Reasons for Étant Donnés by Sara Cahill Marron: a Conceptual Work of Art

Manual for Poetic Contemplation

ApproximationDémontable:

Poetry as a Readymade

When Marcel Duchamp described Étant Donnés as an approximation démontable — “an approximation that can be taken apart” — he was admitting that meaning is never fixed. His tableau could be dismantled, boxed, moved, and reassembled, yet never exactly the same way twice.

Reasons for Étant Donnés operates in that same spirit. Each poem is a piece of a mechanism, a fragment that only begins to make sense when placed beside another, in the act of reading. You, the reader, are the assembler. What happens when the manual is followed exactly? What happens when you misplace a bead, or skip a page?

Like Duchamp’s readymades, these poems were not “crafted” in the sense of a sacred object, but selected, reconfigured, and given new status by being placed together. They are ordinary — language, body, ecology — but their arrangement produces something uncanny.

In this space, I’ll invite you to see how the “approximation démontable” works in poetry: how the mysteries of water, marriage, kingdom, transfiguration, and body can be taken apart, reassembled, and read anew each time.

Like Duchamp’s Étant Donnés, this book asks you to look closer — past the veil, into the light

What you see depends on how far you’re willing to enter.

I'm Ready

I'm not convinced

mystery of

water

"The glisten of tidebirth... a brutal baptism lashes light until it learns to speak.”

Enter the water →

mystery of marriage

The Miracle of the Wedding / demonstrates power / inspires disciples / a man and a woman / the man received spirit and life / and the woman received spirit and life / the man received understanding and the power of movement / the woman received understanding and the power of movement / the man received clothing / the woman received clothing / The man was named Ash / the woman was named Elm / never to mix roots / despite all they shared.

“Compost crawling with larvae, nourishing birds—an empire built on decay.”

mystery of kingdom

upon this Rock, I build my church / give you the keys to the kingdom /even Orpheus / charmed the gates of the underworld / with song / Odin hung himself / from the world tree / Yggdrasil for nine days and nights / all for knowledge / Prometheus stole fire / from Mount Olympus / tried to control the world / the feathered serpent deity / flew from a rock / with keys / fire / knowledge / on a ship of snakes.