THE EXPLODING

NOTHINGNESS
OF NEVER DEFINE
ALSO BY ANNE TARDOS

POETRY :
The Exploding Nothingness of Never Define
NINE
The Celebration
Both Poems
I Am You
The Dik-dik's Solitude: New & Selected Works
A Noisy Nightingale Understands the Tiger's Camouflage Totally
Mayg-shem Fish
Cat Licked the Garlic
Uxudo

BROADSIDES:
Nine 31, 32, and 33, Woodland Pattern
Ami Minden, Davis Museum, Literary Series, Wellesley College
Boomerang Suntan, University of Maine, Orono
I Was Brainwashed as a Child, There Was No Other Way, FluxFax Portfolio

WORKS EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS:

The Complete Light Poems, (co-edited with Michael O’Driscoll) by Jackson Mac Low
154 Forties, by Jackson Mac Low
Thing of Beauty: New and Selected Works, by Jackson Mac Low

RADIO AND MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE WORKS

Among Men, WDR Production; MoMA exhibit, and numerous live performances.
Apple Eaters, Video work, Stefanotty Gallery exhibit, The Kitchen, Electronic Arts Intermix,
and numerous live performances.

3
THE EXPLODING NOTHINGNESS
OF NEVER DEFINE

ANNE TARDOS

Edited by Michael Byron

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

4
The Exploding Nothingness of Never Define by Anne Tardos

Copyright © 2020

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Photograph by Anne Tardos

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-368-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937786

BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

5
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power

Emily Dickinson

6
With appreciation to Lewis Carroll, Jacques Derrida, Martín Espada, Clarice Lispector, Iris
Murdoch, Christina Rossetti, Gayatri Chakrovarty Spivak, Greta Thunberg, Jules Verne,
Walt Whitman.

“Ganymede” appeared in Golden Handcuffs Review, edited by Lou Rowan, and in X-Peri,
edited by Daniel Y. Harris & Irene Koronas
“The Poet” appeared in Poems & Poetics on Jacket2

Very special thanks to Geoffrey Gatza.

All poems were written 2018 and 2020.

10
Contents

Words on a Page 11
The Absence of Presence 12
The Poet 13
How to Unblock 17
In the Living Room 20
Alone at Last 23
This Thing 25
Gaps Between the Water 27
Words on a Page 28
They Are and They Are Not 29
Nothing to Declare 30
Continuous Time 31
Ganymede 33
The Accident 34
The Stork and the Actor 35
Ganymede 37
The Tennis Player and the Lady 40
Until One Day 48
Sol 53
For Clarice 54
Here as Elsewhere 55
No Time 57
Only Instants 58
Desert Heat 59
Antonia 60
Internal Formations 62
Experience Occurs 63

8
 Kitchen Sink 64
What Is Fish 67
Winter Soup 68
First Things First 69
Emptiness 71
Recognition 73
Sol 74
Tell Me 75
Behavior 76
Sphere of the Irreversible 77
A Ghost Story 79
Windup Toy 80
Breathe Deeply 82
Arms Akimbo 83
Human Heart 84
Garden by the Sea 85
Proximity 86
New Piano 89
The Tourist 90
The Favor 91
Chaos 93
Footprints 94
A Point of Light 99
In Love 100
Alice 101
The Rabbit 102
The Pool 105
The Long Tail 108
The Hookah 111
After Much Thought 112

9
Jules Verne 115
The Slender Fly 116
Luminous Dust 117
The Submerged Mammal 119
Think of the Enormous Narwhal 121
After Walt Whitman 123
Beat the Drums! 124
Music Strong 126
The Patterson Silk Strike, 1913 128
Stand Up 139
Lit Fem 140
The News 142
Rage Culture 144
Stand Up 145
Certain Animals 149
As they Breathe 150
The Yak 151
The Zebra 152
The Gorilla 155
Madagascar Mud 157
Begin 158
Suddenly 161
Madagascar Mud 163
Open Landscape 164
What Is Not a Tableau 165
The Vowels of the Wind 167

10
WORDS ON A PAGE

11
THE ABSENCE OF PRESENCE

the blank page

the white space
the unimaginable imagined

retracing what already happened in order to find a present, which everyone

knows does not—cannot exist

The always already absent present

Just ask Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

An insinuation of writing
The exclusion of writing
Without writing
the origin, function, and meaning of writing
The gesture of writing.

