like a walnut brain

SKIN-SWIRL

Wide lonesome chord of milk-train horn

across an Osage plain.

Lilac & star, American

crowd... shy bird calling the not-yet-born.

The microcosm of a Maximus

is like a walnut

brained by teeth.  That

worn brown face, in Omaha bus

lounge, spoke quietly.  “I am Dakota.

I’m a man.”  The poem

lifts a sign toward home,

that’s all.  The sum of Ariadne-

maze, malevolent eye of Minotaur

is in the skin-swirl

of your fingerprint.  Roll

back into the vault then, sailor –

shed each blow of monster violence

until you find the mild

eye of the typhoon-child –

immaculate origin of Providence.

I see her hero stepping through the gate

of stone, one hand held out

on a wave of love.  Light

scout, scouring the root of hate –

defanging that lamprey of predatory

malice, hostile cruelty –

injustice clamped on history.

With Coke & Blackstone whispers : Now be free.

6.28.16

India Point, Providence

One golden witchetty grub

Once again, I countermand my own resolution... the urge to share is hard to resist.

FINAL ACT

They’ve found a fracture in the stone

unnoticed before.

The Holy Sepulchre

is buckling beneath the weight of its own

chapel.  & the confessions have

at last made common vow –

the alpha & omega

of restorations.  Centuries of

soot from votive candles must

be wiped clean; the vault

shored with titanium bolts

& stabilizing mortar, all the dust

blown free – for a strange energy

is here.  The Holy One

has set his seal upon

Jerusalem – the seal of a kiss (hey

ey yo).  Blind King Oedipus

is pharmakon – both

curse & cure; an oath

of the Aranda limns a sacred circus

for the Origin beyond hunger

& prey.  Man is both Man

& Grub; one handspan

joins them, sacred totem-pair

distinct without division, separation

or confusion.  Would

you return to the Wood

where, riven-branching, all began?

                      *

All the world’s a stage.  The Totem

glimmers in earth-cavern

like a mémoire of perfection;

handprint of omni-profundum,

quiet & invisible as wind.

The hand carves a circle

over gray sea, pearl

of adamantine quiddity – your mind

& heart, your soul, my wounded Psyche.

What will they find then,

beneath the slab?  One

golden Witchetty Grub?  One Nike,

linen, soiled by jogging Time?

I think they might unveil

a lost fresco – pale

replica (by Piero) of the same

design that, through the Ice Age,

lifts the crocus.  Stubborn,

indomitable baton,

both crozier & calumet – rage

will not overwhelm your calm beauty.

I think of Late Romances

revolving into dances

all around the Globe... O, we

have not yet seen the final act!

Ineffable victory

of meekness... it shall be,

because it is, always.  O blooming Fact!

6.26.16

like waves of the sea

Occasionally I'm going to disobey my own resolution, and post new poems from Ravenna Diagram.  Happy Midsummer Day...

GREEN PILLARS

Spell me the poem including history

if Providence on earth

blooms, Rhodian... Arthur

ever returning, like waves of the sea –

mesmerized & mesmerizing,

in disguise (as George

the gardener).  So merge,

now, emerge, with enterprising

pioneers of happiness, your

boon companions, in

loon-call theremin

borne toward a Lake Superior

of dreams – one cup of fresh water

lifted to the moon

of manna-honey – one

mute field note in the Chronicle of Mutter-

Patter.  A flimsy paper nautilus

skims her light pinnace

over the sea-surface –

her brood chamber full of caprice,

her Ocean State a colony

of Turtledove Cloud-

World.  A dream-word

sang out of a rooted cedar tree –

so old, Time had forgotten her;

so strong, her smile

threads from green pillars

outlasting the Wars to End All War.

6.24.16 

Ode to the Two Panama Canals

ADVISORY TO SHIPPING

                “Gatun Lake’s level is currently at 81.75 feet, the lowest

                  on record for this time of the year,” the advisory said.

                                                              – New York Times

“For Man, Lacan explains, a nap is a Plan,”

declaimed le Docteur, smiling through his mouth-

toupée.  Martinelli fidgeted; he frowned.

“But an Alp is not a Map,” le Docteur (retrieving

his bone) barked, pleasantly.  “Lacan, Lacan!”

Martinelli complained – “Enough fitful conceiving!

We have no Alps in Panama!  This is South

America!”  The doctor’s office drowned

in sunset crimson (penthouse easy chair, divan).

Stumps of cypress peeked from Gatun Lake.

Rainfall was low; the people’s lips were dry.

