{ Wednesday, July 30, 2003 }
Here we have a new and nifty word hasosismo, or the art of the fallen limb, in which startling insights emerge and are subsequently concealed, a term used by South American poet Jorge Guinheime, and found in Jordan Davis' latest review in Constant Critic of two books by Fanny Howe. Hasoseismic events occur in my life on an almost constant basis, really, it's like hasosismo theatre around here with the heavy velvet curtain rising and falling over suddenly glimpsed, then irretrievably lost understandings. I am so glad there's this word. Great review too. I've been meaning to hunt down some Fanny Howe (but first I need to get through these).
LINK | 7:07 PM | TB
OK, I'm having problems with this. There is no Spanish word hasoso or hasosa, so I don't know what this alleged word would be based on. And if you google it, the only other occurrence is on Jordan Davis's blog. I'm not saying he made it up, but if he didn't, I'd like to see some confirmation. And if he did, shame on him. People believe enough crap about language without the waters being deliberately muddied.
If you want a name for the phenomenon, how about vu perdu? Or Cody's "lost epiphany"?
language hat | July 31, 2003 7:14 AMKenneth Koch's translations of the work of Jorge Guinheime (alt. spelling Guinhieme) have appeared in The Paris Review, The Pleasures of Peace (Grove, out of print), and The Art of Poetry (Michigan). If I can track down a copy tonight, I'll post some of his essay on hasos.
Jordan Davis | July 31, 2003 7:34 AMHey, Jordan! That would be great -- thanks.
language hat | July 31, 2003 9:38 AMOf course, none of the poets that Kenneth Koch translates in "Some South American Poets" actually exists. It is a parody! (I assume that Jordan Davis knows this.) Of course, the innocent reader of his review of Fanny Howe would have no reason to know this. I remember as a kid going to the library and trying to look those poets up.
For a short time when when I worked at Amazon.com under the misbelief that I was going to become a millionaire on stocks alone (har har har), I got a Fanny Howe book, gratis mind you, and wasn't impressed. It's just me, I know it is. It was good but it wasn't great, you know. Anyroad, Caterina, if you want it, I'll post it to you. =) it looks like you need something to read.
p.s. Roxy Music? Bleh. Come down to Seattle and see the Tindersticks on Aug 7th!
I saw the Tindersticks in 1997 or 1998, and quite enjoyed it. I never put the two bands together, there is a sort of languid Roxiness to them, a Bryan Ferryish sobbing into the sleeve of my Prada suit, tears in my cocaine sort of thing.
At that show there was a singer-songwriter that opened for them who was really great named Elliott Smith, so I went out and bought all his albums.
Caterina | July 31, 2003 1:21 PMI've set up a temporary blog for hasosismo studies: Guinhieme [http://guinhieme.blogspot.com/]. When I'm finished posting, this blog will contain all of Kenneth Koch's pseudonymous South American poets.
Koch's parodies are always also homages. When Jorge Luis Borges came to Columbia in the sixties, Koch mentioned that he had written a short story called "The Postcard Collection" which he later discovered had much in common with Borges's work. Borges, in response, thanked Koch "for being influenced by me without having read me."
While I presume that what provoked Koch to invent his South American poets was the proliferation in the sixties of translations of Spanish-language poetry into mediocre "deep-image" verse, I suspect the goal was to deflate the pompousness of poetic theorizing as practiced by boneheads. He would not have published "Some South American Poets" if he didn't believe it was genuinely surprising and insightful, and possibly beautiful, though.
I have preferred to treat Guinhieme as a real poet, much as some Pessoa scholars treat the heteronyms as distinct authors. I'm guilty of an unpleasant smugness in concealing the provenance of hasosismo both in my piece on Fanny Howe for Constant Critic and in my essay on Walter Benjamin for the Poetry Project Newsletter several years back. I want to say there was no wish to mislead the reader, but my delight at several readers' interest specifically in hasos both then and now tells me otherwise. After all, I didn't invent hasos, Kenneth did. In any case, it speaks well of the concept, to me at least, that hasosismo continues to attract readers thirty-five years later.
Having read the sections on "hasos" at the site Jordan has so kindly set up, I do not think the term can be said to mean what it has been taken to mean here ("lost epiphanies"). Indeed, I do not think it can be said to mean anything very particular. Like the set of poems of which it is a part, it is a clever and amusing piece of japery on the part of the clever and amusing Mr. Koch; I think attempts to generalize it are probably misguided, and it should be left to flourish in its native habitat.
I do like some of the poemlets very much:
Watercress Street
A humble street! I see
A girl! She has orange sleeves,
Orange dress, orange shoes!
You belong on Orange Street!
No, I don't! says she.
Très Koch!
language hat | August 1, 2003 3:15 PMOr like how Tom Wolfe puts it in one of his essays using ancient Latin:
Obiter Dicta!
Wich means exactly the same like hasosismo.
just passing by | August 2, 2003 1:59 PMMr. Koch? Was that you?
language hat | August 3, 2003 7:10 AMMike Furir Mike 753
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{ Post a comment }
Wow. That happens to me all the time. I don't know how many lost epiphanies, art ideas, first lines to great poems, jump out in front of my brain (when I am out of reach of pen and paper, natch) only to be lost in my river of thought. Hasosismo, huh? Great word.
Of course I'll probably forget *this* too.
Cody | July 31, 2003 5:18 AM