PROJECT DESCRIPTION: A DRESS BOOK
For several years now I’ve been writing “homage texts,”
or books written for particular female poets whose lives,
work, and friendship have made mine possible. Attached
are a couple of poems for the poet Harryette Mullen. My
first encounter with her manuscript Trimmings, was as a
volunteer for Lee Ann Brown, and her press Tender
Buttons. At the time (1990) I was just beginning to
understand the influence of Stein on so many of the writers
I admired. Here Mullen had found a way to blend lingual
innovation with cutting commentary. Every syllable
perfectly stitched. Trimmings speaks in both covert and
open ways, in confluent language, pinning multiple
patterns for the myriad ways in which language dresses
the body. Mullen's supreme sonic play, incorporating
song, rhyme, and punning, was my introduction to her
unmistakable signature, her witty riffs, and brilliant
reframing of the common, the found, and the daily. Her
work is an ongoing inspiration.
Each of the tiny prose poems, or fabricated remnants,
in A Dress Book, begins with a phrase from Trimmings,
which appears in italics as a title. The excerpts
correspond with the order and pages of Trimmings. While
writing, I kept considering the relation between text and
textile, and was especially interested in that action of
31others one cannot control, the way one is seen, which is
particularly vexing for women. How is assembling oneself
a statement or buttress against the assault of a pernicious
gaze? What does this mean in various decades of
womanhood? How to gather some soft protection to create
a chosen silhouette? How to avoid becoming a dress torn
to ribbons? How to represent oneself as more than a frock,
a skirt (both as verb and noun), vixen, garb, bombazine or
pelisse? How to create language for bodies which might
wrap around a codex, a library of wearable pages, a fur
envelope?
A labyrinth is not an adornment, and yet traversing tightly
woven passages may be required in order to retrieve
essential tools such as a case of braided powers, a worn
yarn, a "serene length" or a long velvet after. Attire may
shield against forms of misogynist weaponry—which
makes a wardrobe of cusps, or a deck of scarves, a
necessity.wearing such wounds, such ornaments
Watching shine glide across screens. Exhaustion is a
silhouette. A chosen absent pulse. Appropriates an
attitude, leaning. Like mouthing vocabulary you don't
quite apprehend. Standing in the illuminated circles
cast by understated, well put-together pawns.
Gleaning stock. I wore a cloak, an attaché case of
braided powers, and sunglasses, set to surmise
sublunary sums.
Body on fire, spangles
The dress code was slashed, executed. I arrived to the
most decorated, lugubriously decked out occasions in
minimal attire. Hair mask, hand mitts, and eye
pillow. Donned in bare lip balm, bedding abets.