Free Gossamurmur by Anne Waldman Page B

of this poem were written while traveling in North Africa, living and working for several weeks in Marrakech on two occasions. I first arrived shortly after the bombing of the Argana café in the medina of Jamaa el Fna, a terrorist act that killed seventeen people and wounded twenty-five on April 28, 2011. I also was working with a foundation that had a library and a center for translation, Dar Al-Ma’mûm (House of Wisdom), near Marrakech, named for the son of a caliph in Abbasid-era Iraq, and the notion of preservation was keen on people’s minds, given the ransacking of museums and other sites of archive during frequent times of strife and war and inclement weather.
    Caddis fly catch-nets
    The name of the order of insects,
Trichoptera,
to which caddis flies belong, comes from the Greek words meaning “hair” and “wing.” They are also called rail-flies or sedge-flies and resemble moths. The combination of hair and wing and a gossamer-like membranous quality—brought to my attention by Peter Warshall—was an eidolon for the poem.
    Dark Lady of my DNA
    Rosalind Franklin was a chemist whose research was used without her permission by Francis Crick and James Watson in their scientific breakthrough around DNA and the double helix.
    demolishing stacks in a library
    A reference to the much-debated renovation plan that would demolish seven floors of “stacks” at the New York Public Library. Many of the books would be stored under Bryant Park; with a new compromise generated by great protest from artists and writers and scholars, a new facility for storage would be built under the library. Many opponents have feared that the Central Library Plan will turn the historic Forty-Second Street Library into a giant Internet café.
    Djinn: Jinn
    Jinn (Arabic:, singularvariant spelling
djinn
), or genies, are described in the Qur’an and in Arab folklore and Islamic mythology as occupying an alternative world to that of mankind. Jinn, humans, and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. The Qur’an mentions that jinn are made of smokeless flame or “scorching fire.” Like human beings, the jinn may also be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent.
    Djuna Barnes
    I observed the celebrated and somewhat reclusive author of
Nightwood
in my Greenwich Village neighborhood as a child. Barnes stands in as a guardian here, and the site where she lived, at 5 Patchin Place, is an historic landmark. She reappears in New York City dreams. There is no visible plaque or marker at this site acknowledging her former residence there.
    Holy Grail as a blank check
    David Graeber’s provocative idea of the Holy Grail as a blank check is from his book
DEBT: The First 5,000 Years
(Melville House, 2011), an inspirational tome for the Occupy movement.
    “…(I swear it) from the breath”
    From Charles Olson, “Projective Verse,” 1950.
    Juan Goytisolo
    Born January 6, 1936, in Barcelona, Juan Goytisolo is a Spanish poet, essayist, and novelist who has been living in voluntary self-exile in Marrakech. He has been largely responsible for the saving and preservation of the Jamaa el Fna square and market in Marrakech’s medina, one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
    [L]ike a spider, like an octopus, like a centipede slithering away, wriggling and writhing, escaping one’s embrace, forbidding possession, there is no way of getting a firm grasp on it.…
    The spectacle of Jamaa el Fna is repeated daily and each day it is different. Everything changes—voices, sounds, gestures, the public which sees, listens, smells, tastes, touches. The oral tradition is framed by one much vaster—that we can call intangible. The Square, as a physical space, shelters a rich oral and intangible tradition.
    —Juan Goytisolo, on the active culture of Jamaa el Fna, Opening Meetings, May 15, 2001
    one of two
    Ida used to sit and as she sat she said am I one or am I two. Little by little she was one of two, that is to say