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    Sophie Sills Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama 978-1-60964-026-2 "Its epigraph from Oppen (“The flaw, the gap which is the aware of being, tho it is within it. The flaw on which being presses”) suggests the epistemological concern at the center of Sophie Sills’ Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama: seeing/hearing things and events in the world, how can we know what’s really ‘there’ – that being “with a pulse . . . without a heartbeat . . . [which] is unknown,” yet which seems to be “aware” of us, seems to “press” against us. Sometimes using the language of science (“the neurotransmitter brings/ what is background up close”), or narrative (in a story never quite told – “We sat in her room talking about the connection of everything”), or a speculative postmodern ‘lyric’ (“All that is and was belongs to the anti-formula of possibility, to matter”), Sills ultimately finds her words are “inadequate to depict how/ even the empty is curved.” And this is why and how her book matters, because it brings “what is background . . . up close,” shows how “In this way, the brain builds up categories that abstract/ the elements of the world” – “Mutable red sky/ Remembered in the red lakes”; and why also you should read it. —Stephen Ratcliffe One thing I really like about Sophie Sills and Aristotle is their shared sense that music emerges most directly from a sense of awe in apprehending the object. Or, more precisely in the case ofElemental Perceptions, a portrait of interiority silenced by the overtakeless burden of elements in concert which in turn overthrow silence as song. Do you think atoms fuck? That’s the crass way of reading Sills’ insistence on the body’s endlessly reducible parts playing out a drama in which theirconnection is constantly extinguished and constantly renewed. I read this astonishing work as that very drama disclosed in the realm of human exchange, battered by ideology into diffuseness yet arranging “coherence” itself as a revolutionary plateau. A plateau of necessity, and from the beginning, absorbed into the rhetoric of philosophical doubt: “I consent to a solvency of sorts.” —Brandon Brown" Sophie Sills completed her MFA in Creative Witing at Mills College in 2009. She has published poetry and literary criticism in numerous journals. She teaches English at National University and works for a Jewish non-profit. Currently, she is the editor of the poetry magazine, the Peacock Online Review. She lives in Los Angeles, and she is happy.

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    Sophie Sills Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama 978-1-60964-026-2 "Its epigraph from Oppen (“The flaw, the gap which is the aware of being, tho it is within it. The flaw on which being presses”) suggests the epistemological concern at the center of Sophie Sills’ Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama: seeing/hearing things and events in the world, how can we know what’s really ‘there’ – that being “with a pulse . . . without a heartbeat . . . [which] is unknown,” yet which seems to be “aware” of us, seems to “press” against us. Sometimes using the language of science (“the neurotransmitter brings/ what is background up close”), or narrative (in a story never quite told – “We sat in her room talking about the connection of everything”), or a speculative postmodern ‘lyric’ (“All that is and was belongs to the anti-formula of possibility, to matter”), Sills ultimately finds her words are “inadequate to depict how/ even the empty is curved.” And this is why and how her book matters, because it brings “what is background . . . up close,” shows how “In this way, the brain builds up categories that abstract/ the elements of the world” – “Mutable red sky/ Remembered in the red lakes”; and why also you should read it. —Stephen Ratcliffe One thing I really like about Sophie Sills and Aristotle is their shared sense that music emerges most directly from a sense of awe in apprehending the object. Or, more precisely in the case ofElemental Perceptions, a portrait of interiority silenced by the overtakeless burden of elements in concert which in turn overthrow silence as song. Do you think atoms fuck? That’s the crass way of reading Sills’ insistence on the body’s endlessly reducible parts playing out a drama in which theirconnection is constantly extinguished and constantly renewed. I read this astonishing work as that very drama disclosed in the realm of human exchange, battered by ideology into diffuseness yet arranging “coherence” itself as a revolutionary plateau. A plateau of necessity, and from the beginning, absorbed into the rhetoric of philosophical doubt: “I consent to a solvency of sorts.” —Brandon Brown" Sophie Sills completed her MFA in Creative Witing at Mills College in 2009. She has published poetry and literary criticism in numerous journals. She teaches English at National University and works for a Jewish non-profit. Currently, she is the editor of the poetry magazine, the Peacock Online Review. She lives in Los Angeles, and she is happy.

