Imagenus  

 

 

 

Ethan Cohen 

Defense Date: November 5th, 2019  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advisor: Dr. Julie Carr—English Department  Honors Council Representative: Professor Noah Gordon—English Department  Out-of-Department Reader: Professor Joel Swanson—ATLAS  

 

 

Cohen 2 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Imagenus 

 

         

  

Cohen 3 

In two dimensions there are three:    a sprig in some white little ruts of light.    See how  you can taste this.                           

 

 

     

Cohen 4 

I learn  its color:    a lilt of gray    smeared on  the window.                             

   

    

Cohen 5 

I will taste  my mouth.   I will sail out  to say   you. Okay  hold on                                      

Cohen 6 

I put things where you are,  and remember to file the crow  under ‘not yet’,   we uninvent.  

It flies away.             

     

Cohen 7 

Enter the creek   with will and  honey agate,    whom   

I conjure.                                       

Cohen 8 

We strong  a stone   toward the  babel   and look,   

I only know a hand  full of words. 

                                    

Cohen 9 

I know knoll. There is one downstream   and when it is wash-hungry   we splay like dogs.         

               

Cohen 10 

I know notion.   Is it  that we are  one?  or broke or are we will and honey agate  

afloat.                                     

Cohen 11 

Collection.  in many senses we are  a dead one.  The first thing  I ever knew  to be true.  *                                 

Cohen 12 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burial Committee 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cohen 13 

Let us unspool  

this carpet  in accidents.  There is clarity in accidents.                                         

Cohen 14 

I hear  a chair   before ever   seeing one  as the bones  of a thicket,  the length  of one minute  in wood.          

                           

Cohen 15 

I sit in  the discovery  of living rooms.   Actually,  I am the first   to pull a chair  out of the creek   and ready it  for funeral.  

  

                              

Cohen 16 

There is so much missing that when I see snow, I wave.   Some days  you leave without  you. So inside  I crush  and take up drawing  at all.                                    

Cohen 17 

                                                                          

Cohen 18 

Turning toward  a mirror piece   I weave  the image.  Is it leaking?   There is clarity in puddles.         

              

Cohen 19 

A pool pools around us.   You drink   and wash   in a house  which is not  your own.  There must be a name  for this.                                  

Cohen 20 

We window  at the light   and I hum a while.  My heart starts to vacuum.          

                

Cohen 21 

I burst at it.   The storm   on the porch near a chair  in the grass,   which is actual.                                         

Cohen 22 

I say  to the glass,  I say  to the storm,  I wonder where  you are anymore.   There you are.   

    

       

Cohen 23 

Bereft is the foundness of a little quarry,  a place we sit  to winter,    hold a thicket  close like  mother’s knuckles.                                    

Cohen 24 

In the piles of agate and seed,   I think you reach  out your hand  to find a tree  already growing  at some little  pieces of the sun.    *                                 

Cohen 25 

     

  

Conjurer 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

Cohen 26 

To describe stone as metal,  is missing  heat.  This I can feel.   See how heavy my tongue is?                                    

Cohen 27 

A space  between cliffs  and water is called  emptiness or something.     

           

Cohen 28 

You are  odd now,    and I have  cried easily  to the sound  of milk bottles  on the porch in a storm.                                   

Cohen 29 

I am told  this is just  the math  of honey,  a way to fountain  the dryness.                                    

Cohen 30 

I dig up a key over by the water  and open   my body   for filling with real rocks—   this is muscle logic?  or something  

invisible                                

Cohen 31 

When I  discover  afternoons   I tell every car  who will listen  to watch me disappear the sun                                   

Cohen 32 

and wait for  the day   to bury. We all start  kissing just a little.                                      

Cohen 33 

Enter a birthed concept of up.  I take myself   to the log  and plant a finger there.  I return to find the whole hand.         

            

Cohen 34 

The sun is hot.  My hair is hot.  October is hot but in a slanty way.                                          

Cohen 35 

I think this is how the  crow flies:  unfettered, a black stain  piles the sky.                                       

Cohen 36 

I compress  and stage some burial  for a bone I found.  It is a dark cold fraction.  The moon pining for breeze drinks milk at a found table.                                      

Cohen 37 

These boiled years and late nights  pack muscle onto skeletons,  the nearness  of a new picture,  I move in  to a warm form.  The hand is sprouting a long arm.                                   

