Psalm 151
Introduction:
On “Psalm 151”
I
By the light of “Psalm 151,” we ask, what poet, writing now, is so ready for catastrophe as Rachel Blau DuPlessis? What living poet can so masterfully take up the Lurianic myth of the Breaking of the Vessels, do justice to its imaginative drama, fathom its complexities with an acute historical and critical awareness, yet sing this tale in a way that is both true to our secular moment, and true to the spiritual agonies at the heart of any such shattering as the tale tells. It could only be a poet who can feel in her bones that the creation of the world arises from the destruction and scattering of the containers of divine light, despite the fact that modernity has happened, and there’s no going back. This is far from the first time DuPlessis has taken up the rendering of religious notions within whatever secular time is taken to be. She has long pondered the impertinent persistence of the sacred within the secular. Consider how the sacrifice of Isaac erupts into the postmodern flow of Drafts. In a scene of consummate uncanniness, DuPlessis makes the turning of the page the lifting of the knife. (Reader, you cannot not be to blame.) She comes by her gift to render such a vast dilemma in fluent and authentic cadences, as is said, honestly. Her father, Joseph L. Blau, a scholar of religion, was the author of a book on the Christian Kabbalah, which he dedicated to his daughter. One imagines the young Rachel at the family dinner table, weighing the competing claims of ritual and reason.
II
Not because it is part of a belief system that she’s trying to revive, or because she wants to aggravate the ancestors by defying rabbinic prohibitions against imagining what was before the Creation, DuPlessis is drawn to the catastrophic core of the Lurianic tradition because this myth permits the poet the most immediate access to a most ancient form of poetry, the cosmology, a cosmology, of the many that scholarship has made available, most congruent with the universe that Drafts proposes. The Breaking of the Vessels has the distressing advantage of surviving the scrutiny of reason, in that the history of the world confirms its truth. While elsewhere in her poetry she can be seen to stage the problematics of mythologically-minded poetry in a secular age, here she takes and eats that final fruit of secular reason, the very category of the sacred. She eludes for a while the antithesis of the sacred, what another great fabulist of temporal duality, Walter Benjamin, called “ homogeneous, empty time,” by imagining the moment before there were moments. Somewhat perversely, DuPlessis casts doubt on what reason would have us believe: the imagination is just a mood that passes through us now and then, with no real standing as a mode of perception. Psalm 151 reminds us that the poet’s work has from the beginning been shaped by mythopoeic and visionary ambitions. There’s no point in arguing about it, Blake and HD agree with me.
III
After reading “Psalm 151,” all of DuPlessis’s poetry looks different. The girl who fell down the well in the title poem of her first book now has a Kabbalistic aspect. The descent into the dark, the abiding within the dark, and the hope of return to the world of light, is reenacted in a variety of ways throughout her immense epic, Drafts, the very title of which notes a task to be completed, a renovation of justice that is a part of the politics and feminism and beauty of her work. Rachel Blau DuPlessis has been imagining Lurianic catastrophe her whole writing life, it would seem. The lightless dark so powerfully evoked in Toll, the sensitivity to radiance, are now to be understood by the shattered light of this non canonical psalm, one that takes its place in the apocrypha beside those of King David, George Oppen, and Paul Celan.
—Joseph Donahue
PSALM 151
in twenty-two parts, as if each part began with a letter of the relevant alphabet
1. Now-Break the ready Vessels,
a blessage honest as the physics
of clay. Broke. Baruch.
Now-Praise those shapes, bless clay
unable to contain the challenge
given what so immense a self-possession
presents, so impossible a force
was,
that be-, that -come, that
through dark-thick IS-ness
is translucid, the light of light
whose swelling e-norms
faced clay
with tasks ineffable and be-
yond matter Itself. A task
unspeakable: Hold this.
2. Praise light that probed
pulses of a strobing essence,
a brightness
stronger than knowledge
stranger than foresight
straighter than curving boundaries
as it drops and penetrates the universe
at the downbeat.
3. Praise the sounding light-trumpet
the bright-edged knife of kind,
descending luminous vibrations,
probing wobble pulse lines pushing,
already enacting the unanswerable.
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
4. Wave of light and light of wave
create quantum delicacies in dictionaries
as yet to open, for
no words and thereupon no alphabets.
No zones. No ways.
Which might not follow.
Doesn’t creation demand alphabets
as companion?
Dot, then line, then letters, then what.
Matted, network-pulsing stuff.
