Amish Trivedi

Image borrowed from Yale Archive


At the library I worked in, I came across a discarded card catalog. Because of computers and databases, etc., card catalogs are a thing of the past. This one drew my attention due to the labels on the front of each drawer, including “Ritual/Abstinence,” “Sound/Chest.” The drawers, however, were empty. I was confused but intrigued by the jarring nature of each word in combination with another word. There seemed to be no relationship between the two words on either side of the slash, so later on, I wrote down all fifty drawers worth of titles and began writing poems that I felt reflected each label’s juxtaposition. I felt the poems ought to try and bridge the two words on the label, creating a relationship through language, much in the way I believe we all create meanings with words.

With some research, I was able to find out that this large wooden cabinet had been used to house a custom index for a collection somewhere at the University of Iowa. Unfortunately, all the labels were removed before I could find out anything for certain and now the cabinet is empty, waiting to be given away or destroyed.

The card catalog intrigues me by its ability to be fascinating and useless at the same time. Language, too, is ultimately ephemeral in that it is always changing and never static. Language must be treated with a movement towards levity, as it is always light with us. Aesthetically, I strive for levity in my poems, not only through subject matter, but also through word choice and the visual effect of the text. As I am attempting to represent the card catalog through my poetics, I believe the card catalog also represents my views of poetry. I feel that poems ought to use fewer words to create jarring oppositions and phrases, which is probably why I was drawn to the card catalog. I believe this is how one explores language as a construct and liquidity rather than as a rigid structure. The function of poetry is to delve into and explode language. In this sense, the card catalog, which is now an ephemeral piece, has room for poetry to move within it, seeping through the disjunctive language present in the extinct labels. Where the relationship is remote, or maybe even non-existent, poetry, as a function of language, is able to propose meaning via its agile nature.

Amish Trivedi

Posted over on Jerome Rothenberg's Poems & Poetics