O for a muse of fire

YOUR VALENTINE

From your Valentine, scratched the prisoner

in Rome, young martyr-to-be.

To daughter of Asterius – maybe

a Morning Star? – love to configure

with philosophy, so (269 a.d.).

Skull crowned with flowers

along with more & divers

relics (Santa Maria in Cosmedin)

– & some of them in Dublin, too

(Whitefriar St.).  Ante-

dating troubadours & Dante

with his severed head & body (rue

the day with smoke of juniper, acacia)

he died young, for liberty

of conscience – thought is free;

fled upon wind, Asterius (Astraea).

The epileptic heart dances offbeat.

Dante & Beatrice

found simplest way

to unity – their cosmos whole, complete

in charity.  So ran my Yeatsian effusion

from the green island;

these pipes, my steely friend

summon her countertop restoration

in the green night of Dante’s neighborhood

where phosphorus gleams

amid Franciscan tombs

like camouflaged green acorn (woo’d

                        *

from wood) to be kingdom come

in your creaky dreambed

Ophelia (Juliet, Cordelia…)

– O rondure of love’s gentle realm!

& poetry burbles of it night & day

to multitudes in their sleep

compartments, while the creep

of despotism creeps from sordid victory

to victory (absolutism corrupts

& empowered absolutism

corrupts with most extreme

prejudice).  So the public servant sups

alone in his cold cell, & the journalist

languishes for speaking truth

in cellars of Pharaoh Badnooth

& enemies of human happiness request

your presence in the Furious Throne Room

where kids die miserably

every day, for lack of liberty

& prison sing-song will pronounce your doom.

O for a muse of fire, cried Hen’s herald –

who solders every soul

with mettle from the molten

whole.  Who clears the air, to yield

a solidarity of understanding

in the sheepfolds of Jerusalem

& Greece… Gregorian hymn

with ocarina harmony (Cahokian thing).

2.14.20

guarding the garden

painting by Phoebe Gould (ca. 1992?)

GREEN CORN

Half-moon tonight, like a silver flask

of molten lava.  On this date

George Washington was translate

(1799).  Here’s his life-mask :

fine profile.  Merging in white clay,

like a peaceful moon.

Landlord, when all’s said & done.

Valley Forger, sensing Californ-i-ay

in the green corn of his plantation

garden.  Grace Ravlin

etched that evening scene –

sweet Virgo in Virginia (dawning nation).

The myth rides with the Indian.

Scars limbs of slaves.

Everyone behaves.

A raven-crumb plummets into ocean.

Something’s lugged back, out of clay...

the lunar wilderness.

Innocence, blessedness –

Sophia twirling in the calm of day.

Like young Hal emerging from a golden egg

(his father’s legacy).

Attainted crown, see –

buried bones in Resurrection (Pig’s

Eye) Cemetery.  Across the river,

on Lakota Bluff.

Two swords – it is enough.

Gesthemane is haunted, Indian-giver.

12.14.18

Pearl Harbor Day

MOON-TIDE

Prospero, home in Milan,

dozes in winter sun.

Hobo, on the run,

hands Henry his drownèd plan.

Pearl Harbor Day.  His Juliet,

her father-love unmet,

unmatched, flings it

(on his birthday) off the Golden Gate.

Incest breeds in the wounded psyche

trapped in regression-mirrors.

Henry’s his own father’s

worst enemy (Knight to Queen 3).

Hal speeds to Falstaff’s hideaway.

Idleness debauchery

& trickery will be

his refuge from a father’s eye.

So Henry runs to poetry –

where Hobo rules the sleepy

riverbank, all lotus-weedy

with papyrus-infancy

(Atlantis-libraries of Alexandria).

He seeks his sweet cousin

for soul reunion – one

shady psyche for another ghost.  Selah!

Prospero!  You’ve gone all cranky

& explicit now.  Don’t drown

your book just yet, man –

Henry threads a maze of hanky-panky.