First the happen, then forever after,
the how did that happen.
That, What?
5. The smooth shape of vessels scooped
and scraped and scorched
into incipience for looming light—
as per this list: a amphora, b dancing bowl
pert on three wee feet,
c d two vats wide as households,
e f two bottles long-necked thirst,
g canteen with a baby spout,
h rope-patterned vessel, i water-storage urn,
j pinch cup, blessed
fabrication , blessed
variety, praise the safe-keeping,
self-keening
Earthenware Ten. Per se.
Of shapes, to exist with edges,
of shapes to contain emptiness,
made to mimic the withdrawing void,
sonorous echo ache,
the resonant vessels sound
vowels inside their open-ring.
6. Praise the vessels ready for emanation
as eager for such beam as any bulked
clay humped and turned, punched and opened,
spread and evened might ever could hold.
Nothing of what was known already--
although nothing was already known--
could have readied them further,
but their it was not enough for It-self,
although how Enough got calculated
also remained obscure.
7. So it is, so
it was, so
it was to have become written.
Like a falsehood that slits flesh
on the underside
of the mortal heart
though as yet exist no lies
and no beating heart,
Like a wall scattered,
dry mortared once, but
now not solid, straight, or standing
because matter, as water be, comes
always in motion, even the solid
rocks slide to slide.
Like a bone dislocated from the socket
of a hip not yet palpable
with its limits of pivoting,
its limns of limb--
This clay, from whatever wet sludge
firmed on its own verges of solidity,
its dredged readiness, emerged, achieves
a shape, this test, this force
arrayed as First, overtook them, the
vessels thereby burst, they broke.
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
8. And mighty actual cracks
did split, did spill, did spell
so vented an event, a vaunt-riddle.
And the vessels blessed rift,
cracking and
bereft praised rift.
Be reft was their praise.
The promised premise.
Blessed be cracks, blessed the fissures,
praise matter spaced wide in the hubbles
of spaces between atoms.
And praise it for tribulating
over vibration’s luminous enormities.
Praise all for finding out
what matter is, how it might suffer,
bless its praise of sharp shards.
Blessed are the edges, chipped and fissured,
praise the clay exhaling orbits and structures,
praise smash.
9. The vessels broke
so Bless them.
Bless being bits.
Broke. First word every day.
They shattered by yearning to know
what light had demanded, why
demanded of them, what to know thereby,
curious to hold that question high
and wanting to answer those
powers of emanation
with their shardy pointed
emendations, gloss
corresponding questions
which became their companions.
A fullness of force
twisted light inside out
and hit into clay vessels
and some of that is held it
and some is/are shattered, so it/that
scattered (ripped, was overwritten)
because plethora exploded--
how could it not?
Bless light, mystery, and shatter.
Praise Matter.
Bless unknowing. Bless the desire to know
along with the desires to hold.
Write (in time, which will now begin now)
Vast Books of Questions.
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
10. Still nothing exactly exists,
and we do not know how to reckon its
precise whatness,
to reckon with wreckages of burst starlight,
residue of shifting bursiform darkness
that outsourced black holes,
insourced explosion,
and through waves, streamed
febrile-focus long-strand light.
No one could count what remained unbroken.
No one could number the wonders broken.
Seven were leaven for three proving grain
was first simply grass.
Kennings scattered unkempt.
Wit shattered shard, will shattered sheath.
Sprinkled everywhere were spangled glittery bits.
It was all readiness.
Shells & husks
savory as dill seed,
dark-silver as poppy seed, crisp as sesame
dance along, a-sperming
in shekhinic cyprine light.
11. Waves fast stream.
The pen (the what?) sops,
the brush saturates,
not enough, always too much.
There’s no black nor red blessing
nor blue nor sooty blessing
because names mean nothing
nor does “ink” designate more than “thunder.”
12. What is “book”? What is debate? gloss?
Surfaces and platforms—whether
clay, parchment, paper, leaves, lead--
each one chips dries, blows, refolds, fragments,
spindles, poisons, figures, reconfigures.
Startled –this made letters? this incises?
cobbled of spells and sounds
and Choking.
13. Some aver—a Psalm cannot sing anything
because numbers like letters
have not been made,
nor tones and twangs not ever-yet arranged.
Some say there will never be one such arrangement.
Some propose shards will change to letters.
And others see sparks capture letters,
others, seeds form letters.
Some say this light was already written,
that letter-light--one fact--
lit act. Some that letters illuminated
with a prior fire. Realms of Per Se open.
