have you never loved & suffered?

MOON-BEAR

Hobo crawled out of a hollow log

like a moon-bear from hibernation.

The River held him in suspension

between breaths, heartbeats (in a fog).

Have you never loved & suffered, Henry?

Do you comprehend soul-agony?

He was a Man of Sorrows, he –

acquainted with grief – like a lost penny

(Lincoln?) at the bottom of a well.

I have, Hobo.

If you want to know

I too be tarnished imago, two steps from hell.

Like who.  But I carry this flashlight

handed me by Lightning

Littletree one morning

(way back, in Providence).  It all right.

Or going to.  Everything you see

is a fresco-dream,

June-bug – the triple beam

searchlights all round (Imogen Dovie

in your mind).  I see you grinning,

Beatrice.  Bunny Rabbi

and Ignatz O’Lamb, too (hi).

This IGNIS NATURA RENOVATUR thing –

will it spin in the sky?  Little Bear,

Big Bear?  In a sloppy gyre

you may bespiral somewhere

sometime, Hobo... in your underwear?

King David hopped like a rabbi

alongside the canoe.  Micòl

was like... O well.

The pure fire is restoration, Jun-eye.

7.17.19

let me orchestrate a pantomime

NUT-BRIDGE

Epileptic Dante struggling like a trapped ant

in his centaur-world

in medias res, Gould –

in RI, for example (not so pleasant).

& nothing gets better in Minneapolis

immediately, automatically

or even slowly, gradually

& verbiage without chasteness

is only noise, eh.  We all agree, eh?

IGNIS NATURA RENOVATUR INTEGRA

– fire renews nature as a

whole – spiritual telos of poetry...

So let me orchestrate a pantomime

rooted in that ancient flame

proceeding from a paradigm

of our immaculate Ariadne-dame;

the shoreline seething with desire

under a summer moon again,

& memory of lambent pain

(Ocean’s infinite suspire).

As when Hart’s Hobo settles down

at last... rolls on to sea

& stubborn ghost of MLK

becomes triform Medusa-Charon

only to deliver newborns (on

St. Christopher’s Day).

Naked Nut-bridge, say –

or eye-in-hand (almonds in Mendelssohn).

7.7.19

serpent ocarina

RED RIVER

Dante calibrated to the nth degree

the classic perihelion

of medieval civilization

simply to retrieve the smile of Biche

out of nine coils of Cerberus

& that sulfurous pit

known to Cautantowwit

who cauterizes death with raven caws.

More things in heaven & earth, Horatio.

We’re all caught up in this

wrestling match with the abyss;

there’s no detachment of the mind from woe

nor from the body’s final strife

– breathing with agony

at the crossroads (in RI) –

where Red River meets Sargasso Gulf.

So the poem of America embodies

Juliet upon the parapet

Ophelia with hairnet

(download Vertigo for double-whammies) –

the tensile span of every suicide,

waiting for someone to reach

them (eye-in-hand) – teach

HOPE to hollowed-out children (pied

serpent, surging back to Mendelssohn).

Observe the valiant

canoe, she said.  Plant

almonds, quincunctial.  Amen, amen.

6.27.19

most August wind-chime

MIGRANT TABERNACLE

So another August 8th-month

inches toward its close.

Whatever Pilate says,

goes – IN RI, nailed to a terebinth.

Whatever happens, happens, now.

An old man is an oak leaf

skimming like a thief,

going to ground.  & when the winds blow

the silver pipes of Sophie’s chime

go tingle-tangle... melody

of sea-blue cherub, see?

Clasping Columbia, his sweet tame

turtledove.  While her fire-engine chair

waits in my octagon

beneath late-summer sun –

a migrant tabernacle... Amor-

Shalom... transportable to Paradise.

Her father is a recent

immigrant, & citizen.

The Shekinah is mercy for chaste eyes –

unquenchable fountain of pure love

for simple existence, for

its mysterious source.  Our

wisdom, Sophie – like your turtledove –

comes shimmering down... she permeates

all things, & everywhere.

As it was always, my dear –

the mind of Love revives, creates.

8.31.18

breath of future time

ROSE ISLE

Providence must be frozen now –

near as cold as here.

There, in a corner

of RISD Museum, on the brow

of a painted rise – a late-medieval

child-world.  Horses

& men, innocent & coarse

in their gaudy armor, their carnival

smiles... all in a day’s work,

limns the rustic Master

of the Providence Disaster

(Crucifixion, id est).  The wolf-pack

crowds up a drowsy, lamb-shy

Messiah-King.  His large

eyes scan the callous surge

ringing those toxic letters – IN RI.

