Description
Book SynopsisSpanning 16 years of notebooks, teaching notes, and improvisations, Lisa Fishman's
Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition upends time itself in lyric, prose, and visual forms. Sharing Paul Klee's intuition that "the eye travels along the path cut out for it in the work," this deeply multifaceted book moves between observational directness and maddened speech, places and persons, humor and alarm. Tempted by Laura Riding's renunciation of poetry yet rich with life-forms of all kinds (vegetable, animal, processual), it is a work of immediate presence and continuous change, enacting an ever-renewing ecology of connection in peril.
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
I.
[Truth-telling is possible, thought Laura Riding . . .]
[not "using words"]
[the Five Ways to jump]
[Spring goes down]
[Michael says the poem will speak]
[Anyone says a few things . . .]
[How is every giant lunatic today? . . .]
[That walk up the hill . . .]
[Hill comes up]
[Each thing seen is upside down]
Night Skiing
[Full moon if I could see it]
[The March King has horse's ears]
[The Dawn Redwood's branches curve up]
Winter
Cilento
Swiftwriting
Swift 2
[You have a noon face . . .]
[There were broken birds . . .]
[I notice my heart . . .]
[Again no mother was]
[Sweet Go Go Lime]
Swift 3
Writing
Sorting
Storing
Pin Drop
Correction to Klee
"The sun's five hours slow"
[Letter One . . .]
[Claw eth the cold . . .]
Worksheet, March 2013
[GUITAR DRAW STAR]
[Gulls lifted over]
[A house has a cloud . . .]
[Being asked to write the sounds . . .]
[What is the outside process?]
Memory Exercise
[When 10 voices appear]
[transcription missing]
[Don't take apples from tortoise man?]
Scraps
The Fingers
[I rode the Red Line . . .]
[D. H. Lawrence wrote a letter.]
"While You Were Out" [#1]
[DonMee was talking . . .]
[I asterisk june . . .]
[Who was the? . . .]
What the Donkey Said
November 16 – December 1, 2016
["i've been looking for you . . ."]
[how far a person recedes]
II.
[Wherefore she changed her mind]
[da Vinci wrote, "If the sun is in the East . . ."]
[J is painting the birch stump . . .]
A dress for the carnival.
[With one person I've experienced . . .]
[The rest of the morning.]
Transcribed to be read aloud
[Compost – decay]
[they all add up to instructions]
[Rain at 4 a.m.]
[The sun appears to have gotten closer . . .]
[Clouds over Lake Michigan . . .]
Found
[James just observed . . .]
[Dandelion says]
da Vinci again
[day before yesterday]
[first night at the beekeeper's]
Transcribed from the Speech Accent Archive
[& drew that eye-shape with you in it]
[The palm of the hand is as square as a house]
[The shadow had a use]
[farm objects are]
"While You Were Out" [#2]
[We're still in]
[Seventh grade assignment sheet . . .]
Notes
[The child drew lines in a rounding curve . . .]
[And: the rhyme is a hand Bell-made . . .]
[An internal window divides . . .]
[Storm light: singular]
[Others could tell the difference . . .]
night day night
[Instructed to move the bees . . .]
[A word not sleeping]
[I could remember a small amount]
[airplane womb sound]
[All winter couldn't fit outside a book]
[Abbott Road]
where are the bees
[Catalogs are full of pictures]
[Beginning with a silver pencil . . .]
[On the Beara Peninsula]
[Completion an instant]
[Spotted Winged Drosophilia . . .]
[I would like some sea salt . . .]
[James is pounding copper]
[Have sent a point from out]
[Who will confess that]
[Misheard what and why]
[May ever any thing come in]
Mid-May to September
A note from my mother in the 70's
[The night is rustling . . .]
III.
Summer, 2015
IV.
"Preserving a Sand Mandala"
Orfordville, 2006
[Time does oscillate Aha]
[landscape]
[Each letter begins with the alphabet . . .]
[Extract what you were looking at . . .]
[The rest of the notebook appears to be . . .]
[When the wild onion floats on its back . . .]
[Many lines around the eyes]
[Observation of pattern . . .]
Transcriptions from unknown sources
[In Avoca, I said field]
[remember 2 days]
[Here a pen draws a line through . . .]
Salzburg translations
[I mean any position of the mouth is]
[Parody of 18thc Rationalism . . .]
[Inside, read what you wrote]
[The number 1 under the belly of the deer]
On the Beara Peninsula
V.
Deer 1
VI.
At the same time as scattering
VII.
[clara luna parce-que la jour]
[Can you carry this object]
Loose-leaf
teaching notes
Worksheet
winter and summer
"When the fog was all gone, Bear felt sad."
Sundial
The plums kept darkness as a net
[Yesterday was Wednesday?]
[Red start or Fire tail]
News paper Miracles Wonders Curiousitys & c & c
[FIRE HORSE SHOWS]
[How Animals Grieve]
November 1st, 2nd or 3rd
[A line through a forest]
[I have a Catherine]
[the beautiful idealism?]
[Unpredicted, snow fell]
[Language goes on General Strike]
[I observe Kellen walking in the middle . . .]
[Writing to see what can remember . . .]
["Snow taken from high peaks of mountains . . ."]
[Carnation in French . . .]
[As I was driving through Dolly's window]
Smash this
[Certain feet are large like boats . . .]
[Unicycle song structure]
May, 2004 – December, 2017
[Morning now, afterrain, owe 50]
[Everything's under the trainwhistle . . .]
[No form]
[Not making the bed not]
[Also the daily tumble]
VIII.
[process]
[We looked for rocks]
Alphabet in Oklahoma
[James goes to school, assigned to write]
Another OK ABC
[Oil the breadboards and don't remember]
Pedagogical Sketchbook, p. 47
[Page from a book on astronomy]
Discerned
[A nuthatch walked up the box elder]
[crankshaft pulley]
[bpN says "they covered each other with longing"]
[my name is lisa fiction . . .]
Spoon Fest
Postcard from Montréal
Acknowledgements
