lux Con­tinua” and “time-lapse res­o­lu­tion.” Orig­i­nal pro­duc­tions are avail­able on my blog– just scroll down.

This shit gives me chills…

http://youtu.be/iI_2vIj_SHw (Lux Con­tinua, per­formed by JJ)

http://youtu.be/1Z_JgdpON3s (time-lapse res­o­lu­tion, per­formed by JJ)

 

Cables

Cables

Nearly dry: a lone rose descend­ing head first from a piece of twine, dou­ble tied.
In absence of Atro­pos, we are part­ners in infi­nite crime.

We are gath­ered here with the win­dow open, on cold linoleum creak­ing.
Through voodoo blinds the Chris­t­ian neigh­bors peek­ing. When she flew her air­plane into me

It all felt so inevitable: the burns on my wrists, her taste in my mouth
The burns on my ankles. How in my last life I was hanged

And how I was hanged the life prior. How we tried and tried.
I don’t know what to feel any­more, save for the wholly ghostly echo of petals coming

Down hard, com­ing down sin­gu­lar, all around the kitchen table.
My voice, a bomb trapped inside a blaz­ing ele­va­tor, fails

And fails to com­bust. Father, for­give us. Demons, evac­u­ate. Nearly Beloved
Take my oxy­gen mask: I’ve said my vows already.

audio poesis VIII (“Cables” remix)

Hit play to hear Andy N’s haunt­ing remix of my recent poem, “Cables.” See below for Andy N’s info. Thanks, Andy! AS x

Cables — remix
Cables– ver­sion two

Meet Andy N:

Andy N’s web­site– http://andyn.org.uk
+ cur­rent band ‘A Means to an End’s web­site: http://ameanstoanend.yolasite.com/
+ blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
+ Andy and me online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com

Read “Cables” — http://www.amandasilbernagel.com/?p=3879

 

Hospitality

Hos­pi­tal­ity

Is a home an uncon­di­tional space—or does it have a time frame?
If the former—are its mea­sure­ments changeable?

Are ques­tions con­cern­ing these changes inter­rog­a­tive?
Or rhetor­i­cal? Can a ques­tion be a home?

They pro­longed the sen­tence to death, hav­ing found you sus­pect
and simul­ta­ne­ously daugh­ter, the words guilty

And inno­cent inapplicable—“teleologically sus­pended”—
Hav­ing seen but not heard // some sec­u­lar bluebirds

Form­ing a riot on barbed wire—an infi­nite rest—
Why won’t the pris­oner speak? We’ve pre­pared a place for it—

You stood bro­ken on your par­ents’ doorstep, hav­ing con­fessed
your Love’s true sex, hav­ing starved your­self illeg­i­ble, tossed a match

From here to child­hood, and watched those bridges burn. Whose face was on fire
when you whis­pered a rose is a rose, and she answered I didn’t raise you

To deface His cre­ation…? The World was found guilty
and the Son was pun­ished, so the Word was pub­lished in absence of the Son

And there were pic­nics and potlucks and silences
that seemed to last eons—Time was mea­sured in bites not taken

And the occa­sional clink of a fork against a plate
became the absolute cen­ter of a uni­verse that was clos­ing in rapidly—

And they called this hospitality—and you accepted it—stared out to the gar­den
whose bird­bath is always over­flow­ing, whose lilies nei­ther toil nor spin

Whose pin­wheels hyp­no­tize what they can’t under­stand—
what can’t be dis­owned or proven innocent.

 

Kill Author [2 poems]

Fol­low the link to see two of my poems (+ audio!) pub­lished in “Kill Author”- an anony­mous + bad ass poetry jour­nal. Happy reading…

http://killauthor.com/issueeighteen/amanda-silbernagel/

[Why the anonymity: “The journal’s title is inspired by The Death Of The Author, a work by the French philoso­pher and lit­er­ary critic Roland Barthes, whose name graced our first issue. We com­pletely agree with the crit­i­cism he makes in that essay–that read­ers rely far too much on their knowl­edge of an author’s per­son­al­ity in an attempt to try and gain some mean­ing from a work. Barthes’ pref­er­ence was that the mean­ing should come only from the impres­sion left in the reader’s mind by the words on the page, rather than from the iden­tity of the writer. That’s our pref­er­ence, too.” –Kill Author]

Preach!