We learn dissonance from what blocks

our way.  The enemy

in the script – mythology

played to strength – flows through the locks

like Trickster (shifty for defense).

Jonah swims with the fish.

Jason or Gilgamesh –

the babe in the river-basket – immense

human soul-wheel spun from sloppy

river-clay, to stand

for Mama’s Best (hand

circumnavigating Ocean Sea

                 *
            *          *
                  *

like sunken Galileo Galilee).

Enameled figure, lambent

on his Southern Cross.  Bent

course, awaiting Arimathee.

Merely a muttered word you must

absorb, digest, like that

moist crumb from Josaphat

(bottom of the well of Cain’s mistrust).

Cain is unable to redeem himself.

The Minotaur blockades

all Ariadne’s braids.

Only a feather from Fiore’s shelf –

Joachim’s rapt ghost – might wave

a breath of future time

across Earth’s clumping rhyme

& waft her grey eye through its architrave.

The wooden limbs of Roger Williams,

still petrified atop

his cliff.  Scars crop

our hope – Man’s malice rims

the years with lime – yet still

the copper peristyle

of liberty’s Rose Isle

shines in its matrix (Man’s good will).

1.4.17 

I'm what they call a Person of the Book, I guess. Not only have I been a bookworm forever, & worked in a library for almost a quarter of a century : my own ponderings & writings are all caught up with metaphysics & religion & scripture. My life took a sharp & fateful turn when I read the Bible at age 19. I was baptized Episcopalian from infancy; at age 50 (old sinner by then) I started finally going back to church.

This is all prelude to saying that there can be people in the world like me who are not part of the global pious-moralist-fundamentalist-superstitious cultural pressure of our era.

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." What is faith? As I understand it, faith is an inner conviction (despite the lack of complete knowledge or information) that something is true. It's a prudent, considered hunch, a choice between possibilities rather than firm facts.

One's view of the substance of experience in its entirety can be focused by such faith-judgements - even if they are understood to be provisional, subject to change.

So my personal poetics or metaphysics or understanding of history or anthropology are all colored by these hunch-beliefs. There is no getting away from it. My artistic development has been shaped by the prior shaping of my worldview.

NONETHELESS. ALL THAT BEING SAID... the fact remains that I am an adopted Rhode Islander (there are two Gould Islands in Narragansett Bay) and a partisan of Roger Williams.

Williams had a concept he called "soul liberty". Which, as I understand it, refers to the free activity of the individual mind in search of grounds for those inner convictions understood as "faith". Williams, simply put, devoted his entire life to the defense of soul liberty. He understood that the inner union between a person and the divine had to be one of true conviction and free choice. Any manifestation of what he (& others) called "enforced religion" was a grotesque 3-pronged insult : an insult to the authentic substance of faith; an insult to intellectual freedom; and an insult to the peace of a (self-governed) community, made up of people holding to diverse beliefs.

This particular conviction of Williams was the historical origin of the separation of church and state as we know it; of the concept of religious tolerance as we know it; and of the oldest surviving secular state in the Western world - Rhode Island.

One of the key elements of Williams' philosophy was an idea related to the medieval concept of natural law (as a young man, Williams was a student-assistant to Edward Coke, the great English barrister, famed for his defense of Parliament and "ancient right" against the encroachments of the Crown). The idea is that humankind, as made in the image of God, displays the God-given, natural capacity to know right from wrong and to achieve self-governance in lawful, peaceful commonwealths. Williams, the friend of Narragansett chiefs, loved to harp on the idea that non-Christian nations (such as the Narragansetts) could be wiser, kinder, gentler, more civilized, more peaceful than many so-called "Christian" nations. (Of course, according to RW, such refined virtuous gentle & civilized pagans would sadly miss out on the Kingdom of God and eternal life, but that was an utterly separate issue.)

This history is part of the "epic theme" I dealt with in my sort of Olsonesque poem In RI. Written back in the early 90s.



(this post was inspired in part by Frederick Wiseman's documentary, shown on PBS last night, about the ordinary workings of the Idaho state legislature... a fine film! Reminded me of my time (back in the early 80s) as a VISTA volunteer, when I worked for community groups as a "legislative analyst" at the RI state house.)

Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : HG poems (label : subject/HG poems).

I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)

Allen Bramhall is reading my book in Starbucks, says kind word. New England, May (2007). This is old country. Poets in moss & old manses. Makes me happy.

The history poem In RI is now available in pocket-size edition.

