Scalapino's Renegotiation of Reader/Writer

Leslie Scalapino’s Day Ocean State of Star’s Night, as might be guessed from the title, demands scrupulous attention from the reader. Language lies in bits—scattered, bracketed, stacked, qualified—scenes disappear and reappear, contradictory meanings lie trapped in single phrases and disparate language and photos are paired. The reader is left to pick up the pieces. Jason Lagapa, in “Something from Nothing: The Disontological Poetics of Leslie Scalapino” (Contemporary Literature 47.1, 2006. 30-61) makes a similar point, but traces the roots of this to Scalapino’s long interest in Buddhism, particularly Nagarjuna’s brand, which influenced Scalapino more radically, and before Stein (CL, 30). How does Scalapino’s poetry alter the presupposed position of reader and writers as having, respectively, minor and major relationships to a given work?

In Scalapino’s reading of excerpts from “Delay Rose” on Penn Sound, she reads “in this eve / rywhere in the country” as such: “in this eve [pronounced as in ‘evening’] everywhere in the country” (Scalapino, 173). Scalapino voices “eve”—written on the page only once—twice, once as its own word and then again appropriated, although this time without the long “e,” within “everywhere.” This mis- and double reading indicates the problem of position between reader and writer that is present in Scalapino’s poetry, even when she occupies both positions. Presumably the author knows “the correct way” to read a text, which is in part why many students and scholars seek out readings of author’s own works. However, in the moment cited above, I see three possibilities: (1) Scalapino refuses to take an authoritative stance on the way the poem is to be read, (2) Scalapino is telling readers that they should read it both ways, (3) Scalapino just made an honest mistake. These three possibilities are not mutually exclusive; in fact, I would argue that all three are probably true and all to the point.

The first possibility is somewhat complicated by the fact that Scalapino frequently writes about her own work. However, her emphasis on process and practice, as discussed by herself as well as Lagapa, seems to suggest that her understanding of her own work is also in some sort of flux. The second option seems obvious and Scalapino often notes her aim at plurality and play within her work. The third is, I think, ultimately inconsequential. If purposeful, Scalapino’s double meaning simply reinforces, or acts out what her text allows for. If it was a mistake, the misreading speaks all the more to the ruptures within the text that allow, perhaps force, readers to make “errors” (acts of roaming or wandering). Scalapino, by allowing language to remain disjunctive and contradictory, not only positions her poetry against a New Critical reading, but also refuses in some sense to be responsible for any reading. However, by retaining her presence in the text through formal properties which continually remind the reader that this text was made (by someone, by her), she attempts to create a text, to invoke Roland Barthes, in which the birth of the reader does not need to come at the death of the author.