![\"Where](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/WhereDoIGoHear1.jpg\")
<\/a>The first thing to notice about the figure in \u201cWhere Do I Go Hear\u201d is that he has been overdrawn for a total of five silhouettes. Depending on the viewer, this may make him\u2014the pronoun is neither arbitrary nor generic\u2014comedic or unnerving. Either way, he\u2019s unsettling. Eventually, he takes on a kind of ectoplasmic quality, like a candle flame struggling with a draft. The paper he\u2019s drawn on has been brushed with something glossy, creating reflections that dance as well. He seems to be stepping forward with his left foot, and reaching out with the hand on that side . . . .<\/p>\nThe first thing to notice about the accompanying poem is that it\u2019s written in prose, like a paragraph, though it\u2019s not a paragraph. It may be a dialogue, call and response, or the call that seeks response, or even a call that responds to itself:<\/p>\n
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The tongue wants what it wants. Tell me again what it wants. Words to be interchangeable. Mouths to be ears. I say, explain to me again the fine connections between the hand and the eye. Tell me how you perceive every word I think, how you see what I speak. Tell me again the word for luck. If the world is to be a realm of representation, tell me what I know a hand to be. Tell me that the apparatus by which I perceive the world is nothing more than a faulty mirror. Tell me. I want so much to hear your voice drawing the image of a man who could be more than he is. The man who could illustrate the world with one gesture. Can you hear yourself? This is the sound of one hand speaking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Art and literature are not puzzles to be solved, though that may be the only way we know to approach them. Close reading, seeing what\u2019s really there, makes appreciation possible. The first sentence, \u201cthe tongue wants what it wants,\u201d repeats from the previous poem, in which the speaker argues that a representation, such as a drawing, is not the same as the thing it represents, and likens this to what happens to lovers, who see not each other, but images of each other through the distorting lens of passion. My name is not me, the voice pleads: do not speak my name. Ah, but the tongue\u2014the passion\u2014persists in its error. It wants words and body parts\u2014his and hers, his and his, hers and hers\u2014to be interchangeable. The speaker argues for fidelity to truth: tell me how you see me, but be careful you don\u2019t deny my fundamental knowledge. \u201cTell me what I know a hand to be.\u201d A lover\u2019s deepest fear is deception, which can happen when one person does too much of the talking . . . when it\u2019s all on the one hand<\/i>\u2014like the hand extended by the figure in the drawing\u2014and not enough on the other hand<\/i>.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a translation. It\u2019s just one reading, and of one poem. Yet it may offer a glimpse of the rewards, the pleasures to be had. See for yourself, and then there will be more to say.<\/p>\n