from “Modular Homes” by Charles D’Ambrosio

With thanks and apologies to Ander Monson, who tweeted:

(Sometimes you gotta multi tweet to get it in; it's like two handed devil horn rock sign.)

— Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) September 7, 2011

But this is just well worth preserving from the ongoing flux that is the Twitter feed, and it also gives me an excuse to use the awesome Twitter Blackbird Pie:

"Language in the modular industry belongs largely to the manufacturing end of the business, and there,

— Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) September 7, 2011

…in technical brochures and spec sheets, it's thick and arcane, made up of portmanteau and other odd hybrids that are practically

— Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) September 7, 2011

…Linnean in their specificity. You get Congoleum and Hardipanel Siding and Nicrome Elements. At the factory all that language is assembled

— Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) September 7, 2011

…and given narrative development in the tightly plotted path the house takes as it progresses from chassis to truck. But once inside…

— Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) September 7, 2011

…the finished home it ends, there's a kind of white hush, a held breath, and all narrative…is gone." Charles D'Ambrosio, "Modular Homes"

— Ander Monson (@angermonsoon) September 7, 2011

(Ron Slate on) William Matthews on Narrative and Time

Emphasis mine:

Matthews knew the dangers inherent in narrative, as spelled out in another Curiosities essay, “Dishonesty and Bad Manners”: “Things happen consecutively in narrative that happen simultaneously in psychic life, and there are many critics and poets who prefer the experience of consecutive time to simultaneous time because it makes moral discourse easier, and because causality and guilt are easier to assert as religious or quasi-religious principles in narrative than in any of the many other experiences of time.” His dream was for an upshot of psychic immediacy in the course of a riff, a disruption of the poem’s official time zone.

via on New Hope for the Dead: Uncollected William Matthews, ed. by Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly (Red Hen Press) | On the Seawall: A Literary Website by Ron Slate (GD).