5.06.2008

Hectic here these days, but meanwhile trying to read through this long essay by James Keery in Jacket #24 (which I discovered thanks to funny article on British poetry by Kent Johnson in recent Chicago Review).

This essay is incredibly keen & erudite... have to go back to the originals (JH Prynne) to follow along... this thing about apophrades (Harold Bloom term for a sort of pre-echo or reverse allusion or foreshadowing of a poet in earlier poets) is fascinating... & the way Keery interprets the Bible so poetically (they were all nazirim, "Nazarenes", holy-fool singers).

I have had various obscure encounters with this apophratic phenomenon over my years in poet-land... signally around "Henry" & John Berryman... relates to what I sometimes have had to say about "incarnational poetics"....

Keery's theme (apocalypse, Bk of Revelations) resonates for me right now, as there's an undercurrent going on in Fontegaia having to do with Joachim of Fiore, Sts. Francis & Bonaventure, & their interpretations of that text.... (see Joseph Ratzinger's book on Bonaventure's theology of history)...

No comments: