from toward the very end of Forth of July. The "W" that Bluejay & Henry's wanderings etched on the Providence East Side ridge, took some odd turns.

 6
   
            The scene, refreshed, reroused, was never to be forgotten,
            the hen and crusader ever intermutuomergent...      
                                        – Finnegans Wake
  
  
 A cask of negus went barreling down the rhode
 whorled in a victory-fin into the foretimes
 buried in the midnight garden   one St. William's
 Day   where he rose (our W) and rows and rowed

  
 his henpicked galley   through gales of galloping
 gallic ages   alone, Gellone   (with 28 oarsmen
 and a red coxcomb   for a bully steersman)
 it was a barging line or ink-can sunship

  
 filled to the midnight brim with Orange   or
 honeyed yellow sweetings for the Bethel brew
 it was a skeevy chicken key V shield anew
 down the rustling river toward   a dey of fire

  
 on Study Hill   or in Byzantium   an axe
 set to the roots   of Oak Tree Day
 Newport summons   wedding for old El Rey
 old Johnny Atahualpa Hamlet's   summery X

  
 the omelet ovum all at last   of everywombin' man
 incalculate and calculate   with little pebbles
 small gray veterans from Black Sea pledge
 unto out of   the Son of Man   (here back to then)

  
 and like a hand-sprung iron spring   by
 golly Moses there it goes   an able nef
 into the winestained cupola's deep
 arrak barrel   diving for the ring

  
 of south-north stars' lamb-lamp
 beeW your myrrh, my Magdalen
 gleams in those double-emerald
 ships (aye-aye me dewfall-camp)

       
                             5.25.2000

some old weird poetry-history, from toward the end of Forth of July. W. Blackstone places his "W" over a map of the Mediterranean:

 2


  
 It was Good Friday (raining) in Lima, Peru;
 it was a rainy April day in Washington.
 It was November 22 in Avignon
 (a lucky day in Paris – Dallas too).

  
 Blackstone lay half-sleeping in a meadow
 underneath an oak – his white bull
 grazing drowsily (slow, calm) downhill.
 And half-dreaming, saw (in the shadow

  
 of his hat) strange visions.  On a wide
 and blue-green map (where a playful whale
 dove deep toward shore) a serpent curled
 (all blue) from hidden mountains northward,

  
 and, at a bulrush delta, zigzagged right;
 then wheeled again (upon a huge, rugged
 stone) into an island labyrinth,  caved
 inward by the sea – while from a root

  
 in Aquitaine, or Septimania, a dragon
 like a red thread spun straight forward
 into Constantinople, and there turned
 likewise back to sea – and wound

  
 itself, entwined, with the Southern serpent
 (tightly, lovingly as any Solomon enfolds
 his Sheba – one, unfathomable, sealed –
 one purple veil-knot).  Out of his own entrails,

  
 then, strangely, this woven Minotaur emerged...
 til Blackstone woke with a start (the weird
 hex going, the map dissolving, merely muttered
 into his own fuzzy beard)... and spring surged on.

       
                                     4.15.2000

This is from Blackstone's Day-Book, the last book of Forth of July (published in The Rose, and also in Island Road). It's about what I've been talking about today; it's also about the poet Edwin Honig (Honig, Tom Epstein & I had dinner one night with Elena Shvarts in Providence. I think it was around my birthday. I'll post a section of the poem I read for them, which I had written for ES the night before).

 5


  
 You remember the stooped man from Brooklyn,
 Elena – limping (wounded) through cedars.
 The man with elephantine features,
 a crown of white hair, scarred... a nobleman,

  
 the only knight we knew.  Out of the black-ink
 melting pot of Septimania (marches of Spain
 tattooed with strange lettering – a written,
 walking tome or tomb).  We drink

  
 the black milk of these scored hoofprints,
 a bread of pain – we scourge the scriptures'
 breathless Word – of heaving sighs
 only (and faded into sand long since).

  
 The icon floats through a crane bone
 flute, and is only image or memento,
 crumb of madeleine... a slow tempo
 memorized long before music began –

  
 in the foam of stars, seeded through night
 like Abraham's offspring, or light manna
 slipped from pigeons' wings – lemony
 taste and flower-scent – white

  
 snow in the depths of blue taiga.
 Was with us for a while, a recapitulation
 of a capitan, a Makhir from Narbonne,
 or Barcelona – Kyot or Flegetanis – troubadour,

  
 star-gazer, man of letters.  Was profiled
 in the ink-black night, still shining bright
 beneath a long-gone W – his delicate
 Sabean bride... (Cassiopeia – distant, mild).

