Norman’s 1993 books of poetry published by O Books.
Poetry. “Those of us who think about the reality of things do not do so because we have plenty of time. Reality is not a fixed and immutable attribute of things but a process, a fast or slow unfolding. And we don’t know with certainty that reality has been given limitless time. Norman Fischer’s urgent sensitivity to the metamorphoses at hand makes his writing real”–Lyn Hejinian.
Norman reads from his book “Success”
This recording is part of the program “Close Listening,” with Charles Bernstein. It is a production of WPS1.org, in collaboration with PennSound. For more from the series, go to: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Fischer.html
It is poorly to be physical
Yet not to be physical must be greater
Poor, not to see the sea rolling
Nor the sky unfolding
Cloud on cloud as wind waggles
Heart is head and hand
With which we speak some sound
Who knows what it means
As we fall down again
Just by telling what happened before
The air swarms with it
The heart burns in it
Into the distance of what we feel
The detail of what we see and hear
Collects
And mounts the ladder of our
Conceptual confusions
Which one stalk of what is there
To hold, to have
In the end of our desiring
Look to yourself
Put a finger there
If you can
Twist the dial and manipulate
The broom singularly around the floor
Listening to this he circumscribed himself
As if he could become at last at least
Wholly him
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