Henry's Two-Step Program for Escaping the Cardboard Box of Poepastry Clubhouse:

1. Literary Absolute
2. Metaform

Henry's Explanation of Two-Step Program:

I've been reading Donna Tartt's novel The Little Friend. She worked on it ten years & created a world.

I wrote about "metaform" on this blog around 1/23-1/24 or so. Instead of talking to each other so much like a pack of barhound weasels, why not think about the aspects of world & society, the different languages or discourses, which a poet is able to reflect intelligently & curiously in their work? What real or imagined wholenesses of a world are they able to bring to bear & bring to music? That, along with perfect pitch, seems like a useful measure of value, if you have to even think about it. As far as the valueless - making lists of what you don't like - how anal can you get?

This is a little lecture to the younger set. After this I'm not talking to you. I'm interested in the unknown reader, not you louts. Behold Donna Tartt, & be afraid. She might turn her cool & creepy & cultured & satirical measuring rod on you someday.

from toward the conclusion of Forth of July (imagine some spacings between some phrases, which I can't manage in this system):


11

It's a narrow ford across the Jordan
a small cupola of water-light
and all our knowledge but a pond
a snoring frogpond madjayanine

when I go kigamanin I will give you
gocu surely gabizikamun what
you will wear widjiwiyun my courting
child if you go with me (the intervals

were sung glissando the metric is slow
and not rigidly maintained all the
Chippewa love songs somewhat rubato)
your little cuppa midway drum-waltz

to the clouds your mighty copper penny
is bronze s.o.s. unfolding as the bent
pole-stirrer of the clay my wee tugboat
alight musters that Julian draconian

taconite turning to caritas seed-jewel
before our eyes and if the bluish cloud
palm-shade Elijah's ravine-dulcimer
or Ezekiel's exact X-catenary wheels

are reels ambitious mother
then lucky Sophie dance!
And do a handstand
now with theremin

and soda (Scotch)
through golden Appalachia
flying the sunny disarray
(a coupla stingy wasps

are fighting bumblebees) (the bee
already master) where the yawning
oreship spreads dove-wings (yon Noah-
Jonah-craft) pshmwly (buzzing in Siberia)

2.8.2000

more prehistoric Henry (mid-1970s):



LAND OF LINCOLN


It is enough to be with them,
the children like shy seedlings,
and the newspaper shedding its phrases
to the sleepy music in the squares.
It is enough to step out,
wind dusting ashes from the sill,
workmen hauling everything away,
furniture, knicknacks, loveletters
written in robin's egg, and spidery
aquamarine. A parade, they said,
is a mild form of chaos,
and so we marched, eyes closed,
to the somnolent trumpets and drums -
around the familiar four corners,
the sad mothers fainting, and dizzy
children, dazzled by flags and ice cream.
The mayor spoke under the statue
erected over the slain brigade. A breeze
touched every bowed head, leading us
to the flag-draped coffin of our lord.
Impossible to step away from summer -
the raft the river carries under us,
and the canoe of the silent ferryman,
lifting his hand for a copper penny.

written around 1200 by Ibn al-Marzuban:
Book of the Superiority of Dogs Over Many of Those Who Wear Clothes

So, in honor of this cardinal day, 3/5 Akhmatova, here is the conclusion to July (3rd volume of Forth of July) (some of the spacings between words do not show in this format):

24

Outside it was now broad daylight; the sun stood some distance up in the sky, looking down on a desolate earth. It was going to be cold today, Per Hansa noticed; clouds of frosty mist like huge writhing serpents curled over the surface of the purplish-yellow plain. The sunbeams plunging into them kindled a weird light. He tingled with cold. . .
. . . How remarkable - the child had been born with the helmet on!. . .He quickened his pace; in a moment he was running
- O.E. Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth


A breezy Sunday in March clouds
crossing the sunlight and in the clay
birdhouse my mother made (knocked
down when its iron wires went slack)

we found a grass birdnest (we can fix
the wire put the birdhouse back up
in the pussy willow it will keep
for another winter extra nef

for another chickadee) Mardi Gras
is coming then comes Lent
Sam Patch in scrambled quilt
crazy Pawtucket from Cumberland

goes into river leaping drifting far and
circling home again so long, Patch
and Julius big Roman E fading chap
a few notes only left left only a ray

of dark matter from the marina or
quintessence of Wimpzilla Pinochet
pinned up with mule's ears by Tin Pan
Blind Tom ineffable inexplicable fingers

of grace out of servitude a fleece
of sound from beneath bronze shield
J's seedy C from Caesar's ceded
sea so see-saw Mediterranean 4-leafy

whorled and loftward bound for the E
in Philadelphy out of Penn's woods
in love with a certain pithy sound
smoked from a tripod's Apollonian thief

of yellow sweetings fading downstream
Lenten crossroad of ash forehead
singing singing brow-bow a drifter-
figurehead mirror-matter's mystery

this waltz become a rivereeee
fox trot of bumblebeeee
my clovery prayer è mobile
crost eft so ftgleeee

and figuratively gone home again
to the little greenhouse at the corner
of 6th and Rooster 132 reconnoitered
an encounter once an image now

no more quoth he but limping
convalescent like the missing

leg upon the earth
my sweet shadow
of summer shade
of luminous ruth

comes faithfully to that tomb
where Lazarus lies with Hope

and cannot live without you and the E
in a dark nest of iron ages tighter
curls a little spiral wrought
of steel-eyed thief

a little spring
a tiny e
yet
b

z
coming
milky from
hive of Zebedee




a q-querned stone from Quito
drawn into straight queue for you
emancipation equality euphoria
come phosphorescent nocturnal

urned forever for eternity
Andean-wound pain-cup become just
Jubilee at last limping staggering
like a wounded jaguar from a winter well

and now in union convalescent
spring of healing hurts the earth
in unison lifts out of deep iron there
these bells droning slow equivalence

surfacing from the depths
bronze dragonship a shield
become light-well delicious
gold poncho sped round

a 1-3-2 we danced easy
we danced easy at the end
around the chestnut tree ding
dong fet fecit finixt see?

a little grass birdnest hidden
in coracle-circle hidden in
green-leafed oak den
come forth then (Edith)

(E) come forth (J-lee)
I dove dove after you
come forth love-neft
Love joyfully come fly. . .


3.5.2000


[p.s. there are 4 large sections at the conclusion of July. Each one is keyed to the letter standing for one of four musical notes sounded by Russian bells. The tone here is "E".]

More foreshadowings from pre-Cambrian Henry era (circa 1971):


BEEP BEEP THE BABY'S UP


you can do anything you want.

the baby here is trying to decide

about growing up human: he's rubbing

his double chin, he's a serious kid.

a cap pistol is sitting on a desk

in the bedroom upstairs with the yellow

walls. according to the kid here,

it's supposedly waiting

for the little green men.

the sky gets closer

as it gets more blue,

and you can recall

the 4th of July

all the heat

and all those little flags

dear reader,

you will be thrilled to know that you are the 7.54 millionth visitor to this site. all previous visitors have signed the Rhodian Manifesto and will receive a Special Rhodian Membership Card which can be attached to earlobe or keychain. There will be a Rhodian Member's Pow-Wow on the Isle of Rhodes at 3:15 pm tomorrow. Try to make it, please. We'd love to meet you.

[for the record: 7.54 millionth is a rough but likely guesstimate, since Rhodians reject on principle the use of website visitor censi.]

It's a rainy Wednesday in March, and I'm doing boring blogging talk about. March 5th marches forth. On this date both Stalin and Anna Akhmatova died. Unacknowledged Tatar queen of Russia.

& to continue the boring vain of talk about, here's a silly old manifesto:

THE RHODIAN MANIFESTO


'I wonder why in Rhodes they tie up their cats with string. I saw one attached to a front door-knob this morning.'
- Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus


*

WHO ARE THE RHODIANS?

The Rhodians are an association of poets who do not live on the Island of Rhodes, but might like to. (The Island of Rhodes is not to be confused with Rhode Island, a small state in the USA.)