In Panama City, Authority was out of town.

Tugs waddled tentatively through the locks,

testing the new routines.  “The Bohemian Rake

is proving useful in emergencies – shocks

to the system are to be expected” (wry

humor from our seasoned pilots).  Drown

Your Sorrows @GuppyCabana!  Salt Milkshake?

The new neo-Panamax behemoths

struggle on the uphill climb.  Old boats

were designed for any weather; these lunks

were built to be actually larger than the ocean.

It can make for difficulties.  National cloths

(flags) end up bumping into low-flying wren;

sailors die of old age crossing from floats

to bunks; giant ship fright syndrome (GSFS)

– a mode of Lacanian paramania-sloth –

mothballs many experienced seamen, before

they are even old enough to Man Overboard.

Just today, a Chinese super-blob christened

Large Ship (Tortugan colors) scraped itself

so bald on the starboard knee as to require

a complete soap-down (Polish Every Shelf!)

and as of today, two weeks later, a hoard

of destructions keeps its crew from Darien

for another week (at least until today).  Scare

stories like these spook international investors.

They collect in London, near Waterloo Station,

& count the oil bubbles that collect like flies

around the rainbows of the bubbles in the oil

that collects like gas bubbles from a Morse

Code info engine (old-fashioned tinfoil

type w/pink elephant-cake, called Mammon

– used in films such as Oil Bubble Rainbows,

starring Omar Sharif).  “Lacan – he bores

me!” complained Martinelli.  “I need stuff!”

His dream-flock of advisors waited, meek

as a collection of hubcaps, shining badly

in their eerie suite.  “We have the money,

your Excellency,” offered Twinglit, bluff

as ever, like the Wet Cliffs of Dover, knee

by jowl with his owlish advisor, Scuttley

Shipley of Scotland.  “What’s wrong, honey?”

inquired his wife, Toeniall Delendo-Muff.

“Is the yacht okay?”  Bobs her bouffant

toward the windswept film poster, from

Cuernavaca.  Under the shadow of the Liner

(Queen Elizabeth of Bath XIV) she files

herself into a small pile of clippings (faint

headlines featuring her husband as Crocodile’s

Crumbcake) and begins to tidy up some

leftovers from the funeral (this was her

finest hour, not Martinelli’s).  Old Paint

was the name of her favorite pony; the whole

City of Panama loved that showhorse filly

like their own flanks.  You could pour concrete

around all four of her dainty hooves

and she would still outrun every international

vessel you could flip her way, because

the concrete we bought was an absolutely

incredible feat of quadruple-booking, complete

with sub-microscopic fractures (intentional)

which will allow Toniall’s beloved steed

to trot alongside even the magnum monsters

of the deep with no fear of plunging suddenly

due to earthquake or stock quirk through

muddy lips of Gatun Lake – Life’s high meed

being nothing to the Bible (many tickle you

for fun, but sin be not in our thesaurus).

Camels will thread needles, Martinelli –

but not you Pacific.  Try Panama weed.

6.23.16

*Note : this poem occurred after collision with an article by Walt Bogdanich, Jacqueline Williams and Graciela Méndez, which appeared in the New York Times on Thursday June 23, 2016.

The Best Translation of Akhmatova's Epigram

Anthony Madrid is one of those rare birds who listens in to the fine mesh of subtle rhetoric, syntax, metrics & style - the nano-landscape - of poems.  His brief article on translation & Akhmatova's famous sarcastic epigram, just published at the Paris Review website,  is a good example.

I think perhaps he slightly exaggerates the difference in tone between the first and second halves of the quatrain.  Akhmatova's powerful persona could mediate & blend both the archaizing poetickal "high style" of the first half, with the earthy directness of the second : she did this often.  Her poems are littered with the Ancient Greats, not merely as references or allusions, but by direct address : she could "naturalize" the most magisterial, heightened, exalted strains.  Still, I think he is correct & perceptive to note the satire on traditional patronizing male attitudes toward female poets.

Here's my own version of the epigram into English.  I reckon I have preserved something of the original meter & rhyme-scheme.  I have a little more Russian than Anthony, I think - though not much more; & anyway that's no guarantee of a better translation.  I just happen to think mine is the best.

Could Beatrice like Dante compose?

Or Laura glorify Love's fiery rose?
I taught the women how speech flows...
but how to shut them up - God knows!

A Word to Readers

A bout of illness sometimes offers opportunity to steer necessary change of course.  I've been laid up for a week or so, & through the fog of discombobulations began to see things slightly anew, or anyway askew.

