Form of an Epitaph

By Liz Howard

In the essay by M. NourbeSe Philip in her collection Zong!, she posits that the legal document Gregson vs. Gilbert is effectively a “tombstone,” the only public marker of a massacre.  If that document is a grave marker then perhaps Zong! is a metaphysical post-modern epitaph in which the dead are honoured and their stories lie in the spark of mind with fragmented space.

The form of this work is the focus, the fore-front, the core, the the of it.  In her essay Philip spoke of how the mind actively and productively engages with the work. The mind seeks to fill in the fragment, create to make meaning. The “poetics of fragmentation” demand more productive thinking and therefore respect each mind in its ability to complete, extend, and extrapolate. It is an activity that creates a “spronging” in my cognitive groin — the pleasure of creation, but also guilt about it.

The way the words are positioned far apart on the page creates saccadic eye movements. A saccade is a high-speed eye movement from one target to the next (think of searching for a specific face in a crowd; your eyes dart from face to face and only pause long enough for facial recognition). During a saccade visual processing is suppressed due to increased pressure on the retina.  While the eye is moving one is effectively blind (albeit for less than a second) but this fact is imperceptible (pun intended). This is because your brain fills in what it believes should be there based on experience and expectations.

When we read we know the long spaces exist between the words because we have perceived these spaces directly. However during the actual reading of the text, the brain is taking a sort of neurological leap of faith, believing that the spaces in fact exist. I believe this fact is significant in relation to the process it mirrors or parallels. The perceptual experience of the text involves a visuospatial “filling in” of information and the spiritual (gasp!) experience of the text involves a temporal “filling in” of information.  Zong! creates a phenomenological experience in which the reader is transported through time, or in which a temporally grounded perception is enacted. The space between the words, the time between our bodies, our breath, and the ability of the mind to leap a connection: Zong!

Afternote

April 12, 2010

In her essay “Notanda,” found toward the end of Zong!,  M. NourbeSe Philp begins with “There is no telling this story: it must be told.” (p.189) This notion is something I found myself inhabiting after a close reading of the text. Since this was one of the first texts of poetry I had engaged with critically when joining Influency — my background is in science not literature —I struggled with how to discuss the work with the seriousness and respect the text clearly warranted. I found that one strategy was to discuss the text in a framework I felt I had some familiarity with, that of cognitive neuroscience. Via this method, I experienced immense pleasure engaging with the fragment-laden fields and recombinatory prowess of Zong! while also retaining a sense of mournful awe. The “spronging” referenced above came from introductory remarks made by Margaret Christakos about Philip’s work in relation to soul music and Sina Queyras’s Expressway.