THE RHODIAN CREDO

Of Minimalism. The Rhodians accept a simple definition of poetry, ie.:
Poetry = rhythmic/measured language. The features often attributed to poetry, such as imagination, intellect, emotion, pathos, unity of affect, knowledge, communication, dream, and so forth, are understood to be features of consciousness and language in general. Poetry bears the imprint of both consciousness and language, but its distinguishing trait is rhythm, pattern, measure. The Rhodian approach precludes tendentious, apologetic or polemical appropriations of features of general consciousness into specialized definitions of what poetry should or should not be. Rhodians believe that the compositional attributes of poems are all free additions to the simple nature of poetry so defined.


Of Continuity. The Rhodians believe that poetry as an art form is distinguished by its continuity. "Poetry is avant-garde because it doesn't change much." Rhodians declare that each poet and each group of poet-friends is responsible for, and eligible to inherit, the bequest of past poetry in its entirety. Poetry as simply defined passes through the hands of its makers to its audience of hearers and other makers; it is molded by their personalities and the experience of their time on earth. It is a human art form, perhaps shared to some extent with other creatures.


Of Purpose. The Rhodians maintain that there is no particular "correct" way to make poetry. But this does not preclude the Rhodians from choosing certain principles and orientations. One such principle is that poetry-making involves a limited, but sufficient - and self-sufficient - autonomy. If the process is not valuable for its own sake it is not worth doing at all, since it makes no claim to be valuable for any other reason. (Here the Rhodians follow the orientation of fellow Rhodian, and former Cranston native, Ted Berrigan.) Another such principle is that poetic autonomy is linked with a realist approach. Rhodians reject sceptical trends which question our ability to posit the existence of a real world outside our verbal formulations (even though Rhodians would like to reside on an island). Rhodians assert their ability to make true statements about the real world, and assent to the influence of that capability on their poetry. In fact Rhodians believe that the human impulse to respond to reality, in all its consciousness and specificity, is something of an artistic opportunity for which they can be grateful. Finally, the Rhodians reject theories of poetics which devalue the communicative function, reifying denatured words upon the page. For the Rhodians, language is essentially communicative - the propositional, interrogatory, evaluative, expressive making of signs. Within the continuum of such gestures, words play a combinatory and supportive role. So, while recognizing the special quality of language in art and poetry - the "focus on message" or reflexive aspect described by Jakobson - Rhodians acknowledge the fundamental semaphoric aspect of the medium.

But that's not all I meant by the literary absolute. Sorry folks, being incoherent this morning. "Literary absolute" was a phrase I used in some poetry list conversation - what the truly obsessed & dedicated poet or writer aims for. Left out of the circus antics. Or perhaps infiltrating & overwhelming the circus with a tremendous talent.

The debate over "Creep" poets continues. David Hess makes some interesting comments today (3/5), connecting the whole thing with decadent aesthetics, and pointing out some distinctions between communities, economies, markets, and artists.

What I mean by the "literary absolute" refers to the autonomous quality of imaginative & artistic activity, the very thing that makes it possible for artists to be anti-social members of a community. I'm not saying art is only or totally autonomous; it's just one of its real & contradictory aspects.

Funny how several bloggers orbiting around this discussion are in the process of reflecting on artistic community, or a particular community. But every one comes to such a discussion with a different set of values & priorities & goals. Isn't the safest (not necessarily the best) approach to idealize the perennial activity of poetry-making and art-making in general, rather than try to define (& authorize & polemicize) specific political opinions or lifestyles or artistic styles? Even if theories & schools arise in dialectical opposition to one another, don't they appeal to a perennial unstated standard (even if they define that standard as the New or the Future)? Aren't we all cicadas in a squirrel-town? & isn't it best to factor in that universal aspect? or is that just taken for granted because it's a truism? Where is Socrates when I need him?

Lots of people hang out to yak in the bistros but there are only a few hard workers among them.

I guess I'm reiterating my earlier statements about the global tradition or universal-perennial poetic activity. & talking to myself again.

A very early Henry poem, from my Shapiro-Padgett anthology/Apollinaire phase. Funny how the intimations become the obsessions of latter days.



...the letters add to the elegance of a structure, even if
their meaning is hidden from those not familiar with the language.
Here, they tell how a piece of the true Cross was obtained at
Constantinople in 1034 and enshrined in the Chapel, where
each night prayers were to be said until Christ came again.
About half of the Chapel has collapsed, the interior yawning
hollowly in the direction of the Soviet Union.
- Horizon Magazine (Winter 1971)

*

the well is always there
a decade of water
just a well
the soldiers pass by
and today the girls are among the clowns
each hiding an arm or wearing a red dance
standing around the well always there

I'm probably barking up the wrong tree myself.


The beautiful the true, shimmering in the well of memory & perception.
the well of wellness. where all shall be well
& all mannere of thinge shall be.

Beware the circus barkers of poetics.

It's useful to the circus barkers to present poetry as a state of continual permanent upheaval revolution orgasm thrill ride. It's useful to import from philosophy notions which question the ontology of the individual, and broadcast them over the literary field, trumpeting collaboration, downplaying the distinctive. It's useful to bellow "We Are Family!" and blur aesthetic values.

Without a sense of the literary absolute, the game is not worth playing.

found 2 more Shvarts translations (the first one seems like a commentary on my note this morning). (Russian-readers, forgive my errors please!)


from Zapadno-Vostochni Veter, p. 26-27


ALCHEMIST'S DAWN

With spiritual abstinence I guide my age,
with radiant intellect. But often I get drunk.
A bird suddenly rushes and falls,
a cold blue eye hangs over nothing.
I go through nigredo - my soul awakens:
again the bird sprouts wings on the wall,
her candescent flight flaring in the gloom.
She is within - where her light is hidden.
She fills my soul (a rounded retort)
with fiery matter - but she won't
give birth. Both angel and devil, she
herself was born to experience miracles.

1995






Blinded, these northern nights
look down into a courtyard well,
drag slowly from the depths
a pail. . . and chi vedra,
they carry it off to the heights:
Petersburg dust at the bottom,
three-day-old fish, books, mice,
an ancient janitor's axe.
They gaze at candles in people's
windows, hundreds of them:
luminous quiet multitudes
in the city left empty.


1996


[This image of the pail from the well recurs in other poems; makes me think of the Voronezh lyric of Mandelstam which begins "I was washing up in the courtyard"]

Angels considered as projected images of the soul.
A little flighty firebird, elusive.
Your quiddity.
That we live in a Byzantine, wooden-icon reality?


Here's an untitled poem by Elena Shvarts, translated (probably mistakenly) by me :


Why, here in this dust,
don't I say "you" and "I"?
A bit of flint given life
gleams dimly out of death.
When light blazed near
I might have dared the sun,
crying - Burn me, dear!
You - my body! Here I am!
But I'm no windmill
and he's grinding me already -
my landlord, shrouded
beneath this decaying shell.

1996

[I remember her telling me in Hoboken once how interested she was in Baudelaire.]

London - my young Jesus freak days. Henry Hankovitch, con guitar. Thought the Stones might be useful for evangelization. (Now there's a new idea! Are you tuned in, Canterbury?) That was when I proclaimed the Fall of Babylon, in all seriousness, one midsummer day, to the hippies & potheads at Glastonbury Tor. Return of "the King".

These days I'm playing with Jim & Colette in a jug band, tentatively the K.C. Moaners. Old-timey, ragtime, blues, & some Canadienne fiddle-stomps. We're live at the No. Smithfield Public Library (I think) on March 22, if anybody's in town.

Strolled down to India Point at lunchtime, & was followed by a small piece of styrofoam for more than a block.

Cute little critter. Hope she finds her way home.

Will my poetry become famous? It's a long shot.
But I did audition for Mick Taylor's old job with the Rolling Stones.
I told Keith Richards he should read Bible; he suggested I read William Blake.

How did I get in? I rang the little bell at the gate to their studio-mansion in Richmond.
When they asked over the intercom, "who is it?" I said "JOHNNY B. GOODE".

There was a poem in the New Yorker not long ago I found completely adequate, & now, dagnab it all, I can't remember her name exactly, can't find it. . . Linda Biehrl? Teaches at Univ of WA Seattle? The poem was called "1934". I read & reacted very strongly : Mandelshtamian.

