The Occult Power of bon mots, mots justes; Quantum Hopping with Angie Estes
NANCY:
Hi Angie! so great to be in conversation with you again. This portfolio of poems, The Present State of My Spirit, takes the reader, as does your last book Parole, quantum hopping via your devotional contemplation of language. It’s this contemplation and attention which animates the occult power of language to conjure and fuse the past, and present and future, to transcend linear time, to “unlock/a sealed cave” to reveal the constellations of the unified field:
words can open
like oysters
some magic
incantation in five syllables like open
sesame—or the way we said it as
kids, open says-a-me—that unlocks
a sealed cave, the bon mots, mots
I would chant
my mother’s favorite
sayings: I have a sneaking suspicion,
That’s what I thought, You’ll do
no such thing, and she
would appear.
I can’t help but think of the quality of this contemplation as poetic reveries, which Gaston Bachelard describes as so deep they help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name.
Can you talk about the characteristics of this contemplation which give it such power?
ANGIE:
Thanks so much, Nancy; your term “quantum hopping” is a fabulous way of talking about what for me happens in both the writing and the reading of poems. And I love this Bachelard quotation–and I agree that his sense of the function and effect of “poetic reverie” has very much in common with the “quantum hopping” and “devotional contemplation of language” you’re finding in my poems.
I’ve been enthralled for a long time, as you know, with the whole medieval idea that the world is something that can be read. All of this really came together for me when I encountered the work of Abbot Suger, who placed gold and precious stones and objets in the chapel of St. Denis and wrote about how aesthetic pleasure and beauty could give rise to mystical ecstasy, how the light from these gems could transport him to “some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven,” by means of which “by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.” In other words, by reading, contemplating the details of this world, one can dwell in the light of some other world.
NANCY:
Yes, as you write in “Ma devise,”
For Abbot Suger
in Saint-Denis, the Gothic cathedral—its gold
chalice budding rubies, emeralds, stones
of celestial blue, its windows staining
light—was a hyphen to heaven, some hymn,
hymen, haven.
I think of Bachelard’s “The object is then the reverie companion of the dreamer,” in which “The man of reverie and the world of his reverie are as close as possible; they are touching; they interpenetrate. They are on the same plane of being.”
It seems to me that this “plane of being” is the same liminal space Abbot Suger describes as “some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of heaven” and the same plane of being as “the thin spaces” in which you as poet—“the Celtic peregrini” or pilgrim, wander, and in which your poems abide:
Celtic peregrini wandered
in “thin places,” sites in landscape
where the borders between
this place and some other, past
and present, feel most fragile, begin
to fray the way bison painted on walls
in the Grotte de Niaux move in
and out of rock as if it were
a membrane between worlds.
(from “Le pays où je désirerais vivre”)
ANGIE:
And for the poet, of course, not only objects and events but words themselves are divine and mysterious details of the world: words have a history both known and unknown to us; they have been places and in the mouths of people we know nothing of, and they continually rub up against, ricochet off of, and cohabit with each other–or hang out alone. And they have a habit of standing in for what we feel or want, or what we think we feel or want or have felt. So the devotional poetic process puts a kind of applied pressure on language–by speaking, listening, juxtaposing–until it opens, as Francis Ponge, writing of oysters, puts it in Le parti pris des choses: “Sometimes, very rarely, a saying pearls forth from their nacreous throats: we get to decorate ourselves.” In other words, the poem becomes an arranged space where experience can happen.
NANCY:
So, in a sense, the poem becomes a medieval, alchemic vessel of transmutation. In all these poems I see this “devotional poetic process” which “puts a kind of applied pressure on language–by speaking, listening, juxtaposing–until it opens” and quantum leaps us to other experiences. For example, in “Ma devise” we can track these leaps from The iris of the eyes to the disorienting playful twist on the old gospel “If it was good enough for Jesus” via the bon mots, mots justes:, in this case, the five-syllable lapis lazuli, which unlocks the sealed cave of the poem and the quantum field it contains.
The iris of the eyes
in ancient statues, it’s what the mantles
of the Madonnas were painted with, once
more valuable than gold. And if it was
good enough for Tutankhamen, it’s good
enough for me. Still deep in the teeth
of the medieval manuscript illuminator
who always licked the tip of her
paint brush to a point, and powdered
into Cleopatra’s eyeshadow: some magic
incantation in five syllables like open
sesame—or the way we said it as
kids, open says-a-me—that unlocks
a sealed cave, the bon mots, mots
justes: lapis lazuli, the true blue
that never fades.
