{"id":31834,"date":"2016-02-07T00:52:37","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T06:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=31834"},"modified":"2018-09-06T02:24:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T08:24:12","slug":"sunday-blog-read-craig-dworkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sunday-blog-read-craig-dworkin\/","title":{"rendered":"READ LOCAL First: Craig Dworkin"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUNDAY BLOG READ\u00a0<\/strong>is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and \/ or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir.<\/p>\n

\"Craig<\/a>Today poet and University of Utah professor Craig Dworkin<\/b>\u00a0favors us with an excerpt of his long poem “The Falls” from his most recent collection Alkali<\/em>\u00a0(Counterpath\u00a0Press<\/a>, 2015). I heard Craig read once at City Art–a blend of the technical and lyrical that was hypnotizing. Later I heard him present in Joel Long’s writing \/ literature class at Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s where he held forth\u00a0on some of his more daring inter-textual forays into the material nature of language, including real research into chemical engineering for a series of poems\u2014 all titled FACT<\/em>\u2014which describe the chemical makeup of their own various physical properties, from ink on paper to compact discs to 16mm film.<\/p>\n

So curl up with your favorite cup of Joe, and enjoy Craig Dworkin!<\/p>\n

[ . . . .]
\nWe are always falling, but sometimes we forget. And because there is motion, there
\n              must be emptiness, yielding and accident. Atoms plummet through an infinite
\n              void \u2014 they rain straight down, perfectly vertical, with only occasional
\n              swerves.<\/p>\n

As when, on some september night, in the air, you can feel the end of something and
\n              the beginning of something else: a peripeteia; a recognized crisis; a clinamen
\n              \u2014 points in the drama with a sudden reversal.<\/p>\n

A trama<\/em> serves to plot the path to which the warp is at any moment wefted, along
\n              the lines of termination of the web, formed by the last weft-thread driven
\n              up by the lay.<\/p>\n

Just as each beautiful day is also a meteor (se estrella las estrellas<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Until the moment of collision, some portion of unforeseen motion partitions the
\n              distance remaining.<\/p>\n

The tea leaves, the cake crumbs \u2014 the sound of a bell,
\nthe smell of fallen leaves \u2014 the chips as they may.<\/p>\n

With blue c\u00e6rulea stewed as a potion, catananche (asterace\u00e6) blooms in the brew.
\n              Infusions are taken as slopes speeding sleep. The sugars dissolve; the dyes
\n              diffuse; the thyme embitters as it steeps.<\/p>\n

The blossoming losses accrue.<\/p>\n

Cupidone blooms from mid-june to late august \u2014 the tender perennial grown as an
\n              annual, seed-sown in soil that drains.<\/p>\n

Then the sepaline drop, the wither.<\/p>\n

Everything rinsed out, bleached pallid and spoiled.<\/p>\n

The achenes, the scarious bracts. The cast and the
\nblanched.<\/p>\n

The nights; the made weathers; the winters.<\/p>\n

The precarious, impending and staggered.<\/p>\n

From the scabs to the scars to the aches.<\/p>\n

The slid and the lanched.<\/p>\n

The wrench of the branched clastic carpals in catch.<\/p>\n

The scales and bracts frame bundles of stamina bound by their filaments.<\/p>\n

The fathomed petals scroll as they dry.<\/p>\n

Phosphates drop while anthocyanins rise.<\/p>\n

Maple stains the sidewalk after showers; burnt-earth red remains in soaked ghost
\n              silhouettes of frozen, settled smoke.<\/p>\n

The back and the back on; the rink of the belt.<\/p>\n

The sifting of fells. The tymp-arch for tapping of iron
\nand slag. The gothic drop of the fauld.<\/p>\n

The victim to.<\/p>\n

The vitrified refuse and calcinate cinders; the furnace
\nsoot.<\/p>\n

The foot; the particular tread; every ambulatory
\nmoment; the other shoe.<\/p>\n

All the lymphatics.<\/p>\n

Each particulate in every suspension.<\/p>\n

The spillway, the mud spew, the quicksand. The draws.
\nThe fill from the point of extraction \u2014 the drays in
\ntranslation all the way to the very point of deposit.<\/p>\n

The mudflow; the glue pour; the asphalt rundown; the
\nendless displacements; the concrete overflow.<\/p>\n

The outwash; the melt and the runoff; the watershed.<\/p>\n

And then \u2014 as one’s downward gaze pitches from side
\nto side, picking out random depositions of salt crystals
\non the inner and outer edges \u2014 a vertiginous keel.<\/p>\n

The sudden declivities, the vague inclinations, an
\ninaccessible precipice; precipitates.<\/p>\n