It worked unlike the CK Williams poem by not over-reaching? I can understand Grenier's "I hate speech" - because it's so dang hard in poetry, at the border between rhetoric & art. The Biehrl[?] poem maintained aesthetic distance - very pronounced reserve - created an inner world, an architecture of sound, self-sufficient. Probably to write a "public poem" [occasional] is more difficult to do successfully.
Inner architecture lost to rhetoric.

"The poem lives through an inner image, that ringing mold of form which anticipates the written poem. There is not yet a single word, but the poem can already be heard. This is the sound of the inner image, this is the poet's ear touching it." [O.M., "Word & Culture", 1921]

Elena Glazov-Corrigan (Mandelshtam's Poetics) repeatedly emphasizes the duality in all Mandelshtam's statements on poetics: material/impulse, inner form/manifestation, etc. But the belief that the poetic Word turns on its own center of gravity, its own architecture, is never in doubt. To believe that such an autonomous activity nevertheless participates meaningfully in the world at large, is to believe that poetry neither denies nor succumbs to Necessity, but engages it on its own terms. This is a statement of faith in poetry's universality, its "categorical" presence.

To conclude that words are not a game is to acknowledge the realm of Necessity. No longer aggression, desire, or interest : awareness.

Something many postmodern philosophers argue we are no longer in a position to acknowledge (reality is fantasmal, a sub-Heraclitean chaos).

But poetry is not necessary. Not a philosophy.

Poetry admits Necessity; then plays with it like a toy. Maybe in this oscillation resides the authentic approach. Also maybe here lies the secret of the emotions, the affect. Free from pain; enslaved to pain. Joking on the scaffold - victory in defeat. The layered emotional effect of music. Both and.

When I sit or stand alone somewhere, in absolute quiet, & imagine speaking. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Poetry at the onset of time & space.

But there must be something more enlightening to be said about games & poetry.

Playing doubles with Joe & Jordan:

Frames are games. Critical games with little round counters & a checkerboard. The yucky feeling of reviews, yes, most of the time; because the reviewer (me) is thinking "this is an easy assignment". The words are anybody's, without much commitment or authenticity.

But let's suppose somebody who can respond with feeling & intelligence & new insight. So criticism might be possible in that case. & if the frames are inadequate, can they be made to work more adequately? In reference to Joe's comments about globalism & war & all : is it legitimate to propose general ideas about how poetry in general responds meaningfully to the world in crises? I really don't know the answer to this.

I sent an email to a list recently complaining about the inadequacy of a CK Williams poem at the back page of this week's New Yorker. Inadequate to me, anyway. So why? I sensed a combination of complacency, vagueness, & cheap tricks ("fire" as a metaphor for general sense of doom & blame the gummint).

I remember with fear & trembling long harangues & debates on Buff List & SubSubpoetics over "general rules" (frames); that puts me in trepidation. But I'm tempted again to look for a way of asking for something of poetry - something between Ron's alternative dialect dialectic, & the typical sleight-of-hand of professional poets represented by the CK Williams poem. Authenticity? Complex engagement? Patience? Unwillingness to rhetorize a reality? What is this called in poetics?

Just blabbing, as usual, ever & anon. Maybe it has something to do with looking for poetry as opposed to the verbalized "positioning" of writers on different spots on the political scale. To focus on the resources of poetry so intensely that it begins to speak to ALL sides, without equivocation. Another idealized frame-up?

More leaven from Henry the blabbing fair-see.

My father, in his mid-70s, still plays poker with his friends from high school. The game-player. A lawyer, it was all about winning games. Now that he's retired, it's games all the time. Up & Down the River with my daughter. I remember the eternal Sunday afternoons, too quiet, us kids at loose ends, Mom & Dad & Aunt Martha & Grandma playing bridge, so quietly. Chuckling now & then. The Mississippi River down in its canyon across the street.

Lots of poetry books cross my desk;
Geryon or Cerberus, I route them
over to the vault (the Harris Collection).

This one looks pretty good,
though terribly straitened.
(Pure Descent, by Elizabeth Robinson.)

i.e., "forth of jewel-eye." JWblee bee heebie-jeebies. honeycomb crust crest.

From Mandelstam's essay "The Word & Culture" (1921):

"Cultural values ornament the State, endowing it with color, form and, if you will, even gender. Inscriptions on State buildings, tombs and gateways insure the state against the ravages of time.
Poetry is the plow that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface."

With that in mind, some curious political-poetical correlations & my Forth of July: "poema" or long poem as a reflection of the "state". "the father of his country". Dubya, & the "W" etched into the East Side hillside, mirroring the eagle-eye "M" of Justitia in Dante's heaven (of Mars?). Inscriptions withstanding the corrosion of time. M & W forming cat's eyes. Pushkin the lost black cat, lost in Petersburg, lost in the Kremlin, lost (in Stubborn Grew) on Halloween & leading into the "catabasis" narrative. & who is the lost Pushkin, the lost black cat, the lost African elephant? The lost "W" in the heavens is Cassiopeia, the daughter of the Ethiopian queen. Ethiopia, "home of the lost ark of the covenant". Black-talk, Delta-talk in Forth of July, redman-talk, rus-talk. Primordial origins. Origin & end in the ark of Jubilee, Eden & Paradise. What is Jubilee? My politics: holiday, equilibrium, liberation, justice, equality, sanctioned by the time-warp ineffable intervening Ethiopian-Hebraic ark-word we don't yet comprehend.

Nutty Nile-notes.

Some comments on Ron Silliman's remarks today (2/27), on Brian Kim Stefan's "Creep" theory.

Ron has a frame for everything, which if I might oversimplify, goes something like this :

There is a community in opposition to mainstream capitalist-controlled society. There is an avant-garde, oppositional poetry & poetics community which stems from & represents this wider community. There is no alternative to membership in this community : anyone who claims otherwise is either a dupe or a sellout. Language Poetry is the classic manifestation of this oppositional community. The younger generations have so far failed to meet its standards, either because they do not recognize the L-Po techniques which they themselves have imitated, or because they are tempted into apostasy by the wider capitalist "serial publication" culture. ["Rugged"] Individualism in this context is false consciousness, a joke.

Maybe an important thing to recognize in this constellation of ideas is that for Ron, thinking about this political community or this alternative culture is a creative activity in itself, and poetry is an outgrowth from this activity rather than something with its own independent center & sphere. & while my first impulse is to try to debunk this whole intellectual constellation as a tautology, a mental prison-house, I have to recognize a strange parallel to the concept of "tradition", or the main line of development in world poetry, which I proposed as the real (though denied) context within which oppositional poetries happen. They are both framing concepts.

I guess the reason I feel more confident in my own concept is that the frame is still poetry per se; also as I have tried to sketch it out, my concept of tradition is fairly open-ended. That is, I don't propose a set of particular works or styles as "the tradition", but the idea of poetry as a global, characteristic, distinct ACTIVITY, which re-arranges the relations between past & present, history and Now.

And the basic error of Ron's concept is that he has imposed one distinct activity (political philosophy) on another distinct activity (poetry), the former providing a kind of control function. Of course, both poetry and philosophy stem from the same source, human creativity, so it's possible to design all kinds of bridging perceptions & vocabularies & judgements - this is the substance of this kind of intellection, Ron's actual creative-critical activity. The problem appears when we recognize that there are a variety of political philosophies, rather than a single one, and a variety of poetries : so that the bridge-making from ONE philosophical community to absorb one acceptable poetry is inherently partisan. In Ron's case it proceeds to a series of polemic oppositions between a capitalist-individualist-market-driven Mainstream on the one hand, and the righteous community of oppositional poets on the other. & his comments on post-lang-po generations exhibit a bemused confusion about why all these youngsters don't fall more solidly & appropriately into his constructed camps.