For long I've had a reasonable rationale for putting a lot of poetry, & ponderoskings about poetry, here on the blog.  I won't rehearse the wherefore all that? right now.  It would require a book-length tapeworm to unwind all real & supposed motivations & feelings about my own sitch in the American poetry landscape (FYI, see prev. 8-zillion pp. of HG Poetics).  In any case, I shall retain all that for the Paris Review interview and the New Yorker profile, both of which are looming on the event horizon, no later than 3026 I am told.

But this week I came to the conclusion that there is no alternative for the American poet, no back door or sideway entrance, whether by street minstrelsy or digital rhizome-megaphonics.  There is a longstanding marble-columnar Establishment building (made up of many buildings) which houses American poetry; it is maintained and sustained by a combination of internal memos and laying on of hands; it is not evil, corrupt or malicious - it simply is what it is, the Establishment.  And there is no route for the American poet other than the most direct : that is, to face that central verbal Building-Complex, and direct one's work directly toward It, and await Its response.  As the old Sunday School song maintains : You can't go over it, you can't go under it, you can't get around it - you've to to go in through the door.

Why would any poet (other than yours truly, Don K. Hotey) imagine things this way, doing things this way?  The only valid reason would be Unity.  That is, if & that there really exists a kind of unity - a unity of the human imagination, a unity of the art of poetry, a unity to the sense of beauty or rightness.   If all our individual strivings under the heading of this art actually nestle under the aegis of some shady, comprehensive unity - then we ought to be forthright in our efforts to sling our work toward the general public, the established organs, the leading Judges of this particular field of endeavor.

I can hear the uproar and the cynical chortling.  Is the Great Refuser suddenly become the Great Kow-Tower?  Is the snarky Rebel now turned toddling Toady?

My answer to that is : I'm not suggesting uncritical obeisance to the standing Arbiters of Taste.  One makes and expresses one's own taste.  Nor am I suggesting the aspiring noodlehead abandon his or her fellow struggling little-magazinites (sounds like a microbe) and aim only for the Big Screen.  I speak only for myself.  I myself need to throw my toys toward the editorial Bull's-eye at the center of the Island of Reception [note arrowed metaphors], and work harder, and take my chances.

So I decided, during my bedridden week, to lay off publishing my poems immediately to blog.  I'm sorry to bid this partial adieu to you dear trusty comrades & faithful friends (this means you, Olive Oyl).  & for anybody who just can't get enough of these mesmerizing, stupefying masterworks, I do think there are actually a substantial Matterhunk of my poems present on record, for perusal & re-reading.  Hopefully they will remain live here for a good while to come.

Hopefully I won't change my mind on this until tomorrow, at least.  In the meantime, here's one more "occasional".   In future I will most likely be posting other kinds of messages - not going away.  Hi-Ho, Silver!  [waves cowboy hat, rides mule toward Chanhassen]

EVENING ROSE

Day after Father’s Day – at cusp

of springing summertime.

Anxious children climb

steep query-spirals – must the Ship

break into toothpicks, battered by

cold 40-ft slaps (off

the Tongue)?  Mozartean buff

Fathers – are they foundering?  & why?

Some stately turkeys ornament

our neighborhood.  Their very

carriage molts each scary

Bronze Age snood toward merriment,

that used-caruncle dewlap glare

to bustle of 18th-century

quadrille heroine (stray

boa-feather in Ben Franklin’s hair).

Down its ravine, the river-myth

is inexhaustible, still

spills, inscrutable (al-

most), its copperhead glide.  With

wattle-basket coracle, Huck Frisbee

heels for civilization.

Skinny levitation,

Aesculapland shaman... – Hey,

there’s Beatrice!  Pacing slowly,

lifted above herself,

a white heron (sylph-

crane) sure-footed, shadowing me –

long-legged flier in the reeds,

like feathered snow come

from gray clouds.... amalgam

sweetheart-griffin-seraph-steed.

She says: your frigate’s scraping shallows,

that is all.  The ring

of Ocean overhead (sing,

choirs of pilots!) is harmonious;

your houseboat made of Lincoln logs

is under beanpole Abe’s

Euclidean bien sabe.

His moral compass counters rogue

waves, waves of dead shark-plugs

with a fertile proposition,

proven (fractal fashion)

through o’erlapping plies – Persian rugs,

matryoshka dolls... onion peals

from domes of ever-deeper

& dove-subtle cheer...

‘til liberty for all becomes the seal

of human Union (universal,

irreversible –

malice invisible,

o’erwhelmed by charity for all).