Anny Ballardini was interviewed today in the Italian newspaper "Alto Adige", about translating my history poem In RI.

Mille grazie, Anny.

In RI : book-length poem (200 pp.), bilingual edition (English-Italian), translated by Anny Ballardini.

You can preview a few pages - & sample some of Anny's Italian - at the same link.

(The book is distributed by Lulu only in the US, I believe - but I hope to make it available overseas in the next few weeks, through their "global distribution"
option.)

p.s. 7/29 : I stand corrected. Anny just ordered a copy from Italy. & I looked at Lulu's website again - they do ship internationally now. Andiamo!

I'm in between chapters of Rest Note. Looking forward to resuming that. Meanwhile, have been prepping bilingual edition of documentary/history/"investigative poetics" poem written about 12 years ago, called In RI. Anny Ballardini translated it all into Italian - a marvel, to me!

Still reading O'Donovan book mentioned recently (Desire of the Nations). I feel more kinship with Hebrew poets of 2600 years ago than with my fellow po-blogmeisters. That's a strange way to feel. It's a strange world, po-biz & all.

. . . but speaking of utopian city-poems, I have yet to write the poem of Providence Now. I've written Providence Then already (read In RI in Anny B's italian translation - when it gets published!).

But I'm working on Providence Now. (That's why I'm reading about 14th-cent. Siena!)

the earlier poem In RI is more "objective", documentary, evidentiary in that sense. Not yet available to the public, though the mysterious Anny Ballardini has translated in toto into italian (as I've mentioned here before). Someday the bilingual edition will be pubblicato.

that poem celebrates Roger Williams & New-Englandy independence - contrasting Rhode Island city-state and Boston theocracy - but the story is overshadowed & undershadowed by the stark suffering & injustices of pioneer days (Narragansetts, Quakers, women, especially).

watched documentary again last night - Let's Get Lost, about Chet Baker. Gifted like Mozart, a natural. wasted his talent; a prodigy who fed (the talent) (off others) like a worm. . . something uncanny about his music. Essence of "lovesickness". Actually, essence of music-sickness. A trumpet-Orpheus, coming up trumps. (Then I found out today my wife had a bunch of her father's old Gerry Mulligan quartet records from early 50s.) In another life I want to play trumpet. From an old poem (In RI):

         This is the voice of nobody, rambling, mumbling.
 And it's hard to imagine the God of Descartes,
             of the Deists,
 a solitary supreme being, remote, Master
 Clockmaker, Big Brother in the sky.
             But language
 is a joint project, a choral endeavor,
 and if thinking is thinking with,
             and perception
 a common inheritance, and under the masks
 of skin color and race and tribe flash
             subtle unspoken
 communications, and if nature displays
 asymmetries of inconceivable
             intricacy... then
 it's not impossible thought might
 outrun matter, and mind might be beyond
             the visible frame,
 and speech might be the mere flower
 of reality, like a morning glory
             or the trumpet
 of an aging poet - the whole body becoming
 a trumpet (wavering, fading) - the life
             an indelible sign.

also watched vol. I of Russian epic version of "War & Peace". I'm starting to understand the Russian, hey. das vidanya.

Noted here a few weeks ago that Anny Ballardini, mysterious unmet angel over yonder Italy-way, had taken it upon herself to translate my bk-long poem In RI into her native tonggue.

Any publisher out there who might be interested in doing a bilingual ed. of a long documentary sort of poem (vaguely Patersonish) about New England 1630-1640s, with Rog Williams, Key Into Language of America, Canonicus, Miantonomi & Narragansetts, w/divagations on Salem witch trials & King Philip's War, Anne Hutchinson, church/state separation & liberty of conscience, founding of RI, RI/Boston rivalries, RW & Milton, etc. etc. (poem written in early 1990s, now transmogrified into lingua di Dante)? Well, my email is listed on this blog. Otherwise we will probably self-do it, Nedge-style.

         Go ye to ye documents, note
 there, how little ye know.
 Stories only scratch the skin, a kingfisher
             flickering, tilted
 toward the banks.  For an argument, to achieve
 an effect.  What is this white surface of
             recycled newsprint, scratched
 by a scion, a scion of certain Puritans?
 (Endicott's farm was adjacent to Zaccheus Gould's.)

A little more from an old "documentary" (In RI).