       
                         4.29.2000

Busy plus tired today, plus I just can't decide where to play shuffleboard - near the Ashbery Scenic View, or over by the James Tate Swingset? So more belated Ron Watch for me...

today he's focusing on the discontinuities of experience (a hyper-realist in disguise?). Very disjunctive-elliptical of everything to be so. But some might say discontinuity is the problem set before us, the puzzle to solve by way of knowledge & vision & most of all, poetry. Read Giuseppe Mazzotta (Dante's Vision & the Circle of Knowledge).

Poetry as the trivium & quadrivium activated, synthesized, turned into an ethical topology. Liberal arts - "liberal" meaning they free the mind... for what? Truth, contemplation of the whole, wholeness, unity...

Looking for the ground & the continuum, the form & the telos. Encyclopedic knowledge shaped into harmonic, playful vision - image of grace (Dante).

The play of all plays, the act of all action. The You, the double You, the W.

ie., "zigshaggin yo own sweetblack rizebury W" [or something like that - quote from memory], sez Bluejay.

Cosmipoetics. From an article in Tuesday's NY Times science section:

As they try to figure out how this strange behavior could be happening to 
the universe today, astronomers say the ultimate prize from all the new observing
projects could be as simple as a single number.
      That number, known as w, is the ratio between the pressure and density of
dark energy. . .

You could say that Stubborn Grew (or at least Bluejay's presence in) is about the pressure and density of dark energy. Here's Bluejay, intimating to unknowing Henry what he's about:

Hey!  C'mon Bluejay!  Live ain't over yet!  Let's go -
up to the Terrace!  There's old Roger himself, up there!
Bluejay turned SE to see.  Yeah, I see the ol bear.
He got up and shook himself - blood to flow

 
into his phosphoric, porous feet and hands -
and said:  you know what you doin, Henry m'man?
You know you zigshaggin?  Raven an zigshaggin
a sweetblack rizebury W, man - donch U?  Unnerstan?

 
A what?  Sho.

& then the letter "W" takes on a multivalent quality in many sections of the poem : a shorthand for Whitman or William Blackstone, a reflection of "M" (both Mandelstam & Dante's stellar icon for Justice in the Paradiso), & other things. Here's something toward the end of Forth of July as a whole:

         1


  
         We are coming to the end of Henry
 Navigator's long voyage, Elena –
 circling around an elephant ear (Abul
 Abaz, or Barnum's Jumbo) – see

  
         how everything grows simpler,
 more harsh, more true.  Still
 the well is always there (and will
 be) – like the man standing here

  
         beside it in the dark courtyard
 (strange blooming out-of-season
 almond branch).  A stone,
 a star, a well.  A cup of water

  
         from a rainbarrel (or Tartar
 wine).  A circling dragon-boat
 or scrap of origami writ
 folded to float so lightly... there.

  
         You fold Andromeda into a W,
 a mountain range back into M.
 You cup them in your palm
 to make a diamond, or double-

  
         diamond – cat's eyes, Pushkinian.
 Delicate Blue Morpho wings
 woven with microscopic strings
 of quipu thread (gentian-

  
         gentle, violet, and red).  A knit
 crossroad, then – red, white –
 streams into Cassiopeia's
 mother-night (at last).

      
                               5.22.2000

(Cassiopeia being a constellation in the form of a "W", and linked mythologically with Ethiopia - another thread in the poem - source of Nile, "dark energy", Ark of Covenant legends, etc.).

Poe, mirror-master, doppelganger-haunted ("William Wilson", Poe+Poe), is the poet of the number 2;
Whitman ("doubleyou-doubleyou"), singer of cosmic Unity, is the poet of the number 1;
Dickinson, of course, at the vanishing-point (Eternity/Zero Hour), is the poet of. . .

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).

More sidelights on the "W" theme, for anyone still following these obscure trails: from Grassblade Light, a chapter titled "Of W.B." (referring to William Blackstone, the Anglican pioneer-hermit who set up a library/orchard ("Study Hill") in Cumberland, north of Providence; credited with producing the first American apple (the Yellow Sweeting). [once again some spacing between words is lost in this format, unfortunately]

19


A downy W
star ached over
the lakeside beehive-
city buried in melody

where flighty
figures and green
clover-lovers ran
to the puppet-play:

here comes Federico
the toreador weighted
down with sword and
finery here comes Gago

the Golden Calf bell-
withered vain swung
on a chain of long
green Jealousy and now

the bull strikes Federico
on his head! He falls
the strings are broken
a slow tear wells

in Boca Reina's eye
ay me
ay me
woe am I

she falls cries See!
as the whole bee-
town lifts the bier
of solid air into the sea


