Excess and the 'she-deep you' posted by Laura Moriarty on Tonalist Notes

quote"
COME WITH THE BOATMAN
a madness
--forbidden—
inside you the she-deep you

Beneath a dress
you’ll brandish the sickle

anchor my tide will devour

You can see there is a lot to do in this piece – many levels, dictions, intimations, myths, addresses, an actual dress, madness, a sickle. The line or phrase from the poem with which I started is one of those just plain good lines that you get to read every once in a while and Jen’s translation of it into English is stupendous. Why I find the presence of a sickle under a dress hopeful I don’t quite know but in this context I do. I think it has something to do with openness."

The above is an excerpt from a review of sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and SEPTIEMBRE
A bilingual edition of books two and three of Dolores Dorantes
by Dolores Dorantes
translated by Jen Hofer featured on Tonalist Notes

Thinking about sickles under dresses...I've been thinking a lot about excess in language, cacophonies and the unsound in language but particularly as it manifests in voice. And wait for it the cutting off of it. Reading 'Opera and the Undoing of Women' by Catherine Clement and 'Erotic Faculties' by Joanna Frueh (hot writing ), and I'm retouched by my own experience of opera and the many cut offs. First hand Opera for me has been heard first through the movies, one removed damn it. Once sitting with a dear friend who ready to weep at la Traviata burst into tears as soon as the lights went down, lots of others were fits of stifled giggles about the silliness of don giovani and other pounces, I thought, and then more recently a better experience a small chapel in Rome la bohem again and the audience squashed up close almost to the mouthes of the performers of the lovers of the pain.. that was better... with excess rippling in us all, but the excess the ripping the leaping of this 'other' of the leading feme closed/sickled her demise after? during her ecstasy, hinted for me at things that i am now understanding and hearing played out again and again in language especially featuring voice of gals and that there excess again and again and again. Back to the book...more research. looking for recordings of Stein's operas if anyone knows of them?

image Pondick