Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics (Issue 32, August 2013—Women Looking at Vispo Issue)

Janice Lee
Response to “THE LAST VISPO: toward vispoetics” by Nico Vassilakis

The owner’s manual of blur. … Vispo is a byproduct of staring.

— Nico Vassilakis

I am compelled to see the letters, all the letters, perpetually and indefinitely.

This is looking at an intuitive level. This is an axis in which sense is made while looking. Can you imagine the intensity of this kind of looking? I am looking at it, intensely.

I can feel the throbbing behind my eyeballs.

I used to have perfect vision.

Simultaneously I am deprived of sight. My eyes cross each other as the landscape shifts.

There used to be a word here. There is still a word. I have condemned myself.

For the moment, I’ve got a direct connection with that which I am looking at.

There is no inability to perceive. Just a difference in opinion.

Anything you think you see is a figment of your imagination.

Here: a flash of the mechanism of the outside world.*

Legibility is irrelevant.

My mouth wants to open as my eyes stare harder. This may be nausea-inducing. I may vomit onto the page. I may wait awhile longer.

How have we learned to distinguish the real from the unreal?

How have we learned to know when we are hallucinating?

How have we learned to see something as incomplete?

The letters now operate as obstacles.

There is a precise degree of darkness that my eyes want to adjust to.

Until my eyes bleed, I will not look away.

With increasing frequency: the throbbing.

The waters are muddy. The water is no longer water. Via the transformation, there is only mud.

Note

*  “lenses extend / unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish / returns on its unself” (e.e. cummings)