Judy Halebsky
Tree Line
“Space, Gap, Interval, Distance”
She concludes the poem with an ekphrasis of the written character followed by a mise en page (via an extended gap between words) that reduplicates the notion of negative space explicated in the ekphrasis.
間 ma
written as the sun
coming through the gateas what we leave open
between us
so the spirits when they come
will have a place to land
This for me comes as an echo of “Ma continent” found in Nicole Brossard’s Amantes (translated as Lovhers,; by Barbara Godard) (which I first encountered as a separate poem in Fireweed‘s 1983 lesbian issue). In one section of Brossard poem there is a catalogue of women writers (spirits of ancestors?). The thematics is one of creating/occupying openings… The link to Japanese concepts of space is conveyed in a note:
mâ — japanese term for space
ma — possessive pronoun, feminine gender in French
After Halebsky, I note that the French rendering of the Japanese word features a circumflex over the “a” like a roof and that the Wikipedia article on negative space (ma) informs us that both Ma (negative space) and Ken (architecture) are written with the same character 間.
And so for day 2565
21.12.2013