Bleed Through: New and Selected Poems, by Michael Davidson. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2013. 237 pp. $17.95.
Bleed Through – the title’s ambiguity is characteristic Michael Davidson. The book’s cover images suggest that “bleed through” is probably a noun – the name of a printed text that has “bled through” to the other side of the paper to become awkwardly and somewhat differently visible there. It could thus be a metaphor for his selected poems – poems strong enough to ‘bleed’ into this collection from Davidson’s earlier volumes -- along with a makeshift pasted-on title and authorname. It could also be a metaphor for various language usages, the ones that Davidson and ourselves live among, having ‘bled’ into his poems and book. In a poetics statement that his publisher has distributed a part of a press package he writes that
Bleed Through – the title’s ambiguity is characteristic Michael Davidson. The book’s cover images suggest that “bleed through” is probably a noun – the name of a printed text that has “bled through” to the other side of the paper to become awkwardly and somewhat differently visible there. It could thus be a metaphor for his selected poems – poems strong enough to ‘bleed’ into this collection from Davidson’s earlier volumes -- along with a makeshift pasted-on title and authorname. It could also be a metaphor for various language usages, the ones that Davidson and ourselves live among, having ‘bled’ into his poems and book. In a poetics statement that his publisher has distributed a part of a press package he writes that
“palimptext” ... seems an appropriate descriptor for my own poetry insofar as I try to engage with ghost texts clamoring to enter the writing. Those voices may derive from popular genres, overheard conversations, other poems, or the daily newspaper. As such, they are embedded in a social world, each with its own specific zones of resonance ....
“Bleed through” could also refer to the literal blood and bleedings, each also with their own "specific zones of resonance," that are released in the global violence that spills frequently into his poems, as here through the Gulf War television screen.
Out of the bunker slash shelter target
brown lumps of hair and matted clothing
on stretchers, red brown, red orange
what distinguishes the body
without a word from other bodies
is a lolling of flesh, head hanging
over the edge
while all around bodies tensed with purpose
lift, point, and dig; cut to Cheney
cut to Neal behind rostrum, cut to
commander in the field saying his
words; go lonely verse ...
(“Screens, 2/12/91,” 196)
Or “bleed through” could be an imperative verb and be here urging readers to let their own readings bleed through the variously juxtaposed popular, commercial and political phrases from contemporary discourse that Davidson has worked to let bleed into these texts.
Davidson’s signature technique in recent years has been the ironic deployment of familiar
Davidson’s signature technique in recent years has been the ironic deployment of familiar
phrases, particularly those of politics and commerce, in sentences where they constitute a sudden lexical swerve.
The Uncanny
seeks advice on how to get home
(Sacrifice, ritual toast, drink blood) where home
(we want to get some of that love) is big business
I feel ephemeral in the shadow of logo,
it keeps drawing me into an agreement I authored,
they say: I feel anxious about my body, I worry
about my general health, work
sets you free, and when money
replaces a doorstop, potatoes, dog food
then we improve (it says here) ... (41)
The swerve highlights the strangeness of phrases which media repetition has made seem normal, and creates overall a surreal linguistic landscape in which rival usages and the cultural summonses they issue collide, with the collisions suggesting that there can be no linguistic innocence.
Michael Davidson began his publishing life back in the late 1970s as a substantial contributor to the Language Poets and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine – along with Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, and Barrett Watten. Since then academic writing has often busied him, including the study The San Francisco Renaissance (1989), an edition of the poetry of George Oppen (2002), the influential reinterpretation of masculinity in US poetry of the 1950s and 60s Guys Like Us (2004), and On the Outskirts of Form: Practicing Cultural Poetics (2011). The present collection is only his fifth book of poetry, and his first since 1998. But there are numerous stunningly instructive poems here. A few, such as “The Landing of Rochambault” (98-101), are likely to become US classics.
FD
Michael Davidson began his publishing life back in the late 1970s as a substantial contributor to the Language Poets and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine – along with Charles Bernstein, Bruce Andrews, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, and Barrett Watten. Since then academic writing has often busied him, including the study The San Francisco Renaissance (1989), an edition of the poetry of George Oppen (2002), the influential reinterpretation of masculinity in US poetry of the 1950s and 60s Guys Like Us (2004), and On the Outskirts of Form: Practicing Cultural Poetics (2011). The present collection is only his fifth book of poetry, and his first since 1998. But there are numerous stunningly instructive poems here. A few, such as “The Landing of Rochambault” (98-101), are likely to become US classics.
FD
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