It seems useful to me to go straight to the perception that for Ron is most taboo : the poet as individual Person. The Person develops distinct notions & attitudes which sometimes get verbalized or crystallized in philosophical beliefs or political opinions; the Person who may also be a poet approaches the distinct activity of making poetry from a similarly unique & individual perspective. Sometimes through the miracle of communication & shared beliefs & common needs, communities form & collaborative work is accomplished; books are edited & published, poems shared, cathedrals are built. We can argue about the status of individuality & consciousness until the sun goes down; but I for one will always tend toward recognizing the inimitable uniqueness, difference, particularity of each thing among species & groups & abstractions. It's how the poem differentiates itself that it comes out of the shadow of its predecessors & the gene-pool of those that have gone before.

Yes, & about that long poem (Stubborn Grew/The Rose - &/or Forth of July). I was looking out the library window this afternoon toward downtown Providence, trying to stay awake, thinking about the motivations which started back in the early 80s. Perhaps very big poems like the Divina Commedia really come from a similar impulse to the very brief poems, epigrams, Emily, Celan. The feeling that a prophet feels with words - Yeats' line, "speech after long silence". Facing the universe & trying to get it right this time, this once. Not so much an intellectual thing as an emotion, as when some serious music begins to take hold.

That was one aspect. Another motivation seems less exalted : a long poem allows you to dawdle, plan, cogitate, live with it - even when you're not ready to SPEAK that way. It's a way of getting old & set in your ways & unpoetic while remaining inside a POEMA (russian name for "long poem").

& the miracle was (at least from my biased experience) I got older & older & the poem(s) got younger. My early poems are older & creakier (I mean my early peoms from my SECOND phase. . . it gets complicated when you take a powder from poetry for almost 10 years).

The genre fascination, another aspect. There is a kind of hierarchy among the buildings. I mean the Bible & Dante are HUGE. . . & the American Long Poem (Pound/Crane/HD/Zuk/WCW/Olson et al.) bears a curious affinity to these ENCYCLOPEDIC works, these WORLD-CREATIONS. & this goes back to what I said above, about the motivation to say the absolute perfect thing, large or small. Pound: "who will lift the great acorn of light?" So it becomes a great game.

& it was a great game! Chess masters manuever within a nexus of thousands of moves. It began to feel that way, after I accepted the procedure I first caught from Mandelstam : the idea of a sequence of DRAFTS or variations on a theme. Many-in-one. It was a very simple idea which grows complexity. & it really worked for me. One thing you can see if you look for it in Forth of July is a progression from the opening chapter made up of very short distinct lyrics, to the next chapter in which the individual poems are linked more closely, to the next chapter in which they are linked less by narrative & more thematically, to the next chapter which pulls all of these together into an uber-narrative (Bluejay/Orpheus). . . to the 2nd half of the book which makes a larger, tighter amalgam in this vein, to the 2nd book (Grassblade Light) which crystallizes & formalizes the balance between whole & part, to the 3rd book (July), which subjects this crystal to SPEED & FLOW. . . There is a distinct progression from specificity & localness & narrative at the start of the poem to music & universality & indirection at the end. The narrative is there but it's part of a very elusive/allusive net toward the end, a sort of cabala of alphabetic characters & significant anniversaries. Under the sign of Orpheus & the shadow of William Blackstone & the light of "J" (Bluejay/Juliet/July/Jubilee/J). Overall the process of thematic variation or many-in-one begins to take on a life of its own as it unifies & draws taut its own materials even as it absorbs & swallows up an increasingly larger range of materials - the BLOB ! It must be this process itself which gives the sense of acceleration. Acceleration toward the past, the springtime, the Jubilee, the Eternal - a time machine. As I've already suggested in this blog somewhere, the notion of a time-warp or ark-machine or J-nave-ship is central to the "historical argument" of this long poem (one more of its motivations being to suggest something slightly different in the way of History than as provided by the other long-poem makers : not COMPLETELY different, but a variation (there are intimations of renovated time or life-renewal in Crane, Zukofsky, Pound, Olson. . . but I place the emphasis in my own way).

It will never be the Divina Commedia, which is the Mozart of poetry, the perfect crystal. But it is a kind of singing HG Sophia!

Responding to Jordan Equanimity's blogdentity crisis: he's such a natural!

I think I'm blogging to find readers and provide a context for my poems at the same time. It's been such a lonesome road. & also to stay near poetry through this new technic of writing, when often I feel very far from the creative state. A giddy person trapped inside the body of a saturnine phlegmatic pre-Alzheimer(?) fiftian. I don't have a poetics, I just have a history which can be thought about as the practice of poetics of some kind. & also I just like these blogs, their variety & characteristicness. All the antennae out there - those blogs with 500 links along the side. Joe Duemer for example as he says was way before Ron Silliman. & also to change the dynamic: ie. I want to TALK SOME MORE ABOUT MY LONG POEM PROJECT !! Because of the odd thing that happened on the Poetry Lists in the 90s : what was that?? Well, the attention I attracted through a new medium (Buff Poetics List) actually militated against finding readers. Here I was, doing what I thought was very much in the swim of "experiment" in American poetry : & I felt very physically the swishing sound of the "innovative" world turn its back on me. Hey, folks, I've written a 900 page American Long Poem !! Hello?? Oh, they don't like me. I was probably putting them down without even realizing it, or maybe I was realizing it.

Something more obscura from Grassblade Light:


3


Infant crocuses (purple and white,
yellow at the matrix - sweet,
infinitely delicate) emerge
into raw-sprung air, among

skunk cabbages, detritus
uncovered after snow -
as an inverse couch potato
crouches in his plot (his potted

messages). Camera obscura
in the darkened room -
Rome through a pinhole,
upside-down. Air-

cushioned mattress microcosm.
Image of your fiftieth American
home run in the grass coliseum
empty absolute zero field of one.

Too-wit, too-woo. . .
This is a path.
The mark P of Philip.
John Sassamon is a witness.

Flying blind to Brazil or Lebanon
Admiral Gago crashes twice.
3.30.22. A 360-hp Rolls-Royce.
4000 miles. See dar, Noah -

the Sperry-Mag is in his hand,
a wheel within a wheel - the
compressed-air spool goes
gaga - countertop-time and -


3.27.99

A blog with a Caribbean perspective : Nicholas Laughlin.

Spontaneity. . . then again, Nowness (awkword word). Eliot's Tradition after great labor comes to sounding everything Again, Now, Anew. I remember finding some phrase once in Zukofsky for that but I can't remember it! How he felt himself re-doing what is always done in every age. Contemporaneous/perennial.

Behold, I make all things new. "The Bible is muh main book (blog?)."

As it is. . . when the universe comes home to the odd & distant nooks & crannies of a particular unique person's essence (soul expressed in character written in experience). David the sinner-man harper hand in hand with his Maker.

So that you hear the universe through the homey voice of someone who's come home - & that filter changes the nature of the universe.

Stevens probably put it more concisely somewhere.

Dale Smith wins the award for the most conflicted review of Gabriel Gudding's Defense of Poetry. If you're confused, Coast-wise insiders, here's the explanation: this is a Minnesota/Texas thing. Ever since Humphrey/Johnson, North Star/Lone Star. . . Yank/Reb. Pickett's Charge & the 3rd Minnesota.

p.s. go straight from "Quintus Laberius Durus" to David Jones, The Roman Quarry. Do not stop at eode.

I think I am, or should be, entering a quiet phase. HarperCollins may pick up HGpoetics January. Then again they may not.

The Wal-Mart of Put-Downs. Here you can find those little oil-lamps of malice, useful for singeing feelings & corroding your wick.

name for a poetry blog: blabflaneur.

Equivalent today to the Homeric catalogue of ships is the list of poets' names. "Poets such as [blah, blah, blah]. . ." Does this mean poets have become dinghies? Part of a flotilla? Part of one big ship of fools, christened "Fame"?

Reading a book about Joseph Cornell & listening to bloggers talk about childhood books & memories. Would like to consider again the concept of "metaform" I was working on here a few weeks ago. Metaform as the interiorization of experience & its recapitulation in a finished, unique work of art. Originality.

But I guess there is a more impersonal conception of what a poet does. The originality expressed in wit & the ability to combine & assemble & respond to events. Spontaneity.

But the sameness, the grinding chorus of pinwheels, jukeboxes & slot machines. Fetishizing the photomontage. As opposed to the patience of the painter. Time seeps into the canvas through mornings & afternoons & evenings outdoors.

