Then spree

“Only the mechanical voice / that nothingness assumes in times like these.” Joaquín Giannuzzi (translation by Richard Gwyn).

So does nothingness have a voice? Does it sound like nonsense? It is dehuman, debodied, mechanic Giannuzzi suggests.

Only only. Just this.

“Because the voice belongs to no one when you are waiting for a doctor to answer your call,” says Giannuzzi. “Before long the doctor’s non-response / has required / the strangeness of utopia,”

What is utopia other than nothing? What is the voice of utopia? What is the noise of the voice? “Poetry makes nothing happen” says Auden.

“The human heart is told / Of nothing – / Nothing is the force that renovates the World,” says Emily Dickinson.

“I feel that ‘nothing’ is generative and opens up a dynamic space,” says Peter Gizzi.

Meanwhile, for Giannuzzi: “the constant homicide of creation”.