irrational Archimedean constant

APPLE PIE

On the cusp of another Ides of March

plague wracks the Republic.

Snubbing his soothsayers, slick

Julius the 4th tees off a crumbling arch.

Henry Hollow glimpses Fenris in the mirror

coyotes laughing in the doorway

the delicate gyroscopic orrery

of light & dark about to shatter –

shards of church & state, the glare

of Lucifer the puppet-master

dark Leviathan off-shore

a wilderness of the sea (whale Jonah’s lair).

But it shall not be so with thee,

you murmur to me…

                O

irrational Archimedean constant

transcendental root of unity.

Mild logos of a fisherman, a Fisher

King, fish-man… your hook

one Magdalenian smile – her look

from nocturne-cave of milky… where?

Before the granary-empire, before

domestication of the slave –

beyond star-winking nave

or curve of Galla crypt (Ravenna lore);

the ratio of infinite circumference

to one straight line.

Guillaume’s trompette marine.

Thanksgiving apple pie (in Providence).

3.14.20

They builded better than they knew

Have been re-reading the incomparable Architectonics of Humanism, by Lionel March. This is a profound exploration of ancient architectural methods (& their survivals in medieval & Renaissance eras), which involved the synthesis of math & geometry with the gematria, or numerology of words & names (back when ancient Greek & Hebrew alphabets & numerals were one & the same, and every word had a corresponding "number" - the Greeks called it the pythmen).

In a chapter investigating Roman architecture, he analyzes a (conceptual) building model described in Vitruvius - the basilica of Fano, & suggests not only that the full name of "Vitruvius" is encrypted in the dimensions of the building, but that Vitruvius might actually be a nom-de-plume of Roman polymath Varro, whose name is also encrypted, numerically & geometrically, in the design. Furthermore, March finds that the name of Julius Caesar - one of Varro's friends - is also memorialized in key elements of the building's design.

Now this I found especially interesting, because the pythmen, or root number by gematria, of Caesar's name, is the number 528. When I read this I almost fell off my chair. Because I've played a lot of number games, using names & dates etc., in my own poems (in this methods are a throwback to some very old bardic procedures). And the long poem Forth of July - especially the 3rd book, July - is quite involved with this number (528). July was finished on 5.28.2000. 5.28 is the date that William Blackstone, New England pioneer & a sort of "keystone" for the book, was buried on his property in Cumberland RI. July's chapters are also structured as 5 parts of 28 quatrains each. Moreover, one of the key verbal themes/games of the poem is a sort of turning inside-out of "Julius" (Caesar) to "July" (or Juliet, or jewel-eye, or "J", etc.) : which is intended in part to represent a kind of overturning of empire, militarism, "Iron Age" values (Caesar), & their replacement with "Golden Age" (or "Jubilee") values.

What I didn't realize, when I was "building" this poem, that the actual "number" of Caesar's name - & Vitruvius' symbolic building - is also encrypted in my poem...

"Chicago asked in 1893 for the first time the question whether the American people knew where they were driving. Adams answered, for one, that he did not know, but would try to find out. On reflecting sufficiently deeply, under the shadow of Richard Hunt’s architecture, he decided that the American people probably knew no more than he did; but that they might still be driving or drifting unconsciously to some point in thought, as their solar system was said to be drifting towards some point in space; and that, possibly, if relations enough could be observed, this point might be fixed. Chicago was the first expression of American thought as a unity; one must start there." - The Education of Henry Adams


"I had come to hear that great things might be true. This I was told on the Christopher Street ferry. Marvelous gestures had to be made and Humboldt made them. He told me that poets ought to figure out how to get around pragmatic America. He poured it on for me that day. And there I was, having raptures, gotten up as a Fuller Brush salesman in a smothering wool suit, a hand-me down from Julius. The pants were big in the waist and the shirt ballooned out, for my brother Julius had a fat chest. I wiped my sweat with a handkerchief stitched with a J."
- Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

A few notes regarding the obscurities of previous post (& other excerpts like it), for anyone interested. July is 3rd penultimate vol. of long long poem Forth of July (4th vol. is brief coda, called Blackstone's Day-Book, published with Island Road). Poem in previous blog entry of today is from 2nd, final section of July, called "The Green Constellation".

