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DIMENSION IMAGINE HOW FRUSTRATING IT MUST BE TO SENSE SOMETHING YOU CANNOT DESCRIBE OR EXPLAIN

“What is it like to experience colors that don’t appear anywhere in the rainbow, colors from another dimension? Imagine how frustrating it must be to sense something you cannot describe. Could you explain what it feels like to see blue to a person who has been blind from birth?”

Ramachandran, V. S. The Tell-tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. p. 115.

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W.W. Norton

BE PRECOGNITION HOW PRECARIOUSLY NAMES CLING TO CIVILIZATION IN ORDER TO QUALIFY FOR LANGUAGE

“Children know be precognition how precariously names cling to civilization. In order to qualify for language they must stifle unrelenting internalization.”

Howe, Susan. The Quarry. New York, NY: New Directions, 2015. p. 116.

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New Directions Books

WHEN THE REAL WORLD WAS OUR WORLD IN ITS NATURE TO MIND OUR WOULD-WORLD THRESHOLD WORD LITTLE

“Once when the real world
was our world in its nature
to mind our would world
Threshold word little hinge
hope of bewilderment its
parchment memory sign”

Howe, Susan. “Periscope” Debths. New York, NY: New Directions, 2017. p. 106.

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New Directions Books

BLUE DEPTHS SO MANY THINGS HAPPEN BY BRINGING TO LIGHT WHAT HAS LONG BEEN HIDDEN LILTING BETWIXT

“So many things happen by bringing to light what has long been hidden. Lilting betwixt and between. Between what? Oh everything. Take your microphone. Cross your voice with the ocean.”

Howe, Susan. Debths. New York, NY: New Directions, 2017. p. 18.

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New Directions Books

AND THE ENVIRONMENT WE ARE PERMITTED TO RETURN TO THIS MEADOW THIS FOREST THIS DESERT AS A GIVEN

“In our field of Literature and the Environment, we are permitted to return to this meadow, this forest, this desert, as a given property of the deeply natural human mind.”

Snyder, Gary. "Ecology, Literature and the New World Disorder." Irish Pages 2, no. 2 (2004): 22. Accessed May 31, 2021.

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JSTOR

THE EARTH CRACKS WITH DROUGHT WE'LL STILL HAVE TO A STRANGE WRINKLED ANCESTOR HANDS US A NUGGET

“For we have to know how to make the new one. And if the earth
cracks with drought we’ll still have to. A strange wrinkled
ancestor hands us a nugget.”

Notley, Alice. "We Have to Know How to Make the New One." The Kenyon Review, New Series, 31, no. 4 (2009): 138.

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JSTOR

YOUR EYES CLOSE OPEN YOUR MOUTH BE DUMB SPEAK TO US BE STILL SING TO US TELL US AN OLD OLD NEW ONE

“Please open your carved wooden protruding
live dead mouth & let your green
bronze dark light skin shimmer with
life death, close open your eyes & close open
your mouth & be dumb speak to us
be still sing to us, tell us an old old new one”

Notley, Alice. "Mother Mask." Ploughshares 15, no. 4 (1989): 154. Accessed June 24, 2021.

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JSTOR

TAKING YOU THE SCAB IN THE SKY IS GONE WE HAVE TO GO BEYOND OUR CALCULATIONS AND SMALL WORDS

“The front of my looking out pulls

beauty taking me taking you. The scab in the sky
is gone. We have to go beyond our calculations
and the small words.”

Notley, Alice. "From My Forehead." Poetry 206, no. 4 (2015): 404. Accessed August 18, 2021.

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JSTOR

SLITHER WITHOUT ARMS THEY KNEW WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO BE THE GROUND HOLDING THEM UP BROTHER DIRT AND

“…The people realized they were the birds and snakes—
before they forgot—they knew what it felt like to fly
and to slither without arms; they knew what it felt like to be the ground
holding them up. Brother dirt and sister rock; mother the
vault of the sky, father lightning.”

Notley, Alice. From "Eurynome's Sandals." Chicago Review 54, no. 3 (2009): 140.

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JSTOR

THEMSELVES THE PEOPLE HAVE WORDS THEY USE THEM TO PRETEND WITH THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRETENDING

“They lose sympathy with whatever they didn’t make themselves.
The people have words; they use them to pretend with. There is no such thing as pretending, it’s all real!”

Notley, Alice. From "Eurynome's Sandals." Chicago Review 54, no. 3 (2009): 140.

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JSTOR

WHILE ART BEARS WITNESS TO LIBERATION IT TESTIFIES TO ITS LIMITS WHAT IS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE WHAT

“While art bears witness to the necessity of liberation, it also testifies to its limits. What has been done cannot be undone; what has passed cannot be recaptured.”

Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1978. p. 68-9.

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Marginal Utility

CANNOT CHANGE THE WORLD ART CAN CONTRIBUTE TO CHANGING THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND DRIVES OF THE

“This qualitative difference appears today in the protest against the definition of life as labor, in the struggle against the entire capitalist and state-socialist organization of work (the assembly line, Taylor system, hierarchy), in the struggle to end patriarchy, to reconstruct the destroyed life environment, and to develop and nurture a new morality and a new sensibility.”

Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1978. p. 28.

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Marginal Utility

RECONSTRUCT THE DESTROYED LIFE ENVIRONMENT AND TO DEVELOP AND NURTURE A NEW MORALITY AND SENSIBILITY

“This qualitative difference appears today in the protest against the definition of life as labor, in the struggle against the entire capitalist and state-socialist organization of work (the assembly line, Taylor system, hierarchy), in the struggle to end patriarchy, to reconstruct the destroyed life environment, and to develop and nurture a new morality and a new sensibility.”

Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1978. p. 28.

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Marginal Utility

AWARENESS NO MEMBER OF A GROUP SHOULD ATTEMPT TO PREDOMINATE OVER OTHERS NO EGO TRIPS MUTUAL

“All choices must proceed from a state of heightened, concentrated awareness.
No member of a group should attempt to predominate over the others — there should be no ‘ego trips.’ Mutual goodwill, tact, and courtesy and lively self-reflectiveness are minimal requirements for participation.”

Low, Jackson Mac. "Lucas 1 to 29 For One or More Instrumentalists." Conjunctions, no. 16 (1991): 223. Accessed August 19, 2021.

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JSTOR

OPENING SKY THE STAR SUCH SPACE IT COMES AGAIN TO BE A ROOM OF SUCH VAST POSSIBILITY A DEPTH SO GREAT

“THE SKULL

‘Come closer. Now there is nothing left
either inside or out to gainsay death,’
the skull that keeps its secrets saith.

The ways one went, the forms that were
empty as wind and yet they stirred
the heart to its passion, all is passed over.

Lighten the load. Close the eyes.
Let the mind loosen, the body die,
the bird fly off to the opening sky.

THE STAR

Such space it comes again to be,
a room of such vast possibility,
a depth so great, a way so free.

Life and its person, thinking to find
a company wherewith to keep the time
a peaceful passage, a constant rhyme,

stumble perforce, must lose their way,
know that they go too far to stay
stars in the sky, children at play.”

Robert Creeley, “Inside My Head.” The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. p. 531.

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Poetry Foundation

POOL OF LIGHT WATCHING THE LETTERS THE WORDS TRY TO SPEAK CLASSIC EMPTINESS IT SITS OUT THERE EDGE OF

This early still sunless morning when a chair’s
creak translates to cat’s cry a blackness still
out the window might be apparent night when the
house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of
immense empty silence and I feel the children
still breathing still shifting their dreams an
enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one
centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the
leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen un-
known placed out there in night I can feel all
about me still sitting in this small spare pool of
light watching the letters the words try to speak.

*

Classic emptiness it
sits out there edge of
hierarchic roof top it
marks with acid fine edge
of apparent difference it
is there here here that
sky so up and out and where
it wants to be no birds no
other thing can for a
moment distract it be
beyond its simple space.”

Creeley, Robert. “Helsinki Window.” The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. p. 380.

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Poetry Foundation

THERE THE FAINTER YELLOWISH PLACE IT MAKES FOR EYE TO ENTER OUT TO GREYED PENUMBRA ALL THE WAY TO

“Go out into brightened
space out there the fainter
yellowish place it
makes for eye to enter out
to greyed penumbra all the
way to thoughtful searching
sight of all beyond that”

Creeley, Robert. “Helsinki Window.” The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006. p. 377.

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Poetry Foundation

SURVIVAL TOOL ALL SPEECH IS AN ATTEMPT TO CREATE TO RECOVER OR DISCOVER AND TRANSMIT SOME ORDER

“So it lays out the argument. ALL SPEECH IS AN ATTEMPT TO CREATE TO RECOVER OR DISCOVER AND TRANSMIT SOME ORDER YET ALL SPEECH GENERATES SOME NOISE TALK IS CHEAP ALL IT COSTS IS NOISE IT MIGHT BE WORTHWHILE TO CONSIDER HOW MUCH NOISE ANY SPEECH GENERATES BEFORE SPEAKING...”

Antin, David, and Charles Bernstein. A Conversation with David Antin. New York City, NY: Granary Books, 2002. p. 37.

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University of Pennsylvania