Opening from Eruditio ex Memoria by Bernadette Mayer

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I saw a doctor, a doctor. It was Antonin Artaud. He was elected to the Royal Academy, no, that was Chekhov. This is the Russian Theater, it’s 1962 or so, the moralist of the venial sin is here, resigning over Gorky. Doctor, a doctor. “The Seagull” defends Zola and Dreyfus, it’s the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov is Godard. This is what I learned in school. This is what I thought: Artaud, Antonin. Hemispheres become loose in the country, there are new forms. Stanislovsky, etc. Add up a column of numbers, it comes to William Carlos Williams to me. What are the spiritual heights, she said. Just as Uncle Vanya looks like a dial, Paris comes and goes, prissy, lightfooted and beautiful-looking, but, by and large, the outside forces come to the surface. 13y the same token, we seem fully uneven, without the bones and stays. The homecoming; she opened and closed her conversation with adequacy. There’s a picture of a man with a spring for a body. There’s a picture of a woman dancing with a leaf for a hand, her head on a string, hanging forward. It’s Madam Shaw. Relevant is revelant, irrational knot, unsocial socialist, unpleasant and pleasant Madam Shaw. Oh Shaw, polyg-mammalian, the candidate, there’s a heart and a louse on the skunk.

- Bernadette Mayer, Eruditio ex Memoria



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