Friday, April 18, 2014

Ghost Tantra - Matt Tsang

In this reading of Ghost Tantras by Mcclure, we see his incorporation of animalistic words and sounds in his poetry. From the beginning to the end of the book, there is a merging of the animal language with the English language. In the first tantra, we immediately notice the high usage of certain letters: G, H, and O. When these letters are together, it forces the reader to use the throat and the diaphragm to say these animal sounds. This feeling of sounds coming from the depths of one's body gives the poetry a primal aspect to it. In the regular english language, the majority of the words are spoken with the tongue and the mouth; very few words require the throat and diaphragm. In addition, the animal words are just completely different in length as well. Many of the words repeat the same vowel anywhere between 2 to 10+ times and no other english words that I know of does that as well. Some of the animal words are completely one vowel, which is not any word in the dictionary.

Mcclure's focus on this brings attention to view a language as if it was completely different from our own; instead of hearing an official foreign language, we are hearing a form of an animal language. Much like how bilingual speakers are able to understand and consciously flow between two languages, this entire book can be considered to be a bilingual exchange between animals and humans. With what we've seen in other works that have made up words, this animal language puts into perspective that languages can be created out of thin air, even the English language that we often take for granted.

Along with this bilingual idea, the juxtaposition of two languages forces one to see and hear the similarities and differences between the two of them.

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