Cohen 38 

I splay like dogs  in rain  I splay like steam  from pockets   I dig in for  the ends  of town hauling stone   until I sleep it all  

knowing                              

Cohen 39 

somewhere  finds me  all hung up, hands in my pocket  scratching initials  into fabric  until I am.  * 

    

                             

Cohen 40 

           

  

The Grid and its Shadow  

 

            

Cohen 41 

I have been tilling   the afternoons  for a brain.   I am measured  now. I know  how I am.                                      

Cohen 42 

There is more then there is light  then there is more light.   My calendar exploded the year all over.                                       

Cohen 43 

In honor  of some woods,   I make a return to babble.  The tongue is  a bottle of lead.  A crow laughs at me.       

 

 

        

Cohen 44 

I cannot walk  and also see myself:   This is the  root I tumble over always,  how to speak  about my own pink tongue.                                    

Cohen 45 

Things have cooled  and you are again  pacing behind blue, blue eyes.   I am sorry for the interruption  and the storms  and all the uninvented  chairs forested in the house.                                   

Cohen 46 

The truth is that  there is a light patch   and a dark patch  and a fence-post   and its shadow.  and I am trying to fit   them all into a single world.                                    

Cohen 47 

So I smear honey  on a stone   and place it in  a stump,   the sweetness  of a wooden foundry  is the scent  of it’s image.   How many of these deposits have I made?                                 

Cohen 48 

I grow a body   a leg, a mess  of teeth.  I loud onto  green surfaces,   still life.          

                      

Cohen 49 

Knowing how a wet mouth  in the creek looks,   I check it.  Pull a stone out.   Cast one  for someone.   Dip myself slow  like a buoy in the milk of things.    *                               

Cohen 50 

 Bibliography 

 

Celan, Paul. Poems of Paul Celan. Translated by Michael Hamburger, Persea Books, 1972. 

This collection contains both English and the original German versions of Celan's 

important works spanning from 1952 through 1976. Celan's preoccupation with the body, 

the self and its relationship to others provided a thematic example from which I worked. 

Creeley, Robert. Windows. New Directions Publishing, 1987. 

Creeley's short form poems modeled impactful, concise poetics. 

Foust, Graham W. Necessary Stranger. Flood Editions, 2007. 

One of the most formative books of poetry for me, Foust's language and wordplay model 

how poetry can at once be funny, strange and crushing all in a two line stanza. 

Howe, Susan. The Quarry. New Directions Publishing, 2015. 

A book of previously uncollected essays, The Quarry explores art, history and loss in New 

England. Howe's work is heavily historical, and as a result, utilizes image and found text to 

supplement Howe's own language, which is why this collection was influential in working 

with multiple mediums. 

Howe, Susan, and James Welling. That this. New Directions Publishing, 2010. 

Howe's expertise in repurposing found text for poetic and visual ends was valuable to draw 

from in manipulating my own images. 

Cohen 51 

 

Jogging House. From, Seil Records, 2017. 

An atmospheric modular synth record which aesthetically influenced the work. Also served 

as a model for the dynamics, textures and temperatures that I aimed to channel.  

Krauss, Rosalind. "Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America." The MIT Press, vol. 3, Oct. 1977, 

pp. 68-81, doi:10.2307/778437. 

Krauss recaps Lacan’s mirror-stage, and discusses signs and referents as they relate to art, 

and specifically, photography. This article was important because it speaks theoretically 

about one of the key relationships I explore: the relations between different modes of 

referral.  

Nguyen, Hoa. Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008. Wave Books, 2014. 

Nguyen's work provides an example of functional space, and absurd image combinations 

which are atmosphere creating. Her total originality and creativity amount to work which is 

at once inspiring and frustrating to emulate. 

Rankine, Claudia. Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Graywolf Press, 2017. 

Rankine's book is a mediation on American depression, medication and post-911 anxiety. 

This book influenced the placement of images and design of my pages. 

 

 

Cohen 52 

 

Steensen, Sasha. Gatherest. Ahsata Press, 2017. 

Steensen's work gives a formal example of how space functions in a longer piece. Gatherest 

features three long poems, all distinct in form, but working toward the thematic and 

aesthetic atmospheric unity toward which I also write. 

Swenson, Cole. Noon. Sun & Moon Press, 1997. 

Swenson writes about the process by which we develop a relationship with our body. The 

object based voice influenced my own. 

Wilkinson, Joshua M. Selenography. Sidebrow Books, 2010. 

Wilkinson writes poems congruent with polaroids by Tim Rutili, and creates a relationship 

with image that is not always easily apparent, but is always present. This was useful in 

observing the relationship between language and image in practice. 

Wilkinson, Joshua M. Swamp Isthmus. Black Ocean Books, 2013. 

Wilkinson's method of delineation and section titling served as a model for the sections in 

Imagenus. Additionally, his pacing, voice and object based images construct a world akin to 

visions I have for my own work.