And some say alphabet is creation. As Such.
Who cares about orthodoxy
given visionary inference?
Who dares say “purity” or “heretic”?
Who rides the tidal vowels for
voyelle volvelle
volute vulval voyages?
Are these paths One?
If all are already One, why number how many?
Did letters happen now?
Then? When?
Who can tell?
Were these (letters to say it
numbers to count it, tones to hum it,
vowels to alter it) always co-existent
within question-rich compacts?
When did turquoise-colored letters seethe and settle?
when in the world emerged such doubled forces of making?
Did time begin
before or after letters. How many of these are One?
Whatever <OfIt> Was
it got-set inside the This <Happened>.
Can one speak at all about “site”?
And “where”? What is time without itself?
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
14. These Ranges and rungs,
flinting shards flung
from the fractalized fractions,
whose responsibility have they become--
became—?
How flickering fireflies
of floating lights of Light
be, are, might be, or somehow will
exist, pursued and gathered and restored
from their exile, blown by the wings of the wind
of the no-thing except
the It Self where
scintillate by spark, lightclip clapping,
these enter elemental Exile of the uneven All--
is unknown.
All become eruv, inside became out.
15. This (and referring to what exactly?)
being endlessly debated, endlessly affirmed.
Who can claim it? Who will?
Who will say “I know.”
Is this not a token of their unknowing?
Who will say “I know” and
“you do not”?
Who will say “I know”
this vast void made of light belongs to a double fable
something of the light is its own light, some darkens the stark.
This means debate.
16. Why light is not matter is its own secret.
Light is light; matter matter. Not one?
Are there other cracks in the sky-dome,
divided, in hiding, a mirror
of the thing that split inside to out when it went
deep into its own secret?
Is there a double It? Is there a plural It?
Many lights exist, bright eyes and dim ones.
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
17. Were there particulars of name in Name?
Did name have further names or fewer?
What is “vision”; what is “dogma”?
Was name a sacred L-N-M that no one
may write, though once there is alphabet or pictograph,
someone will always write something. Or seem to.
Even an awe-struck scribe won’t cease to,
standing in a long feather/palm skirt
with fat lapis nipples, and lapis lazuli eyes
found staring down
the astonishing word
and debating it.
18. What was the word she stared down?
Word? Whirled?
Wide cleaved clove-curved World?
All throated sound and the moaning reverb
of cosmic winds mounding and mounting mounted clouds.
How came our substances out of light?
Nothing exists but now its array may be listed--
light, shards, matter and flickers.
Names--become riven
driven towards and away from <Itself>--that word
is ridiculous. The <Eyn Sof>. Same odd blessedness.
The <Soif>. To thirst forever.
A multiple of one as one. Of one as all.
The milk of joy.
There were no particulars of name
but Name,
though this was not unmixed, for nothing was purity.
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
19. From flax comes fiber,
stalks being wetted, broken, stranded.
Sheep and goats have wool
to be sheared, washed, combed and spun.
To Weave these together honors the All.
Weave waken woves whether mixed
or unmixed. Wasn’t it
all mixed? Why divide substance?
Nothing can be
impure, or kept un-
mixed. It’s Light. It’s Clay.
It’s Linen and Wool.
It’s one, with interactions.
N M N M rang through noumenon.
What a scatter. What a weave.
To sort is a sort. To pattern pattern.
Purity not being the point.
There being no point
but endless incipience,
endless processes,
being as begin.
20. Blessed the word <shattering>
praise the word <vessels>
blessed the not-whole
Smash. This
Shevirat Hakelim,
the vessels breaking,
is almost a relief.
All the vessels
could not contain
the absolute substance
with their own now tested substance.
Universes of cracked vessels
sharded the land, triangular seeds,
flinty shapes, chips of many forms
and whatever plants happenstance
or happening, everything falling as shards
has now informed it-them-
selves re: existence of multiples,
such begun as One,
telling the tell-tale told of night sky’s
sparks and matching darknesses
around invisible arcs of questions.
21. How would we know these things
without many chromatic and micro-tonal names?
How could we name these things
without the hover and crash of each downed vessel
without the sound of the shattered clay
without counting broken vessels, without
high pitched glass break or porcelain
without the claims broke-vessels create--
they made the blessed paths to numberless splits.
Praise flaw. It makes speech and writing.
Bless physics of these cracks,
the odd jump where matter does not fuse
with itself and makes something
sever from the it-self to release itself
into the splendor of approaching time.
