GREAT MOMENTS IN TACHES BLANCHES

“Freedom is never free”

One July, it was 1997, a small group, convened by Emmanuel Hocquard, met at the Centre de Poésie et Traduction at Fondation Royaumont, near Paris, to play the “blank spots” game (le gam “taches blanches”). If the game of “blank spots” was a betting game, it would go like this: “I’ll see your nothing and raise you nothing.” Parent figure:“I didn’t raise you to say things like that.” Parent figure: “Leave them alone & they’ll come home, wagging their tales behind them.” I present here one of my contributions to the Royaumont meeting.

1. Jimmy Stewart is Tache Blanc in Blank Check, un film de Jean-Jacques Lecercle.

2. “I have lost my notes but maybe I will find them during my nap.”

3. Staedtler “Mars Plastic” Eraser (Cf.: Rauschenberg’s erased DeKooning, c. 1954)

4. Lascaux sans image.

5. THE GLARE OF THE BLANK (the tear of the . . .  )

6. Don’t blink.

7. Blink.

8. She shot me point blank.

She shot me at point blank range.

I got shot at point blank range.

9. Johnny must have slipped me a Mickey because the next thing I knew everything started to go blank and I found myself on the floor next to the couch and she was saying to me: “[Quote removed by Tom Raworth for further study].”

10. (      )

11. (

12.        )

13. There’s no blank like the present.

14.

DRAWING A BLANK

IT’S NO LONGER BLANK

15. Blank Stare

16. The anoriginal space between versions (translation & source, text & performance, cup & lip) is the grace of blankness.

17. This section intentionally left blank.

18. “Never give a sucker an even blank.”

19. “Don’t blank on it.”

20. “Don’t blank out on me. Not now.”

20a. Her glance pierced me like blanks firing on an icy precipice.

21. Goffman’s “disattend track” (Frame Analysis)

22. In the blank of an eye.

23. Drawing a blank (II):

24. “The gap I mean.”

25. MIND THE GAP

26. The gap in agape.

27. “Rob sees red when Laura goes blond.”

28. The savage wilderness of the desert.

29. All problems of language are problems of translation.

30. “Running on empty.”

31. Arakawa / Gins: “Forming Blank” (tube / twisted tube /      )

31. Fill in the blank:          ,         ,         

31. Blanched but not bowed.

31. Waldrop’s paradox: The only one who can judge the translation knows both languages and so can’t judge it.

31. “DU CALME:

Poetry makes nothing happen”

(Rogélio Lopez Cuenca)

31. Poetry fakes nothing actually.

31.

31.