Poetry

Oana Avasilichioaei

from Tracking Animal (a survival + the tracker’s marginalia)

This poem comes after Jacques Derrida’s essay L’Animal que donc je suis (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2006), while “the tracker’s marginalia” is imagined and glossed from The Oxyrhynchus papyri by Bernard Pyne Grenfell & Arthur Surridge Hunt (London Egypt Exploration Society, 1898), a lengthy exegesis of, among other texts, a fragment of Sophocles’s play Ichneutae (The Trackers). In the landscape of the page, a subject tracks D’s “animal,” follows his animal word in order to become the animal (according to the double meaning of the French word suis as both being and following) and free the word-beast from the philosopher’s argument, let it loose in a new forest of language, help it cross the porous space between tongues. The poem is thus shadowed and hounded by French and Latinate sense and sensory structures, and by the languages of philosophy, theatre and scholarly interpretation.

derrière nous
l’animal est une rature

(Claude Royet-Journoud, Théorie des prépositions)

 

 

 

 

……………animal drone……oa red tx 1

 

…………………………………….the osseous
problematic of the anima

 

 

animates the question, its form

 

 

…………………………………….so animale

 

 

 

……………………………..oa red tx 2

……………………………………..sound the
mal of maw­

…………………………………breach thesis
surrounding animal, animal logos-primated

 

……………decisively question the suffering
sentence of animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

Common and afaced, radical finitude partaken
with animals, the moral  of  vitality’s   finitude,
compassionately…..experienced….and….taken
vulnerable in angst.

……………………………………….oa red tx 3

 

 

 

certain anima impairment

allege anima suffering sensate

 

 

 

 

 

 

animal the versed vitality

 

 

 

 

Animal regard known before another

 

 

 

 

 

…………………………………………………………..decade
decadent with the autobiographical animal
………………………………………..with animal entrails

 

 

 

 

 

Animal Aggrandisement

………………………………………………….oa red tx 4

 

 

…………………………………………abyss between the
singular-plural animal appellation
……………..animals appeal

 

 

 

 

………………………………the contiguous continuity
of entrails schemas between hind appellation and
animal appeal

 

 

 

 

 

…………………………….naming hounds the animal
appellation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. ..Abyssal…rupture ..draws ..the.. unilinear and
indivisible…line…between…two… borders,….the
Hounded and the Animal in general.
2.

 

 

………………………………………………..oa red tx 5

3. …………………………..
…………………………………………in lieu of “animal”
or “anim(vit)ality”

 

 

………………………………………….tender the anime
a species or genre of animal meaning, animal in
general deems……….“animal”
……………………………………………………..provokes……………….oa red tx 6
“animal”
……………………………………..common as rational
animal, common as political animal, common as
conversant animal

 

 

 

 

…………proficient in the dominant anima subject

 

yet denied animality

 

…Valued hypotheses and theses surround the
animated maw, mutt animals.
…Animalsquall — a mutt!
…Animal motto hounds

………………………………………..oa red tx 7

a soiled concept: the Animal (dissected)

 

a boasted territory: the Animal (interrogated)

……………………………………………private animal
lingo

 

 

………………………solo animal voicing

 

…………………………..a mutt dance: the animal
…………………………………………………….affinity

 

 

 

 

….Does the animal I fellow problematize?

 

….a parlance, a frond? animal this primal question:
“Does the animal I fellow problematize?”

 

 

…………………………………….treasoning the animal’s
animality (solicited)

…………………………….my auditory animal concedes
communicates a system of signage

 

………The fiction of demanding “Does the animal I
fellow problematize?”

 

………The it, the has been, the could be of anima

 

………………………………….animalistic signs portent
a sort of signature, brailed, traced, effaced

 

 

 

……………….(hounded for example)……………………..oa red tx 8
(example of animal)

 

 

……………………………………………..trace then erase
animal and the hounded

 

 

 

 

……………..feigned entrance of the mutt assembly
doggedly follows the “animal” and the “just”

 

 

as though ..the.. general “Animal” ..communes… the
non-humane, ..the ..common sense,.. the.. “common
link,” “Animal” qualities abyssal in …their… liminal
animated structures

deign to animate the vast camps
……………………define the animaled article

 

 

 

 

 

……….biographical zoo of the Kafka or Nietzsche
anima

……………………………………………………………oa red tx 9

 

“autobiographical animal”

 

…………………………………………………….historical
animal, conceptual human animal

 

 

………………………..consecrate the question of the
vital animal

 

rationed animal

 

quantifiable animal

 

……………..the amnesia of most philo-interpretive
routes leading to my animals

………………..oa red tx 10

 

 

 

…..In parting, my animated figures accumulate

…………………………………………………………..oa red tx 11

 

………I draw animated figures. Animals othered in
fables
………..the metamorphosis of the animated figure

 

 

…………………………………………gnaws on the anima
language
animal mimetic

sorting through all the animal tautologies in philo

draw animal guard

 

 

 

……animals are my guardians.

 

 

a sign animes, maws
………………….oa red tx 12

 

 

 

 

In parting, I draw animated notes

 

 

………………………………………………philosophical

animality of animal

 

 

 

 

 

 

…..To fawn over a certain appeal of my animals

…………..I obligate an intersection of the animalistic
and the autobiographic

 

 

 

……………..the animutt?……………oa red tx 13

 

……………………………………….vindicate
the animality of habitat
……………………………………..the animal
horde memories my woods

 

Oana Avasilichioaei’s practice is concerned with textuality, polylingual poetics, the social and political forces/voices of the polis, and the intermediary spaces between word, sound and image, exploring the transgressions of these terrains through poetry, translation, performance, and sound work. Her five poetry collections include We, Beasts (Wolsak & Wynn 2012, winner of the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry) and Limbinal (Talonbooks 2015), a hybrid, multi-genre poetic work on notions of borders, and her current book/beyond-the-book project is Eight Track (upcoming 2019), a poetic, sonic investigation of the multifold meanings of track and tracking. Also a translator, her most recent translation of Bertrand Laverdure’s Readopolis (BookThug, 2017) won the 2017 Governor General Literary Award.