What is an artist? Somebody who has detached him or herself from the wheel somehow. Is standing still & time is seeping out of them, bleeding at the edges.

"Providence. My Providence."

Another old poem, from Way Stations.




Under cover of a whisper
Under wings of snow
I draw forth the star
From the velvet cloak
I draw forth the star
Of your protection
Black Madonna, Black Madonna.

Where life has fallen
And ships gone under
And clouds of November
Take flight in haste
And clouds of November
Shadow your cloak
Black Madonna, Black Madonna.

Who thinks you are gone
Follows their shadow
Far from the sky road
Your green star glimmers
Far from the sky road
And circles the children
Black Madonna, Black Madonna.

Here's a section from chapter 4 ("Ghost Dance") of Grassblade Light.


2


Air swirls counter-clockwise
through the pinetops. A ghost
of summer waltzing once,
twice. In July. Eyes

focus your line. Meridian
out of cold nowhere. Wide-
open hollow. Prairie
spaces. Grass, clouds, wind -

everyone broken with, and left behind.
The love that didn't work out right.
The long dirge. Prison on your heart,
like an infant Moses-mote wound

around. Life-in-death bit of death-in-life.
Not a matter of temperament only -
seasonal, private (an image of DiMaggio
wholly imaginary, say - an airy, Roman leaf

of Marilyn mirage) - whirls in the dark
backwater - a light beam. Leaves, wrecks
all behind us now (stage-struck).
Spirits were. Have done their work.

I'm a man, the Sioux man said to me
in the Lincoln Nebraska bus terminal
a quarter of a century ago. Soul
shows where spirit and body

leave no shadow - noon, gnomon.
And the grain scrapes like a seed
underfoot. Drifter, water moccasin.
Part with eternity now, my son, my son.


3.24.99

Anastasios listens to me make myself even more of a pariah.

What am I doing here? Making myself pariah, as usual. Among the professional marginalites & criticriticritical oppositionalists. Why? Thankless task. Lowest of the gutterdrones.

My adopted state has a history of pariahdom. RI was always Rogue's Island to puritanical Massachusetts, prim Connecticut. Why am I doing this? Maso-exhibitionism? "Here, have some of my sin." Stubborn Grew is about that - becoming leper in pariah state.

Deeper motives. Who is "J", really?? Or M? Or W? Collecting memories. Joseph Cornell.

What a dreary week, mostly, among my fellow bloggists. But I will hold my tongue - they flee from mee anyhowe.

Spent some time snowed-in reading Gabriel Gudding's Defense of Poetry. For Gudding, parody is deployed almost like a geometry. I bet he studied Latin & Geometry the same year in high school. The geometry creates spaces in which languishing old US threads suddenly glimmer through again - sounds of Whitman, Vachel Lindsay, Stevens (but not the usual Stevens - this is a Stevens-Pandemonium), Plath, Lowell. . . all keyed to comedy. Along with these American threads are waves of arcane ancient vocabulary & burlesque - a vast & goofy weird-hoard.

Why does GG have to twist the presentation to such a high pitch of the ridiculous in order to "defend" poetry? He seems to be clearing a space for himself, most obviously maybe in the poem about the Tippecanoe County Courthouse (I don't have the book in front of me, unfortunately). Something about getting clear of the (poetry?) bureaucrats & flying light. Maybe he's getting ready for take-off.

Another poem re Eyerack by Kent Johnson over at Skanky Possum (posted Feb. 17). Reminiscent of poem by Cesar Vallejo (from "Himno a los Voluntarios de la Republica"):

Pedro Rojas, asi, despues de muerto,
se levanto, beso su catafalco ensangrentado,
lloro por Espana
y volvio a escribir con el dedo en el aire:
"!Viban los companeros! Pedro Rojas."
Su cadaver estaba lleno de mundo.

[Pedro Rojas, thus, after being dead,
got up, kissed his bloodsmeared casket,
cried for Spain
and again wrote with his finger in the air:
"Long live all the combanions! Pedro Rojas."
His corpse was full of world.

- trans. by Clayton Eshleman]

Ron Silliman's give and take with Rodney Koeneke on the question of the unconscious & religion in contemporary poetry. Some thoughts from me on this can be found in the interview with Kent Johnson in Jacket.

Joe Duemer has another response to my recent comments on Iraq. We are all in the midst of one of those dramatic prologues to decision, when everybody's position sounds simplistic because no one can characterize the total complexity of the situation. Joe's comments are similar to some made previously by Anastasios - a suspicion about the imperialist, expansionist motives of the hawks in the Administration.

All I can say at this point is, I hope both of them are mistaken. I understand the logic of resisting the spiral of war & violence for as long as possible. But I also recognize the logic of Colin Powell's argument. In response to the French position - "why war now? Why not let the inspections process continue?" - the argument can be made that, given that Saddam has produced and failed to account for huge amounts of chemical & biological weapons in the last 10 years, and given the context of what happened on 9/11, containment has NOT worked, and will not work, without a willingness to cooperate on Saddam's part. & the record of that willingness or unwillingness over the last 3 months is plain to see. It will grow even plainer in the next 2 weeks.

The complexity of the situation - this is the real work cut out for poets. Poets writing : evoking, describing, understanding, penetrating. The heart of the situation & the mind of the situation & the realities of the situation. For that, see Kent Johnson's poem posted Saturday (2/15) over at Pantaloons.

Today hundreds of thousands of people, including many of the poets I admire & whose work I enjoy, are joining to march against war. While I think it is always right to protest against war in principle, I also think that sometimes, and as they say "as a last resort", we have to fight for what is right. As I read this total situation, Saddam Hussein is in defiance of a UN resolution insisting that he cooperate, reveal & dismantle his weapons of mass destruction. The choice facing the UN is whether to force his compliance, or accept some arrangement which allows him to remain in violation. The French, Germans & Russians are proposing a middle path, which involves increasing the pressure of inspections with the hope of gradually forcing Saddam either to cooperate or leave power. This might possibly work, if the UN is forthright in sticking to this position, rather than assuming that by simply allowing inspections - even more strict inspections - Saddam is complying. That would be a mistaken assumption. Saddam can comply only by revealing what happened to the stockpiles already in existence. Unfortunately the divide betwen the US & these other Security Council members could give Saddam the notion that his strategy of evasion is working. Hopefully in the next couple weeks the UN & the US will achieve some compromise that will allow them to stand firm for full compliance backed up by force.

There are those thousands opposing war under any circumstances. But the counsel for appeasement out of fear of a war against extreme Islam is an argument for the status quo, and the status quo is one in which these same millions of civilians are held hostage by terrorist extremism, abetted by a dictator who has excelled in producing the tools they need & who has shown a readiness to use them. If war comes, because Saddam Hussein has persisted in defying the will of the UN, then Saddam will also bear responsibility for the suffering that war brings.

I think we are reaching a profound turning point in the way in which individual nations & the world deal with militarism, violence, weapons of mass destruction, & terrorism. Clearly the Bush strategy of US military hegemony plus willingness to intervene may have both negative & positive consequences for global maintenance of peace & security, but taken as a whole it is insufficient grounds for global order. The UN remains the only hope for a lasting mechanism for resolving international crises & injustices. Hopefully the intense strain of the give-&-take between the US & the UN over this issue will act as a kind of learning process, rather than a signal of breakdown & beginning of a new round of disorder & tension. Hopefully, if war comes, the US will go to war with the sanction of the UN. If not, we will all witness just how limited in efficacy are military solutions alone. On the other hand, I think that if Saddam will not relent, & the US with the UN goes to disarm him by force, the outcome may give the lie to those who are counseling peace at any price.

NY Times today says Monarch butterflies making a comeback from terrible freeze-out in Mexico a year or so ago.

St. Valentine wrote love letters from the prison where he was eventually martyred. Tomb/chrysalis. La condition humaine. Time flowers.