Did the past tense imagine itself at this moment?
Here this <is> would make of itself
its Sof-conscious Itness, and announce
it now had time to become
<was> and to construct <will be>.
21. The air counts to one and then makes ten,
by adding the zero
that has not yet nor will soon be invented
although there was always void.
Perhaps void is not empty
but all possible place, plus time the teeming.
Perhaps zero is original light
and when zero fills too full, it emanates one.
Then light is zero-one, and its exigencies
flaws six or seven of the ten (one-zero)
perhaps searches out
thereby
curious plethora,
the creatures with their porous breathiness,
the places where the spark-shards crash and light
by the process of asking <how this comes to be>
and what is it?
When is unclear, but whenever the shards
can hold, perhaps they have been mended.
Then they contain many words in sparky syllables. Then
as the quick little gleams fall in evanescent sparkles,
they map some paths to trace
through drown-prone water,
through sonorous air
through lands filled with clay and sand.
Mira Schor, Book of Pages, 1976, detail. Mixed media on rice paper, 12 x 20 x 1 inches when open, cover c. 12 x 10 inches. Collection of the artist, © Mira Schor
22. Mended?
by the power of yeast to make bread
sticky with open adhesion;
by the dough thickened with falling wanderer spores,
exilic and local, all bread diasporic.
Mended?
by a golden glue of human ingenuity
that seals the cracks but makes them
visible on the vessel, shining
within each flaw as its specific aura.
The tracks of mend spell out entangled letters,
letters imagined as yearning limbs
entwined. The tracks of mend write
cells and atoms, mark
rocks, trees, streams, roots, fibers
with a golden mended clay.
It’s now a written-over vessel.
This mend is meant now
as its markings. A marked whole
never without its histories.
Each marked maimed shard
will have been outlined by golden glue
tracing its shape in crack and seam. Set slowly
together cup by drop, drop by cup.
Our blood and wonder-singing
mingles with gold
to re-set the vessels,
this crucial glue in the cracks of matter.
Then after shatter
and generous golden cementing
vessels newly patched
reveal the paths of breakage.
The tiniest seam seems cobwebbed,
the largest are caught flows of cooling lava’s
wave-shape, fold shape, rope shape,
and the middle-sized seams
reveal time with all its seizures,
individuated days of crackle-ware, craquelure
where something shrinks and separates,
but still joins day to day.
Traces, they make, with Days and changes.
The allure of the hair-like trace of changes
enlarges ranges of the known
because the crack
gives essence a place to try
to re-enter itself
while the shredding and sharding continue,
get re-gathered,
washed by the sweet-light milks still
spinning through galactic presence and emptiness.
January–May 2021, October 2021
Notes.
Section 5. Early earthenware — I have seen the 3-footed bowls in Cyprus, the storage amphora from the Villanovan civilization in Italy. Etc.
Section 10. Cyprine — Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood’s name in French for vaginal transudate [wetness].
Section 14. Eruv, a Judaic concept of a holy space declared appropriate to travel through on the Sabbath, a complex compromise with sacred Law, which might otherwise be unbending on this point.
Section 17: the Mesopotamian “Votive Figure” in the Menil Collection, Houston, TX. From Iraq or Syria, 2900–2350 BCE. Mainly alabaster and lapis lazuli. The figure is devotional, not a scribe; it’s also male.
Section 20: Transcribed Hebrew means The Breaking of the Vessels.
Whole poem: Isaac Luria, one claim of his Kabbalistic writings, plus a kintsugi ethos, the Japanese technique of golden mending for broken porcelain.
What I don’t know about these matters would fill a book.
Joseph Donahue's most recent volumes of poetry are Wind Maps I–VII (Talisman 2018) and The Disappearance of Fate, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). He is the co-translator of First Mountain, by Zhang Er. With Edward Foster he edited The World in Time and Space:Towards a History of Innovative American Poetry, 1970–2000 (Talisman, 2002). Two volumes of his ongoing poetic sequence, Terra Lucida, are forthcoming from Verge Books.
Mira Schor is an artist and writer based in New York City. Her books include Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and of A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life. She was co-editor, with the painter Susan Bee, of M/E/A/N/I/N/G and she writes about art and culture for her blog A Year of Positive Thinking. Schor is represented by Lyles & King in New York, which recently published a survey of her work and featured an installation of her major work War Frieze (1991–1994) at Art Basel 2021.