At the edges of the walk the slate of the paves of the path are halved. Notched, cut
\n              away at a bevel, the slabs, chipped and fit, nestle into each other with a
\n              mutual overlap.<\/p>\n

The total pitch and batter of the bank. The flag and the
\ndrop of diminutive bends, from the sinister chief to the
\ndexter base.<\/p>\n

The sinter and leached reach of scoriated recrements,
\nsedimented lees.<\/p>\n

The beleaguering leak from fothering failing.<\/p>\n

The further back; the so far behind.<\/p>\n

The forging, forgetting \u2014 the spans of the gaps of what
\nslips from the mind.<\/p>\n

The indiscriminate scarp of the hills; the crest of the
\nslopes; the cast up and cupped inner sides that envelop
\na ditch.<\/p>\n

The hollow of a vessel, bowl, or drinking vessel.<\/p>\n

The hollow of the waves, the breast, the depths.<\/p>\n

[ . . . .]<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Copyright, Craig Dworkin, <\/em>2015<\/p>\n

\"Alkalai\"<\/a>Craig Dworkin is the author of several books of poetry, including\u00a0Dure<\/em>\u00a0(Cuneiform, 2004),\u00a0Strand<\/em>\u00a0(Roof,\u00a02005),\u00a0Parse<\/em>\u00a0(Atelos, 2008),\u00a0The Perverse Library<\/em>\u00a0(Information As Material, 2010),\u00a0Motes<\/em>\u00a0(Roof, 2011),\u00a0Chapter XXIV<\/em>\u00a0(Red\u00a0Butte Press, 2013), An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Williamstown<\/em> (Publication Studio, 2015), and\u00a0Alkali<\/em>\u00a0(Counterpath, 2015). He has also published two scholarly monographs,\u00a0Reading the Illegible<\/em>\u00a0(Northwestern UP, 2003) and\u00a0No\u00a0Medium<\/em>\u00a0(MIT, 2013), and edited a half-dozen collections:\u00a0Architectures of Poetry<\/em>, with Mar\u00eda Eugenia D\u00edaz S\u00e1nchez (Rodopi, 2004);\u00a0Language to Cover a Page: The Early Writing of Vito Acconci<\/em>\u00a0(MIT, 2006);\u00a0The Consequence of Innovation: 21st-Century Poetics<\/em>\u00a0(Roof, 2008);\u00a0The Sound of Poetry\/ The Poetry of Sound<\/em>, with Marjorie Perloff (Chicago, 2009);\u00a0Against Expression: An\u00a0Anthology of Conceptual Writing<\/em>, with Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern, 2011); and Nothing: A User\u2019s Manual<\/em> (Information as Material, 2015). He teaches literature and theory at the University\u00a0of Utah and serves as Founding Senior Editor to Eclipse <eclipsearchive.org>,\u00a0an online archive of radical small-press writing from the last quarter century.<\/p>\n

Past featured writers in <\/em>15 Bytes\u2019 Sunday Blog Read:\u00a0Katharine Coles<\/a>, Michael McLane<\/a>, Darrell Spencer<\/a>, Larry Menlove<\/a>,Christopher Bigelow<\/a>, Shanan Ballam<\/a>, Steve Proskauer<\/a>, April Wilder<\/a>,Calvin Haul<\/a>, Lance Larsen<\/a>, Joel Long<\/a>,Lynn Kilpatrick<\/a>,Phyllis Barber<\/a>, David Hawkins<\/a>,Nancy Takacs<\/a>,Mike Dorrell<\/a>,Susan Elizabeth Howe<\/a>, Star Coulbrooke<\/a>, Brad Roghaar,<\/a>Jerry Vanleperen<\/a>,Maximilian Werner<\/a>, Markay Brown<\/a>, Natalie Young<\/a>, Michael Sowder<\/a>, andDanielle Beazer Dubrasky<\/a>,\u00a0Kevin Holdsworth<\/a>,\u00a0Jacqueline Osherow<\/a>, Stephen Carter<\/a>,\u00a0Alex Caldiero<\/a>,\u00a0Stephen Tuttle<\/a>, Raphael Dagold<\/a>, David Lee<\/a>,\u00a0Lisa Bickmore<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Kirstin Scott<\/a>\u00a0and Jesse Parent<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUNDAY BLOG READ\u00a0is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and \/ or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir. Today poet and University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":31838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,35,2513],"tags":[26,2760,2759,1301],"class_list":["post-31834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first","tag-15-bytes","tag-alkali","tag-craig-dworkin","tag-sunday-blog-read"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Craig-Dworkin.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 18:43:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31834"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35436,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31834\/revisions\/35436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}