ANGIE:
One of the things, of course, that continues to draw me to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is his fascination with the “quantum leaps” between time, experience, and memory, which he delineates in his famous “Proustian moments.” I’m thinking especially of the moment when he is on his way to the Guermantes party and steps suddenly onto uneven stones–and is immediately transported back years to when he stood on uneven stones in the baptistery of St. Mark’s in Venice, a transport that brings back and immerses him in all of the sights and smells and emotional complexes of that previous moment in time. I think that in both our writing and reading of poems, words themselves–placed in relation to each other–often function in the same way as those uneven stones: rubbing against each other, breaking against each other, constantly evoking new constellations of sound, emotion, memory.
NANCY:
I can’t help but think this process requires a kind of stepping back and allowing words to bump and rub up each other and then accepting where the poem ends up.
ANGIE:
In writing this, even, I am suddenly thinking of the Japanese word nagori, which literally means “remains of the waves,” the mark that waves leave once they have retreated: the sand has moved, pebbles perhaps appear, and some algae may have washed up on the shore, wrapped in foam. But the Japanese character used to write nagori is the one that means “the name that remains.” Nagori is therefore a word, but a word that tries to convey what it is to have sensation, experience, and memory simultaneously: “the nostalgia for something that we reluctantly let go, an ambivalent sensation that encompasses the joy of experiencing a given moment, while being fully aware that it marks the end of something, either for good or until the next time.”* As with Proust, and often in poems, it speaks to the cycle of the seasons and to memory and the relationship of human beings to the passage of time. And of course it speaks to what poems are, what they do to and for us, and why we need them.
And from here Baudelaire comes to mind: “The only way to inhabit the present is to revisit it in a work of art.” And that brings us back, of course, to Proust. And to why we read and write poems.
* Nagori, Ryoko Sekiguchi
NANCY:
This portfolio of poems, each a work of art, gives us this opportunity to fully “inhabit the present.” What a gift! Thank you, Angie, for so generously sharing them with Plume.
The Present State of My Spirit
A Proust Questionnaire Sequence
Angie Estes
Sometime during 1889 or 1890, Marcel Proust responded to a
questionnaire that was popular in France at the time. Proust titled
his responses, “Marcel Proust par lui-même” [Marcel Proust by
himself]. Some of the topics he responded to are also the titles of
the following poems:
État present de mon esprit: The present state of my spirit
Ma devise: My motto
Le principal trait de mon caractère: The principal trait of my
character
Le don de la nature que je voudrais avoir: The natural talent I
would like to have
Ce que je voudrais être: What I would like to be
Comment j’aimerais mourir: How I would like to die
La fleur que j’aime: The flower I love
Mon occupation préférée: My favorite occupation
Le pays où je désirerais vivre: The country where I would like to live
État présent de mon esprit:
What do birds talk about
before the sun even
rises? They say voici
the letter C and agree
that the Colosseum,
the whole open
world, should be known
as the Comeandseeum,
that the world is scarred,
sacred, with not even a scherzo
to scare me. We used to think
time moved like sheep
nibbling their way
to some mountain’s peak
with only the occasional saint
ascending in his or her
private ascenseur. But in
Der Rosenkavalier, the aging
Marschellin says, “Sometimes
I get up in the middle
of the night and stop
all the clocks,” their hands still
pointing forever the way
the lines on a family tree
become a pedigree—a pé de
grue—certain as the standing foot
of a crane, although we ourselves
are more like Augustine’s
music: something that can occur
only in time, a song held together by
time, entirely in the present, composed
of memory and anticipation.
Lord Byron’s grandfather, exploring
for the British Navy, named the atolls
of Napuka and Tepoto the Islands of
Disappointment because he could get
close enough to see them
but never come ashore. My father,
when I was a girl,
would swim underwater
like a frog, carrying me with him
on his back as if I were
the dorsal fin of some
fin de siècle.
