train to Boston

FATE-LINES

Hobo follows his instinct to the river.

A serpentine circulation,

labyrinth – heart’s burn.

Romans might haruspicate the liver

of an ox, or note the forays of a raven

like smoke-signals overhead;

Hobo lingers with his own dead

Providence photos – train to Boston

or that old blind man who walks the plank

straight off the cliff (at Prospect

Park).  Ghosts intersect.

Eurydice in San Fran hits a blank

wall of blue salt water.  Prince Henry Hal

uproots the better part of soul

to be the bard imperial –

shelving himself with racks of Fleurs du Mal.

To be refuge for troubled consciences,

Rhode Island was.  & was.

Hobo works with materials

by eye-in-hand (fate-lines, hunches);

commissioned for a wedding-song

of earthen pots (Cahokian)

& Morning Star – where one

Virgo-conjunction plants her Gateway prong

the Rio del Espiritu Santo will merge

St. El with Muddy Waters

& Ravenna’s virgin martyrs

with a N’Orleans fanfare... cosmic splurge.

12.10.19

This unknown recommends Oblivion, a book of essays by Donald Justice (publ. in 1998). Should be a benchmark, lighthouse, guidebook.

In an essay on metrics, he debunks the notion that meters have some kind of organic basis (breathing, circadian rhythms, etc.). He offers a very persuasive (to me) interpretation of the paradoxical (subsidiary, understated) role they play, in the process of hammering together a memorious art work.

In a subtle essay on Baudelaire and "sincerity", written in 1957, he undermines the rationale for confessionalism - just a few years before that movement burst on the scene.

In an essay on Stevens' meters, he gives a sparkling mini-course on the "Imagist moment", followed by a discerning analysis of the pentameter background in Stevens, & what he did with it.

I'm loving this book.