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    Übermütter's Death Dance is a mixed-genre poetry series recounting a mother's experience of an adult child's death. Beginning with reportorial poet's prose, the book dissolves into a series of lyric pieces that incorporate song fragments and scripted movement into written text. Memoir-like surreal prose tales lace together multiple modalities of poetry into a script that creates and re-creates the "Übermütter"—a pluralized figure—into repeating but evolving reconstructions of grieving "selves." These are performance "selves" that appear and reappear, as reflected in the disembodied sightings that also distill this book's deeper exploration of matter through 3-D figuration. Interweaving multicultural historical-spiritual texts with literary and psychological accounts of death and dying, this hybrid poetry work provides space for words that mirror the grieving body, for a body that mirrors back the spatially moving text. "There is no way to make sense of a senseless death, but in Übermütter's Death Dance, Laura Hinton engages the senses to stay alive and to find, if not meaning, then some sort of vital force in the midst of tragedy. Hinton’s heterogeneous yet unified collection combines the rhetoric of documentation and daily life with the lyricism of dreams, visions and ritual. The result is profound, moving and mercurial." —Joanna Fuhrman, author of The Year of Yellow Butterflies "How do we survive grief—let alone write it? Shattered by the inexplicable death of her only child at 32, Laura Hinton miraculously gives us this lacerating work of witness. “am I still a mother?” she asks, refusing any answer. Her voice is at once desperate and wise, knowing that no one wants to live in these pages: “I / breathe on you / my Death / contagion,” she quips—“I am un-home / d.” And because in grief “time does not exist,” sequence reverses, halts, disappears: “no future tense in morning time,” “there is no ‘after.’” In the shifting landscapes and timescapes of Hinton’s work, memory and dream, lived and imagined experience, coalesce in the dissociation anyone who has mourned will recognize. I feel privileged to read—to be—in these words." —Elisabeth Frost, author of The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry "Laura Hinton’s heartbreakingly beautiful elegy to her son Paul, Übermütter's Death Dance, is a thrilling choreography of lyric, memoir, dance, spirituality and theory. In this book, Hinton assembles a profound reflection about motherhood, death and love. Indeed, the reader dances throughout this mother’s life and death dance, leaping and soaring from one gorgeously written section to the next." —Karen Brennan, author of little dark Laura Hinton is a multi-media poet, scholar, editor and literary critic based in New York City. Her scholarly books include The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy: Sadomasochistic Sentiments from Clarissa to Rescue 911 (SUNY Press), and two edited collections on women's poetics: Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero: Voice, Vision, Politics, and Performance in U.S. Contemporary Women's Poetics (Lexington Books) and We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics (co-editor with Cynthia Hogue, University of Alabama Press). She has published a poetry book, Sisyphus My Love (To Record a Dream in a Bathtub) (BlazeVox Books), and many independent hybrid poetry pieces including photography and/or video in journals like Yew, Madhatter Review, Feminist Studies, and Poetryseen. She publishes critical essays on literature and film in journals like Textual Practice and Jacket 2, and has also published creative non-fiction essays, most recently in The Intima. She is the editor of a performance chapbook series under the imprint of Mermaid Tenement Press, and has kept a literary blog of essays on hybrid poetics since 2009, entitled, Chant de la Sirene. Laura Hinton is a Professor of English at the City College of New York (CUNY), where she