Full fathom five   thy father lies

these are pearls   his eyes

the moon-tide hurls  (sailors

sleep beneath waves, where firelight dies)

The flame in the heart surges, or is

deflected into shallows.

Juliet of the swallows

flittering at dusk... Henry’s paralysis...

shady pining for the sister-dove –

Orpheus, Eurydice

Alighieri, Beatrice

Ray by Nile, yearning for Eye of love...

Hobo’s intellect of mother-wit

tangential, tacit

               *

star, Cautantowwit

Raven-shade of Narragansett

Buried god Osiris, burdened Berryman

weeps on his barbed-wire fence

of psychic violence.

Angry sons are on the march again,

the envious ones – misled by signs

of fraught deflected love;

the Dragon’s treasure-trove,

the Minotaur’s deceit (threadlines,

snarled cul-de-sacs of self-defeat).

Manxmen of tyranny –

their island fantasy

a sunken travesty (Narcissus-fleet).

I remember your weaver’s baton

in Providence, Francesca.

The shuttle flying (rock-a-

bye, baby) to shape a golden woolen

poncho – gift for a San Francisco

poet (from Rhode Island).

Like a wand in your hand,

unspoken, felt – taking flight so

from one heart to another, at

speed of light – what

equilibrium you wrought

there!  Or an image of it –

warm, wearable, at human scale.

From the heart, the earth

shines – ruby hearth,

or emerald (blue-cloudy pearl).

The mystery of Providence

is as a rose in flower,

full of people-power –

origami of experience

unfolded in a safety-net

concordance –

each fold in silence

married to the others – what

complete rose blossoming!

Inexpressible

joy of a grateful Abel,

poncho-whorled into a golden ring!

12.7.18

aqueducts for bumblebees

JESTER THREADS

In the anonymous late grass,

among the stray brown

stalks like overgrown

aqueducts for bumblebees

Hobo looks off toward the flesh-

tone Mississippi bridge.

He yearns for the courage

to be like Woodpecker, in his mesh

of stealthy wasps & stolen honey –

I mean that Thunderbird,

drilling his fiery word

dovetailing out of Galilee;

the lightning rod atop the dome

whose inner lining is mosaic;

a kingfisher, whose beak

flings Geryon from his kingdom.

Late August air grows clear, autumnal.

He’ll shed his jester threads

like Hal doffs Falstaff duds

& lie down by the Rio del

Espiritu Santo.  Watch how that firebird

melts hearts into unison –

lifts into comprehension

both Jerusalem & Athens, toward

a chastened & revived Cosmopolis

where neighbor-love is measure

of the planetary future... &

then he’ll mosey back to Minneapolis.

8.24.18

We few, we happy few

PARIS JACK

                        i.m. John Berryman (on his birthday)

October burnishes the oaks

to ruddy bronze.  Ancient

St. Crispin’s Day, meant

for veterans, the player-folks

of Agincourt & Balaclava

(ours not to reason

why)... bright caparison

of mental mists, pink pillbox (ah,

Jackie).  Man, the intelligence

of his soil... what triggers wars?

Mobs of blood & tears...

flame, shadow-boxing with a fence...

In chessboard worlds of red & black

for every victor there’s

a loser too – King Henry’s

brother-band meets Paris Jack,

sad Roy du Jour.  So each Garfield

meets his Guiteau – the best

& worst, the first & last,

the wheat & tares blent in a field

of glory (shriven up in sheaves).

Was it for blood & soil?

Intelligence of soul

says no.  What man or woman loves

in battlefield or study is

glory itself, & fellowship

in pain (joined at the hip) –

not flags or nationalities

                  *

but one star over Ark & Argo-ship.

Light from a tiny acorn

grows resplendent Okean –

sunlight of restoration (skip,

Jackie, Jean, around that Minotaur

of stupid pride – a hollow

idol full of nothing, O).

This living Imogen is where you are.