5.22.99


21


Fallen pollen
yellow me this
mellow day must
to your mini-donjon

in the prairie my
Stephen's Gate Ist
ein bully byzbyz nest!
halloos St. Giddy-

up doubleyoudoubleyou
galloping into his leafy
micro-chasm take me too
far down above and up below

my dove
my sistrum
my harp-hum
of struck piano-

voluminous black hills of
Sheba milky w-veined gold
- a mass of canonical rolled
skyland red cardinal suet hove-

ring within a tiny Armenian X-
cathedra chrysalis above Turkish
trucker's gardens of Magda-Kurdish
Yahweh-wayout zebra-flipped King lex-

acorns. Inside a Blackstone.
Where was Abraham most-urlieste-
mourning-doveliest lovecake-teste-
calculate-continous-crow Jack Robinson.


5.22.99

Then again the outline of the W is also Henry/Bluejay/Orpheus re-tracing of the track of the W-man (Eurydice, Beatrice, Julie, July, "J"). Will, Williams (Roger; Lincoln Penii-Penelope). Into the river-water, into the Womb (see the Mississippian "nekuia" into the Gulf, in July).

The poet Gabriel Gudding emailed me about my book Stubborn Grew, & I replied with some info on its design. I emailed back to say that the story formed a "W": a sort of double W, in that while following the protagonists (Henry & Bluejay) on a geographical zigzag W across a hillside in Providence (mapping a W), the structural or numerical design formed a textual "W" : that is, the center of Book 2 (the asterisk on p. 137) forms the apex of the center of a narrative-numerical W (zigzagging from optimism/pessimism, happy/sad, etc. - the "nadir" of the 1st descending (tragic, pessimistic) stroke of the W on p. 133, written on 4/4/98 (anniversary of MLK assassination: "44" Chinese number of death) - from which nadir it begins to ascent toward the apex (p, 137) & then descend again. . .

But what is this "W"? Is it a burning Bush? (see section 5 on p. 49, written in Feb. 1998). I wrote to Gabriel about how the narrative follows "Henry's" search for a lost black CAT (Pushkin) kidnapped on Halloween, into a CATabasis (journey to the Underworld) with Blue J. The "W" is many things: for example, it's the reflection in moonlight of a heavenly "M" inscribed on the landscape (Dante's M of the eagle of Justice, Mandelstam's M). Combine an M & a W and you get a pair of cat's eyes. A "W" is also the outline of a CATamaran (combining 2 V's: Venus, Virgo: becoming a constellation: Cassiopeia, with its Ethiopian (Pushkinian, Bluejayan, MLK) themes.
& Cassiopeia/Ethiopia/Blue J/MLK-Melchior leads back to the Ark of the Covenant, or the ship-shape of a CATamaran.

The "W" inscribed on the landscape in Stubborn casts a shadow in the structure of the larger poem. That is, see pp. 137, the center of Bk 2 of Stubborn: the last words are: "Thy will." This unfinished sentence is only completed in the 3rd book of sequels (July), in a symmetrical mirror-image at the center of its 1st section, the last words of which are: "Be done." These nodes form the nadirs of the larger "W" design of the entire poem. The exact numerical center is found at the center of Book 2 (Grassblade Light), in a single isolated line (referring to a star).

These mappings are summarized in Book 4, the shorter "coda" to the entire poem ("Blackstone's Day-Book", found in the vols. Island Road & The Rose). They circle around many motifs, including MLK, Ethiopia, the Ark, the ship. . . Melville's American-prophetic underside. Here is a sample of what I'm getting at (from Blackstone's Day-Book, toward the very end of the long poem):

IV.1

We are coming to the end of Henry
Navigator's long voyage, Elena -
circling around an elephant ear (Abul
Abaz, or Barnum's Jumbo) - see

how everything grows simpler,
more harsh, more true. Still
the well is always there (and will
be) - like the man standing here

beside it in the dark courtyard
(strange blooming out-of-season
almond branch). A stone,
a star, a well. A cup of water

from a rainbarrel (or Tartar
wine). A circling dragon-boat
or scrap of origami writ
folded to float so lightly. . . there.

You fold Andromeda into a W,
a mountain range back into M.
You cup them in your palm
to make a diamond, or double-

diamond - cat's eyes, Pushkinian.
Delicate Blue Morpho wings
woven with microscopic strings
of quipu thread (gentian-

gentle, violet and red). A knit
crossroad, then - red, white -
streams into Cassiopeia's
mother-night (at last).

5.22.2000


The focus on the catamaran-ark is a focus on Jubilee (Bluejay-inversion), or the coming of justice & redemption & the kingdom of heaven. The angelic reality requires a vessel of some kind (shelter or modus operandi, womb or Grail). I realize this sounds a bit wacky & obscure.