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Tjanting

Ron Silliman author Barrett Watten editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Salt Publishing

Published:30th Sep '02

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Tjanting cover

Space heater. Writing gathers around the pigeons. This line leads to Uranus. Nun census. Silver fork upon a chipped blue plate. I saw sleeping bag, pillows in the Buick's back. The companionship of refrigerator's hum. This is beginning I again began not. Salt shaker tall as coffee's mug. Dented Opel's orange fender. Gray dawn. On the rain falls Spain mainly in the brain. Smudges forming fingertips on the back door's windows. X-ray reads gold-leaf sign on the glass. First sound of roommates beginning to stir. Grey into yellow comes sky to the room. Each page, once tree, soon shall be ash. Leather chipping, flaking off the tattered jacket. A woman who wears sweat pants. Detestimonialist. Don't sneeze on cat. Predictable boots worn by Frye people. Potholders old and dark. Ridges by bridges. Knife blade streaked with butter. That bus coming back this way. Rough surface of cat's tongue. Pin koans. Clutter of seeds, oils, spices atop the side board. Uganda Liquors.Pedestrians scamper across in the sun. Stake each sentence out. Call this 5 Corners. Knot this knot. Ball bounced into the panda plant. Cups fill the cupboard. Aliens from other planets are perfectly visible. Tamal is a half-name in the place of the name. The squeak of faucets. I was on the road discovered. Ash "tray." Yellow caterpillar tractor. Ashtray fills up. Waking is in each instant I am. Across, then down and across. Her tone to him through long years of rough intimacy was at once tender and gruff. Begin each letter at the top. Not this. Pit bull's spittle as it snarls. I saw a burgundy filling the clear vial at needle's end, my blood. Liquid detergent. Ing the trap bears ed. Roach holder made of a matchbook. She never lookd this way, whose face I sought a glimpse of. Free write each day. My fingers counted between nine and eleven.Any symbol is a contrary seen in a positive light. A specific shape, complex amd nameable, to each cloud. Sky pilot. Factory filld with sunrise. Scraping paper, leaving tracks. Forklift to timeclock of montage and cut. Call this tracing. 3 wooden rainwarpd chairs in the (back) yard. Fence is a verb. Scratch that. Each word in Max 3 meant polis. In the mind...

It’s true we need another Allen Ginsberg. Unfortunately, I don’t see one on the horizon, unless Ron Silliman can get himself arrested.

-- Keith Tuma * Sulfur *

Of all the Language Poets, Silliman’s express-line writing was and is the one that stuck to my ribs. It was so thingy, so specific, so formally radical, so hard-headed, yet witty, and now and then, in spite of itself, lyric. I liked his post-industrial music. I loved Ketjak and Tjanting and Paradise … And the reach – the compulsion to pull everything in.

-- C.D. Wright * Jacket *

Silliman’s writing is fun to read: Its pleasure lies in the gradual unfolding of intricate forms and in the mix of puns, declarations, sounds and sights from our daily environment, the range of references from philosophy to baseball.

-- Hank Lazer * The Nati

ISBN: 9781876857196

Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 12mm

Weight: unknown

212 pages