Works Referenced In Annelyse Gelman's Vexations


Page	Stanza	Line from Vexations	Referenced	Author	Year

3	2	There were airs, waters, places, daughters	De aere, aquis et locis	Hippocrates	5th/4th c. BCE
3	3	Men with bird masks and wheelbarrows	Plague doctor costumes		17th c.
3	4	Just the ginkgos, a parent might say, regarding the smell	Ginkgo biloba
3	4	The dominant metaphor for the brain was the computer	The empty brain	Robert Epstein	2016
4	3	Exquisitely dependent, a scientist might say, regarding a spiderweb	Extended spider cognition	Hilton F. Japyassú and Kevin N. Laland	2017
4	5	Creamy like a library, someone wrote, regarding madness	I Love Dick	Chris Kraus	1998
4	5	Creamy, like certain roses, regarding a woman’s cheeks	In Search of Lost Time, Vol. II	Marcel Proust	1913-1927
4	5	Creamy bursts, regarding flares dropped from choppers	White Noise	Don DeLillo	1984
4	5	Creamy, a prayer between two flights	Cool Memories II	Jean Baudrillard	1987-1990
4	5	Creamy, the inner surface of one thigh	The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec	Kathy Acker	1975
5	5	Beneath the paving stones there was not a beach	"Sous les pavés, la plage!"	1968 Paris protests	1968
6	3	I pet her behind the ears like a little rabbit	Personal experience of the author	Auden Lincoln-Vogel	2010s
6	5	To move the angel, they tied a rope around its neck	"Does It Make You Feel Alive to Sing?"	Annelyse Gelman	2019
7	4	An incarcerated man asked for a photograph of the sun	Photo Requests from Solitary	Tamms Year Ten	2009-present
8	1	The entire pluck Could be removed en masse for complete evaluation	How to Perform an Equine Field Necropsy	Sally L. Ness and Fairfield T. Bain	2009
8	1	The weight of the ice melt slowly tilted the Earth	Rapid ice melting drives Earth's pole to the east (Geophysical Research Letters)	Chen, Jianli & Wilson, Clark & Ries, J.C. & Tapley, Byron	2013
8	1	As for the starry crown, we didn’t know what to do with it	"Down to the River to Pray"	African-American spiritual, c. 1867
8	2	A shy mimosa cringed when you touched it	Mimosa pudica
8	4	A procession of violent images culminating in a fact	Personal experience of the author
9	1	Hissing, we hit it with a hockey stick but it wouldn’t budge	Personal experience of the author
9	2	The cut was wide but not deep, praise be	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985
9	2	The blood was common-poppy red, the grass chroma-key green	Chroma key
10	1	People built a road straight through the base Of the oldest living tree in the world	The Chandelier Tree
10	2	The economy of attention was an economy of care	The attention economy
10	3	It was like walking up a tempered-glass staircase into a cloud	The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask	Nintendo	2000
10	3	From which there was no wisdom one could carry down	Exodus 32:15	Moses	c. 1400 BC
10	4	Acts of God, sending thoughts, nonbreaking space	"Thoughts and prayers"	American politicians	c. 2010s-present
11	1	Willows along the canal were smothered in something cotton candy–esque	Ermine moth larvae (Gespinstmottenraupen)
11	2	Creamy pudding, someone wrote, regarding knowledge	Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom	bell hooks	2014
11	2	A scheme always failed if you watched it being hatched	"Unspoken plan guarantee" trope
11	4	Like that woman who couldn’t pour a cup of tea Because it was frozen, like a glacier	Selective Disturbance of Movement Vision after Bilateral Brain Damage	J. Zihl, D. Von Cramon, and N. Mai	1983
11	5	Sometimes a brain got too big, holes had to be drilled	Trepanation
11	5	People always want more, no matter how much they have already	Economics: Concepts and Choices	McDougal Littell	2008
11	2	A figure’s hand was still encased in the marble block	Auguste Rodin
12	1	In a fake Russian schoolhouse an intern sprinkled Fake dust onto the fake wooden school desk	School No. 6	Ilya Kabakov	1993
12	3	People built robots to clean the dust off solar panels	21st-century technology
12	3	Birds flew through the light and were cooked in midair	"Streamers"
12	3	Over the PA someone said, A diamond is forever!	De Beers Group advertising slogan	Frances Gerety	1947
12	5	And she cried when the fox said, Please—tame me!	The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	1943
13	1	There was a poster of a painting of a girl about daughter’s age, standing in a snowy field	"Love Hunter II"	Michael Cheval	2015
13	3	The article called the tundra a giant white layer cake	B-46, Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica	National Geographic	2018
13	5	—I think something’s wrong with me, said daughter	"Grasshopper"	Annelyse Gelman	2019
14	3	We had a word for stepping on someone’s face with a boot	1984	George Orwell	1949
14	3	Who would preserve the smell of an expired carton of milk?	Personal experience of the author
14	3	The specialist said, Persistent and indiscriminate receptivity	Boredom	Siegfried Kracauer	1924
15	1	The box stridulated and daughter opened the lid	Stridulation
15	3	Creamy smoothness, someone wrote, regarding a fog-wreathed sea	"'Psychical Distance' as a Factor in Art and as an Aesthetic Principle"	Edward Bullough	1912
15	3	A little nectar was enough to make two hummingbirds Fight to the death	Personal experience of the author
15	3	The plant is the leaf, went the saying	The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture	Emanuele Coccia	2018
15	4	The form of the danger was an emanation of energy	Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant	Sandia National Laboratories	1993
15	4	As for the youngest, there were tender age facilities	At least 3 “tender age” shelters set up for child migrants	AP News	2018
15	4	We worshipped progress, there was nothing else to worship	This Is Water	David Foster Wallace	2005
15	5	Pain is weakness leaving, went the saying	"Pain is weakness leaving the body"	United States Marine Corps
16	2	If you become a little boy and run into a house, said the mother bunny, I said	The Runaway Bunny	Margaret Wise Brown	1942
16	2	I read her the book about the little rabbit Who says goodnight to every object in the room	Goodnight Moon	Margaret Wise Brown	1947
17	3	Over the PA someone said, If mine eye offend thee, pluck it out	Matthew 5:29	St. Matthew the Evangelist	1st c. AD
17	4	—The air is coming inside me, said daughter	Nausea	Jean-Paul Sartre	1938
17	5	Sweeping water back into the wine-dark sea	Iliad and Odyssey	Homer	8th c. BC
19	2	Thérèse, her thin red sweater, her Peter Pan collar, all adjectives . . .	Thérèse on a Bench-Seat (Thérèse sur une banquette)	Balthus	1939
20	1	A new hospital was the same place in a different location	Personal experience of the author