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    Übermütter's Death Dance is a mixed-genre poetry series recounting a mother's experience of an adult child's death. Beginning with reportorial poet's prose, the book dissolves into a series of lyric pieces that incorporate song fragments and scripted movement into written text. Memoir-like surreal prose tales lace together multiple modalities of poetry into a script that creates and re-creates the "Übermütter"—a pluralized figure—into repeating but evolving reconstructions of grieving "selves." These are performance "selves" that appear and reappear, as reflected in the disembodied sightings that also distill this book's deeper exploration of matter through 3-D figuration. Interweaving multicultural historical-spiritual texts with literary and psychological accounts of death and dying, this hybrid poetry work provides space for words that mirror the grieving body, for a body that mirrors back the spatially moving text. "There is no way to make sense of a senseless death, but in Übermütter's Death Dance, Laura Hinton engages the senses to stay alive and to find, if not meaning, then some sort of vital force in the midst of tragedy. Hinton’s heterogeneous yet unified collection combines the rhetoric of documentation and daily life with the lyricism of dreams, visions and ritual. The result is profound, moving and mercurial." —Joanna Fuhrman, author of The Year of Yellow Butterflies "How do we survive grief—let alone write it? Shattered by the inexplicable death of her only child at 32, Laura Hinton miraculously gives us this lacerating work of witness. “am I still a mother?” she asks, refusing any answer. Her voice is at once desperate and wise, knowing that no one wants to live in these pages: “I / breathe on you / my Death / contagion,” she quips—“I am un-home / d.” And because in grief “time does not exist,” sequence reverses, halts, disappears: “no future tense in morning time,” “there is no ‘after.’” In the shifting landscapes and timescapes of Hinton’s work, memory and dream, lived and imagined experience, coalesce in the dissociation anyone who has mourned will recognize. I feel privileged to read—to be—in these words." —Elisabeth Frost, author of The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry "Laura Hinton’s heartbreakingly beautiful elegy to her son Paul, Übermütter's Death Dance, is a thrilling choreography of lyric, memoir, dance, spirituality and theory. In this book, Hinton assembles a profound reflection about motherhood, death and love. Indeed, the reader dances throughout this mother’s life and death dance, leaping and soaring from one gorgeously written section to the next." —Karen Brennan, author of little dark Laura Hinton is a multi-media poet, scholar, editor and literary critic based in New York City. Her scholarly books include The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy: Sadomasochistic Sentiments from Clarissa to Rescue 911 (SUNY Press), and two edited collections on women's poetics: Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero: Voice, Vision, Politics, and Performance in U.S. Contemporary Women's Poetics (Lexington Books) and We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics (co-editor with Cynthia Hogue, University of Alabama Press). She has published a poetry book, Sisyphus My Love (To Record a Dream in a Bathtub) (BlazeVox Books), and many independent hybrid poetry pieces including photography and/or video in journals like Yew, Madhatter Review, Feminist Studies, and Poetryseen. She publishes critical essays on literature and film in journals like Textual Practice and Jacket 2, and has also published creative non-fiction essays, most recently in The Intima. She is the editor of a performance chapbook series under the imprint of Mermaid Tenement Press, and has kept a literary blog of essays on hybrid poetics since 2009, entitled, Chant de la Sirene. Laura Hinton is a Professor of English at the City College of New York (CUNY), where she

