The Ancient Use of Stone: Ray DiPalma’s Words & Pictures (Terence Winch)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ray DiPalma told me something recently, over the phone, that he repeats in this book—that his “intention is always to write something, not necessarily to write about something.” He delivers on that intention in this imposing new collection from Otis Books, the very busy imprint of Otis College of Art and Design in L.A.

 

 

 

DiPalma scatters clues throughout the book, hinting at what this writing is all about, the most revealing being:

 

Cunning

Magnanimous evasions and strategies meticulously violated,
Forgotten conflicts, maxims, wily distractions, sonorities,
Logical starting points, garbled melodies, dissemblings,
Perpetual adjustments, baffling embraces, panaceas, trills,
Recapitulations, subverted calibrations, drifting rhythms,
Aimless tracings, slogans, requisite materials, hybrids, puzzles,
Penalties, nuances, seductive myths, targets, elegant solutions,
Adornments, disparate etymologies, routines, cavalier methods,
Complex interpretations, jargons, weird polarities, chosen dialects,
Melancholias, bravura caprices, abbreviations, masquerades

 

 

The subtitle of this collection is Journals and Daybooks 1998--2008, and the journal-day book framework really allows DiPalma to showcase the astounding eclecticism and erudition he brings to his work. A meticulous attention to language has always been central to DiPalma’s writing, and a macaronic spirit inhabits The Ancient Use of Stone (no surprise, really: he has corrected my Latin—with which, like most one-time Catholic schoolboys, I have a fading familiarity—and I know Ray’s first language was Italian). 

 

 

 

[photo: DiPalma in the '70s]

 

 

 

 

Forest and Cave

The book is an album
not a final set of solutions

The real discoveries
Are to be found elsewhere

What the book exhibits
Are the ways to them 

The collection is filled with incisive quotes from a huge cast of thinkers and writers (Breton: “Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known”; “Raids are our agriculture”—Bedouin Proverb), wry autobiographical complaints and comments (“Short noon walk for Georgie. Encounter no unpleasant dogs—unlike earlier this morning when the 3 vicious dogs from two doors west showed up in the park. Exchange of words with the dogs’ owner. More than a few profanities”), lists of neologisms (among my favorites: gratiturd, improversion, neolurkism, nocturinal), and more than forty of his collages:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[left: part of  p. 85]

“Fuck the posthumous! We want to sit down, eat, and drink sometime today!,” DiPalma proclaims.  And I won’t argue with that.  I’m hungry.

 “Keep commentary to a minimum,” he admonishes elsewhere, and thus I will stop here.

Comments

[Amy Allara]

Definitely a good book and author to take notice of...and glad to see Otis getting some exposure.

[Doug Lang]

This is a magnificent post bringing well-deserved attention to Ray DiPalma’s new book. Di Palma has enough edge to be considered a street poet, that is if the street started at Homer’s backyard and continued past Dante’s bungalow, Tasso’s villa, Wordsworth’s cottage, the Bigtime Modernist Plaza, the New American Poetry Park, St. Mark’s Church in-the–Bowery, the Language School cul-de-sac, and on into the unexpected future. DiPalma and The Ancient Use of Stone are compendia of existential wit and literary acquaintance. If journals and daybooks can be said to have a subject, then the case here would be what their author identifies (via William Carlos Williams) as the natural world of the mind. This would be a perfect desert island text, an inexhaustible source of pleasure and provocation. Terence Winch has somehow managed to capture its essence, even in the structure of his post as well as in his actual comments.