20	2	The dog barked at the moon but it wouldn’t come down	Blue Thinks The Moon Is Her Ball Again	Jessie Raspbury	2016
20	3	Birds in clear-cut woods mimicked heavy machinery	Lyrebirds, mockingbirds
21	1	Every leaf of every tree of every wood, went the saying	"Funes the Memorious"	Jorge Luis Borges	1962
21	3	On the grass the dusk just sort of sat there	"A Blessing"	James Wright	1963
21	3	Over the PA someone said, Eram quod es, eris quod sum	Epitaphs	Horace
21	1	The street, praise be, daughter’s little shadow in the big orange	The Handmaid's Tale	Margaret Atwood	1985
22	3	A rabbit looked like undetached rabbit parts	Word and Object	Willard Van Orman Quine	1960
22	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding ocean waves	The Lotos-eaters	Alfred, Lord Tennyson	1832
22	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding the inner arm	"Collude"	Bhanu Kapil	2019
22	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding the attire of musicians	"The Instruction Manual"	John Ashbery	1956
22	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding trees in Boston	"My Father Was White but Not Quite"	Fanny Howe	2008
22	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding a painting of a lemon	The Potions Master's Nephew: A Harry Potter Fanfiction	SeverelySnaped	2009
23	4	You could either tumble or run, run or tumble	Howard C. Berg	E. coli in motion	2005
23	5	Organ, an organ without a body	Body without organs	Antonin Artaud	1947
23	4	On mountains people practiced drawing circles	Ensō
24	1	We were compelled to adventure like the last prince cut his hair	Princess Mononoke	Hayao Miyazaki	1997
24	1	As for the trouble, we didn’t know how to stay with it	Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene	Donna Haraway	2016
24	3	Children had bad man practice to rehearse the obligatory song	US school shootings: Lullaby used to teach drills		2018
24	4	Creamy lake, someone wrote, regarding the object of passion	The Broom of the System	David Foster Wallace	1987
24	4	Creamy moons, someone wrote, regarding hothouse chrysanthemums shining through the golden gloom	Anne of the Island	Lucy Maud Montgomery	1915
24	4	Creamy as a cat, someone wrote, regarding excitement	Sylvia Plath	The Journals of Sylvia Plath	1982
24	4	Creamy iridescent coats of mail, someone wrote, regarding wheelbarrows	"At the Fishhouses"	Elizabeth Bishop	1948
24	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding a beige wall being looked at by someone who wasn’t anxious	Letters from Max	Sarah Ruhl & Max Ritvo	2018
24	4	Creamy drops of mammalian weather, someone wrote, regarding the tears of the sun	"That Rat's Death"	Eileen Myles	2015
24	5	Daughter wanted to know if this would be forever	David After Dentist	David DeVore Jr.	2009
25	3	The abandoned film set was the ruins of our civilization	In the Land of Drought	Julian Rosefeldt	2017
25	5	The caption said, Is our world gone? We say “Farewell”	Official passport, United States of America	Lyndon B. Johnson
26	1	Scientists put jellyfish genes in a rabbit	Scientists breed glow-in-the-dark rabbits		2013
26	2	On an intercity bus a person decapitated another person	Horror on Canadian bus as man beheaded		2008
27	3	The guy behind the camera asked kids to speak in tongues	Primitive Technology		2010s
27	3	R stood for Romeo, H stood for Hotel	NATO phonetic alphabet		1950s
28	1	Over the PA someone said, Powerless, but not helpless	Alcoholics Anonymous
28	5	How I love my babe-a-la, little baby girl, I sang	Personal experience of the author
28	1	She was everywhere, or starting to be everywhere	"Marvel of War"	Guillaume Apollinaire	1918
29	1	Into a window, we used to put a decal of a hawk on the glass	Personal experience of the author
29	3	An album of photographs of his little boy	Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood	Hiromu Arakawa	2009
29	4	Fugitive, a scholar might say, regarding knowledge	The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study	Fred Moten & Stefano Harney	2013
29	5	At the edge of one town a boy pressed one end of his flute	Personal experience of the author
30	1	—I know she could kill me, and she chooses not to, said daughter	Personal experience of the author
30	2	Ripe bananas just sat there like they weren’t even scarce	Personal experience of the author
30	3	Never show an idiot a half-finished job, went the saying	Russian idiom
30	3	Our eyes were staring, our mouths were open, our wings were spread	On the Concept of History & Angelus Novus	Walter Benjamin, on Paul Klee	1942
30	4	When you touched something, it touched you back, I read that once	Nausea	Jean-Paul Sartre	1938
30	5	They made a sound like grains of rice falling on a cymbal	Ricefall	Michael Pisaro-Liu
31	1	Engage in commerce with the outside world	Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President's Council on Bioethics		2008
31	3	The purpose of the rain was to be small and wet	"Natsukusa"	Annelyse Gelman	2023
32	1	One had a whole shelf of To the Lighthouse	To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf
32	2	Eyeless and terrible, said the book, and the book was right	To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf
32	2	Pain was the shadow of a bird on the shadow of a branch	"Dreams"	Richard von Sturmer	1993
32	2	An unprovoked act of senseless brutality was hardly mentioned	Children of Men	Alfonso Cuarón	2006
32	3	The medium is the message, went the saying	Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man	Marshall McLuhan	1964
32	4	Creamy with tenderness, someone wrote, regarding a child’s affections	The Childhood of a Leader	Jean-Paul Sartre	1939
32	4	Creamy pulp, someone wrote, regarding a brain cut by a scalpel	Methods of preparing, demonstrating, and examining cerebral structure in health and disease	Bevan Lewis	1881
32	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding a sumptuous evening	Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3	Anaïs Nin	1939-1944
32	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding a flower’s waxen flesh	On Being Ill	Virginia Woolf	1930
32	4	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding a brook full of garbage	Garbage	A. R. Ammons	1993
32	5	Flowers grew and bloomed and died and that was time passing	Adaptation	Charlie Kaufman	2002
32	2	Pain was the shadow of a bird on the shadow of a branch	"Dreams"	Richard von Sturmer	1993
33	3	People buying eggs got shot at the grocery store	Mass shootings in the United States
33	4	I thought it was firecrackers, said the DJ	Pulse nightclub shooting		2016
34	2	On his face there were black flies—hundreds	Personal experience of the author		2019