Ax

Ex Nihilo

A thou­sand hats off, twenty rounds of applause, six hun­dred hun­dred goats, and my old­est (hypo­thet­i­cal) child–to Andy N, for sound­ge­neer­ing this most epic track. (See below for links to Andy N’s work…) Vocal record­ings include excerpts from Tessa Rumsey’s “Fan­tasy Coat,” and from my essays “The Glimpse of Recog­ni­tion,” “Toward a Lin­guis­tic Account of the Soul-Poem,” and “Cri­tique of the Gen­e­sis of Form.” With­out fur­ther ado, we present to you “Ex Nihilo”–

Ex Nihilo

Meet Andy N:

Andy N’s web­site– http://andyn.org.uk
+ cur­rent band ‘A Means to an End’s web­site: http://ameanstoanend.yolasite.com/
+ blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
+ Andy and me online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com

Radioactive Moat [2 poems]

Click on the link to see two of my poems recently pub­lished in issue 6 of Radioac­tive Moat:

http://www.radioactivemoat.com/issue-6.html

We seek the mutant; the face­less and com­po­nents grotesque. We abhor the exem­plary; the self-righteous. Writ­ing is not merely a game or reward. Writ­ing is social crit­i­cism; is activism. Writ­ing is few words; is many.” –Radioac­tive Moat

Thanks,
AS x

Musical Chairs (A Lullaby)

Musi­cal Chairs (A Lullaby)

I am the keeper of the heights, wind-tender and wild-eyed. Alpha and Omega, Begin­ning and End, I Am

The cast and the cho­rus and the audi­ence at once: mean­ing lone­some. A lime­stone cas­tle crumbles

With my every exha­la­tion; when­ever I inhale a lit­tle color leaves the world, my chil­dren, listen—

To the hyp­notic pull of the full moon preg­nant with every sad poem ever writ­ten, the wil­low and the ter­ri­ble truth

The wind has to tell it—and tell me who I am. If you refuse: sleep will come like a thief, the lover, set sail in the toss­ing and turning

Your bed­frame become lad­der become kin­dling is no fire escape. I am the-top-of-the-world and the sea,

Now evap­o­rat­ing. You who I carved out of an eye-sore, you sight for sore eyes, rise—walk bravely in cir­cles to the music.

Do not ask: “What shall we make of all the dis­ap­pear­ing fur­ni­ture?” Think only on those things that must be dis­cov­ered, that may

Never be cre­ated nor destroyed. Dreams come to those who ask for much, and need lit­tle: a sound tonic, a fist­ful of sand.

Ye wing-bent, ye with no way down, take com­fort: you aren’t the first, and are far from the last.

 

 

Pastel Pastoral: The Black Sun in Pop Culture’s Closet

X

What if you—abandoned your­self? Dis­lo­ca­tion, as in a time of great dan­ger or impending

IX

Phys­i­cal anni­hi­la­tion, the way the—soul?—may dis­cover the lib­erty to disconnect

VIII

From the body, like the word money from the mint or an indi­vid­ual cop­per penny

VII

And what exactly does it mean to won­der about this over cof­fee, soli­tude, perfect

VI

Weather?.…”  (Tessa Rum­sey, 19)

* (Con­tin­ued)

audio poesis VII (w/ Andy N!)

Click here to hear another exper­i­men­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion with audio-poetic genius Andy N! (See below for Andy’s info.) Thanks Andy– as always, you’re a true inspiration!

audio poe­sis VII (unsta­tis­ti­cally speaking)

MORE FROM ANDY N:

Andy N’s web­site– http://andyn.org.uk
+ cur­rent band ‘A Means to an End’s web­site: http://ameanstoanend.yolasite.com/
+ blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
+ Andy and me online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com

READUNSTATISTICALLY SPEAKING”: http://www.amandasilbernagel.com/?p=3404

uncertainty principle

uncer­tainty principle

What our nature is / can’t be cap­tured: this I know.

