Part two, ‘Vocalised (private)’,
shows how the poet ‘is brought to speech’,
but in quite distinct ways from the empirical-mystical process implied by
Denise Levertov’s use of those words. Privacy has again negative connotations, of
secrecy and concealment. ‘The secret,’ explains John Hall, ‘relates to the
confession and is governed by a contradictory impulse to conceal and show, perhaps
to find a form of showing that can enter the public domain.’ (Hall 2013: 78)
Monk’s ‘words up like sap. Exit with frou-frou’, move towards the public
domain, but do not reach it beyond a contradictory saying Monk calls (in a
brilliant neologism) ‘mutterance’; sap transforms into the rustling of silk,
hardly a form of showing (silk, a contradictory material itself, suggesting
undergarments, concealment). ‘Cabinet readings’ sounds more closed in than a
chamber performance, say, and the word ‘Cabal’ suggests conspiracy rather than confession
or consanguinity. However, ‘amongst friends only’ suggests a safe environment,
what Hall calls ‘the relative social privacy of being among friends’ for ‘the
quiet page ruffled’, the ‘inner sanctums’ of private performance, in which ‘Off
guard quirks’, ‘A misplaced laugh’ and ‘Gaffs’ are all permitted by performer
and intimate audience alike. (Hall 2013: 78)
Most eloquent, perhaps, are the
single empty quoted space of “ ” and the clammed parenthesis of [] which are
the formal markers of, the phenomenological bracketing of, something so
locked-in, a species of windowless monad, that we see only the unvoiced sign of
its non-appearance. It is simply so private as a content that it almost carries
no form other than a vacant shell. For Monk, private vocality is almost formless and demands processes of
performative forming (and deforming) to make the voiced text a significant and
signifying form at all. She doesn’t want to confess; she wants to profess.
However, in this, the shortest part
of Insubstantial Thoughts, the
somatic reasserts itself as ‘Words
birthed. Made flesh’ – a reiterated reformulation from the head-note text –
words which suggest forming and transformation, but it is only as a
Body
reclining.
Internal
organs curled.
Limbs
laxed.
The full stops enact truncation and
separation of the phrases, as does zero enjambment. ‘Lax’ suggests lethargy as
well as lack, and ‘Foot cramp’ seems worse than the ‘involuntary fidgets’ of
silent private reading, although ‘Low-glow performance’, it must be emphasised,
is still performance. ‘Mutterance’ is still utterance, ‘shared murmurs’ still
shared. The private is like a low wattage light bulb using the ‘Letric’ as
energy. ‘Letric’ points towards electricity but it also evokes letters, as in
the ‘lettrism’ of the French avant-garde, opening the possibility of
performative energy on the page. ‘Letric’, the text asks, ‘is a (j)eeled live
wire?’ Electric eels carry energy and perhaps letters do too, beyond their
silent curling orthography, a ‘live’ (i.e. performed) ‘wire’, though perhaps
the ‘(j)eeled’ nature of the energy is ‘con-gealed’ before being ‘Made flesh’. The transformation of
energies is stalled but is conducted through the kaleidoscopic perspective of
multiple puns, transforming meanings and thus forming meaning in a way
consonant with the poetic processes described. This section ends with yet
another question, as though this performativity is liminal: ‘Is it within a
hair’s breadth or a hare’s breath?’ The ‘it’ of the question perhaps refers to
the ‘vocalised (private)’ performance itself. We are left with the panting
somatic breath of the most elusive of animals. It is ‘breath allows all the speech-force of language back
in,’ as Olson puts it. (Allen and Tallman 1973: 152)
Before we pass on to public
presentations, to performance per se, it might be worth dwelling a little on
the liminal performativity expressed by Monk in this section, in light of the
theoretical and practical perspectives of what has become known as performance
writing (to which Monk’s work stands as precursor and analogue).
Institutionally associated with Dartington College of the Arts between
1994-2010, its chief theoreticians and practitioners include Caroline Bergvall
and John Hall, and it is the latter’s teasing ‘Thirteen Ways of Talking about
Performance Writing’ that most clearly articulates, in its fourth section, the
way performativity is formally conceived at every
stage of the writing-performance continuum by performance writers in a way
that Monk partly resists (in order to prioritise the public). Hall writes
X is a performance writer
she
writes pages and she writes performances
she
performs writing
she
forms writing which informs performance
what is it to
perform writing?
she performs the
act of writing
quite simply,
she writes
imagine that
there is a performance of X in the act of writing (Hall 2013: 26)
Writing, whether private writing or
the ‘live writing’ proposed above – ‘live writing implies an act of writing as
itself a live performance’ – is all performance in this perspective, and the
stages or states between them are matters of form, conceived of as acts of
forming, quite explicitly in Hall’s words, and as transformations in Monk’s poetics. (Hall 2013: 155)
Hall also writes, in remarks that
contextualise the apparent categorical distinction between the two ‘vocalised’
forms of performance in Monk’s titles: ‘“Private” and “public”, rely on each
other, of course; even the OED can’t talk about one without the other. It is a
very public notice on the door which reads “private”. What constitutes privacy
is, as it were, a public decision.’ (Hall 2013: 76) This interconnection is enacted
through Monk’s parallel titles (‘Vocalised (private)’ and ‘Vocalised (public)’)
but the passage to the public (if only as yet ‘vocalised’) means we can consider
Monk’s public and published works to test her (so far ‘private’) poetics of
transformation, although the poetics are, like the notice on the door, in
public form (and in poetic form, we must remember). (Such testing is beyond the
scope of this piece which is, as the reader will have noticed, already
lengthy.)