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    162 views13 pages

    Elemental Perceptions - A Panorama by Sophie Sills Book Preview

    Uploaded by

    BlazeVOX [books]
    Sophie Sills Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama 978-1-60964-026-2 "Its epigraph from Oppen (“The flaw, the gap which is the aware of being, tho it is within it. The flaw on which being presses”) suggests the epistemological concern at the center of Sophie Sills’ Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama: seeing/hearing things and events in the world, how can we know what’s really ‘there’ – that being “with a pulse . . . without a heartbeat . . . [which] is unknown,” yet which seems to be “aware” of us, seems to “press” against us. Sometimes using the language of science (“the neurotransmitter brings/ what is background up close”), or narrative (in a story never quite told – “We sat in her room talking about the connection of everything”), or a speculative postmodern ‘lyric’ (“All that is and was belongs to the anti-formula of possibility, to matter”), Sills ultimately finds her words are “inadequate to depict how/ even the empty is curved.” And this is why and how her book matters, because it brings “what is background . . . up close,” shows how “In this way, the brain builds up categories that abstract/ the elements of the world” – “Mutable red sky/ Remembered in the red lakes”; and why also you should read it. —Stephen Ratcliffe One thing I really like about Sophie Sills and Aristotle is their shared sense that music emerges most directly from a sense of awe in apprehending the object. Or, more precisely in the case ofElemental Perceptions, a portrait of interiority silenced by the overtakeless burden of elements in concert which in turn overthrow silence as song. Do you think atoms fuck? That’s the crass way of reading Sills’ insistence on the body’s endlessly reducible parts playing out a drama in which theirconnection is constantly extinguished and constantly renewed. I read this astonishing work as that very drama disclosed in the realm of human exchange, battered by ideology into diffuseness yet arranging “coherence” itself as a revolutionary plateau. A plateau of necessity, and from the beginning, absorbed into the rhetoric of philosophical doubt: “I consent to a solvency of sorts.” —Brandon Brown" Sophie Sills completed her MFA in Creative Witing at Mills College in 2009. She has published poetry and literary criticism in numerous journals. She teaches English at National University and works for a Jewish non-profit. Currently, she is the editor of the poetry magazine, the Peacock Online Review. She lives in Los Angeles, and she is happy.

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    of 13

    Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama

    Sophie Sills

    BlazeVOX [books]
    Buffalo, New York

    Elemental Perceptions: A Panorama by Sophie Sills Copyright 2010 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza Cover art: "Interventionby Sean Higgins First Edition ISBN: 978-1-60964-026-2 Library of Congress Control Number 2010931942 BlazeVOX [books] 303 Bedford Ave Buffalo, NY 14216 Editor@blazevox.org

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    The flaw, the gap which is the aware of being, tho it is within it. The flaw on which being presses. George Oppen

    This is How a Prism Works

    The light enters the glass, bending and refracting it, breaking it up into its constituent colors. The tower separates the color from the light. She said, believe me that you're a beautiful human being. Think of your insides like a grand spectrum, a forgivable animal, teasing and mortal. The big mirror splintered, then came the din, bearing the cosmos and urging you. You are a body, but try watching your mind think, listen to the maundering; it traces the pacific coast. You can mesmerize all that daunting blue. And when the light breaks, try to appreciate the view.

    They see the place they stand in Dont know anything about the place

    But the brain stores the image away


    They stood in the place and walked away And the place came to disappear

    Pains, or color are intrinsically conscious There cannot be unconscious pain Or unconscious red
    Later he dreams because for consciousness, there is sleep

    Sleep is the consolidation of this and all information


    What sort of place?