Ma devise:
In the photo, my mother and aunt arrive home
from shopping to our staged scene: chairs
and tables toppled, doilies draped
on kitchen counters and lamp shades
like the melting watches in Dali’s
The Persistence of Memory. “What
in the world?” they exclaim, stalled
at the open door in their belted
Bermuda shorts, tucked-in sleeveless
blouses, and matching hair like the tight
poodle pelt on my Tiny Tears doll,
their arms raised in the air as if we had
pointed our cap guns and yelled, “This is
a stick-up,” as if they had stepped over
the threshold of heaven and found it far
more dirty and disheveled than they
had been led to believe. At dusk,
glowing red lights and posters
for aperitifs—Amer Picon, Lillet,
Dubonnet—at the entrance to the Paris Metro
guard the threshold that leads
to the underworld, although at the gate
of Dante’s Hell, we’re told to Abandon
all hope. My mother never heard of
Charon but always said when I
cautioned her about what she was
eating, “Something’s got to carry me
away from this world.” It could be
the saxophone of John Coltrane
or a trombone, the perfect French word
for paperclip, just as a hyphen
becomes a trait d’union. For Abbot Suger
in Saint-Denis, the Gothic cathedral—its gold
chalice budding rubies, emeralds, stones
of celestial blue, its windows staining
light—was a hyphen to heaven, some hymn,
hymen, haven. The iris of the eyes
in ancient statues, it’s what the mantles
of the Madonnas were painted with, once
more valuable than gold. And if it was
good enough for Tutankhamen, it’s good
enough for me. Still deep in the teeth
of the medieval manuscript illuminator
who always licked the tip of her
paint brush to a point, and powdered
into Cleopatra’s eyeshadow: some magic
incantation in five syllables like open
sesame—or the way we said it as
kids, open says-a-me—that unlocks
a sealed cave, the bon mots, mots
justes: lapis lazuli, the true blue
that never fades.
Le principal trait de mon caractère:
desire to see the back
side of things since
the back is the only part
of our body that we can
barely see or touch,
to taste the difference
between Burgundy wines
grown au-dessus or au-dessous. Even
in the Scuola Grande di
San Rocco in Venice, we walked
holding mirrors
in order to better see
Tintoretto’s paintings
on the ceiling. Think of how
the trunk of the paperbark
maple bursts into flames
when the sun sneaks up
behind it. Tall stones are known
as menhir in Welsh, hir
meaning long as in
hiraeth, nostalgia or longing
for home. But the backside
of nostalgia—nostos, return,
and the desire to return—
also bears algos, pain, the im-
possibility of returning. When I was
a child, I wanted to find a way
to take the blue-, pink-, and
yellow-dyed rabbits’ feet
hanging from belt loops or rear-view
mirrors and give them back
to the hopping rabbits.
And I loved the Biblical story
of the many loves
of bread, although in hindsight
I see they must have been
loaves. Remember the moment
in Le grand blond avec une chaussure
noire when Mireille Darc
greets her paramour at midnight
in a high-necked silk, black
velvet dress and then pivots
to walk away, revealing
that the dress has
no back? The moon, too,
sometimes goes black
just before slipping out
of its eclipse. In front of
the homestead where my
family lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
beyond trees and thickets,
an occasional upright
stone, a row of jonquils
blooms each spring. Sometimes
we cut them early and
arrange them in a vase: you love
to count the hours it takes
them to open. Now, at this
moment, when everything is
still possible, I remember you
as you will be.
Le don de la nature que je voudrais avoir:
Interior, Sunlight on the Floor, a door,
a window made of four windows, each
with six panes, not counting
the panes of sunlight
on the floor. So is the painting
a tarnished gold interior or
a landscape of the French
word hôte, both host and guest, subject
and object—or what’s in
between: the margin,
that which holds the book
together. You would
look and I’d always
be there. I would chant
my mother’s favorite
sayings: I have a sneaking suspicion,
That’s what I thought, You’ll do
no such thing, and she
would appear.
Hammershoi painted room
after room, empty
or with one woman
viewed from behind, while
Hans Hartung and Anna-Eva Bergman
designed their villa in Antibes
with windows the dimensions of
paintings, white exterior walls
where light and shadow could continue
to make new designs. Hartung saved
his spattered wooden closet doors
and papered the floors in order
to preserve the overspray
because what was left over, accidental,
was as important as what was
purposeful, meant. I’d gather
all the words not used at the end
of the poem, and that would
be the poem: bespoke galore, intimate
in time, a late sun-split field.
Ce que je voudrais être: Fugue
Mother may I
moon glow, Mother may
I know who
bruised the moon, left
its scar on the back
of my arm like some
celestial heirloom. And who
crowned the white-crowned
sparrow? Mother may I
take three giant steps
back, may I not
step on the crack that
breaks your back. May I
flee, take flight—fugio,
fugere—may I ride
autumn’s sway and
drag, carry the dead
the way we carry
a tune. Mother may I push
the black button on top
of the catbird’s head. May I stay
in the Grand Hotel on
the Normandy coast and always
rent, like Proust, five expensive
rooms: one to live in
and four to contain
the silence. May I exit,
exist, Mother may I
leave the white space
between letters. In order to
grasp its prey, the tendons
of a hawk must contract
its talons. In April, may
the knuckles of peonies
know how
to release.