Let’s stand with that Shakespearean

from this day to the ending

of the world.  His battling

with fright (mother loss & father gun)

an inward thing, not of the arrogance

of windy crowds (a victory

over himself the only

guarantee of happiness).  An instance

for the rest of us (the human race,

that is).  Restoration

of an idea – of a nation

of united nations, reconciled by grace

& with humility.  Familia of Man.

As Imogen stepped from the cave

so Henry might rise from his grave

– somehow Franciscan, now.  His plan

simply to walk across these states

barefoot, like Mark Baumer –

glad-handing poet-palmer,

Johnny Appleseed (with acorns, dates).

10.25.17

Through human sleep

Christopher Columbus is a divisive historical figure.  The Columbus Day holiday brings out clashing perspectives.  I'm aware of his mixed legacy : symbol of exploration, expanding human horizons, a round globe - and also an image of Western imperialism, cultural hegemony, genocide.  I know today's entry in the Ravenna Diagram series will come across (to most, perhaps) as culturally & stylistically obsolete.  But a poet has a right to be out-of-touch & ridiculous, occasionally.  Sometimes we have to follow the poem's lead.  Now & then a poem unfolds in a metamorphosis, transfigurement.  Symbols molt into something new.  I don't know if that's happened here, though; it's just another Henry sketch.

TREASURE CHEST

A bird hums low through human sleep,

hums softly lullaby,

aubade.  Ohio

bifocals their Burchfields reap.

Columbus is a Jonah still.

The outcast Genoese

casts off, a shifty breeze

of shuttered Inquisition swells

bright spinnaker for Spanish Main.

Indies glimmer in the grain;

Powhatan’s skipping maid

knots scalp & quipu in one braid –

taps down lost gold of tumbleweed

& prairie memory

to one wide planetary

estuary (harvest mead).

The bird floats feathered in her gypsy

treasure chest.  The ship

is Holigost – Time’s keep

(unfathomed yet).  Each Henry V,

grandee Philip will drop the knee

her way; each hungry soul

will stand renewed & whole

upon New Land someday (you’ll see).

Thus in the globe of Jonah’s word

the world comes round, & so

one wing’s carefree proportion

curls each creaking mast homeward.

10.13.15

Statue of Columbus (Elmwood Avenue, Providence)

Would like to follow up some of the comments of last few days.

In Stubborn Grew, and the 3 books of The Rose (all of which make up Forth of July), I tried to make such a frame. Part of that totalizing epic impulse. & not something I learned from Northrop Frye or other scholars, some abstract idea of genre - but an impulse going back to the Shakespeare thing, a need to articulate experience in a holistic way.

(My apologies to those of you for whom I may be sort of repeating myself, again.)

I wanted to "finish", to my own satisfaction, what seems like the unfinished business of the "long poem" in America.

In effect, this poem takes a very long psychic-poetic trip. The poet, the "speaker", wavers between autobiography, and history, and "pure" poetry, and parody, and lyric singing, and romance, and symbolic narratives, and documentary, and collage...

however, whatever the literary-emblematic, symbolic, political-historical ramifications of it all, the sum toto, when I reflect on it now, seems like self-portraiture. This may be due, largely, to the emphasis on memory (reverie) as the basic source of inspiration, the instigator.

I tried in several ways to "generalize" the poem's subjectivity. But this is a very problematic and paradoxical region of art-making. In some ways the subjectivity of the creative artist is exactly what the artist is about - the substance of art's message. The very ability to "muse" & write is dependent on the personal & private to a great extent.

I'm reading another (short) book by Giuseppe Mazzotta - Cosmopoiesis - on aspects of "world-making" in Renaissance literature. He writes in the intro about the traditional distinctions between Medieval and Renaissance : the former is theological, the latter is humanist; the former is vita contemplativa, the latter is vita activa.

I feel sort of on the cusp of this divide (as I guess everyone is, really). The poet-as-poet experiences originality - world-making, life-made-anew - in a very concrete way. But the fragile symbiosis of subjective & objective, person & world, is hard (if even possible at all) to "fix".