The year I wrote Stubborn Grew, my father's birthday (4.12) fell on Easter Sunday. This is from the 1st sequel (Grassblade Light), toward the center of the book (a chapter called "Ghost Dance"):

30


Spring scent in the nostrils, and in the eyes
a fan of tender buds over the branches. Happy
birthday in the ancient garden. A voice searches
me out, whispers reedy Magdalen. She says:

I spotted a jay guarding the door of the sheep
in a meadow where time does not run and
a crow flies with a knife sharper than
a blade of noon sunlight across the deep

prairie grass. The jay doubled over and wheeled
in a circle like a flowering M or tall amaryllis
or bold forsythia - and soaring toward the apex
of the sky, plummeted - a kingfisher, anchored

in a mirrored lake. Rose then - vermillion-
sheep-clothed - spread both wings wide -
and - for an instant - a pied, rainbow-hued,
flared tepee floated - when with a sudden

reversal of his feathery coat, the quetzal - all
coated and colored over now in earthen clays -
spread her wings again: and monarch butterflies
and grey doves stream from that wide coracle while. . .

I listened as the woman in the garden gradually
marrigated her seedgreen purplescaled hypotenuse
(happily numbering) while my soul rode Blackstone's
white bull slowly toward Oxford on my father's birthday.


4.12.99

[p.s. note for advanced bloggertationists: for riding the bull slowly toward Oxford you should see the closing Finn-Wakean section of Stubborn, where "Akhtemydovie" Akhmatova makes sort of a spring procession toward Oxford (where she received an award in her old age) surrounded by Gould-Herefordshire farmfolk - & then recall that the symmetrical close of book 3 ends on March 5th, as explained below. . .]

A response from Anastasios (of Ineluctable fame) to my comments about Iraq made here earlier today:

Henry--

I completely hear what you are asking in terms of all these questions. The only reason I cannot entertain the thoughts you are allowing yourself to entertain is because I have absolutely no trust in the US government's improving the suffering's plight . The suffering Kurds and Iraqis, in my opinion, mean absolutely nothing to Team Bush. If international pressure increases and if the inspectors were given some teeth along with some intelligence, there might be an opportunity to rid the Iraqis of Saddam while also improving everyone's lot on the Arabian peninsula. However, I don't think a million bombs and an additional loss of lives will improve the situation over there. It could well turn into WWIII. Hell of a lot of good we've done Afghanistan. Karzai is propped up by US henchmen, the Taliban are re-entrenching, and people are just waiting to assassinate him.

Ultimately, I cannot, do not and will not trust Bush and his lot of criminals (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Negroponte, Condoleeza, Pointdexter, et al).

I pray things don't get worse.

Valentine's Day & DATES. More about birthdays & dying days. More dissertation fodder for the 900 pp. poem Forth of July follows.

The poem ("Forth. . .") puns on the "birthday" of the USA.

Each of the 3 large books took close to 9 months to write. Gestation.

The poem's form & themes were sprung or triggered by a short elegy written for my maternal uncle James Ravlin which appears in the opening pages of Stubborn Grew. The section immediately following is a short elegy for my cousin Juliet Ravlin who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge on her father's birthday in 1972. Juliet becomes one of the Orphic figures : in a sense the poem is a "coming-forth of Julie".

Stubborn Grew ends on 4.10 - Good Friday. The short central section of the entire poem (#28 in Book 2 - Grassblade Light) was written on 4.10.

Grassblade Light is made up of seven chapters: each chapter (save the central one) containing 28 parts plus a central part; the central chapter is a double chapter with 2 halves of 28 parts each, centered (as noted above) on #28 of the 4th section. The 6th chapter, titled "Giants in the Earth", is kind of a microcosm/"underworld journey" of the entire book 2, and was written on 5.28.

5.28 is the date of the death of both William Blackstone & the knight/monk/ancestor St. Guillem de Gellone (discussed earlier in this blog). 5.29 is my birthday & also "Black Wednesday", the date of the fall of Byzantium. The "Russian theme" in the poem can be read in some ways as revisiting of Byzantium/Orthodoxy via Mandelstam, E. Shvarts, et al.

The entire poem (Forth of July or Stubborn Grew/The Rose) was finished on 5.28.

Book 3 (July) begins on 7.15 (St. Henry's Day; St. Swithin's Day). One of the themes running through this book is death/resurrection, empire/Jubilee. 7.15.1099 the Crusaders after taking Jerusalem visited the Holy Sepulchre for the 1st time. "July" (the month) named for Julius Caesar; the poem moves toward & alludes to both 3.15 and 4.15 - Ides of March (Caesar's death) and the Good Friday on which both Lincoln & Vallejo died. This transformation is thematized as a kind of chrysalis (empire/Jubilee : Julius/Juliet). July was actually completed on 3.5 - date of death of both Stalin & Akhmatova (Julius/Juliet).

The poem as a whole begins with the words "Time flowers". The first stanza runs:

Time flowers on the lips of whispered clay.
A spring breeze flows through the branches on the terrace.
The city below flutters and flaps, roars
and drones like a resurrected bumblebee.

You could say that the birth/death/rebirth themes are encapsulated here. What is the meaning of this 900-pp muttering toward a birthday (5.28 to 5.29), while visiting dozens of other "holidays" along the way? In Stubborn Grew, the 2nd chapter, called "Ancient Light", serves as yet another miniature model of the entire poem (the title & the plot of this chapter revolve around a chance visit I made to a lovely Greek Orthodox church in London, where there was an old paint-chipped sign posted mysteriously high up on its wall : "Ancient Light"). It begins with a Breugel Epiphany scene & African wise man Balthasar (should be Melchior) offering his green-golden nef or toy boat as a birthday present to baby J. It ends with a christmas carol scene in a small London church shaped like a boat.

The poem is about moving from the vessel of the womb to the ark of Jubilee: the nef or star or angelic UFO which re-winds reality & intervenes in historical time (so that "time flowers"). It's a very American poem about timespace flight (July ends with these words: "come fly. . ." The entire poem ends with these words:

the nef rows, rows. . .
palms, heartbeats, light.

5.28.2000)

(p.s. one theory for the etymology of "Russia" is that "Rus" comes from the name given to the Vikings who founded the Kievan empire: they were sailors, "rowers")

I'm writing my own bloggertation. . .

[p.p.s. click here to see a picture of Julie & my sister Cara (on trike) & me, Gull Lake, MN, ca. 1968 or 69]

A poem from another Valentine's Day (from "My Byzantium", in Way Stations):


7

On Valentine's Day on my lunch break
I walked down the hill to the School of Design
to see the Crucifixion with Two Thieves
by the Master of the Providence Crucifixion (Dutch, circa 1450).

After 500 years the colors still bright as a dream.
Jerusalem in the background, strange towers of mauve, beige,
violet, the high walls flecked with scrawny trees
(no goldfinch near), the line of horsemen
in blue Martian armor (or Flemish 1400's) appearing
out of a crevice in the pale
green, springlike fields
and surrounding the crosses,
crowding the stage, the gray horses, their necks
like tensile steel with unknowing beast grins,
the fop soldiers and gawking onlookers, the boy
(or dwarf?) reining in the horses for the lords
staring in gratified excitement
at the three hung men, a swordsman
(realistic touch) ready to hack at the calves
of the thief on the left - the three men
of exactly the same build, only
Jesus more deathly pale, calm, as if asleep.

In the foreground Mary faints, weeping
(like the women outside the execution arena
in Afghanistan today, NY Times 2.14.96),
her arms hollowing, ready to become
a bronze Pietà; two of the soldiers
peer sidelong out of the picture frame,
but John and the Magdalen look you in the eye
out of hell, still, out of 1450.

Beside the Crucifixion a little gilded wooden niche-
relic, even older (Italian, 1250 or so, hand
of Lippo Memmi) - a blonde in a red cloak,
sky-blue undergarment, holds a little casket
(myrrh-box? urn?) and gazes with almond eyes
from under her hood at me,
the blush on her cheeks still faintly there,
her look still veiled and distant, yet looking, still

B
M I N E

(A little further down the hill below the museum
you in the yellow t-shirt under a black sweatshirt
circle the gargantuan monolithic pile of the Supreme
Courthouse in a banged-up Falcon only
to look through the corner window
behind the iron bars hoping
to catch a glimpse
of a certain Irish cop
- like a goldfinch
tethered to the law.)

