Master(y) / JESSICA PUJOL DURAN





sea o(h) mother



that's                      what             we             say

sea            o(h)          mother

sea     that     if     you    look     you     see     waves

waves       that      if      you      look      you      see      rocks

rocks        rocks

eroded

rock             wave            rock                 wave               rock          wave

eroded

all       this       sea

all       this       say  if  you look            you see              waves




Radical Ro
manticism rejects the idea of the poetry master as one fully in charge of (usually) his materials and the fulfilment of intentions. The poet of Romantic manifestos lives in “uncertainties mysteries doubts” on the one hand, and on the other, praises poetry that discovers itself in the process of its making. If a poet is a “man speaking to men” (sic), then no one should be anyone else’s master. In Mallarmé’s Un Coup des Dés, the master drowns and the starry constellations are revealed. At times the “master” seems to indicate expanse and extent of vision, a hope for the conscious, celebratory presence of the subject flowing through the world, also participation and improvisation. “I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer gra
ss” (Whitman), or Adam Mickiewicz more spectacularly: “I am the master! I stretch forth my hands, even to the skies! I lay may hands upon the stars, as on the crystal wheels of the harmonica. Now fast, now slow, as my soul wills, I turn the stars. I weave them into rainbows, harmonies. I feel immortality! I create immortality!”



Text by Jeffrey Robinson, from Romantic Manifestos Manifest (2024)




ABOVE & BELOW
Mare, by Jessica Pujol Duran







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