36	3	Fireflies were beating against the walls, tap tap tap tap	Wild Grass on the Riverbank	Hiromi Itō	2014
37	4	The community was a type of assistive technology, like a spiderweb	Extended spider cognition	Hilton F. Japyassú and Kevin N. Laland	2017
38	1	I don’t wanna have to kill myself	Personal experience of the author		2018
38	1	Little blue buildings in a big green valley	Little Boxes	Malvina Reynolds
38	4	There was no phonological loop, no visuospatial sketch pad	Baddeley's model of working memory
38	5	Onto the dusk-charged air we welded a new preposition	Into the Dusk-Charged Air	John Ashbery	1997
38	5	The acquisition window slid shut and I was feral forever	Critical period hypothesis
39	1	A pigeon participated in a token economy	Substitution effects in a generalized token economy with pigeons	Leonardo F Andrade, Timothy D Hackenberg	2017
39	5	Over the PA someone said, You don’t really care for music, do ya?	Hallelujah	Leonard Cohen	1984
40	1	—It’s a drawing of a HORSE in a cage	The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince)	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	1943
40	2	Creamy, someone wrote, regarding a woman in a dress	Suicide Club	Rachel Heng	2018
40	2	Creamy, the sharpened edge of a ceramic knife	Suicide Club	Rachel Heng	2018
40	2	Creamy, a stone, limestone	Loba	Diane di Prima	1973
40	2	Over the PA someone said, You know your mother doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s watching the war	Personal experience of the author		2022
40	3	Over the PA someone said, And the wisdom to know the difference	Serenity prayer	Alcoholics Anonymous
42	2	A plastic bag blew around in the visible spectrum	American Beauty	Sam Mendes	1999
42	2	Rain is only rain in midair, went the saying	"How to Pray"	Annelyse Gelman	2013
42	4	—What’s an ontological sickness? said daughter	Personal experience of the author
42	5	Indefinite postponement, said Hank	Criminal Law: Indefinite Postponement of Sentence		1958
42	5	—I don’t have access; I am access, said daughter	Personal experience of the author
43	2	Her back arched like a person that had just begun to be hit by a car	Pies z głową (“Dog with a head”)	Auden Lincoln-Vogel	2021
43	3	A maid stood next to a window pouring milk	The Milkmaid	Johannes Vermeer	1660
43	5	Over the PA someone said, Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires / To obtain pain of itself, because it is pain	De finibus bonorum et malorum	Cicero	100 B.C.
44	2	A spoken word is not a sparrow, went the saying	Russian idiom
44	3	You could refuse all ideology, which was an ideology	What is Art? Conversation with Joseph Beuys	Joseph Beuys
44	4	E.g., a boy pretending to catch and then eat a salmon	Primitive Technology
44	5	To reveal the wires, they opened daughter’s wrists	Metropolis	Rintaro	2001
45	1	Under the asphalt, the treacherous goo	La Brea tar pits
45	3	Petals licked at her like flames exchanging softnesses	"A Boy and a Girl" (Los Novios)	Octavio Paz	2008
45	5	Lorem ipsum dolor in the shade	Lorem ipsum	Cicero