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    467 views20 pages

    Übermütter's Death Dance by Laura Hinton Book Preview

    Uploaded by

    Geoffrey Gatza
    Übermütter's Death Dance is a mixed-genre poetry series recounting a mother's experience of an adult child's death. Beginning with reportorial poet's prose, the book dissolves into a series of lyric pieces that incorporate song fragments and scripted movement into written text. Memoir-like surreal prose tales lace together multiple modalities of poetry into a script that creates and re-creates the "Übermütter"—a pluralized figure—into repeating but evolving reconstructions of grieving "selves." These are performance "selves" that appear and reappear, as reflected in the disembodied sightings that also distill this book's deeper exploration of matter through 3-D figuration. Interweaving multicultural historical-spiritual texts with literary and psychological accounts of death and dying, this hybrid poetry work provides space for words that mirror the grieving body, for a body that mirrors back the spatially moving text. "There is no way to make sense of a senseless death, but in Übermütter's Death Dance, Laura Hinton engages the senses to stay alive and to find, if not meaning, then some sort of vital force in the midst of tragedy. Hinton’s heterogeneous yet unified collection combines the rhetoric of documentation and daily life with the lyricism of dreams, visions and ritual. The result is profound, moving and mercurial." —Joanna Fuhrman, author of The Year of Yellow Butterflies "How do we survive grief—let alone write it? Shattered by the inexplicable death of her only child at 32, Laura Hinton miraculously gives us this lacerating work of witness. “am I still a mother?” she asks, refusing any answer. Her voice is at once desperate and wise, knowing that no one wants to live in these pages: “I / breathe on you / my Death / contagion,” she quips—“I am un-home / d.” And because in grief “time does not exist,” sequence reverses, halts, disappears: “no future tense in morning time,” “there is no ‘after.’” In the shifting landscapes and timescapes of Hinton’s work, memory and dream, lived and imagined experience, coalesce in the dissociation anyone who has mourned will recognize. I feel privileged to read—to be—in these words." —Elisabeth Frost, author of The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry "Laura Hinton’s heartbreakingly beautiful elegy to her son Paul, Übermütter's Death Dance, is a thrilling choreography of lyric, memoir, dance, spirituality and theory. In this book, Hinton assembles a profound reflection about motherhood, death and love. Indeed, the reader dances throughout this mother’s life and death dance, leaping and soaring from one gorgeously written section to the next." —Karen Brennan, author of little dark Laura Hinton is a multi-media poet, scholar, editor and literary critic based in New York City. Her scholarly books include The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy: Sadomasochistic Sentiments from Clarissa to Rescue 911 (SUNY Press), and two edited collections on women's poetics: Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero: Voice, Vision, Politics, and Performance in U.S. Contemporary Women's Poetics (Lexington Books) and We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women’s Writing and Performance Poetics (co-editor with Cynthia Hogue, University of Alabama Press). She has published a poetry book, Sisyphus My Love (To Record a Dream in a Bathtub) (BlazeVox Books), and many independent hybrid poetry pieces including photography and/or video in journals like Yew, Madhatter Review, Feminist Studies, and Poetryseen. She publishes critical essays on literature and film in journals like Textual Practice and Jacket 2, and has also published creative non-fiction essays, most recently in The Intima. She is the editor of a performance chapbook series under the imprint of Mermaid Tenement Press, and has kept a literary blog of essays on hybrid poetics since 2009, entitled, Chant de la Sirene. Laura Hinton is a Professor of English at the City College of New York (CUNY), where she

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    of 20

    BERMTTER'S DEATH DANCE

    LAURA HINTON

    BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
    Buffalo, New York

    bermtter's Death Dance


    by Laura Hinton
    Copyright 2016
    Published by BlazeVOX [books]
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
    the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
    Printed in the United States of America
    Cover design, interior design, and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
    Cover photo by Bernard Roy, with image concept by Elizabeth New
    Drawing of skulls taken from "Real American Heroes," by Vickers Gringo (Paul Daniel Lyon, 1978-2010), front
    and back cover, with Photoshop enhancement provided by Ronni Raygun Thomas and Elizabeth New
    First Edition
    ISBN: 978-1-60964-241-9
    Library of Congress Control Number: 2015958570
    BlazeVOX [books]
    131 Euclid Ave
    Kenmore, NY 14217
    Editor@blazevox.org

    publisher of weird little books

    BlazeVOX [ books ]
    blazevox.org
    21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

    1
    The sun dropped its leaf like a sun diary
    turning its page to shadow . . . death closing in.
    Barbara Guest, "Nighthawk"

    Clair-Voyage / Le Rayol (Shared Death Experience)


    This sunlit sky is the sign of luminance dissolving into radiance.
    Tibetan Book of the Dead1
    A table is made
    though they say all are taken
    A live lobster is boiled
    in front of tourists eyes
    Ordering all beings of flesh
    we are out of order as
    mothers line up with sand-baked children
    leave dirty crusts on bathroom floor
    Sign in French instructs: No Dripping
    One waltzes through a darkness
    versus radiance light of blue
    rays rapping our heads impossible to tell
    if not yet discovered means a marketed site
    whose pseudo-isolation has no name
    hidden paradise forgets
    fortune-hunters shopping coastlines
    . . . watery
    boundaries
    permit . . .
    no shells
    merge . . .
    optical

    bland

    equipment
    floats

    body

    lacking . . .

    (any kind of

    proper
    suction . . .)
    extra / ordinary
    system . . .
    counting . . .

    liquids

    Robert Thurman, trans., Tibetan Book of the Dead (New York: Bantam Books, 1993); from "a prayer for
    the reality in-between.