Snow is falling today on Providence,
it comes down gradually from cloud to ground;
soon Mardi Gras, then Lent, a drop of ash
on seared forehead; and through the
mirror of a dusky glance I see
one green-eyed almond Magdalen -
a chalice in her hands, she holds
this dying light in pale green fields,
while snow falls slowly over Providence.

2.14.96

More disjointed thoughts about the world crisis.

Consensus coming apart. The US has a strategy of global "peacekeeping" which involves pre-emptive military attacks on other nations. The rest of the world repudiates this more strongly every day, which increasingly isolates the US. Asymmetry of perspectives.

The strange shadow-symmetry between Bush & bin Laden. Oil boys who need each other's aggression to justify their own. Useful to each other. We go to war (against the wrong guy) & get color-coded threat warnings.

Yet still I can hear the weird optimism coming from the hawk planners : bringing down Saddam will make things better, safer. We will liberate Iraq. & strangest of all (to me) - I'm not yet ready to deny they might be at least partially right!!

I hear what Jordan & Anastasios & so many everywhere are saying - about the consequences, the pure immorality of aggressive war, the ordinary people who will suffer & die for the sake of these "plans". But then I also think of the Marsh Arabs, the Kurds, the people in Iraqi prisons & torture cells - the people who have been suffering from Saddam's killer regime since he installed it (via murder of his associates) decades ago. & of the nature of the Saddam regime : its sick focus on torture, repression, experimentation with WMDs. . .

So I am still not the one with the firm voice to say NO to Bush; not the one with the clear vision of a post-militarist world in balance. Have I lost my own morality? Am I become a "good German"? These are the thoughts that oppress me.

my brother Bill's birthday today. the roll-call:

Bill - Lincoln
me - JFK
Cara - Constitution Day
Grandma - 4 July 1900


from my own Cornell box (July):


5

With fog in rearview mirror end
of the span ahead lost in blast
of X-ray light (darkness visible? M.
Purrly's frwcks greenhorde lunge-dragn

tales?) Mississippian suppositories are
homing devices I will triangulate
some December with a Florentine
grandmother and a Negus-ancestral

mother of millenniums MOM grand
on the far side of blindness at the head
of the dinner table in the ancient
apartment off River Rd (or Niger?)

swirl of communal clay chert
deciphered only dimly and a little
child at the table with Lafayette
dancing in the painting in the country

of his father looking on after a late war
D.A.R. Florence Ainsworth 7.4.1900
cardinal pts of a maternal Negus
feeder reddening unraveling on

the other other side (these variable
sublimitations mean I need a M.A.P.
(relief if possible) or Nazca poem
(excellent, Ray!) visible over the Iowa barn)

raison d'état and Inca terraces (mirth-
impervious) in foiled embossments of
rain-porous Thursday's stunned pain's
cup of sorrow (vale JVL you're through)

and it's Marian Anderson Peru out of your
flaming dream from Indiana to the tall
Andes from musical tomahawk to capitol
steps up to the microphone and I am a poor. . .

1.21.2000

Looking at a book about Joseph Cornell at lunchtime.

"Those who live by the sword. . ."

"Do not return evil for evil but overcome evil with good. . ."

Listening to the poets on NPR last night in the supermarket parking lot. Whitman poem: "Are these what they call statesmen? Is this a President?" (or something like that.) Even if they happened to be wrong in this case, it's good to hear poems against war in principle.

I return to the idea that unless the hatred & bitterness & misunderstanding & alienation are overcome, "jihad" will remain after Saddam, after bin Laden. So something must be done on an entirely different level. Something to encourage the re-thinking of religion. Perhaps a shattering of mythological thinking rooted in all three of the Peoples of the Book. A historical re-interpretation & revaluation of events, beginning with Abraham in Ur. Not necessarily a secularization - but perhaps a kind of enlightenment (?). A re-reading : for the good & the evil, the wisdom & the folly, the knowing & the unknowing in "scripture" & all that followed.

There will be calls to action now, and people will be encouraged to get in line or shut up. Like a weak mirror of Bush policy.

I learned to play devil's advocate on the Buffalo Poetics List. Now it's no longer a game, but I'm still playing.

Ron's measured & sensible rationale (but see Joe's) against war:
the parallels - Vietnam, Nazi Germany;
the warnings - roiling Middle East, Fortress America;
the dismissals - UN resolutions, evidence of terrorist collaboration;
the evaluation - "spreading democracy" through US invasion is foolhardy. . .

the Bush admin. viewpoint:
we are already at war (viz. 9/11);
the goal is to isolate & defang global terrorism;
the strategy is to confront states that sponsor terrorism, to liberate Iraq & thereby isolate Iran, Syria & al Qaeda.

contra Ron, this MIGHT actually work. But too bad it's a war strategy rather than a peace strategy (if the Prez were Jimmy Carter we would be defanging al Qaeda by making peace between Israel & Palestinians).

Excerpts from an article in this week's Science section, NY Times:

For Astronomers, Big Bang Confirmation

February 12, 2003
By DENNIS OVERBYE

The most detailed and precise map yet produced of the
universe just after its birth confirms the Big Bang theory
in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the early
history of the cosmos, astronomers said yesterday.

It reveals the emergence of the first stars in the cosmos,
only 200 million years after the Big Bang, some half a
billion years earlier than theorists had thought, and gives
a first tantalizing hint at the physics of the "dynamite"
behind the Big Bang.

Astronomers said the map results lent impressive support to
the strange picture that has emerged recently: the universe
is expanding at an ever-faster rate, pushed apart by a
mysterious "dark energy."
. . .

In a nutshell, the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus
or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a
margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4
percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter - presumably
undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big
Bang - and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically
"flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over
cosmic scales.
. . .

The map, compiled by a satellite called the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe, shows the slight temperature
variations in a haze of radio microwaves believed to be the
remains of the fires of the Big Bang. Cosmologists said the
map would serve as the basis for studying the universe for
the rest of the decade.

"We have laid the cornerstone of a unified coherent theory
of the cosmos," said Dr. Charles L. Bennett, an astronomer
at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who
led an international team that built the satellite and
analyzed the results.
. . .

Dr. David N. Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and member
of the WMAP team, said: "We've answered the set of
questions that have driven the field of cosmology for the
last two decades. How many atoms in the universe? How old
is the universe?"
[end quote]

It's nice to see the cosmologists are finally catching up with my poem (see blog entry for 2/5 on the "W map"). Henry & Bluejay start their journey from the Doyle Observatory, a cute little galactic dome (built in the early 1900s, still in use) at the summit of Hope St. in Providence.

"Donshu know you zigshaggin', Henrah? Zigshaggin yo own black rizebury W" (or something like that).

Just another quick response to Jonathan. He writes:

"There is no set of cultural references presumed to be shared by all educated readers.
Eliot's notes to the Waste Land already posit the end of a common Victorian culture of
reading. Pound takes this a step further. So I don't think that Henry Gould can say that
there is a common, mainstream Eliotic tradition that we ignore at our peril."

But if I think of "tradition" specific to poetry, I don't think of the set of cultural references. I think of poetry as a characteristic, unique activity. & I think there are traits of poetry-making which are pretty timeless & global. "Poetry is avant-garde because it doesn't change much." (quoting himself) & I try as many have before me to get at that peculiar activity in some places on this blog ("metaform", "event", etc).

The healthy thing about Eliot's awareness of tradition - whether we agree or not with the specific qualities he chooses to emphasize - is that it counters the parochial, polemical mirror-world of oppositional poetics, where claims & counter-claims for value or importance are always made in the context of opposing some OTHER poet or poem or style. . .

I'm happy to see someone's reading the archives. Jonathan Mayhew writes:

"So I don't think that Henry Gould can say that there is a common, mainstream
Eliotic tradition that we ignore at our peril."

. . . but I don't think I said that, exactly. Or if I did I didn't explain myself properly (this is back in the early weeks of this blog).

Firstly it's important to distinguish between the "Eliot tradition" (which is NOT what I mean) and Eliot's notion of "tradition" (which is something like what I mean). Secondly, I did not say that poets ignore tradition at their peril. I think I said that the various oppositional streams in US poetry emerged in conscious or unconscious differentiation from the tradition (in a large expansive sense of that term). In other words, poets DON'T ignore this tradition - they play off against it.