"G.C." is kind of ecstatic conclusion to whole poem, following 1st part of July, titled "Upstream, Down", which is kind of an imaginary "journey into the interior", down & up the Ms., paralleling the center of previous vol. Grassblade Light (Grassblade is centered on source of Mississippi; July is centered on the Delta).

Anyway, "G.C." was composed in four equal parts (24 poems each), sort of balancing the 1st 4 chapters of the 1st book (Stubborn Grew). Though the 4 parts are printed consecutively (I-II-III-IV), they were written "across", ie. I wrote them in this order: I.1, II.1, III.1, IV.1, I.2, II.2, III.2... etc. (each poem is dated, so the reader can read it "across or down"). The idea was to create this big sort of echoing square, thinking in part of the effect of Russian bells (cacaphonous-harmonious). As you get toward the end (I.24 etc), 4 letters standing for 4 bell-tones become more pronounced : D, F-sharp, A, E - the simple door-chime tones - except I inverted them to spell "F-A-D-E". You can see that the previous poem is from the "D" section.

The spanish quote in this poem from from Vallejo's "Poemas Humanas". Among other things, the section threads together various motifs from earlier in the work, including the balance of Caesar/Cesar (Vallejo), Julius (Caesar)/Juliet/Jubilee etc, March 15th (Ides of March) and April 15th (Good Friday - death of Vallejo & Abraham Lincoln), e-mpire and e-quality (under the shadow of the "W" &/or the gold doubloon nailed to the mast at the center of the Pequod (in Moby-Dick), from Quito, Ecuador (e-quator). The "Forth of July" figures the emergence of a "jubilee-bee" or butterfly from the husk or cicada shell or military shield of Julius (empire) - basically a sort of magic letter-game. What was an orphic "Romeo" search for a ghostly "Juliet" in Grassblade Light becomes a kind of spiritual image of metamorphosis on a cultural level in July. All this was oddly & shamanistically "predicted" by the Hermes/Orpheus-figure of "Bluejay" in Stubborn Grew.

I'll post another poem from the "Green Constellation" section which points toward the Russian bell phenomena. Incidentally, the penultimate section of the sonnet sequence Island Road (1996) is titled "To the Green Constellation". (The "Green Constellation", among other things, was actually the brand name of simple Sears typewriter, lent to me by Francesca Tagliabue, on which many of my early poems were written.)

"Mammon Lujius", in FW: MMLJ, Matthew Mark Luke John. "Lujius" an inversion (as is rhyme-scheme in Forth of July a.k.a. Stubborn Grew/The Rose book 3, July) - an inversion of "Julius". July begins on 7/15 - St. Henry's Day or St. Swithins' - the date on which in 1099 the crusaders entered the Holy Sepulchre. 33 years later (age of Christ): 1132, Joyce's motif date in FW : birthdate of Joachim of Fiore, theorist of the Age of the Holy Spirit. Christ-Finnegan wakes from the sepulchre (time-age reversal) after 33 years (1132). July plays verbally & thematically with inversion of Caesar & Caesarism throughout - going from July 15 toward Ides of March & April 15 (death of CESAR Vallejo & Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday). Julius to Jewel-eye to (trickster) jew-lie to J-muse. Recapitulation/inversion of western history.

(note recurrent motif of "132" in Stubborn & sequels: 1-3-2, the waltz-step. Number of rooms in the white house. Number of acres in North Main Cemetery (Providence). Square footage of Grace Church (center of downtown Providence). Number of Beethoven's greatest string quartet. Address of Francesca Tagliabue. a-one and a. . . )