    15

    in a rhythm like

    mathematics . . .

    wavering . . .
    rivulets

    greens
    seem

    appear . . .
    night dreams

    spreading
    day dreams

    wet basins . . .

    leaking . . .
    white

    channel

    fluids
    "scene"

    amplitude
    or . . .

    luminance

    dissolve/ing
    No humming, no camera
    stops for the seeded glitter
    a silver parole
    via word stream, arrives
    le rayol
    calls for a sea screen
    Typology of the bottom?
    like lumire
    voiceless
    lumineuse

    because men imagined

    fluids to be female
    So the feminine undertow might have sound not speech
    I am the flesh of a cheek
    moist I am
    ing
    Flotsam
    debris
    scandalizes

    16

    sink-

    far out at sea


    angel bay rounds

    le littoral

    we are
    watching
    water breasts
    heaving . . .

    And you my bright child


    along this writing path
    a hummingbird visits
    longs to get in
    hits my window
    caged, like me
    my music scored with your lips
    my maternity
    leaps
    through recollected
    spongy warm words
    yours
    but my breasts fallen

    I fancy it
    a frog perpetuates

    as if by shock
    People on the beach
    glow from here
    appear / ing
    float / ing
    all say:

    at the watery distance


    a / way

    Merci Merci Millefois


    Les feuilles
    we hear the tones
    human vowels on waves
    diphthongs sing
    the leaves, the leaves
    the pastries we didnt eat
    what we couldnt buy, couldnt pronounce
    didnt need
    A rupture for every footprint
    etched in delicate sloped rock

    17

    I am picking you out


    of a sand pit
    We had everything

    to fall in to

    What could I dofoster the width of this circumference?


    clarity . . . paradise . . .
    Your 'geni-osity" swallows
    mermaid . . . mirage . . .

    Suited body wades down in upward thrusts


    Yellow porpoise wanders by
    laying cool tracks
    its silicone air
    a blast
    the sea just a tourist rip-off
    sky plus breeze
    ten bumping heads
    children buoyed in off-limit zones
    a boat, a play thing
    zooms pastI see it all
    at light speed
    the Buddhas landfill
    *
    Prayer for the dead:
    Now this mirage you see is the sign of earth dissolving in water. This smoke is the sign of water
    dissolving into fire. These fireflies are the sign of fire dissolving into wind. This candle flame is the
    sign of wind dissolving into consciousness. This moonlit sky is the sign of consciousness dissolving
    into luminance. This sunlit sky is the sign of luminance dissolving into radiance. This dark sky is the
    sign of radiance dissolving into imminence. This predawn twilight sky is the sign of imminence
    dissolving into clear light.1

    Thurman, Tibetan Book of the Dead, 123-124.

    18

    bermtter's Message
    At 9:39 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on August 9, a NYPD detective called my American cell
    phone. That is, I believe a NYPD detective called my American cell phone. I didnt answer
    my phone. I didn't recognize the 718 Brooklyn, New York, telephone prefix.
    I was in Nice, France.
    At 9:39 a.m. EDT, I was in a doctor's office in Nice, France. I was admiring a young woman's
    newborn baby in a doctors office in Nice, France. I was talking and talking in Nice, France,
    with this young woman in the doctors office. I was taking pictures of her newborn baby.
    The young woman was about the age of my adult son. I was recalling my own son and
    talking about him to this young woman with her newborn baby. I was talking about my
    adult son not as a man but as a newborn baby like her own. I was remembering with
    startling presence the emotion of loving my newborn sonas if my son, an adult, had just
    been born.
    All time collapses in the love of my son, at the time that a NYPD detective is calling me.
    *
    Actually, I do not know if a NYPD detective ever called me. Later, I did, in fact, call a NYPD
    detective. He told me that he was very sorry that my son was dead.
    When at 9:39 a.m. EDT on August 9, 2010, a strange Brooklyn number flashed on my
    cellular phone screen, I assumed it was a mistake. I was in Nice, France.
    A message was left on my cell phone.
    The message is still on my cell phone. I do not erase it.
    It has been a year now. I will not listen to the message. I will not erase it.
    I have never listened to any message.
    All time collapses . . . remains suspendedin another time.
    *
    Two days later, on August 10, 2010, my son's girlfriend told me via a different telephone that
    my son was found in his room, in Brooklyn, New York, "not breathing."

