Tjanting

Silliman’s major long poem published in a new edition and introduced by Barrett Watten. Tjanting abounds in a wealth of cultural reference and explores the strategies and procedures of constructing a reality in language. This classic text will delight readers and provide students of modern American poetry with a key work of the late 20th Century.

Space heater. Writing gathers around the pigeons. This line leads to Uranus. Nun census. Silver fork upon a chipped blue plate. I saw sleeping bag, pillows in the Buick's back. The companionship of refrigerator's hum. This is beginning I again began not. Salt shaker tall as coffee's mug. Dented Opel's orange fender. Gray dawn. On the rain falls Spain mainly in the brain. Smudges forming fingertips on the back door's windows. X-ray reads gold-leaf sign on the glass. First sound of roommates beginning to stir. Grey into yellow comes sky to the room. Each page, once tree, soon shall be ash. Leather chipping, flaking off the tattered jacket. A woman who wears sweat pants. Detestimonialist. Don't sneeze on cat. Predictable boots worn by Frye people. Potholders old and dark. Ridges by bridges. Knife blade streaked with butter. That bus coming back this way. Rough surface of cat's tongue. Pin koans. Clutter of seeds, oils, spices atop the side board. Uganda Liquors.Pedestrians scamper across in the sun. Stake each sentence out. Call this 5 Corners. Knot this knot. Ball bounced into the panda plant. Cups fill the cupboard. Aliens from other planets are perfectly visible. Tamal is a half-name in the place of the name. The squeak of faucets. I was on the road discovered. Ash "tray." Yellow caterpillar tractor. Ashtray fills up. Waking is in each instant I am. Across, then down and across. Her tone to him through long years of rough intimacy was at once tender and gruff. Begin each letter at the top. Not this. Pit bull's spittle as it snarls. I saw a burgundy filling the clear vial at needle's end, my blood. Liquid detergent. Ing the trap bears ed. Roach holder made of a matchbook. She never lookd this way, whose face I sought a glimpse of. Free write each day. My fingers counted between nine and eleven.Any symbol is a contrary seen in a positive light. A specific shape, complex amd nameable, to each cloud. Sky pilot. Factory filld with sunrise. Scraping paper, leaving tracks. Forklift to timeclock of montage and cut. Call this tracing. 3 wooden rainwarpd chairs in the (back) yard. Fence is a verb. Scratch that. Each word in Max 3 meant polis. In the mind mines gape. Tell that to the Possum. Words tried to imagine. Coffee ground spilld on the stove top. Bare nap rugs on the cat. Mouth open, take a deep breath, say Ah. On the far gray bay side haze hued the hill.Rush of footsteps upstairs. Bathetic. In a middle that is not yet the middle. The mock coolness of the air-conditiond underground. Hours alter colors of the page. Grease sizzles, spitting on the stove top. Words vary. Swam past sand sharks. An idea of land's end. Pale luncher. An eternal groove around record's center. 4-tunneld city and 7 its hills. Owl light.Impaired eyes, desert rocks are attributed evenly throughout the pain. Red water. We saw on the sea sails. Stoppage makes the line. Translicity elects the voice. Cowabonga. But you dependent for what comes thru. Call it dogface. Know all blame, same difference. Doors "ajar." I glimpse the machinery of the modern dentist thru windows. Pills on my Tarot. Shade throws the light lamp. Pacific Palisades. Write between light green lines. Beer in waxed cups. Noon's rise mooning. Someone must make awnings. On the bus home from work, squinting at a thick printout. On a bus in dawn heavy fog, on my way to meet Taggart. Smouldering sienna. One ideogram, meaning lunch, middle or China. The familiar smell suddenly of balsawood and Testor's in a hospital corridor.My nose, seen as a waterfall. Disfeel an ease. Cary Grant on the face of George Washington. Or the faces of watchers through a window at sunset, their skin blue by the dim light of the telly. Once on the bus, took his shoes off. Detains, denotes detonation. His eyes enlarged by his glasses.