B.V.: Still, your texts give an impression of distancing. It functions, it functions, and maybe they won't stop unless it stops working or it can only evolve into irony.
C.T.: Oh, I see. Because if it evolved into irony, it would be...I mean there's this joy and it absolutely must not turn into...into...I don't know how to describe it. In fact, I think that irony isn't very nice, as far as I understand. Because it's as if your work no longer existed. I was thinking of the distancing you mentioned. I can't write without it. By definition, writing is a real thing. I think that bears upon irony.
(tr. Geneva Chao)
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i've been fascinated, and frustrated, by tarkos since discovering his work on the net i think in 2000 or maybe earlier. there's a zine on the web called, hold on i'm gonna google it now, here's the link http://tija.free.fr/tija2/home.html, the zine is called THE INCREDIBLE JUSTINE'S ADVENTURES.
with tarkos i'm unable to anchor myself within his texts, as they seem so wiggly to resist the speaking mouth. his texts are perhaps approximations of abstract electronica where distance and coldness are pieces of the whole.
still, i know tarkos was prolific as hell before he passed away at a way too early age. and i've read only a fistful of his work. i'd like to see more french poets blogging and publishing on the net.
Hi Richard.
Thanks for the breadcrumbs in the forest. I'll have to follow up later.
I just like the way he doesn't fit, Richard.
I like people who don't fit.
I like that he called himself "slow" and things like this disavowal of irony.
There's a lot of honesty and not a lot of defenses, which is rare in people who write "this way."
There is a frightening amount of personal presence in his omniscience/omnipresence schtick, which strikes me as a sort of divine thing...a sort of divine insane Incarnation thing going on...sort of takes me back to some creepy Renaissance paintings where painters do weird things with their own likeness in allegories...and takes me to things like this quote i heard on t.v. the other morning...I'm fairly sure it was St. John of the Cross? saying something like the mystery of God....in that completeness...creating humankind is sort of like God needing man to be God...
I think that's the sense in which Tarkos can lay down a completely mirrory surface and still claim he's not being ironic...
but this is because he's also inserting bits of his own dna, friable genetics into it...
some of it gets too playful or it's simply untranslatable...i don't have the french texts i had hoped would be included....
i can't really think of anybody in america he reminds me of...i suppose there are moments in beverly dahlen a bit...maybe some bp nichol...okay the latter's canadian...
there are probably a few others...but most are probably hybrid form artists...in the ROOF book I bought many of his translators are just such creators (ex. Fiona Templeton)...
you're right about the performative aspects of many of the texts...that probably explains his mania for performance...maybe in performance he augmented with devices...i'd have to read more...i seem to recall reading something like that but probably i'm hallucinating...if so that would bounce off what you're saying about electronica...
the coldness is the coldness of the mirror i think. but there's a lot can be done with the coldness of a mirror.
xo
bill, i hear you. if you google tarkos you'll find some videos and sound pieces of tarkos performing which i think are fantastic. there's one, can't recall the name in french at the moment [i've no french anyway, just feel myself around in the language] but in english i think it's called THE MAN OF SHIT. quite compelling performance.
there's another french poet, nathalie quintane, who was published along with tarkos in an old issue of the journal LE GERM which i can also find on the net now. quintane is also a great performer of her work.
the whole divine, ironic, unironic, writing until tarkos simply stops, is not what i find so puzzling in his work. i can't quite place a hand in it. perhaps the coldness of his writing, and i understand that he is as influenced by comedians as he is by poets, is my lack of becoming fully engaged enough within his texts.
there are a few french poets, christophe fiat, whose poem also published in LE GERM, is about traci lords and on that website, THE INCREDIBLE JUSTINE'S ADVENTURES, you can hear fiat's performance of it with his electric guitar and the refrain, 'because the world is round.'
another french poet that i'm afraid i know only two texts, remi giaccommotti, is wonderful. LE GERM also published these texts as well, and giaccommotti's appropriations of pop culture, his poem 'portland' about courtney love is i think quite marvellous.
perhaps i want just a bit more grit with my writing and tarkos is, as you say, sailing on divinity. no he doesn't fit a neat box, but he does hail from the late 20th century french post-structuralists.
i do have that roof book around here. i've worn it out from readings and rereadings. my favorite texts in it are 'toto' and 'flour'. i think i need to reread those soon.
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