    19

    I told my son's girlfriend that my son, therefore, was "dead."


    My son's girlfriend did not use the word, "dead."

    20

    Depuis (Death Dance)


    Scored text for voice and movementtwo readers and a dancer
    (Solo voices alternate lines)
    pp Since voice messages and text messages do not translate over the Atlantic
    / The dance: Hands surround face
    head leans right
    p Since babies grow to men and man to child
    / left arm spins and makes basin figure with
    both hands, left leg slightly rises
    fp Since lullabies are grounded in someones music past
    / arms sweep past feet and aim left
    ff Since a grandmother stopped walking
    / left leg reaches upward with alternating
    arms stretched in air
    p Since a father stopped talking
    / knees bow out, hands cover ears
    pp Since a father disappeared
    / bent knees point left, hands fold together in
    prayer form but facing the ground
    p Since brothers are not kin and cannot see
    / right leg extended, arms fold toward chest
    fp Since a few of us are gathered around a tree
    / trunk lifts, arms form a circle, spin
    ff Since the giant bulb blew up your movies green screen
    / full body leaps in air twice, arms make
    big circles
    f Since a man fell out of the sky past my window in despair
    / right leg forward, full body collapses, rolls
    to the ground
    p Since the gardener drank all the cognac
    / then rolls back up into a half-scissor shape,
    eyes look left
    pp Since fireflies scanned the forest in the dark
    / full body turns left, right knee bends forward
    (Chorus:)
    fp Since we slept in the dirt by a creek at 4-Corners
    / right leg forms triangle
    ff Since we did a corpse pose in Death Valley looking at stars
    / full body crawls between the two speakers,
    lies on floor, hands and feet splayed

    21

    ff

    Since the memory dangles chillingly in the yellow leaves


    / sitting in floor posture, holds gaze
    toward and as if through an audience
    fp Since grief postpones
    p

    Since the astral holds


    / (Dancer sings lines with Chorus:)

    pp Since you went away


    I reach for you . . .
    You suddenly disappear . . .

    22

    Coroners Report
    A boy who had a mother now is Case No. 431.
    A boy who grew to be a beautiful man now is Body No. K10-3964 in the Brooklyn Morgue.
    The Coroner's laboratory will take at least 6 weeks to process the toxicology report.
    It will be at least 2 months before the Coroner's Report can be issued by City Hall.
    I have to make 3 phone calls, visit 1 Police Precinct, and swear before 2 judges to get my
    son's keys and wallet back. This takes nearly 2 months.
    The mortician demands: How many copies of the Death Certificate do I want?
    The chairman of the Graveyard Association wants to know: Will I buy 1 burial plot, or 2?
    I wonder if we should keep the numbers down at graveside.
    I wonder if 100 people can fit into 1 small room.
    I wonder if 2 girlfriends1 current, 1 formercan fit into 1 small room.
    I wonder if 8 beers over 10 hours can kill an adult male aged 32.
    *
    I am given a primer book on grief, in which a bereaved mother asks:
    How many children do I now have3, or 2?
    My son, my only child, is dead. Am I supposed to wonder:
    am I still a mother?

    23

    As He Goes, A Lullaby (Putting My Child to Sleep in His Room)


    Spoken and sung text over recorded collage piano / vocal phrases from "Goodnight, My
    Someone" (The Music Man) and Hindu mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum"1
    Leather bracelets loop slender wrists
    chains identity the artist
    pairs of socks that wrap long feet
    sweaters knit
    unknit this summer night

    guitar strings stretch musician hands


    plastic identifies the man
    gathered up and boxed

    I wish you may and I wish you might. . . .


    Our star is shining its brightest light
    window breaks summers shade
    sunny Sun-day you drift to sleep
    drift . . .
    to sleep . . .
    singing . . .
    I'm playing . . .
    as you go . . .
    Im

    singing
    Sleep tight my someone, sleep tight my love . . .

    my love

    my love
    drift . . .

    to sleep . . .