    The brain takes this place Imagines how it might feel


    In dreams, red flies beyond its dominion The inaudible Muddled and sea wash Dreaming wind of fire

    These too are stored


    Of patterns not substance Not red but patterns of red

    Through perception we are conscious for moving things


    The redder from the red What kind of red?
    10

    But fear is neurological conditioned and traceable


    Seeing in the coherent system of mechanisms Not in their function but meaning

    those same neurons reactivated upon remembering


    The next time he sees the place

    His brain compares it to the stored fantasies, and keeps those that agree with this experience
    A language tumescent in an encompassing dream The flood wandering ankle-deep mutable red sky remembered in the red lakes the body slips out of its skin gone quiet under the red

    one of color the other the experience of color each memory has a unique representation
    What sort of red? besides The bridge to what place?

    Each event belonging to the whole

    11

    In dreaming, the neurotransmitter brings what is background up close


    All are musical and patterned, his desire to redden the lake

    the neurotransmitter prompts the brain to give abnormal importance to its own representations
    The man losing his form into that of the red lake As the sun goes down sees only the red of seeing

    The condition
    Where she says, I am the I in I love you As Ive willed it,

    not the substance


    Of her is his perception of the place There was a place What sort of you? He asks

    Neurons give a story about red Neurons give a story reactivated upon remembering you
    And the man says, It is not will

    The neurons form the trace for that memory


    What sort of red?

    In this way, the brain builds up categories that abstract the elements of the world
    What sort of story? He says, It isnt a story, its a threat

    12

    In every atom are a hundred blazing suns. Mahmud Shabistari


    The impulse of the universe to bring like and like together happens everyday. Particles distend. Streaming from my chest, fingers full of fish. The sound is a shape of birds emerging from the city. Their unknitting makes passages closing behind them. And no end in the pinch between land and dark. A lattice of ropes, veranda, a handful of hair strands. Each separate as whole. Hippocrates said all things are in sympathy. A million edges and eyes enfold in a dark city. As they do, I open a window to the city, to the smell of a strange lake. I am without individual existence. Knowing and fear have the same form as bird and fish. Animal to flight is woven together with the smell of water and cold happening over a lake. Weeping with fists of fish is only one pattern. The objects are solid and moving beneath.

    13

    All are musical and patterned

    14

    The sand and the pail, and even our moving eyes are not things but possibilities to choose from. We stand here strong as bullets, dreaming that the incorporeal soul is possible. And it is popular. But this soul is material in essence. Memories of experience are preserved in the brain. Our dream body shifts from one identity to another, a sojourn of temporary residences. The interrelation of all things affects one another faster than the speed of light. The sunlight through the water only as waves of possibility. In the atoms of our consciousness, structures disappear. Think of your thoughts like mercury. Feeling is earthed into actuality. Waves in the sea, with all that was and all that will be swaying in quantum foam.

    15

    The winter light is like the halo that surrounds space elements. A pile of pine tree branches in a heap outside my back door lay as a reminder that the breakdown of the natural world begins with a decline in luster. We fret, as if we are the sole agents of the dead and disappearing. There was preparation, but it has passed. And that smell of sweet and cold. The channels travel straight like the trigger to a moment relived. Youre leaving work now, in the evening, when the light is all violence and dusk. Travel down the trembling line with your headlights on. This cold erects emptiness. And Im already tired of the dark coming so early. Ready to build a fire. Build it from everything we own.

    16

    What is background brought up close

    17

    Ive been careful not to go under some distends of space. Because electromagnetic radiation cant escape the event horizon and because tarnished stars quell from this dreams bank. Within all connected matter is a leaking torrent stitched to its center. Wanting a reason to empty danger of shadow and rhythm. I return solitude and insomnia for headache pills, cigarettes. My death unfolds in the last dream, a cracking of further clouds. Birds turn upside down. Ensnarled in dusk, even oceans boil. I tumble in charred branches and wander the hills. Im outside my memorys oscillating tantrums, stubborn humiliations of panic and toothache. Every nightshade in all of dark nature has gone to fire, a labyrinth bound by sutures of sulfur and what cannot be placed. Each blooming burden fulfills a purpose. I still walk this lighted maze.

    18

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