Banca de DEFESA: ANDRE FILIPE PESSOA

IRRESOLUTE VORTEX: Memory, time and subjectivity in Ann Lauterbach’s writing

Our objective is to introduce Ann Lauterbach’s poetic and critical work by outlining four aspects of her writing: (1) poetic language irresolution as trace; (2) memory and its residual and fragmental interaction with language, time and subjectivity; (3) contemporary and untimely attitude towards tradition and transgression; (4) the poetical effort to subjective unsettlement. Therefore, through those four aspects we demonstrate how the poet - born in 1942 in New York City, United States - apprehends language as architectural to rectify absences. Lauterbach is aware that the intentions that teases the artist’s mind and body may not align with the reader’s apprehensions. The poet believes that readers search for their own meaningful fragments. Then, we offer a critical reading on memory and its relation to the poet’s écriture. In this case, we approach the contraction between remembrance and forgetting concerning time and subjectivity. Those aspects lead us to delve into the anachronistic quality of the contemporary. We argue on the conception of polyrhythmic, contemporary and untimely perception of the poet’s writing. Finally, we reach the subjective tension that underlies Lauterbach’s work. In that case, we show how the poet moves from the egotistic “I” to the congregational “we”, hoping for a continuum in the poetic realm as a form of community.