    Phrases from "Goodnight, My Someone" (lyrics by Alan J. Lerner, copyright 1966); and Om Mani
    Padme Hum, a Hindu mantra, meaning, in the words of Ram Dass, "God in unmanifest form is like a
    jewel in the middle of a lotus, manifest in my heart." (See Ram Dass, The Only Dance There Is [New
    York: Double Day, 1970]).
    24

    that which is beyond all


    Om Om Om
    Hum Hum Hum
    we are
    Om Mani Padme Hum
    *
    In the middle of a bright jeweled lotus
    clouds rise
    In the bedroom, electric
    c(h)ords snake
    to
    a

    higher

    amplifier

    Goodnight, my love, for goodnight . . .

    25

    Not / Night
    First wedding night.
    But first mourning night?

    Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary1

    not falling asleep not falling into anything not real not
    him not you not "person" / not "subject" just not
    resting on this newly bought
    french mattress au latex naturel raided from
    some tree in the Amazonian jungle colonized by terrible terrible "au naturel"
    stupid thoughtsson's childhood shrink said when i rejected
    at night
    had him
    this night, my night dark dark
    night previously was
    reading he was still alive

    i was

    reading
    mattress built for
    comfort shell my body ononly
    last night, poor Katherine of Aquitaine her prison her nunnery her loss
    of inherited lands but it was Richard
    Lion de Coeur her son, her heart-son, dead son, "Lyon," my darling, my darling
    darkling
    heart-boy


    1 Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary, Richard Howard, trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), entry

    dated October 26, 1977.


    26

    you, Paul . . . Daniel


    Lyon, like the French
    town
    you were

    born

    on a mattressme, both
    we all
    disappear
    or changebook
    left my hand
    on a French beach
    me, swimming late rays

    days, lounging

    longing (watching little boy dive)


    to finish
    huge book

    life story

    huge

    too huge

    American
    volume

    in English

    in this barricaderiches

    the placid sea


    where could it be?
    itthe book
    disappeared!
    where? to?

    (i retraced every single


    walkway

    swim-way

    funny ladies in hats

    beach-comber's passage-ways
    no no je ne sais pas

    27

    un gros livre? trop gros?


    noooo
    just

    HURRY

    nothing so bigso dearcan

    disappear

    into the azur . . .

    the air . . .

    moi . . .

    like that
    the water fountains

    the peaches are sweet

    misted tourists

    the French are happy

    pas vrai any particular


    life

    lived against

    leads deepening

    bay, this peace, this light, this beam


    days

    open

    by words
    not / night
    over

    so the book was found behind a steep bench


    and i slept and slept well that night

    *
    night before nights
    i weep over context
    someone else's fate

    to lose a boy

    mon coeur

    28

    assuages

    thought: my mistralmis / trial

    my own
    HEART
    doesn't
    beat
    he was
    born
    of my
    chest
    BEAT BEAT
    the rhythm of the wail
    the Reality of "3D"
    newness

    for him

    baby dry eyes


    hears heart

    of heart

    to his own beating


    heart / measure

    (beat beat)

    found woman of his


    heart / dream
    measure to measure about to end now, mums
    narrative
    forms shadow
    to grow against solace
    in sun, the solstice I perceive like rain

    is this why i watched that man in the glasses on the floating mattress

    29

    in this ocean?
    no compromise with Real (fake) song
    not one even a Frenchman would throw
    book a hefty weight
    (i knew it could be found)

    and you, in bed, dead weigh, sleeping, deep, usual, not your night
    laying herei am a sunny Sunday, this son's day, i am not therei am
    my nighttime, on a mattress, nightmare, reading about
    an ancient queen's silent ancient
    pain, crying

    i am not
    sleeping

    i am not

    gaining
    anything awake
    weeping is not altogether
    this terrible terrible night of
    deepest abject beautiful doorway opening so wide
    in the dream that i feel the breeze yet i can't
    even taste a tepid glass
    of mother's milk

    30

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