         RW stayed in London several more months.
 The battle was on full tilt for Separation or
             State Religion.
 Cotton's tract The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven
 became the Bible of national church forces.
             Then on July 15th
 appeared RW's The Bloody Tenent of Persecution
 for Cause of Conscience, his most far-reaching tract.
             Defending freedom of religion,
 he outlined a political philosophy
 in which government was not divinely engineered,
             but man-made
 to suit the purposes of civilization -
 the common peace and welfare of the people:
             civic virtue
 was a natural attainment, available to all,
 and not an attribute of theological ordinance.
             Spiritual achievement, soul
 liberty, was something yet again, far beyond the reach
 of civil authorities to promote or require, except
             through tolerance.
 
     Since government was by nature humane and civil, "it must 
consequently be of a humane and Civill operation."  Secular 
authorities were bound to promote civic virtue, but it was an 
abomination if they confused good citizenship with religious 
sanctification.  Magistrates or rulers were not stewards of the 
Lord but civil servants of the people; their duty toward religion 
was to protect the right of the citizen to freedom of worship, 
not to determine whether the citizen's religion was true or false. 
These demands for a secular state Williams grounded solidly on 
his deep faith in the common man and the power of reason in a 
free people; and on page after page he drove home the 
revolutionary democratic doctrine that governments derived 
their powers solely from consent of the governed:  "From this 
Grant I infer...that the Soveraigne, originall, and foundation of 
civill power lies in the people...  And if so, that a People may 
erect and establish what forme of Government seemes to them 
most meete for their civill condition: It is evident that such 
Governments as are by them erected and established, have no 
more power, nor for no longer time, then the civill power or people 
consenting and agreeing shall betrust them with.  This is cleere 
not only in Reason, but in the experience of all commonweales, 
where the people are not deprived of their naturall freedome 
by the power of Tyrants."
        - Brockunier, Irrepressible Democrat

  
         On September 17th (Constitution Day)
 1644 RW disembarked (boldly)
             in Boston,
 and presented the magistrates with a letter
 signed by prominent lords and commoners
             (Northumberland, St. John,
 Masham, Barrington, etc.) praising RW's
 "Indian labours" and expressing sorrow
             over the disagreements
 with the Bay colonists.  RW requested
 safe passage to the border;
             it was granted.
 At Seekonk, fourteen canoes
 full of friends from Providence
             escorted RW,
 "hemmed in the middle", across
 to home.  With him from London came
             Gregory Dexter,
 the radical printer from Stationer's Hall.
 Condemned by censors in parliament
             for certain tracts,
 he followed RW overseas.  His final
 London publication:

  
       Almanack for Providence Plantations in New England for 1644.

  
         (February 4 - I'm thinking of Naguib Mahfouz
 in a Cairo hospital, with a neck wound -
             and Sheik Rahman
 on trial for bombing New York - and Egypt
 fissuring, decaying
             between imperial strings,
 and a secular state full of rich mafiosi,
 and priestly politicians
             tyrannizing the slums -

                                                    2.4.95

A little more from In RI. (The poem was written some years before Rosmarie Waldrop published her "take" on Roger Williams' Key Into the Language of America.)

         Waves sonorous against the prow,
 flowing astern quietly, softly.
             Lay the feather down,
 NETOP.  WEQUANTIG.  Candle, light.
 UNHAPPO KOSH?  Is your father
             home?  NUCQUIQUATCH.
 I am cold.  POTOUWASSITEUCK.
 Let us make a fire.  NOTE,
             NOTAWESE, little
 fire.  AWAUO?  Who is at home?
 ACAWMUCK NOTESHEM.  I came
             over the water.
 How doth your wife?  ASPAUMPMAUNTAM
 COMMITTAMUS?  I came from far,
             NAWWATUCK NOTESHEM.
 TAUBOT PAUMPMAUNTAMAN.  I am
 glad you are well.  Eyes.  WUSKEESQUASH.
             Where are your eyes?
 TIYUSH KUSSKEESUCKQUASH?  Mouth.
 WUTTONE.  Tongue.  WEENAT.
             MAPANNOG.  Breast.
 WUNNICHEKE.  Hand.  I am tired.
 WUNNEGIN, COWISH.  Welcome,
             sleep here.  NOTE.

At Josh Corey's suggestion, re-read Kristen Prevallet's essay on "investigative poetics".

Progress is happening toward italian bilingual publication of "history poem" In RI. KP published part of it in Apex of the M years ago.

Boston had no case against Miantonomi, so
 they released him to Uncas; shortly thereafter,
             while leading him
  
         down a path, one of Uncas' men drove
 a hatchet into Miantonomi's skull.

  
It's dark out now.  But the lights are on again.
 Narragansett Electric at work on the lines,
             or the generator.

  
         For me to narrate?  Delving in
 hell for the details?