Finally I think in various postings, esp. regarding the idea of metaform, I tried to get at the idea of poetry as immediacy, event, "nowness" - that there's a way of looking at poetry in sort of a worldwide sense as a distinctive activity, in which "tradition" is always new, always emerging "now" - this is of the essence of poetry.

I admit that this idea of a category or frame which includes US poetry is unsubstantiated & controversial. But it does also seem to me that there is also a lot of evidence that, at least in its more polemical manifestations, different styles of US poetry have emerged in very clear dialectical contrast with whatever is considered traditional or establishment or mainstream or passe style.

Here is one of the stranger segments in Grassblade Light (from a chapter called "The Lost Notebooks").

18


No time. The double movement of a gyroscope,
or Gneiss binoculars: the target sharpens
or the flame leaps out. Anonymous children
of Baghdad tonight - too small, too large -

all out of shape. While William holds his temples
in his hands, and makes a leaf-pile out of
windy mutterings. A graven treasure trove.
Tinder and carbon. These are examples. . .

Are they? When a stone fell from heaven
and penetrated the earth. . . and your heart
(which was a stone) became flesh. . . what craft
of Solomon was this? The word moved among men

like a Samaritan, wandering now here, now there;
and dust blew from the north, and turned round
to the south; and missiles threaded the ground
with a zigzag, morris pattern, purple. . . back to Ur.

Everywhere the holy returns to these rings of Ezekiel.
And the promulgated ordinances solidify as iron
above clay. 29 times the walls must tumble down,
and the petrified heart melt, and the scars heal:

because the temple that will not fall is Babylon,
and the heart that will not break is Nineveh.
And I saw the high walls of Constantinople,
I saw the ornate temples of the Pope, London

bowing down to Henry's iron horseshoe, Boston
measuring the earth with a poor translation -
and I saw the heart of William Blackstone
blaze in the night above those unknown children.


12.17.98

[Wm. Blackstone, as you may recall - Anglican scholar-hermit, first European settler in Rhode Island. The "Lost Notebooks" refer to his own books & papers, destroyed when his property was burned to the ground the day after his death (5.28. circa 1675), during King Philip's War.]

Joseph Duemer at his (scintillating) blog Reading & Writing has some comments on my war thoughts.

I share his reservations about the Bush administration's foreign & domestic policy, as put out in the strategic defense plan (transcendent military superiority from now to eternity), in the dismissive attitude toward international consensus on many global problems, & what appears to be the ancient political device of using war to clamp down on civil liberties & social justice at home.

Setting aside (if possible) the question of the morality of pre-emptive military attack, or the morality of modern war in general, it remains to be seen whether the risky game being played with Saddam will result in the strengthening & furthering of the administration's plans, or their defeat & undoing.

In any case, it seems to me that, as I mentioned before, WHETHER OR NOT there is a new battle in Iraq, the disconnect & dissonance between the worldviews of Islamic revolutionaries/religious conservatives, on the one hand, and the worldviews of the West (& the US as a special case), will continue to exacerbate conflict & confusion for at least another generation, unless some attempts to mediate that dissonance take place.

I note Joe's interest in philosophy as exhibited on his blog. & I wonder again if some kind of philosophical dialogue across cultures & disciplines could be instigated, and whether this would have any practical meaning. I'm not very knowledgeable about Islam; what strikes me about it, as an ignorant Western observer, is the way it seems to assert the authority of a transcendent divinity - but at the same time a special kind of divinity, INSTALLED at the political/legal/cultural nexus of civilization. In conservative Islam, there seems to be no separation of religion & state. The question to be put to Islam, then, is how it proposes to live at peace with the non-Muslim, the non-believer, the secular aspects of the world?

Turning to the worldview of the West (& specifically the US): one would want to ask the Bush administration in particular: what morality or authority sanctions the world military hegemony you seek? And how in turn would such a strategy be implemented without actually disturbing the peaceful co-existence of various peoples & nations?

It seems to me that PERHAPS there is an area of discussion which might provide some kind of mediating function. That sphere would be the discourse around the notion of "freedom". Freedom, democracy, or popular sovereignty might, MIGHT, be the social force which is capable of limiting the utopian/dystopian/utilitarian extremism of the US administration's dream of hegemony; it MIGHT also be the social force which provides a contemporary analogue to the "separation of church & state", which the Islamic world has not experienced in the same way the West has. So it might be interesting to pursue a cross-cultural public dialogue around the global question of freedom & human rights, as a way of clarifying basic norms. . .

. . . but then I think again. Of the dying & suffering. Of the permanent residue of pain & illness & bitterness.

Of the disconnect between the culture & mentality of the hawks, and the lessons they should have learned from the 20th century. Not only the lesson of "standing up to evildoers" : the lesson of the desolation & madness of war & militarism.

I see the logic of preventive action. But I see the greater logic of never being the aggressor. That's why the case for preventive action would have to be very strong and crystal-clear. Which is why it would be better to accept the European proposal of steadily increased inspection pressure.

I wish I could see more clearly. I see both sides, unlike many of my fellow poets, & I'm wavering.

Yes, as the Platypus of Doom, I find myself increasingly alienated from the poets who circulate in blogworld, so secure in their antiwar sentiments, so certain that they have seen through the conspiracy of Tex & Rummy et al. I want to agree with them, I want to think we are fighting the Vietnam War all over again against the American War Machine...

but then I look at all the facts I can gather & it seems to me a legitimate case can be made that the current Iraqi dictatorship does not deserve to have these mass-killer weapons, and if they are not willing to give them up, they should be removed by force. The arguments from fear are very powerful ("the Middle East is a tinderbox. . .
they will come & take revenge on us. . ." etc), but we should be moved by reason & not by fear. If Islamic extremists decided to massacre thousands of Americans because they were angry that we were taking away Saddam's WMDs - well, are we going to let them dictate the agenda? Because that is what it would amount to if we gave in to them.

The proto-fascism & extremism emanating from Islamic reactionaries must be opposed. So must the injustices of fundamentalist Israeli zealots & extremists.
So must the complacent imperialist logic which allows might rather than diplomacy to manage policy. So must the Karl Roves of the world, who think they can spin international crises into dividends for their faction & its plutocrat supporters.

I am very ambivalent about the situation. Maybe only poetry can express the ambiguities with sufficient exactitude & irony. I'm think of Marvell's ambivalence & his Horation Ode. Someone could take the descriptive satirical powers of prose & make a real poem out of this impasse, from the sands of Texas to the sands of Ur. The trouble is most of the poets are pleased to express cardboard opinions & make febrile tinny sounds. I suppose I'm one of them.

Responding to Jordan's comment today:

There's rationality, and there's self-interest. Everybody has to integrate them both. But there's something else too: fellow-feeling, altruism, self-sacrifice for the greater good.

Isn't rationality, or enlightened self-interest, the ability to work beneficially for others as well as ourselves?

The past few weeks I've really begun to question my own capacity to think rationally, because I find myself tempted to take stands on the Iraq crisis which amaze me, which I can't believe I believe in, which I don't completely believe. That is, I'm tempted to argue FOR war (and marshall those arguments on my blog). Why?

1. For the hell of it. For the curiosity of it. Because Saddam has it coming.
2. Because all the poets seem to be marching lockstep, of one mind. I have a reflexive need to differ (learned in the Poetry Wars). I question some of the self-righteousness of those who are always ready to impugn the motives of the ones they disagree with (ie. perhaps it's not just "oil profiteering by Bush & Co.").
3. Because over the years, without even being aware of it, I've become complacent or conformist - I simply don't want to believe what's happening to my government & my country, I close my eyes.
4. Because I can't completely discount the arguments for attacking Saddam either. In the post-9/11 world, I can entertain serious justifications for a pre-emptive strike, if the claims being made about Saddam's aims & capabilities are really true.
5. Because I'm having a failure of imagination : failing to consider the real alternatives to attack; failing to reckon the carnage & suffering war will bring; being naive about the mentality of those promoting this war.

I'm having difficulty with this. . .