New rim-shot at Lanthanum.

There's a great passage from Hope Against Hope (maybe I can post it tomorrow) in which Mandelstam (via Nadezhda M.) contrasts poets & popular novelists - the latter decanting their gnosis from a superior (flow of liquids) position, down into the masses... whereas the former - the poets - are so busy with the spirit of inner building - akin to the scientific spirit, the selfless devotion to Riddles - they are so busy with their inward vocation - that they are like all the other mute confused ordinary people - ie. they don't talk down to their readers - they are one with their readers -

anyway, I experience this, working on my "quarrels with myself" - dimensions of inward memory -

poetry is truly a sort of pharmakon - the poison that heals - akin to fasting or prayer... very much akin, indeed, to pasting or (State) Fair...

Poetry is, as they say, memory & invention. Poetry is discovery through blindness.

(p.s. re this poem - over the holidays I was in Minneapolis, & went back to the Art Institute with my 81-yr-old mother... there's a wonderful (& early) "installation" piece - basically a walk-through standard "apartment building", much like the ones my grandfather Gould managed (& his father built) along the River Rd., & where I spent my 1st 2 years... (1952-54)...

- you walk into this grungy space & listen at the doors... when you bend your head toward the apt. door, a recording comes on, of whatever apt-like life is happening inside... you have to understand, this is so upper-midwest... so Twin Cities... we all lived (& still do) in these places... & you have to understand - I am not condescending here. We love these cozy-desolate places... they are home...

I don't know the name of the artist... but it's a permanent installation...)