Self-portrait used for cover of The Circle of Fragments
(Blind Cupid Press, 2010)
I.
The final book I published with Blind Cupid Press in 2010 [1] was a collection of little poems [2] written in the period 2000-09.
The title of the work - The Circle of Fragments - and, to some extent, the style of the pieces themselves, was inspired by the following lines written by Roland Barthes:
"To write by fragments: the fragments are then so many stones on the
perimeter of a circle: I spread myself around: my whole little universe
in crumbs; at the centre, what?" [3]
"The fragment ... implies an immediate delight: it is a fantasy of
discourse, a gaping of desire. In the form of the thought-sentence, the
germ of the fragment comes to you anywhere: in the café, on the train,
talking to a friend ..." [4]
What I wrote in a very short preface to the book is even more true now than then: along with a few broken bones and some shards of shattered glass, these leftover fragments - written between Barcelona and Berlin, Aberdeen and Athens - are pretty much all that remain from this period of my life.
And so, it was amusing to recently re-enter le cercle des fragments and look back at what they captured (and, just as importantly, what they missed or failed to capture).
II.
Obviously, I cannot reproduce all 112 of the fragments, although readers will find a number of them scattered here and there on Torpedo the Ark if they search the index closely enough (or click on those titles below that conveniently come with a link).
However, I thought it might be instructive to provide a full list of titles [5] in the hope that they will provide a clue of sorts as to the content, theme, mood, and tone of the anthology:
Sea-Bitch, German Sea-Cow, Sun-Lizard-Rock, Love Remains the Great Adventure, In the Land of Convalescence, Underground with all the World, Death Chant, Sitges, Post-Coital Disappointment, At the Anchovy Museum (Collioure), Mosquito, Black Holes, The Holy Life, One Should Not Apologise Oneself Out of Existence Simply to Please Her, The Sorrow of an Invisible Man, The Bitterness of a Domesticated Man, The Woman Who Was Jealous of the World, Idiota, At the Funeral of a Domesticated Man, Lolita, In Memory of Anaïs Nin, In Memory of Henry Miller, The Birthday Cake, On the Other Side, Blanes, Song of a Discontented Man, When You Are Dead, In the Bookshop, Yolanda, In Becoming a Subject of the Sun, Lemon Drizzle, The Taormina Virgins, Un relation privilégiée, Phallic Defiance on Ward H2, In Memory of Friedrich Nietzsche, Filthy Love (In Memory of Georges Bataille), Diary Fragment, Hakenkreuz, Her Cunt, Supposing Truth to be a Woman, Life Bleeds, At the Party, Spinster (In Memory of Sylvia Plath), Flightpath, In Memory of Marinetti, Under Erasure, Haecceity, In Memory of the Divine One, The Three Consolations, Baby on the Bus, Aberdeen, Miracle, Tear Drops, Polarity, Confession of a White Widowed Male, Being and Nothingness, The Boring Dead, Little Greek, Flow, Becoming-Flower, Promises Promises, Fucked-Up, Crab-Like, Pa amb Tomaquet, Sandals, Floratopia, Fox, We Do Not Have Souls, September, In This Life, Posthumous Hope, Decree Nisi, Dawn, Image, Thomas, Mark, In Kissing Liberty, Odysseus, With the Coming of the Sun and the Rising of the Moon I Think of Her, Dawn Chorus, Conflicted
Morality and Desire, Seven Fragments of Glass:
I: Crash!
II: In the Confrontation with Glass
III: At the Hospital in Athens
IV: Poppies
V: The Vengeance of Objects
VI: On Which Side is Wonderland?
VII: I Love Everything That Flows, This is not a Love Song, Love, What She Should Tell Him, Tears, The Danger, Gifts, Self-Sacrifice, The Hired Hand, Snippets, Death Sentence, Lost
Crows, We’re a Long Way From Wuthering Heights, Breast Relief for a Dying God, Little Miss Microbe, Reflections on the Abolition of Slavery, Regents Park, Cockroach, Caliban, If the World Were Caring, The Tour Guide, Roses in April, Abandoned, Baby Fingers, Negritude, Rats, Beige, Zurüchgeblieben,
Aufklärung.
III.
Looking back, I still think many of these little poems sparkle in an amusing manner (even if the world at the time did not agree) and I regard them with similar affection as D. H. Lawrence regarded his own collection of fragments, which he called Pansies.
Better, says Lawence, to offer a simple thought which "comes as much
from the heart and the genitals as from the head" [6], than present clever
ideas and opinions - or didactic statements - dressed up in lyrical
form.
And this passage from Lawrence re his book of pensées perfectly expresses how I felt about The Circle of Fragments:
"I do not want to offer this little book as a candidate for
eternity in the ranks of immortal literature. It is [...] a book of today,
and if it is a book of tomorrow, well and good. But I hope that on the
third day, it will have gone to sleep, and become forgotten. Immortal
literature dragging itself out to a repetitional eternity can be a great
nuisance, and a block to anything fresh." [7]
Notes
[1] There were seven Blind Cupid Press books published in 2010. The other six titles were:
Whore's Don't Fuck Between the Bedsheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse
Outside the Gate: Nietzsche's Project of Revaluation Mediated Via the Work of D. H. Lawrence
Visions of Excess and Other Essays
The Treadwell's Papers Volumes I & II: Sex/Magic and Thanatology
The Treadwell's Papers Volumes III & IV: Zoophilia and Reflections Beneath a Black Sun
Erotomania and Other Essays
[2] As will become clear, I primarily think of the pieces as fragments, though often in the past I described them as little poems, even if that's a problematic term both for me and for my critics who insist that they lack the rhythymic language and richness of imagery that defines the art of poetry. Some have suggested that they might, at a push, be called aphorisms, but, again, I'd be weary of using that term; the fragments may be short and observational, but I'm not sure they embody any form of wisdom or truth.
[3] Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, trans. Richard Howard (Papermac, 1995), pp. 92-93.
[4] Ibid., p. 94.
[5] I'm one of those writers to whom titles matter. Indeed, I sometimes dream of the perfect title that would make the text redundant. Probably this is why I was once told that I'm not a serious writer or thinker, but, rather, a sloganeer or a comedian addicted to certain catchphrases and for whom everything is ultimately just a set up for a punchline.
[6] D. H. Lawrence, Introduction to Pansies, Appendix 6, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 663.
[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Unused Foreword to Pansies, Appendix 7, The Poems, Vol. I ... p. 667.