Back to references table

Additional References

Men think they are better than grass

– W.S. Merwin

There is no person without a world.

– Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

Extended cognition cannot entirely replace centralised cognition; otherwise, the autonomy of the living system would disappear in a constant flux of ecological relations.

– Hilton F. Japyassú and Kevin N. Laland, Extended spider cognition (389)

Erthe toc of erthe erthe wyth woh.
Erthe other erthe to the erthe droh.
Erthe leyde erthe in erthene throh.
Tho heuede erthe of erthe erthe ynoh.

– Anonymous

If James Lovelock noted that the weather worked like a person, why not imagine a person as being like the weather? In other words, perhaps one might deconstruct personhood into ambience, atmosphere, surroundings, dwelling, environment. . . This would provide a more appropriate philosophical view (I am reluctant to say "ontological foundation") for a deep ecology, an ecology that could assume that a politics of the environment must be coterminous with a change in the view of those who exist in/as that environment. A poetry that articulated the person as environment would not invert anthropocentrism into "ecocentrism," it would thoroughly undo the notion of a center.

– Timothy Morton, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth

I am now working like a horse, as I must use the time in which it is possible to work and the carbuncles are still there, though now they only disturb me locally and not in the brainpan.

– Marx to Engels, 1865

I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.

– David Hume, 1739

Knowledge is by nature erotic—a guess is a kiss

– Graham Foust

FIRSTILIKEDEDGES
NOWILIKEITALL

– Jen Bervin, Silk Poems

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

– Elizabeth Bishop, Questions of Time

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them.

– Shakespeare, Henry V

We tortured some folks.

– Barack Obama

Give me a dozen healthy infants…

– John B. Watson

Like water I spilled out, all my limbs fell apart

– Psalms 22:13, tr. Robert Alter

I felt as if I were standing still, and yet I knew I was being carried along by the uninterrupted flow of time... Time was the only moving thing in which I moved, I tried to grasp it, and every night I knew I had failed.

– Michel Siffre, cave explorer

A) I love them. B) They might be the most useful musical tool ever invented. On some level everything we hear can be separated out as a collection of sine tones. This means that in some contexts they can become invisible, affecting things without us directly hearing them (this is probably my favorite thing about them).

– Michael Pisaro, on sine waves