On black and white film, ele­ments may appear interchangeable.

The flames were like ocean spray—a surf wave—we could not see through them.

At the end of this world will rain hour-glass. Will time pass like light. Will light separate

the shards from the sand as we wade deeper in. A gray sun may hang

in the back­ground, dis­in­her­ited. Under­stand: a great lens encom­pas­seth us.

Under­stand: some may lose their faith. Cam­era now turned on / the Light of the Dharma:

his face soft as lotus petals, firm body. An arrow called Grav­ity points away

from an unnamed cen­ter, Beethoven’s Moon­light Sonata play­ing from a for­eign car

crouched beside the curb, upstream a boy anoints the monk’s head with gasoline.

There are two kinds of peo­ple in this uni­verse. Min­strels, drag your rigid bows across

the trem­bling cello. Reporter releases the shut­ter / shud­ders: a flour­ish of orange

flags and yes a few blue even— In my lungs, an unspo­ken manifesto

now com­bust­ing— Did he stay in that pose, and for how many centuries:

These ques­tions can’t be answered simultaneously—and will burn—

_______

*pub­lished in Radioac­tive Moat

 

fragments on openness (published by PANK Magazine)

Hello all–

The below link is to a col­lec­tion of my apho­risms– “frag­ments on open­ness”- now part of the “This Mod­ern Writer” series, pub­lished by PANK Mag­a­zine: http://www.pankmagazine.com/pankblog/this-modern-writer/fragments-on-openness-by-amanda-silbernagel/

Many thanks,
AS x

audio poesis VI (Battery Cage w Andy N)

Another col­lab­o­ra­tion with UK poet/experimental musi­cian, Andy N!! Andy sound­ge­neered the track, and I wrote the poem. (thanks Andy!) Enjoy…

Audio Poe­sis (Bat­tery Cage)

MEET ANDY N:

Andy N’s web­site– http://andyn.org.uk
+ cur­rent band ‘A Means to an End’s web­site: http://ameanstoanend.yolasite.com/
+ blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
+ Andy and me online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com

READBATTERY CAGE”:

http://www.amandasilbernagel.com/?p=2003

unstatistically speaking

unsta­tis­ti­cally speaking

wings fold back and break off in unbear­able winds

nei­ther of us had the lux­ury of watching

my plane leave inso­far as you crashed once I said good­bye come dawn

and I was stuck inside it. love, to be honest

is to board a metal bird full of strangers all moving

in the same gen­eral direc­tion at ter­ri­fy­ing speeds

much as a train of thoughts throt­tles across a page, mean­ing anything

you think you want—oxygen mask, sui­cide bomb—can and will be

held against you. bound­aries blur, book drowns, as water­color air­craft spirals

bright lights down below may belong to sev­eral cities or sim­ply a home

once chris­tened flu­o­res­cent, now taken by flame.

______

*pub­lished in Radioac­tive Moat

tasteless: writings by/to a starving artist

go slow, said the soul, // That you may know the streets of your aban­doned city more inti­mately than any joy // Or cher­ished sea­son.” –Tessa Rumsey

On return­ing to my home­town (i.e., for the last cou­ple of weeks) I’ve been com­pelled to revisit an era of my life, and hence of my poetry, that for a long time I’ve kept at bay. This work is the result of said revis­i­ta­tion: a col­lec­tion of poems, cor­re­spon­dences, and reflections-in-retrospect, that  doc­u­ments, or mir­rors rather, one poet’s jour­ney through hell/anorexia — more or less toward health/life. Poems and cor­re­spon­dences appear in chrono­log­i­cal order (or order in which they were writ­ten) — begin­ning in advance of a stint “on the road,” and end­ing in the author’s hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. Excerpts from my essay, The Gen­e­sis of Form, recount the expe­ri­ence in ret­ro­spect. Thanks to MH, with­out whom I’d surely be dead (to say noth­ing of unpub­lished.)    Happy read­ing, A xx