Comment j’aimerais mourir:
in Old English unweder, “unweather,”
weather so extreme that it seems
to have come from another
climate or time, still holding
in my hand a lame, which bakers use
to carve their mark
on bread—not to be
confused with l’âme, the soul—
while blackbirds line up
to form an abacus on the wire
above me, listening
to the Arpeggione Sonata, which Schubert
composed for an almost
extinct instrument, like the moon
we keep singing to anyway—Casta
Diva, pure goddess, shine
on, shine on harvest moon
up in the sky (the most difficult
part of the opera, the soprano
replied, was not crying after
her own death)—and the moon, too,
a trace fossil, a sign left
by the impress of life rather than
life itself, as in the fitting
of a bespoke jacket: all dots
and dashes, Cézanne’s
taches, what’s left of Mont Sainte-
Victoire when he is done painting it.
La fleur que j’aime:
They must have been Molly Bloom’s
favorites since she remembered
how the sun shines for you he said
the day we were lying among the
rhododendrons on Howth head yes,
and Virginia Woolf wrote
in late winter/early spring in
one of her last diary entries
L is doing the rhododendrons. Maybe Leonard
was planning a trip to Rhodes, island
of Rhodos, roses, or just removing
compost, bark or straw mulch,
some burlap, snow or wind screen
from around the shrubs. Perhaps he stood
out in the garden, secateurs
in hand, deadheading the most
far-reaching blossom inflorescences,
their frayed ends dangling as if
they had exploded
like firecrackers. From a distance,
it must have looked like a Greek
dance, one leg crossed over
the other, someone holding a bouquet
of air at the end of each outstretched
arm, praising what comes back
each spring, or doesn’t.
Mon occupation préférée:
“I have taken delicious voyages
embarked on a word,” Balzac wrote. So I say
millefeuille, Givenchy, trois fois
de rien, while trees fly
their kite tails, the chickadee keeps
practicing its song, and I wait
at the edge of the woods like the young
brown deer in October still
remembering when it was branded
by stars because words can open
like oysters and Sometimes, very
rarely, a saying pearls forth
from their nacreous throats: we get
to decorate ourselves.*
* Francis Ponge, Le Parti pris des choses: l’huître
Le pays où je désirerais vivre:
terra, cara, terroir: in the open
mouth of the wind, blue-black from all
the kites it has eaten, blown back
like the past, where the family lives
in Alexandre Dumas’ Le chevalier
d’Harmental : 5 rue du Temps-Perdu.
In the about-to-bloom history
of wisteria, twisting while
the soft gray paws of pussy willow
boom suddenly above me, a thunderhead
nods like Mary at the Annunciation, recalling
how Abraham said the journey is within, from
inside us to inside us, nous même à nous
même. Where else could they be
headed in Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia when
the chest of the Virgin Mary flies open
to release the beating doves?
Celtic peregrini wandered
in “thin places,” sites in landscape
where the borders between
this place and some other, past
and present, feel most fragile, begin
to fray the way bison painted on walls
in the Grotte de Niaux move in
and out of rock as if it were
a membrane between worlds.
Out back,
the mourning dove bobbing
in the birdbath, one wing unfurled
and hoisted on its mast, doesn’t even think
about sailing home. She’s somewhere
between Pavlov and Pavlova.
PERMISSIONS
Le don de la nature que je voudrais avoir: Originally published in Copper Nickel
Comment j’aimerais mourir: Originally published in Great River Review
Le pays où je désirerais vivre: Originally published in Great River Review
photo credit: Olga Maslova
Angie Estes is the author of six books of poems, most recently Parole (Oberlin College Press, 2018). Her previous book, Enchantée (Oberlin, 2013), won the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize and the Audre Lorde Prize for Lesbian Poets, and Tryst (Oberlin, 2009), was selected as one of two finalists for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. Chez Nous (Oberlin) was published in 2005, and her second book, VoiceOver (Oberlin, 2002), won the 2001 FIELD Poetry Prize and was also awarded the 2001 Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Her first book, The Uses of Passion (GibbsSmith, 1995), was the winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize. A collection of essays devoted to Estes’s work appears in the University of Michigan Press “Under Discussion” series: The Allure of Grammar: The Glamour of Angie Estes’s Poetry (2019).
