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    An Essay in Asterisks
    An Essay in Asterisks
    An Essay in Asterisks
    Ebook124 pages58 minutes

    An Essay in Asterisks

    By Jena Osman

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    About this ebook

    Poetry. "AN ESSAY IN ASTERISKS by Jena Osman is a multi-part book analysis regarding the intersection of public language and private perception. In that elusive space Osman eclipses the expected with the expected and poetics with poetry. She explores social issues such as sense and memory, perception and truth with poetic skills that astonish at every page. Using fonts and images to illuminate the manuscript, Osman's Essay is a tour de force of magnitude and seriousness. Jena Osman's writing takes language as the ultimate double-agent, in which official and personal allegiances collide into and reimagine censorship, memory, translation and rhetoric. AN ESSAY IN ASTERISKS generously offers a sustained and often comic view of how uncannily public discourse shimmers with private meanings."—Thalia Field. Jena Osman's recent books of poetry include CORPORATE RELATIONS (Burning Deck, 2014),Public Figures (Wesleyan Press, 2012) and THE NETWORK (Fence Books, 2010), which was selected for the 2009 National Poetry Series. Other books include AN ESSAY IN ASTERISKS (Roof Books) and The Character (Beacon Press). She co-edits the CHAINLINKS book series with Juliana Spahr, and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at Temple University in Philadelphia. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRoof Books
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    ISBN9781931824101
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      Book preview

      An Essay in Asterisks - Jena Osman

      An Essay in Asterisks

      An Essay in Asterisks

      Jena Osman

      Roof Books

      New York

      Copyright © 2004 by Jena Osman

      ISBN: 0-931824-10-X

      Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 2004092271

      Cover art by Luca Guerri

      Author photo by Jenifer Wofford

      Sections and versions of these poems have appeared in the following publications: Bombay Gin, Conjunctions, Enough: An Anthology of Poetry and Writings Against the War, Hambone, HOW2, Issue, LIT, Pequod, Van Gogh’s Ear, Verse, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics

      Roof Books are distributed by

      Small Press Distribution

      1341 Seventh Street

      Berkeley, CA. 94710-1403.

      Phone orders: 800-869-7553

      www.spdbooks.org

      This book was made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

      ROOF BOOKS

      are published by

      Segue Foundation

      303 East 8th Street

      New York, NY 10009

      www.roofbooks.com

      CONTENTS

      An Essay in Asterisks

      Press Scrutiny: The Doubles

      Bowdlerizer

      Dropping Leaflets

      Novel of Nowhere

      The Astounding Complex

      Boxing Captions

      Louvre IV

      Memory Error Theater

      how do you get from here to there

      on an airplane

      or an asterisk

      AN ESSAY IN ASTERISKS

      On the problem of the not-there. REACHING INTO THE BOX AND TAKING OUT THE BAG. If we place all stock in the space where words are missing, there is greater possibility of emotional range. Because memory is often like that as well. LOCKING THE BOX AND PUTTING THE BAG OVER SHOULDER. You fill in the blank (the hollow of what you can’t remember) with a picture. First there is a series of images that you can’t shake, as if you were there and it was a significant part of your childhood: a burning car, the crux of a tree, a desert scene and walking through the branches. Also a bright kitchen in the sun. WALKING OUT THE DOOR AND INTO THE STREET WITHOUT LOOKING. These must have been part of your life. Yet later you learn that they were just images from a film. Perhaps at a certain age it is difficult for a child to discern the boundaries between what is real and what is not. RUNNING DOWN THE STREET WITH A SMALL CART. For the child to confuse what is her experience in life and what is not. SITTING ON THE LEDGE AND MAKING NOTES. The moment years later, when the memories are exposed as just a piece of film is something of a shock. As if a part of life was manufactured and thus lost. RIDING A BIKE WHILE DRINKING A DRINK. As with the men and women in the film whose photographs are the only traces of their childhood and who then learn that their memories, based in these images, were manufactured. They were given a set of memories on which to rely. WALKING WITH A BROOM AND SHOVEL EXTENDING BOTH ARMS. It’s all that holds them together. So that in the film, suddenly photographs no longer mean what they once did. In fact, they symbolize their inhumanity, their monstrosity. PUSHING HAIR OUT OF THE EYES AND PLACING IT BEHIND AN EAR. Photos are proof of our own manufacture. They shape how we recount our lives to ourselves. As does memory in its selectivity. LIGHTING A CIGARETTE WITH A MATCH WHILE SITTING IN A CAR. When the man remembers the event that tore them apart, it is quite different from the woman’s memory of the event. And yet this event changed their lives dramatically. WALKING SLOWLY INTO THE PARKING LOT AS IF LOST; WALKING SLOWLY BACK OUT WITH EYES LOOKING FOR SOMETHING NOT THERE. But if just this one moment was the source of the change, how can it have been remembered so differently? They each have their own narrative for what happened, and the narratives barely touch surfaces, like two sliding metal planes one on top of the other in a kind of gear. JUMPING UP AND DOWN STEPS IN GROUPS OF 2-3-4. So if fact can be so swiftly undressed, what does it mean that the man is writing a book about his father? BANGING A GRANITE SURFACE WITH BOTH PALMS AS IF IT WERE A DRUM. In what ways will his memory manufacture the father away from himself? It is not new, this idea that memory is a creation, perhaps our most creative act, and yet it never ceases to puzzle and taunt. TRACING THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE SURFACE

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