Attention Span 2012 | Maya Weeks

Maggie Nelson | Bluets | Wave Books | 2009

To go out from the point of a colour.

Gaston Bachelard, trans. Maria Jolas | The Poetics of Space | Beacon Press | 1994

Reading this aloud on the wooden floor of a one-room apartment in Sweden furnished with only a coffee table and four old grammar school chairs. Trying not to fall in love.

Jean Baudrillard, trans. James Benedict | The System of Objects | Verso | 2005

Addresses the positive space to Bachelard’s negative, with a complementary regard for sublimation. What makes a world?

Marcel Proust, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrief and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright | Swann In Love | Modern Library | 1998

Mitigate time, space, sensation. “An anguish the present assuagement of which was so agreeable that it might almost be called happiness.”

Joan Retallack | The Poethical Wager | California | 2004

Yelling from this on the steps at Occupy Oakland. Witnessing closed membranes become more permeable.

Anaïs Nin | Diary Volume I 1931-1934 | Mariner | 1969

“I am not committed to any of the political movements which I find full of fanaticism and injustice, but in the face of each human being, I act democratically and humanly. I give each human being his due. I disregard class and possessions. It is the value of their spirit, of their human qualities I pay my respect to, and to their needs as far as I am able to fulfill them. If all of us acted in unison as I act individually, there would be no wars and no poverty.”

Gertrude Stein | The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | Vintage | 1990

Did not begin again, just began.

Arthur Rimbaud, trans. Bernard Mathieu | A Season in Hell / Illuminations | BOA | 1991

“It’s the vision of numbers. We’re going towards the spirit. What I’m saying is absolutely sure, it’s oracular. I understand and, not knowing how to explain myself without using pagan words, I’d rather shut up.”

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha | Dictee | California | 2001

Three generations, four languages, unreckonable stories.

John Ashbery | Flow Chart | Farrar | 1998

Every time I’ve gone swimming this week I’ve found myself bleeding when I’ve gotten out of the water without knowing what’s scraped me. Until I was two-thirds of the way through this book I didn’t have any idea what I was reading, then I felt like I was on an endless beach walk.

Inger Christensen, trans. Susanna Nied | It | New Directions | 2006

Life is holy. While the Danish language emphasizes location, English relies on time. How does this play out in the coda? the pronoun? us?

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Maya Weeks’s obsession is and has been and probably will continue to be the intersection of systemic + intimate. Based in Oakland, California, her endeavors are in merging worlds.

This is her first contribution to Attention Span. Return to 2012 directory.