TASTELESS (PDF)

anti-christmas audio poesis

Hey all;

the fol­low­ing track fea­tures my poem “thrown­ness,” and belongs to an album by Andy N + friends– “…Offi­cially designed for peo­ple who don’t really like Christ­mas, the album has a series of tracks that go for acoustic based pop to full on drone epics.”  See below for more info. Thanks Andy!!

silent night (thrownness)

Hear the full album HERE: http://www.archive.org/details/DihFriends-ChristmasAlbum2011
Read the poem: http://www.amandasilbernagel.com/?p=1538

Andy online: http://andyn.org.uk
Andy + me online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com/

poetic justice (video)

Fol­low this link to see a youtube video of some Texan poetic rad­i­cals (oh yes, they do exist!) + myself per­form­ing poetry a week ago:

 
Com­pli­ments of Anna Lover­ing. Happy lis­ten­ing! AS xx
 
 

Transmissions Outside the Teaching (poetry book)

Dear read­ers,

This is just a note to say that my book of poems, Trans­mis­sions Out­side the Teach­ing, is now avail­able on Ama­zon, i.e., HERE (or you can just go to Ama­zon and type in my name and/or “Trans­mis­sions Out­side the Teaching.”)

Sorry also for the radio silence– I’m in grad school and teach­ing right now, and as we’ve hit the mid-term mark there’s not much spare time for blog­ging– the writ­ing I’m cur­rently doing (that isn’t for uni) is for-itself; but I will try to keep the blog alive/active by post­ing links and PDFs to cur­rent projects. Thanks!! A xx

 

fragments on intention, desire, and transcendence

*

Ego is the nec­es­sary result of being-toward-identity, a con­di­tion that’s dis­tinc­tively human.

*

Ani­mals do not “intend”: they act. Am I say­ing that inten­tion is unnat­ural? Yes—and no. It is no less nat­ural than our instinct to socially con­form so as to rem­edy estrange­ment. Estrange­ment is the factory-truth that ratio­nal beings are reasoned/corralled into. We enter the estranged state via a con­tract which reads: “I will repeat myself until you’ve com­mit­ted that self to mem­ory.” Most of us entered this con­tract non-consentingly, or as children.

* (Con­tin­ued)

Prophecy and Abstraction in a Passionless Age

The fol­low­ing is a re-worked ver­sion of my paper Ani­mal Meta­physicum: Prophecy and Abstrac­tion in a Pas­sion­less Age, which I recently pre­sented in a panel dis­cus­sion on “Nar­ra­tive and Social Move­ments.” A cou­ple of peo­ple asked me to post the updated ver­sion on this blog, so here it is– com­ments and ques­tions are wel­comed! Thanks, A (Con­tin­ued)

audio poesis IV (remix by Andy N)

Here’s another audio-poetic col­lab­o­ra­tion with exper­i­men­tal musi­cian Andy N. Andy mixed the track (see below for his con­tact info and links to other projects) and I wrote the poem (here again, see below.) Many thanks to Andy, and happy lis­ten­ing! –A x

My Euphrates (Remix)

MEET ANDY N:

Andy N’s web­site– http://andyn.org.uk
+ cur­rent band ‘A Means to an End’s web­site: http://ameanstoanend.yolasite.com/
+ blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
+ Andy and me online: http://amandasilbernagelandandyn.yolasite.com

READ THE LYRICS:

http://www.amandasilbernagel.com/?p=395

Timely Meditations

Upcom­ing Arts and Human­i­ties grad­u­ate con­fer­ence @ TTU, Sat­ur­day, 22 Octo­ber 2011. If you live in the region, hit us up! My paper can also be found HERE. (Con­tin­ued)

love song / suicide bomb

love song / sui­cide bomb

Let us go then, you and I / When evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table —T.S. Eliot

As the insom­niac dreads the night, so does the city

Grow pet­ri­fied of being what it is, need­ing what it needs.