12
THE POET

The poet writes dactylic syllables—eight times Lovingly but like a shadow

Consented and conceived of melodious French and English conceived through

itself and others
To cheer up the text negating its most indifferent nature
as many women turn to nobility and tact

The enclosure of freedom was at its most indifferent

Water didn’t show such conditions of breaking out
Or inhabiting or developing a dynamic understanding

Okay so far, inevitable writing, no comments so far from narrating

I have ruined but lovingly

the dynamic of syllables and dactyls in narrating

and took up next the dynamic of understanding

Tenacious tenant loving and conceived and consenting

contemplating death I have

Then they ever okay so

13
so
I don’t do not

But I write syllables dactyls eight times

Lovingly

Call the dynamic understanding

Tenaciousness

But I write syllables and dactyls eight times

Most lovingly

Thinking in language by applying melodious French and English

A new day here
between a disturbance and a cheer
Between a dinner and all the slights
Between a story and many women

I see I stood up for many women

Inhabiting ok so far
so that okay
okay
good

I have learned

14
Okay so good, I did because my survival is writing.

You will see

I awoke from
Much much celebration
you will see

Celebrated you’re supposed to intentionally leave

Much celebration
Spinoza said
Women turn the pump that could accommodate a new writer
Or something new like thinking of love
until the larger more than
wanting
but hidden behind the static while time had to task

Editing and getting off

took a jolt
a cheer up

Never developed to an abstraction as easily as

Remaining loyal to the healthy specimen
loyal but then I had to leave A distance from the cold
and women have bravely moved

15
From an inner organ that must overwhelm some women who turn the demons

The famous Chinese inner organs that have consented

So I write a joyride:

“Inky Infinity infantilizing Insight”

Never learned to be a transformer

Feelings come out of time, she adds, she loves the tenacious lodger

at any point in itself and

men are not hidden behind my temple only the mind’s password

Behind my very concept of all this love

Followed by many women who are into preservation

And others who write in an effort to survive

I write something new.

Philosophy touches all I inhabit.

I write.

16
HOW TO UNBLOCK

from a Still Moment

With Nothing Inside It

Begin writing I begin writing I keep saying

Writing I can with certainty I can
Wrong thing I do, I keep saying
Confidently I begin writing in reverse
Everything I reverse I reverse confidently
With certainty
I can believe and trust

Tell the moment

I tell the moment
Truth I write
I am open receptive alert

Edit criticize
measure
judge
Judge what I look like
What I navigate through
Important just finding a way to make something

17
I write
To tell the truth, I write
Tell the moment I tell the moment

What I don’t stop I tell

the moment I write I write
I navigate
Hesitate
I run rhythmically
I run without haste
I lay it on the page.

Rhythmically I run without haste

I make some tea

I take a bath
I have the page
Some tea

I take a new object

a new object
And see if things improve
I have the courage to make things improve
have courage
have the courage to have courage

18
Have to have the page

Needs to be said on the page,

Said the page.

19
IN THE LIVING ROOM

visions are resting

until they are written
you ask
You write the words
Going through the ritual of deciding which words to avoid the most
you finish the poem directly

You write incessantly

run into some remarkable teachers
your notions become formatted
you receive a letter from a friend
focus on the letter
focus on a phrase
written incessantly
until several hours left for editing
while there is nobody home.

Your brain secretes your ideas

In the living room

Words you ask well yes ahem what notion
and then you delete most words

20
Then you ask how to let the paper decide which words to delete
with no way around writing
in the hours left
Inventing a human with words
which words
which words
does the brain secrete?
living our own way
in the hours left
We write the first phrase
on a page filled with good intentions
Curl up and sleep another night
Another thing we learn to do

The need to occupy the restless brain

with doings
amusements
reading and understanding
The need to observe
filled with distraction

We let the paper watch the lives of others

Ahem
What notions well yes
What is flowering

21
well yes what is overflowing
The need to compose each page
Reading and sleeping
Another night we can talk.

22
ALONE AT LAST

Alone at last: Me and this page

This white glow of imaginary paper
Ready and gleaming and expecting the onslaught of word constructions
manipulations
prestidigitations

accommodating distinctions between thought and sound

tense moments
rainfall
climbing up to the roof

Steady rain drops

No less no more
Someone floating in a pool
Swimming pool
madness
A photo
A disk
A drawer that opens and closes
The heart beats

23
The girl upstairs is sobbing
broken dismal solitary alleys
Dismal solitary library on a Sunday

Separated from most people most of the time

But all that is in the past
The sun is shining now and you are by my side

A bench in a park
A kiss

No dogma no creed
Lay it on thick
Watch the movie
Let’s take a look
Let’s have a chat.
It’s over
No it’s not.

24