Notes

Taking things without giving credit always relates to a history of colonialism.

—Jacob Wren, Facebook post (2017)

Acker uses dreams as another means of relinquishing authorial control over the writing and returning to one of the original functions of the early cut-up, namely to bring writing closer to the subconscious mind.

—Edward Robinson, “From Cut-Up to Cut and Paste, Plagiarism and Adaptation: Kathy Acker’s Evolution of Burroughs and Gysin’s Cut-Up Technique” (2010)

Whether copied in substantial or insubstantial part, expression that creates and conveys meaning constitutes a legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.

—Bita Amani, “Copyright and Freedom of Expression”

All uses of quotation and excerpting in this book adhere to the Center for Media and Social Impact’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry
(http://cmsimpact.org/code/code-best-practices-fair-use-poetry/).

“Shadows the words”

This cento, which is also an acrostic, consists of one line taken from each of the following poems (in order of appearance): Kathleen Ossip’s “Your Ardor”; Philip Schultz’s “Afterwards”; Sarah Eliza Johnson’s “Combustion”; “Noelle Kocot’s “On being an artist”; Philip Levine’s “Our Valley”; Adam Clay’s “Our Daily Becoming”; and Julia Cohen’s “In the dark we crush.”

“Three votive candles”

The poem’s subsection titles excerpt and adapt phrases from the biblical New Testament.

“Here is where was”

The line “what lips it had were tattered and bloody” is from Basil Johnston’s The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway (Minnesota Historical Society, 2001); the line “where is here” is from Northrop Frye’s 1965 “Conclusion to the First Edition of Literary History of Canada” (in Northrop Frye on Canada, vol. 12, edited by Jean O’Grady and David Staines, University of Toronto Press, 2003); and the line “Here was beauty and here was nowhere” is from Dionne Brand’s No Language is Neutral (Coach House Press, 1990).

“Second of the night”

The poem’s title quotes Heart’s “These dreams” (Capitol, 1986).

“No family one pictures”

This cento is composed of excerpts from my great-aunt Ella Kittmer’s unpublished typescript “The Kittmer Family Tree,” written circa 1970, and from Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (Illuminations, translated by Hannah Arendt, Schocken, 1969).

“Take forever just a minute”

The poem’s title and its fourth-from-last line is from the Bee Gees’ “More Than a Woman” (RSO, 1977).

“A pantoum to smash pandas”

The second (and fifth) line is from “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” by the Wu Tang Clan (Loud, 1993). PANDAS stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections; it is diagnosed when a child exhibits obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or tic symptoms that appear suddenly, or worsen drastically, following an infection such as strep throat or scarlet fever (for more information, see NIMH’s “PANDAS—Questions and Answers” at https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas/index.shtml).

“Anthropocene obscene as orange”

The line “the cities wash away” is excerpted from the lyrics of R.E.M.’s “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” (IRS, 1984). The line “eye of the hurricane listen” is from R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” (IRS, 1987). “New Orleans is sinking” refers to the eponymous song by The Tragically Hip (MCA, 1989). The phrase “smoke-smuggered sky” is from Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (Random House, 1971).

“Room for one more”

The poem’s title refers to the recurring phrase in “Twenty Two,” episode 53 of The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10 February 1961).

“Mab and Burke”

For no mere mortal can resist and “the funk of forty thousand years” are quoted from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (Thriller, Epic/CBS, 1982).

“L’âme de l’homme est fait du papier”

“L’âme de l’homme est fait du papier” (“The human soul is made of paper”) is a phrase from Michel Tournier’s 1970 novel Le Roi des aulnes (The Erl-King).

“Voyager 2, thinking, types things”

This cento (and sonnet) is composed of excerpted tweets by @NSFVoyager2. The poem’s title adapts that of “Thinking Voyager 2 Types Things” by Bob Geldof (Atlantic, 1990).

“Lunar sonata”

This cento is composed of selectively excerpted phrases from “Audio recordings document ‘weird music’ heard by Apollo astronauts on far side of moon,” by Lee Speigel (Huffington Post, 20 February 2016).

“Heaven help the roses”

The poem’s title is a line from Stevie Wonder’s song “Heaven help us all” (Motown, 1970). The Benjamin quotation in lines 44–45 is from “Theses on the philosophy of history” (Illuminations, translated by Hannah Arendt, Shocken, 1969).

“Forgive me Cathy for”

The line “I have been contemplating suicide but it really doesn’t suit my style” is from “Shivers” by the Boys Next Door (Mushroom, 1979). The lines “I have always found myself determined to survive” and “I have suddenly realized the meaning of My Mother: Demonology” are from Kathy Acker’s novel My Mother: Demonology (Grove Press, 1993). Some lines and phrases (like “I have to be in heaven”; “wick slip”, “I have a right to kiss her”, and “I have lost the locket”) are from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). “I have come home let me / have it” are phrases borrowed from Kate Bush’s 1978 song “Wuthering Heights” (EMI, 1977).

“The lineaments”

The first stanza adapts William Blake’s Notebook poem no. 41 (1793).

“New patriot love”

The poem’s title and several lines adapt the lyrics of the national anthem “O Canada.” “owl kill in snow” is from Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1988).

“Shape your eyes by shutting them”

This poem (like this book) takes its title from a line in André Breton and Paul Éluard’s The Immaculate Conception, translated by Jon Graham (Atlas Press, 1990).

“Was I asleep?”

The italicized phrase in the third stanza is from William Shakespeare’s King Lear; the line “When you sit with meat you rot” is something my younger child said when ten years old.

“The Pit of Carkoon”

“The Pit of Carkoon” is a setting, and “the sarlacc” its resident monster, in the film Return of the Jedi (Lucasfilm 1985).

“Raver in the bathroom”

The poem’s title adapts The English Beat’s “Mirror in the bathroom” (Go Feet, 1980). The phrase a city for a night is from Frank Brewster and Bill Broughton’s Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey (Headline 2006).

“Like opening your refrigerator door”

The epigraph is from Dani Fankhauser’s article “18 Facebook fossils we’ll remember forever” in Mashable (25 January 2013).

“Speeches for Francis Bacon’s Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion”

The title refers to Francis Bacon’s painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944). Italicized phrases quote Bacon’s statements in David Sylvester’s The Brutality of Fact (Thames & Hudson, 1975).

“Nightmares in the university’s ruins”

The poem engages with Bill Readings’ book The University in Ruins (Harvard University Press, 1996).

“Stranger music”

The poem borrows its title from Leonard Cohen’s Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (McClelland & Stewart, 1993).

“Ecstasy, Euphrasia”

The lines your body for my soul fair swap and but I hold all this to myself are from “’Cause cheap is how I feel” by Cowboy Junkies (RCA, 1990). “Owl-kill” as a simile for the Canadian flag is from Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (McClelland & Stewart, 1988). I’m thinking about mortality and it’s a cheap price we pay for existence are lines from “Thinking Voyager 2 Type Things” by Bob Geldof (Atlantic, 1990). The line always has existed, always will exist is from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (Delacorte, 1969), and he would like to pause for a moment so fair is from Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (Illuminations, translated by Hannah Arendt, Schocken, 1969).

“In Gwen MacEwen Park”

The poem quotes monuments in Gwendolyn MacEwen Park that quote from MacEwen’s poem “Late Song” (Afterworlds, McClelland & Stewart, 1987) and from Constance Rooke’s introduction to Writing Life (McClelland & Stewart, 2006).

“Cash paradise”

The poem quotes from Johnny Cash’s “Proust Questionnaire” interview with Vanity Fair (as quoted on the magazine’s website at https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2009/11/proust-book-200911).