A Way of Loving Time: The Year in Wavy Lines
In 2023 we published 120 reviews, essays, interviews, and experiments in critical writing on this website. Each time we posted a new piece we selected one line, phrase, or fragment to represent it, scrolling by in the wavy line on our homepage. We collected them throughout the year, compiling a document lovingly referred to as the “wavy lines inventory.” At this year’s end, we present its distillation or digital imprint: every wavy line from our homepage arranged in chronological order, a kind of cento, list, monument, calendar.
A Way of Loving Time: The Year in Wavy Lines
poetry is a way of loving time
attend, as it were, to attention itself
what to do when the water recedes
it is not just who I am with, but also who I am reading, that (re)shapes me in perpetuity
all study means is love
repetition is not repetition per se
competitive wage rates, profit margins, and outsourcing
a sex scandal is just another tedious shuffle of paperwork
the single heart weighs almost nothing, and everything
once the fucking stops, everything falls apart
no answers, no points, no prize money
in the abused copy of the Kafka letters
where is the Midwest?
because it’s not like Stanford uses all their thousands of fucking acres
as familiar love recedes untouchably
fundamental identification with the animal
flat design’s incursion into the literary realm
playground basketball’s the common denominator
ambling through Vermont giving passersby his howdy
there’s no way to know if you’re making the right choice
play the game or wear the gown
converting their Grand Rapids “ruff” to “roof”
less frightened by the prospect of an isolated winter than of a reckless spring
we remain meaning-making machines
pretty metal, but also suggests barbecue
the opening, the rupture, what might be brought into existence through tears in the fabric
we get James Joyce on a boat
not a demystification but a mystification, a séance
girls just have bad tummies
she decides not to attend her father’s funeral
as it turned out, I lived
to dream is to know
the girlfriends are “leaning in” to not working
we learned about one another through the ways we read
watching can also be an act of scorn
too often explained and too little understood
in a rock and a hard place
sexualized, but not sinful
pointing to… signifying… something…
to embrace contingency as opposed to closure
the book’s intentions, or anti-intentions
in one case, the drawing conveys knowledge; in the other, it deconstructs it
it is a dance from beginning to end
when the mind is open to sideways time
modern world predicated on the relative climatic stability of the Holocene
ham cubes and cheese-wiz
to negotiate the sum of weight
how we rebuild imaginary palaces, vast and tenuous estates of maybe
in the middle of the ring with nobody to fake-fight
good, if hardly the same good
home is where the zone is
slim, ironic, plot-averse
unreliable narrators, angled mirrors, filtered photos
all languages develop idiosyncratic images
the toddlers are playing airport again
shame is a practice, guilt a craft
a hope that feels absurd, almost playful
following the chimera out of the dead soil of the human
it feels good to smash things
Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a good movie, by the way
trying, once again, to write
this shift: how momentous
who gives a shit about world-building, right?
an excruciatingly cumbersome mental exercise
not the fruits of a palatable truth
keep crate-digging, stay ostentatious, don’t apologize
fudged just enough to become semi-intelligible
the kangaroo courts of Twitter
the worst of all possible worlds is also the best
I extended my drawl, bought a punch bowl
are they good jobs?
the fickleness of solidarity
it’s the “underfacts,” the undercurrents, that are more interesting
the technology of poetry to make immediacy happen
to sneer is to survive
a supernatural element to this quest to learn more about her
the egg of zero in an orderless invisible gasland
maybe if I stand straight like an angel it will come to me
they would rather cut onions for soup
what life must be like in Manhattan, Kansas
craft breweries gestate with exploding meth labs
no aim, only ambition; no object, only a subject; no super-ego, only pure id
why shouldn’t we ask for more?
the hoeing techniques I developed doubled my team’s efficiency
yeti lover!
the idiots will inherit the world
bad books deserve this
the overlap of disgust and pleasure
I am no longer interested in talking to people who, structurally, cannot hear me
in quatrains ++ couplets ++ in heat
the “insider” poet, the academic or MFA student
to understand the history of waste is to understand the history of the world
the inevitable future had not arrived quite yet
a woman alone is an emergency, being poor is another emergency
nonfiction promises reality and truth, a mask for the writer and her investments
corporate logic might optimize the game into something truly unwatchable
I was here
two geographical-cultural poles: the urban and the rural
but we are “here,” as offshore debris nevertheless
no pattern holds forever, it breaks to hold you better
she belongs to a country that wants to kill her
the pearl is anti-myth
disaffected housewife turned cultural critic
the It Girl to end them all
UUUHH! UUUHH! King! King! King! King! King! King!
a narrative that progresses forward, after all, relies on a past to leave behind
I hold the udder and squeeze, it’s my udder
what a more positive, holistic, sustainable conception of security would look like
not “rum” or “aguardiente” but “hooch”; not “fortunate” but “lucky-duck”; not “witless” or “foolish” but “a big dummy”
salvaging a devastated ecosystem
repetitions that change by staying the same in a new context
that’s not a big enough god for me
nothingness—the mute fact of being
language is the dreamscape, and she must weather the hellscape to reach it
the act of looking can never be separated from the body that does the seeing
“meat jewelry,” “gastro-esthetics,” and “hors-textes”
the world that has fucked you into oblivion can be fucked in turn
get back on that horse