Doubloons of humanism shine,

winking in mud-banks

near St. Lou.  So prinks

the Rio’s evening Rose (yours, mine).

6.20.16

facet of the grey sea

WOOF DAWN

Now vales of Maia give away

to peaks of June, plains

emerald after rains;

gold Ghana-threads of yesterday

(encircling Hermione,

her Perdita) are knotted

in one polyglot,

shade-silvered whisper-crown.

The dream-song of that melancholy

painter in the corner

(Henry Coroner,

or Richard Parking-Lot) might be

a facet of the grey sea’s matière –

portion of the human

globe (octagonalmond,

arched like Nut over the pearl-

sphere of the earth).  Hearth-sign

of futurity, through sleep

to an oasis – leaping

Minnehaha (Hobo river-mind).

Someone smiling in an acorn cap

shadows his Georgia garden.

Some apple-orchard man,

repairing limbs... his milky map

renews the face of day.  All things

woof dawn, old Prospero –

it happened long ago.

Her cartwheel (spun of gold bee-stings).

6.15.16

"O death, where is thy sting?"

where friars met the chiefs

BRIGHT EIDOLON

Like a round dime tossed in a round

lake, hermetic lady

(Mendelssohn, or Galilee)...

the circle of clans closes on a mound

of blue-white clay.  With a star

beneath pulsing waves,

to summon all the braves.

Rêve-dream, song-songe (de la mer).

Smoke rises from Pipestone, where

friars met the chiefs –

an old Amerique (Lief’s...

Hennepin’s, Marquette... le voyageur);

Rose de St. Louis, Annie

de Texas... Jessie O.

from N’Orleans – down below

rim-sleep (full fado, Ariel).

The fumes are gray & sinuous

veins within rose

windowpane (chartreuse?) –

where a rustic yokel stems the breeze

like mast in steady gale.  He’s

smiling (thick mute mule,

dumb lamb).  You’ll

toss him in a hole – he slappim knee.

The frost hurls stern memorials

across blank mirror-ice

(in Mendelssohn).  Yet twice

& twice, bright eidelon... (loon calls).

6.13.16

in Aleppo

COMPLACENT WEATHER

A green kid from Appalachia

gone to fight in Fallujah

– someone explain?  Aya,

Babylon!  O generations!  A

late-night flashback (this time

not a war zone) – the stone

cave, the Mezzo-Eon...

the wooden man (half-lamb,

half-king) splayed on an axle

of Lebanon cedar.

Adam, 2nd mate (bare).

In Aleppo, the shells relax

theological distinctions

(strange how disaster

nets cousins together in

dense swallow-clouds).  Sons

remember their angry fathers

in another atmosphere –

benign, complacent weather,

a constant world.  Who bothers

to refit owlish waste places?

Earth presses toward

obstructed Adam, stymied

Eve – each watchful heart races

to reach Yezidi Paradise

(jade Peacock Angel,

over the next hill

from Sheol).  Sol breaks the ice.

6.11.16

 

in a land of Gerrhi

LITTLE BUNDLE

Light cottonwood fluff-motes drift

from high green vaults

along the river, Walt.

Thy hobo-hymn floats like swift

Scythian swallows   over the steppes

Gerrhi   in a land of Gerrhi

gray   milkers of mares

Geloni   like Jonah   swallowed up

& cast-off   by the sea again

like an exiled raven

scouring   the salt-sown

slate   for breadcrumbs, broken

limbs, dry vines   any sign

of home, of motherland

Guillaume would understand

Colossus of roses   tall man

grown meek   bemused upon his own

Bermuda   who bears a little

salt-bundle   close to heart

lifted six ways   a hexagon

grown octagonal   a diamond

have salt among yourselves

& plant   peace shelves

atop green Andes   condor-monde

Thus crooned the shuffling friar

under orange garage door

over grey sea-floor   as

poplars, nigh Gellone   signed, Ephphatha

6.10.16

Minnehaha's moccasin

SPIRIT-WOOD

                             i.m. Edward Lewis Peckham

Step lightly in my mother’s house,

whispered a tiny elf

named ELP – himself

a watercolorist (a yellow lady’s

slipper’s footprint left the forest

on this day).  Cypripedia

reginae – Minnehaha’s

moccasin – graced this wilderness

as well, making a pair for Joy

& Beauty (graces

almost three).  Time paces

seasoned out of winter, so employ

your dancing shoes, fiery Hiawatha –

roll like Polar Bear

around that pinpoint star,

sing like a loon, like your happy

father (Thalia-glad).  Nature

& Manitou join hands;

a Turtledove blends

sea-sounds, all about green Eire;

urn burials, gardens of Sirius

swim synchronizing

rhombs on monarch wings

(a rugged Paradise for ladybugs)...

one dance-call through spirit-wood

or jadestone flute

sows dreams of Camelot

(like waves of wheat around a vineyard).

