Field Effect

By Joshua Clover b. 1962 Joshua Clover

For 8 months he lay in bed over the

difference between “the bell rings” & “he rings

the bell.” Did those 2 “rings” SOUND

DIFFERENT? The invisible disturbance which

is the bell’s vibration beating at the air—a

FIELD EFFECT—does it shift with the

ringer’s will? This, he thought, was the

smallest difference between things which the

human mind could hold (or almost hold, the

thought-of-it falling away from the thinking,

a penny rolling to the horizon & so to

sleep . . .). He couldn’t get up. It became clear

that he was the murderer. Everyone knows. A

man standing at a podium reads from notes.

In the audience people nod in immaculate

suits, women & men. When I am done

someone will transcribe what I say into speech.

It will not resemble my notes. He is just THE

THING between his notes & his speech. This is

only fair, that he be the air. Some of the

women wear hats with feathers in them, wild,

candescent. In the audience is a boy named B,

not the letter, not the note. Another sound,

neither letter nor note—

Source: Madonna Anno Domini (Louisiana State University Press, 1997)

Biography

Poet, critic, and journalist Joshua Clover was born in 1962 in Berkeley, Calif. An alumnus of Boston University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Clover has published two volumes of poetry, Madonna anno domini (1997) and The Totality for Kids (2006). His poems have also appeared three times in Best American Poetry, and he has written two books of film and cultural criticism: The Matrix (2005) and 1989: Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This . . .

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