Reality is mysteriously in flux, in process - a theologian (on a good day) might describe this as an aspect of the divine gift of human freedom, power, & self-determination. Artists understand this - experience this - as the sudden coalescence of their imaginative projects.

In my "posthumous" creative life of the last 5 years or so, I seem to be struggling to find a mode of expression which is more objective, less autobiographical, less caught up with my interior psychodrama.

Or at least find a way to make that personal experience more informed by the objective present.

Forth of July is full of obscure symbolic structures & meanings. The 3rd volume, July, tried to go in two directions at once : to break out of the nostalgic-memorial element of the previous volume (Grassblade Light), and at the same time to create a more autonomous artistic structure (ie. Forth of July issues in, seeks its own telos, in July.)

I started writing it on July 15th - traditionally, "St. Henry's Day" - the day in 1199 when the Crusaders formally invested the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I aimed to end it between March 15th - the Ides of March - and April 14th - around Easter/Lincoln's assassination/Vallejo's death.

There were a lot of ideas circling around in my head about these symbolic dates. The notion of "Henry going to Jerusalem", for one (a reference to Henry the IV's ironic speech to Prince Hal in the "Jerusalem Chamber" in Shakespeare's H. IV).

There was the Judaic-Christian concept of "Jubilee", which is a kind of messianic/utopian hopeful idea about world justice & peace. In order to symbolize this element I played a lot of word games - reversing the "shell" of an armored (military) Julius Caesar - world political power - through the "coming-forth" of Juliet, or the ark of Jubilee.

Thus the Christian sacrifice evoked by the sepulchre - & resurrection-hope - is linked in the poem (& to America) via Lincoln/Vallejo.

It all sounds very schematic, but it was shaped through a kind of whacky (psychic) journey to New Orleans - through American history - up & down the Mississippi, via Crane, Melville, Whitman, Twain... (& the mysterious Bluejay - who returns after his disappearance at the end of Stubborn Grew.)

The octagonal shape of Frederick II's Castel del Monte (discussed a few days ago) was modelled (some have argued) on the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, which Frederick may have encountered in the course of negotiating the (peaceful - & very short-lived) return of Jerusalem to Western control. The octagon is also symbolic of the renewal of the world (the "eighth day" of creation).

Anyway, happy Ides of March.

... in the last pages of Stubborn, the "voice" of "Henry's father" suddenly breaks in for the first time. He talks about "going to his chamber" in Jerusalem.

Now this is a nod toward a very famous scene in Shakespeare, which you will have to hunt down for yourself. Happy Candlemas Day.

from July:

 11

  
 I saw Eternity the other night   said Henry V
 once more   unto the breaching whale
 for often as I stretched my lips toward
 the lucent wave   so small a thing it

  
 is that separates   our loving hearts
 the darkness had materially increased
 hereupon Nu-Nu stirred   within the secret
 unfailingling J.A. J’s omvalejoss   stretched

  
 postpartum   like a red seed   from
 now-now   to yes-yes yesterday
 deep in Maxwell’s stirry equanimity
 a little kip o’thorn goes o’dell   morphed

  
 the length of a tinier tin plank   forth
 Hendrix   (in tune with a low-rent
 transformation)   (turning
 toward the wall and)   walks on through

  
 Lex Luther’s bilking paradox   (using
 simple OM radio junk from the shack-ham)
 he shows if Shakespeare types out Hamlet
 on his tachyon transmitter, Bacon receives

  
 (in sing-sing) the transmission
 at an earlier time (via chronocomputer)
 settin on a photon clock   spacelike
 timelike and   likelike   Sommerfeld’s

  
 first apple-fall of free-falling world lines
 in a lightcone tipped over by Tippecanoe
 Tipler into the river   just a bit   o’Henry-
 phlegm   caught in the throat   (between

  
 wormholes)   (mouth a and b)  like a frog
 couching for flight through a fog or griffin-
 like surfaces (what exotic matter!  Figure
 it out yourself!) an undersod of the rogue

      
                             2.8.2000