Atet A.D. - Softcover

Mackey, Nathaniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872863824 ISBN 13: 9780872863828

Publisher: City Lights Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Atet A.D. is the third volume of Nathaniel Mackey's ongoing epistolary fiction, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate. Like the first two volumes, Bedouin Hornbook and Djbot Baghostus's Run, this work is written by the composer/multi-instrumentalist N., a founding member of a band formerly known as the Mystic Horn Society.

The letters in Atet A.D. span a seven-month period beginning shortly after Thelonious Monk's death and culminating in the band recording their first album on John Coltrane's birthday. Rendered in N.'s distinctive mix of discursive registers, they chronicle and meditate upon, among other events, Penguin's return from seclusion, N.'s recurring cowrie shell attacks, the band's adoption of a new name, and their being beset, beginning with a gig in Seattle, by a new, perplexing twist in their expressive powers.

"As with all of Mackey's prose fiction, his hermeneutic speculations are advanced as much by the power of puns as by syllogistic reasoning. For all the wordplay, Mackey manages to cover a lot of ground in this neo-novel, which is not so much about "characters" as it is about ideas and themes like gender equality, the survival of African customs and spiritual values in America, and the play of dreams within our waking realities. Most idiosyncratically, Mackey, with his nuanced knowledge of jazz, convinces the reader that music operates like a language, with all the power to convey, say, a specific feminist critique of male-centered jazz culture, or to acquire levels of symbolism that would make Dante wonder if he should have taken up sax."—Publishers Weekly

"Atet A.D. is a fascinating work of poetic/musical fiction-storytelling that plays with, and is inspired by, language and the mystical concepts and connections that arise unbidden from the manipulation of metaphor and meaning, while simultaneously fueled by the sounds and energy of American jazz which Mackey views as a source of spiritual and sexual discipline and discovery."—Art Lange, Pulse

Nathaniel Mackey, recipient of a 1993 Whiting Writers’ Award, is the author of School of Udhra and Whatsaid Serif, both also published by City Lights Publishers. He won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006, was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2014, and won Yale's Bollingen Prize for American Poetry in 2015. He teaches a poetry workshop at Duke University.

About this title

About the Author

NM, poet and critic, is the author of three books of poetry, Eroding Witness(National Poetry Series) 0252012305, School of Udhra (City Lights) 187286278X, and Whatsaid Serif (City Lights) 0872863417, and two volumes of an ongoing prose composition "From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate": Bedouin Hornbook (Sun & Moon) 1557132461 and Djot Baghostus's Run. He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone and the author of a book of critical essays. He teaches at Univ. of CA, Santa Cruz.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From "So Dja Seh, or, The Creaking of the Word: After-the-Fact Lecture/Libretto (Drennette Virgin), Act One": Penny wondered was it a dream the way the mist came down like a diffuse hammer, a dream how the hammer’s head, blunt but exploded, unlike a hammer came down so gently she moaned. She lay in bed in her room at Hotel Didjeridoo. She knew it never snowed down under, but no sooner had she dismissed the thought of the mist coming down like a diffuse hammer than she thought of it as coming down like snow. No sooner did she dismiss this thought than she thought of it as coming down like ash.

This had to be someone’s doing Penny thought. In telepathic touch only the day before with her sister Djeannine living in Djibouti, she decided that someone had to be her. Why would Djeannine do such a thing, she wondered, just as what sounded like a bass trombone hit a note so low it made the windows rattle.

There was always music at Hotel Didjeridoo — mostly no more than an all but inaudible background growl or hum, but on occasion it rose, as it did now, in volume as well as intensity, an insistent, insinuative thread or threnodic complaint which told of loss, laceration, collapse. The low note, however, was hit not by a bass trombone but by the hotel’s namesake axe. It initiated a riff one could only call doo-wop didjeridoo, a funky-sweet rhythmic foray into ditty-bop dreamtime.

Penny wondered again was it a dream the way the mist came down — hammer, snow, ash, the way it was all three of them alternating one by one. Let it be said I saw it all wear down she more thought than said, though, all but inaudibly, under her breath, she said it as well. But there was something overdone, prematurely elegiac, about this. She was glad she hadn’t said it louder, glad Penguin, thank God, hadn’t heard. But it was just like Djeannine to try to spoil her fun she reflected, changing register from resigned-elegiac to sibling-rival-indignant, letting the mist coming down make her moan again.

Meanwhile Penguin continued licking the soft flesh of her inner thigh, letting his tongue venture tentatively closer to the mat of pubic hair and the lips underneath it which were moist already, ready, salty-sweet. He took the soft flesh of her left inner thigh between his teeth, a pretend bite Penny thought of as being seized by Penguin’s beak, the namesake beak he too thought of this way (with the added spin that, austral bird, antarctic bird, he sought mammal warmth, marsupial warmth, in the salty-sweet cleft between Penny’s legs).

The low note announcing ditty-bop dreamtime had caught Penguin’s ear as well. It only intensified the heat he was in. Penny had dabbed a drop of perfume on each inner thigh and the mix of flower smells and pubic funk made for a scent he’d have given a king’s ransom to capture in sound. Thus it was that in taking the flesh of her left inner thigh between his teeth he sought to seize the synaesthetic equation of love-bite with embouchure, music with musk. The low note announcing ditty-bop dreamtime made it maddeningly clear he hadn’t even come close.

It seemed only appropriate, though, that namesake beak had taken over. The train of events culminating in this tryst had begun with a photo Penguin received in the mail it seemed ages ago, a photo someone had sent him of Penny sitting on a chair. Shot from a slight angle rather than straight-on, the photo showed her wearing a dark blue blouse and skirt. The skirt was a short one, hem at about mid-thigh, and she sat relaxed, her legs nonchalantly parted — not flagrantly so, albeit open enough to reveal a bit of her panties. This one saw, however, only after lifting a parakeet feather which had been taped to the photograph — taped at an angle between her legs, covering what little could be seen of her crotch. It was the recollection of this feather which now brought out the bird in Penguin, brought out the beak with which he bit Penny’s inner thigh. He thought of his pursuit of marsupial warmth as a return to basics: feather and fur. Florid perfume, pubic funk and recollected feather worked him into a frenzy.

Penguin and Penny were conceptually complicit, giving birth to a feathered-furred amalgam which olfactorily included fish attributes as well. Furred-fish-alighted-on-by-feather spoke to their need for an annunciative mix, a new day which would contend with realist constriction, realist constraint. "The wing praises the root by taking to the limbs" was the motto inscribed above the entrance to the hotel. Both Penny and Penguin thought of it as endorsing the way he now addressed her leg, taking to it by applying namesake beak to soft inner thigh. The motto lent itself to the need for flight in which they were caught up, the need which had brought them to the hotel. It was a need to plumb depths even as one flew, to probe roots as though plume and plumb shared a common origin. "Plumbage" named a neologistic mix of which furred-fish-alighted-on-by-feather was the announcement. Hence the low note announcing ditty-bop dreamtime.

About this edition

• Publisher: City Lights Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0872863824
• ISBN 13: 9780872863828
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192