The triple form of the argument or plot of Forth of July, as I've described it, gets back to question I mentioned a couple days ago : why does Bluejay disappear at the conclusion of the 1st part of Stubborn Grew? After leading Henry on what he thinks is an epic re-enactment of Dante's descensus inferos, into local Rhode Island history?

Bluejay disappears because Henry must undergo further descents & disintegrations before he can speak & recognize the truth; in the process, the truth becomes first "nationalized" (the dream-journey up & down the Mississippi, the encounter with Whitman, Lincoln, New Orleans, etc.), further "poeticized" (the Orphic drama of raising the dead Juliet & the suicide-poets Berryman & Crane), further universalized (the infiltration of Biblical, Russian, prehistoric-shamanistic, Vallejo-Peruvian, etc. elements), and further personalized (as the motivations, desires & actions of Henry are unveiled, the search for a "lost cat Pushkin" leads, at the end, to an identification with the villain in Pushkin's gambler tale Queen of Spades).

All these developments are prefigured in miniature in various sections of Stubborn Grew (the 2nd chapter, "Ancient Light", is a virtual microcosm of the entire poem); in the 2nd half of Stubborn, after Bluejay has disappeared, the poem subsumes both Pound's Cantos & Joyce's Finnegans Wake in paired parodies delimited by the Falstaffian "downfall" - & hinted recovery - of "Henry" at the very end of the book (finished on Good Friday evening). Before he leaves, Bluejay continually hints & predicts to Henry that he is still unaware of the deeper purposes of their trip.

The emotional affects or effects of this "descent-ascent" vary greatly - basically the whole poem is a set of ring-changes in various emotional & visionary keys - but here's just one sample from toward the end of the poem of the mingled sense of universality & personal displacement or journeying (from July):

         5

  
         You stole through the Hopkins cemetery   side-
 stepping the gravestones   while for 35 years
 you hid a pebble on your tongue   unsavory
 Bosch-man unsavior   unable to decipher

  
         the broad paths of the Republic   nor
 the narrow corridors   footprints of
 one sole's   limping history   interpretations
 of a colorful clan   shaded by particulars of

  
         unacknowledgeable shame   your private
 Halloween mocks you   dog star   a silver
 stake left (pointed, unconnable)   reveals
 a secret ski-pole star   black vapid revels

  
         of unlaminated Pushkin   the wager you bet
 unaware one night   against your neighbor
 and if forgiveness comes (your rubbery rosary
 well-said from sad well's   deep tab's tub)

  
         it must come from her who   rose   a stone
 from the depths   of your fire-tonged
 prison   Henry   for whom you return in
 ash-strewn flame and   a reverse nostos

  
         where the vernal jewel   of a summer submarine
 repels the magnetic pole   downward   toward
 the bull's eye   of your signful urn   (retarded
 twice-embossed   crossed-out   snaildrum)

  
         heart and   hope to die   the children swear
 over the grave   pregnant   beneath layers of
 ice-coated Qs   and endless lines of   wayfaring
 strangers   in a winded   anti-host-figure

  
         to that crossroad   mapped red-eye   trained
 on your heart   dead-central   lemon   a
 cup of green   Teo-Hiawathan T   the scent
 of death   steam-railing toward   a restoration

     
                                       1.22.2000