Take the bridges we man­aged, despite down­pour and detour, to let burn.

An ani­mal in motion stays asym­met­ri­cal: this was me try­ing to get even

With history—carbon foot­prints all the way down.

The metro­plized sky­line like a girl, by def­i­n­i­tion, interrupted

By the pol­i­tics of entrance, essence askance—warship lands

Her one-hundred-story deal: pub­lished, perished.

They’re tight­en­ing the bor­der now, punc­tu­at­ing things with­out thinking

What they might be killing off. If this is free­dom, I’ll have no part in it.

If this is scan­dal– I want in on it all. In Time’s Square, a fig­ure ate

Dirt, back­ground ate fig­ure, a skat­ing rink falls asleep full

Of frac­tured bones, New York City full of terror

And I still can’t remem­ber where I parked that night

For the life of me // requires so many more bod­ies than this.

_________
*Pub­lished in E-ratio

audio poesis III (me + Andy N)

The first time I heard this track it was a sound-gasm in my ears. Thanks to Andy N (see below for his info) for this–

love song / sui­cide bomb — Andy N’s mix

MEET ANDY N:

Andy N’s web­site– http://andyn.org.uk
+ cur­rent band ‘A Means to an End’s web­site: http://ameanstoanend.yolasite.com/
+ blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/

READ THE LYRICS:

http://www.amandasilbernagel.com/?p=2642

 

teen angst / grand theft auto

teen angst / grand theft auto

It all started with you want­ing
to set off all the alarms with­out a thought
to how self­ish that crime–
to-criminal-ratio would’ve sounded.
I tugged at my ski mask and swore
to play super­flu­ous. Per­haps I was pray­ing
for all the wrong things, teased the world
in all its mock-oyster glory. I lived
for you I killed for you I promised you
it’s all in how you frame it. Under­ground
sub­ways con­verted into anti-rain dance halls
the beat and what falls between the beat
Gins­burg, Fer­linghetti, fanat­ics pass­ing out
–dated lit­er­a­ture out to ravers at the tunnel’s mouth
exact a drip­ping pulp. Water tor­ture
was all in our heads, like the song
you only loved because it made you feel
invin­ci­ble as it boomed from your snow-white
’87 Cor­sica, bass cranked, heart pound­ing,
eyes close as they’d ever been to sleep.
Dream-screams flee lips crim­son kissed
by all the hooks you made out with
like a kid in a jew­elry store, delin­quent
writ­ten all over her car, and I’m total
–ly that pearl right now.

________
*Pub­lished in E-ratio

teen angst / selective memorization

teen angst / selec­tive memorization

I
There was the stark Unwel­come
In the blan­kets of that time / there was night

Who refuses as only the seg­re­gated can—
To swad­dle our sick with (an unlim­ited supply)

Fire­flies smashed together / against the skin
Tight atmos­phere, sweat­ing (like the restless)

Bul­lets glis­tened, and con­torted, and
Did not die. Stoic toward a des­per­ate query

How much do you love me—drove across the old
Wide-open again, where the road twists ‘round

I
As a mouth—revealing the rup­tured tone
Of a col­lec­tive body. Had the sun shone through

(Our ruined) thatched roof, the insec­tual drama,
Like a blood-ring—had the brood­ing dropped off

Before our camp came to: starved, con­gru­ently
For dawn and dark (a clo­sure.) I’d stop

Beg­ging, recon­vene believ­ing: exhaus­tion is an act
Of devo­tion (much like reach­ing—) into fog

After hell-hot fog / for the pearl in ques­tion.
If I look for you. If I look for you

I
Like a man whose head is on fire looks, for water…
Peri­win­kle cool coun­try air. Noth­ing keeps

The beads on my brow from turn­ing, like slaves
To their mas­ter / the tinc­ture of the realized:

Aqua-marine, or that which we steal from the sky.
I arrive—where the world is a shell (click) safety is

Haz­ardous, and you—you were arranged to do this:
Keep calm within the cold blue daz­zle of a caste

Sys­tem (chant­ing: should we ever cease to spin…)

 

THE GENESIS OF FORM

The fol­low­ing work, like all of my work, is not to be taken for an argu­ment, or for an attempt to con­vince or per­suade. I’m going to bite the bul­let here and speak on a sub­ject that I’ve been avoid­ing for some time now, not because it is, though it is, taboo among philosophers—but because I’ve so far lacked the con­fi­dence to put this par­tic­u­lar “word­less under­stand­ing” into words. To voice the word­less is to tap into the force of your under­stand­ing, and let it pour out, free of the con­straints of lan­guage, thus expe­ri­enc­ing itself as lan­guage, as river. If a river were con­scious, it would not worry about its “route”—the sights it passes or doesn’t pass, the ter­rains it cuts through or doesn’t cut through, along the way—for it would know it’s des­ti­na­tion was the sea. Even the most lucid writ­ers, who can “hold their breath” as it were for the longest spans of time in the sub­ter­ranean cur­rents of their Unconscious—even these pos­sess a con­scious­ness, an aware­ness of what’s being said and who might be lis­ten­ing. But to dwell on these coin­ci­dences is to com­pro­mise the momen­tum of the cur­rent: the force of the expres­sion which alone con­firms the des­ti­na­tion, and promises its arrival thereupon.

Eccle­si­astes 1:7 — All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

I want to talk about, to put into words, my spir­i­tu­al­ity. There. I said it. Did your brain do a som­er­sault? That’s alright if it did: you’ll get used to it, so long as you don’t try too hard to get your bear­ings (turn­ing in cir­cles is a sure way to aggra­vate sea sick­ness.) But go ahead—look back at the shore­line, and notice that it doesn’t fall off into the cur­rent: the shore, your ori­gins, what­ever you were doing or think­ing about before I so rudely abducted you, exists on a con­tin­uum: you can jump over­board and swim to it when­ever you like. Of course the scenery might be dif­fer­ent, you be might be thou­sands of miles away from where you boarded (I write pretty fast) but you can always walk back, or hop a cab (although I don’t sug­gest you swim.) The world is your con­tin­uum: everything’s con­nected, everything’s per­mit­ted—whether we con­sider our­selves “spir­i­tual” or “Chris­t­ian” or “Bud­dhist” or “athe­ists” or none of the above, all of these sub­jects, and all of their gods, are “in our line of vision”—or bet­ter, close enough to touch. Let me show you: (Con­tin­ued)

votive

votive

And here’s the thing:
what­ever has mean­ing in this life
must grind to a halt, a
holo­gram of every­thing you need
and need to know,
can’t have, and won’t.
Per­fec­tion­ists are those
who can’t han­dle
the sound of water boil­ing.
It’s tea-time in seven
of seven con­ti­nents, and here
my cig­a­rette minds
its finite­ness. There’s a woman
back home that I hate
myself for lov­ing
while the other one sleeps
in my air con­di­tioner, leav­ing me
humid, all too humid.
Evenings like these
turn the hands into weak
the­olo­gies, clos­ing in on what­ever
promises com­fort
to the bit­ter end. This isn’t
the time to con­fess
there are times I’m still blinded by
a blonde star com­ing
up pre­dictably as the crops
of holy men, this win­dow lit and open
all hours as this heart
waxes centerless.

safari (after & before)

safari

I
Of the things we can’t let rest: how we left the rainforest’s

fowl in a fit of deci­sion: to leap
into the predator’s mouth, or to make waste slowly?

wish­bones blown in plas­tic bags out to sea—

A bal­lis­tic mis­sile falls for all it knows

in the lap of lux­ury, one cell courts can­cer,
becomes its own abu­sive spouse

(when god’s only son fled hell, what do you think he was
think­ing about?)

Was it the saint who’d fed him water from a sponge

or the droplets, loosed like dirty orphans
into sunlight

where they’d vapor­ize, never to cure a case of thirst…

II
You could sit with that chip on your shoul­der
until what put it there stops chirping

let your phone ring ‘til you’re ninety-five and no one
knows your num­ber or your name

You could empty your heart

like an answer­ing machine, its cho­rus still play­ing
in the nau­tilus cham­ber of rooms

whose doors you don’t leave open

whose oceans you sleep through.

Etymology of Poet (on the bastardization/devastation of the word)

In The Art of Cre­ation, Edward Car­pen­ter draws on the are­nas of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, anthro­pol­ogy and art to explore the vast sub­ject of “the self and its pow­ers.” And what sub­ject but a vast one is fit for a poet? Bet­ter, what sub­ject but a vast one is fit for human thought?

In truth, while not all are “poets” in form, we are all poets in force: each of us daily amasses and dis­charges colos­sal sums of infor­ma­tion, both tan­gi­ble and not, simul­ta­ne­ously con­jur­ing up sequences of pat­terns in our per­cep­tory, mnemonic and lin­guis­tic reg­is­ters to under­stand our expe­ri­ence of the world. It’s well known that humans con­cep­tu­al­ize via metaphor, as con­cepts are merely sym­bols for the objects, and our expe­ri­ences of the objects, that con­sti­tute “the real” (or, if you’d rather, they’re mere sym­bols for other sym­bols which are mere sym­bols for other sym­bols– never reach­ing the “thing in itself.”)

The word “poet” com­monly con­notes one who uses metaphor to express her sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of the world. As a poet, I say (or rather write) of a cer­tain sky, that it is “a volup­tuous black / swan tak­ing a bul­let the breast: bloody blos­soms / bloom­ing all at once upon a time / –lapsed pho­to­graph.” And my typ­i­cal reader responds in one of two ways: she’ll either “ooh” and “ah” and say “A sky full of fire­works is like a dark bird’s punc­tured breast—what a great anal­ogy!” or, she’ll scrunch up her nose and think to her­self (unless she’s gone to grad school, in which case she’ll heave a the­atri­cal sigh and say) “that’s not how the sky is at all—what a weak metaphor.” But in gen­eral, any­one who knows what poetry is—?— “knows” it’s ridicu­lous to judge a poem as “true” or “false”—poetry isn’t logic after all. (Con­tin­ued)

antonyms for reticence

antonyms for reticence

Hav­ing breathed the invis­i­ble glass
hav­ing for­feited my gas mask, last chance
before the sea lev­els every­thing
in its way—killing it with contrast

To cough up an excuse, a vow, a word for how
eyes are still the vul­ner­a­ble vow­els
through which slip a soul: sound fury burn­ing salt and me
not get­ting any of it down: the un-crying shame

Of a beached whale bathed in wail­ing gulls,
lit­tle Sally sell­ing seashells by the sea-corpse
in the dream I lost my voice
scream­ing Has any­one seen this pearl?

Lines cast out from tired poems and tied to lime
stones too frag­ile to make a dent
in any­thing, get wasted on this win­dow,
shat­tered on that heart.

If bro­ken, call me a liar. If bleed­ing, call me Ish­mael.
If god’s blade dulls, if gun­metal blue rivers
never lap crim­son forth, would not even Moses slit his
to prove the Nile sentient?

Where is the grain of truth in these fool’s gold waves—
these days that find you wait­ing on the Furies
to sweep down and dis­perse
your sil­ver lin­ing into acid-black dusk?

When they come you set the island on fire
with your glory-torch: a fist-full of words
my photo cloned and posted
all across the flam­ing hillside—I saw it

With my own eyes, and only my own eyes
know how many oil spills I counted on
that quiet drive, which, because cir­cle, felt end­less.
Feel­ings are toxic or they’re nothing

And I’m bank­ing on the for­mer and I’m drown­ing
on the shore. If some secrets aren’t lies
if con­fes­sions can be true
I’d slay I’d for you.