6.9.16

*Note : Edward Lewis Peckham, Rhode Island artist and naturalist, painted a watercolor of Cypripedium parviflorum - Yellow Lady's Slipper - on this day in 1866, 150 years ago.  See illustration here from the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Black holes have rings of light straw hair

SCRIMSHAW TRINKET

                    It’s the past that tells us who we are.  Without it

                    we lose our identity.  –  Stephen Hawking

A raven carried heaven-manna

out of the ark to lonesome

Jonah – him just come

from under the whale-rib (manna

overboard) stranded on sand

off Galilee, RI –

& it made him cry.

Those crispy cackles he couldn’t

understand – like low gull-talk

sent through a black-

hole paradox;

light straw climbed an orange rock

from the event horizon up to

null infinity –

it was all catenary,

looped in one wave-smile... – who?

Gravity? – or Grace?  Eurydice,

maybe.  (It was her cave.)

Spoiled meat you crave

is portioned by division – say,

two doves for every plowman’s mule.

Queequeg in his casket

(like a scrimshaw trinket)

penned our sempiternal Rule –

each rustic Penny in the well of night

was tender out of love.

Her vernal sparkle-trove

is polyglot – Euphrasia (eyebright).

6.8.16

Monk's Mound (Illinois)

the principle of the epic poem

STAR-FIELDS

A monarch sails transparent air

over a sea of grass

toward Mexico cedars.

June hums softly into summer

orchestra – a Symphony

of Ocean River (flutes

by Apollinaire).  Broom-roots

of harmony brush copper tympani

with nervous splendor.  The principle

of the epic poem – Hart

Crane’s plangent part

for solo Jonah (sailor’s pipe)

merges with cat-gut chords

of choral hymn, Atlantean –

sagas of Everywoman,

Everyman (adze-edge word-hoards).

A stone spun from heaven... King

Tut’s meteoric dagger,

sanded to plow much bigger

meadows.  Star-fields of the tongue

flicker from familiar cave –

shape speech to love,

vault from worm-grave

to groves of cedar (almond nave

upon a flame-stream, evergreen

to save).  Pine-needles

tingle with seedling-

cones; wings fan (bright V-formation).

6.7.16

Lake Vermilion (sunset, 6.5.16)

from the rubble-edge

SOFT CATHEDRAL

She came from the rubble-edge of tracks,

my little Jessie, O –

her father gambled so,

her mother sunk low, like a parallax

of sallow sun.  Harsh raptor features,

scavenged palimpsest,

thin gewgaws in a needle-nest –

indifferent lights, long-distant stars...

– as if the morning held no lamp

for choppy grizzlies, salt-

&-pepper crowns.  O Walt,

where be thy warm palm now?  Thy camp

amid tin canvases o’ cheery braves?

Jonah & Jessie, splintered

by the sea, had wintered

in the bottomland, like jasper leaves;

no voice of kind encouragement,

no ring-dove warbling

could break the iron thing

that iced the whole whale-monument.

Only one bright prong near St. Louis

promised their release –

an upturned kayak, Miss

Virginia (airy gate to happiness).

Slant waves of sorrow wash across

the little pine deck, Jessie

sang, but comfort thee –

my soft cathedral floats on moss.

6.2.16

all aboard the Midnight Sun

FROM MEMPHIS

O Lady walking by, in black

jacket & yellow skirt,

you lift me from inert

& vacant thought into a way-back

memory-milieu.  The Promised Land

of sunlight at midnight

is nest for monarch flight

& viceroys too (you’ll understand

when we get there).  The Milkweed King

is Hobo in disguise –

the motherland is prize

for steady Jim (gone huckleberrying

with Oblomov).  He walks gently

into rabid disputes,

young Nanabozo – toots

his horn – Rabbi-clown, my

Hiawathee Bigfootprints

of Peace; he’s taken down

in order to rebound

into renown, like Printemps

Spring-Rain Joan, or Franny Cricket

(she of jingling anklets

in the cedar dusk).

There’s earthy scent beneath the musket;

there’s a penny in the well.

A dinged wingèd profile

traipses from the Nile –

elopes from Memphis (into Israel).

6.1.16