Ravenna Diagram Reading Guide #3

Notes for the long poem, continued.  Please refer to previous post for clarification on this project.

RAVENNA DIAGRAM READING NOTES #3

“UP NORTH” (p.5)

Change of scene.  In stanzas 1-3, description of wilderness lake (Vermilion) in northern Minnesota.  “Mnemosyne Point” : poet’s mother (Mary Ravlin Gould) christened family camping area after keynote word from Nabokov.

“Time’s wooden (4th

grade) ruler.  Not to break.” :  obscure reference to the history-pattern of the poem (contra Pound) outlined in the “preliminaries” section of these notes.  Pun on “wooden... ruler” : the metaphysical “ruler” (“King of Kings”) rules from “fleet of ragged little cedars” – or from the Cross.  Establishing hegemonic chronology (B.C.-A.D.) of western culture.

Also : the simple childhood memory (mnemosyne).  The wooden 4th-grade school ruler.

“Placeness of quiet places” : in this stanza the northern MN landscape is merged with the imagined landscape around Ravenna (cedar, pine swamps near ocean).

“One saturnine pedestrian” : Dante, also Mandelstam (who wrote about Dante’s “long walks”)

“snowbound wedding band” : Dante’s Commedia correlates, interrelates human and divine Love – the Orphic “wedding” with Beatrice (& divinity) in the Paradisal afterlife.

“stream’s bright ford” : the poetic “stream” is the passage between the two realms.

Jasper circumference

GRAY PAINT

The vast Flemish panorama

coheres in a raven’s eye.

Through haunted oaks, high

wind tosses bugle-calls (taran 

tara).  Bruegel’s gray paint congeals

on the perimeter

of the sea... Demeter

wanders like a Walloon reels

caterwauling, Persephone!

In Flanders grass, poppy-

purpura (like the sea

around a stubby Orizaba) –

only the poem is humble

enough to bear the yoke

of a poshlost rude joke.

She won’t let you stumble,

Psyche, in your edgy sundance.

That quatrefoil in the blue

mortuary was for you,

poilu (Apollinaire) – entrance

to complete volume of sibylline

Mnemosyne.  Pine

tree pantomime... a line

of sketchy aquamarine (shan shui).

A jasper circumference defines

our Atlantean task,

to reconcile each mask

of pathos (in a matrix of threadlines).

4.8.16

Vladimir's Mnemosyne

FLINTY SEAL

The little height of land, pasture

behind the slough, Heidi,

in Mendelssohn – where we

hunted fireflies together

as on a giant turtle’s back

in the dark – like sparks

or bees on a gloomride

puppy stars under the black

sky – sidling, sidereal

in sympathy, friendly

affinity, & simply

love (centripetal

North Star).  Vladimir’s Mnemosyne

within the hazel wood

only pure good –

Time the shady tall ash tree

that leaves its paw-print on your brow

today.  Miniature

meteor, or sepulchre

in microcosm, negative snow-

flake, flinty seal of Solomon;

emblematic passion-

flower, heart’s icon,

salt for a matrix-flame... O Queen

of the South, nightingale’s

bridegroom, at peak of

deep star-well – Love’s

rose-nest (crowning pregnant sails).

2.10.16