Lily-Cannelle Mathieu

Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Canada.

lily-cannelle.mathieu@mail.mcgill.ca

​

Abstract    Sounds from a formalist ontology is a poetry diptych exploring words, literary sounds, thoughts, and images folded within a formalist ontology – an ontology constrained by, and subjected to, form. It stems from the ripples of a poetical anthropological study concerned with form and visual perception, and engages with fiction and fabulation as modes of knowledge and experience.

 

Résumé     Sounds from a formalist ontology (Sons d’une ontologie formaliste) est un diptyque poétique explorant mots, sons littéraires, pensées et images plié-e-s dans une ontologie formaliste – une ontologie contrainte par, et soumise à, la forme. Il émane des ondulations d’une étude poétique et anthropologique s’intéressant à la forme et à la perception visuelle, et entre en relation avec la fiction et la fabulation comme modes de connaissance et d’expérience.

 

Keywords  poetry; ontology; form; perception; fiction

​

​​

Sounds from a formalist ontology

 

​

i. flesh’s bones

​

an
impossibility
 

of immunity


, from form
, from structure.

 

 

Octopi have no bones

 

   but are the matter of genomic structures
   – form-ed, structured.

 

Is
a fold,
a curl,
a tentacle,
a tongue,
a human,
a poem
, free?

 

   , free from subjection to form
   , free from structure and structuration?

 

Is
An excess of skin
, of flesh,
an excess of vision
, free?

 

Excess,
Madness –

Hallucination,
Illusion –

 

, free?

 

 

 

     ii. I only see ink, now

 

I cannot see

freedom –
an absence of ontological limitations,
an independence from external control

 

 

– is it

an emptiness, an inexistent?


a lure?
a lie?
a deception?
a fable?
 

 

Drenched in ink
soaked in seawater,
wet of salt,
 

I cannot
unsee

my inability to see

freedom

 

from

form

 

 

, my inability to see

.

 

My eyes are stained
The cephalopod has escaped

 

 

I only see
ink
now

 

and the constraining, restraining, frightening

 

hold

of form
.

 

​

​

Acknowledgements     

Many, many thanks to my anonymous reviewers and to the CORA team for publishing this work.