Reaching further back into my personal archive of whiteness, I find this poem—written in Iowa City about 1971 or ’72 and published in 1975, on the theme. It is the second poem in my first book, Opera—Works. The title quotes a line from Charles Olson’s “The Kingfishers.”
The Whiteness Which Covers All
Magnum opus
white
marginal waves
nested in whiteness
The triangle dilated
fragments—
the voracious snake
hidden
in the sheets of—
White sea
flat under a white sky
The narrow eye, such that
it encompassed the
compelling frigidity.
I was
witnessed throughout.
From Barrett Watten, Opera—Works (Bolinas, Calif.: Big Sky Books, 1975), 6; reprinted in Frame (1971–1990) (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1997), 280. Copyright (c) Barrett Watten 1975, 1997, 2015.
