Read-Along-with Rest Note, poem #7 :

7.1 : "May day, memorious..." - echoes opening of poem #1. Date of composition is Memorial Day. "the old soldier" - we're back with Teddy Roosevelt, making his Bull Moose comeback attempt with a big speech in Madison Square Garden. He had just survived an assassination attempt in the midwest a day or so before, and was walking around with the bullet still in his chest.

7.2 : "rich men..." etc. Some vocabulary from Richard II, another politician on his way out.

7.3 : "Stern was the sterling word..." etc. - public rhetoric, political rhetoric, takes on a tincture from the Iron Age (the world of power and violence) which it addresses.

7.4 : "oak tree... bantering manteau" - out hidden in the country, beyond sequestered rural wealth, a tree furls (hides) in a cloak of whispering leaves. Image of reserved, persistent presence of poetic speech, powerful in its sphere, yet distinguished from political rhetoric per se. May 29, the date of composition, is Oak Tree Day in England, or Restoration Day : a celebration of the young Charles II's successful escape (hiding in an oak tree) from the roundheads. May 29 was Charles 2nd's birthday - also this poet's birthday. Contrast of Charles II (strong successful monarch) with Richard II (weak falling monarch).

7.5 : poetry is both "sheltering" and a kind of riposte ("ripe post") to political conflict. "The octave..." etc. - the poetic word discovers the sameness or harmony or equality hidden beneath class differences ("squire" and "hand"). "rest note" - in musical terms, a rest note is a silent note : a pause between sounds.

7.6 : "young seal" - cf. previous comments on the "seal" motif.

7.7 : "speechless limbs" - the silent-speaking tree, the "seal" which speaks only silently or symbolically (as animal or as image). Yet the "retort" is a gesture, part of a real test, game, agon. The contest originates in the "racing heart" itself.

2

 
...and he found an old map of the Amapa :
9-foot granite blocks, in a jagged circle,
measuring the winter solstice.  Oro
Pendula wove aviaries overhead.

 
Daring souls drag freedom by the arms,
prong fandangos on the knife of the abyss.
Let prudent beards go mumble otherwheres -
these follow out their hunches, finger charms,

 
face down their fear.  So Fawcett plunged
into the Amazon.  Lost Civilizations
inaccessible, as usual - ruins
cached behind a mental door (unhinged

 
maybe).  There were two mappemundes :
the paper chart (a tactic of the hunt)
and then that bosky planetarium (bent
above pellucid cranium) that fronds

 
its stars across a secret sky.  Of what
be the substance of celestial cascades?
Which treasury (purled deep in Hades)
lured these earthy spirits from the plot

 
of placid precincts?  Archaeology
of buon governo?  Blind vainglory,
gildered dust?  A just-plausible story
to relate, if they return (all Argo-eyed)?

 
On and on (into an onion of hermetic
union) go the seekers.  Ominous hours
ravel their desires... garlands, lairs
of labyrinth (cthonic Parthenon).

Josh Corey comments today on Mark Halliday's recent review in Pleiades.

The issues around paraphrase and "paraphrasable meaning" seem very complicated. Are we talking about the poem's style or rhetoric, or about its subject-matter, its themes, its logopeia?

A poem's style would be impossible to paraphrase (cf. Mandelstam's comment : "if a poem can be paraphrased, the Muse has not spent the night, has not ruffled the bedsheets" - or something to that effect).

On the other hand, a poem may have many layers of intelligibility - which might be open to successive layers (like an onion) of interpretive unpacking : which is similar to paraphrase, but not exactly the same thing.

Halliday's remarks about paraphrase were what spurred me to offer the successive "read-alongs" here, of the ongoing poem Rest Note. His essay reminded me of Wallace Stevens' repeated forays in this direction, & thus I felt licensed to give it a try.

Hopefully, the poems have not been rendered completely transparent - which would close off their future, to some extent (cf. Josh's comments on understandability). Probably impossible, considering my obscurities.

Moving on now into a second section of Rest Note. This one will be a little different (that is the plan, anyway). The "scene" (if you can call it that) is the office of Brian Fawcett, son of Col. Percy Fawcett & editor of his papers.

1

 
A wandering gull makes random tracery
over the borderlands of Lima.  I hear
the railcars shunting in the lonesome yard.
Here's my office : chart heroic errancy,

 
retrace Dad's folio.  Peruse the maps,
the journals, clues, evidence; pursue
the path until it vanishes from view
into some cul-de-sac east of Peru.  Perhaps

 
find what he sought.  The maps unfold
(bug-spotted origami) – refold again;
the chase for lost primeval Azatlan
reverts to search for Leif the Bold

 
(himself).  Into the elements explorers go;
into the capital's unspooled complexity
slip knotty guardians of verity
(gnarled snarlers in unruly limbo).

 
Desire for golden leaves on the lapels
shoulders aside a copula's rotundity,
its ruby wheel.  Rabid ambiguity
shrivels into nonsense; truth repels.    

 
Below, a ruined rock still squeezes
rust from its accordion (the rose
of its accord).  Ungainly willows
anchor the tired swing's oscillations.

 
The scrap, the dented implements,
skewed directives, waterlogged books...
– here's where Mark spots the X – looks
like a 9-stringed lute! – makes no sense...

I've added #11-19 of Rest Note over at Alephoebooks. Also attached these sections to the first post (so now you can follow #1-19 in sequence, if you like).

This is the complete 1st part of the poem.

[NOTE 5.11.07 : Rest Note was deleted from Alephoebooks. Now available here.]

& so, with this odd couple (#18 and 19), the first part of Rest Note is (draftily) complete. Tomorrow, if all goes well, I will amalgamate #11-19 over at Alephoebooks, & continue with the parallel philological forensic frenzy.

19

 
The rain keeps raining, softly, toward July.
And we were born in rain, and we may die
in rain; this is our rain (mutter of sighs
and tears).  So grumbled Jonah, at the sky.

 
The contrite heart is as a broken swing;
its rickety creaking is a cricket-sound
in lonesome summer.  The iron wound
of spring, uncoiled... you hear it conjuring,

 
cajoling (questioning).  And so set forth
upon July, a pilgrimage of chums - hobos -
toward the source (one lazy Russian O
revolves... some undulating Volga-moth).

 
Suddenly (across red velvet veldt)
an Abyssinian abbess comes to call.
Her abecedarius (of questionable
providence) gesticulate, and felt.

 
The mud-flats of the Amazon form an inverted V.
Teddy could hardly bear it (jagged with rage,
you are half a swingset - mean with extreme
persiflage).  And it was hard to see.

 
Only the treetops fingered royal blue.
There, a jay of the jungle translated :
stale shovels can't bury her; checkmated
tyros swing like hoarse cicada glue.

 
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity,
suborned the rain. Clear at the source,
a subtler sort of V, victorious;
the rest, a snoring Jubilee (Z... Z).

18
       
         But stay, here come the gardeners.
         Let's step into the shadow of these trees.

 
I remember my brave setting-out.  How suddenly
the heart lifts, when some El Dorado comes in view!
A martial exercise.  Across a jangled spur
we rode - the wilderness (green, bushy

 
perturbation) down below.  To the right,
a short-cut - limpid grottos, toxic, sheltered
(globule mimic of the Golden Shore).
To the left, a rabid knothole (termite-

 
ridden, caterpillar-swamped) : ur-forest,
eaten by the trees.  And yet a third path
for the indisposed - a trail boreal, wreathed
with arctic poppy (sweetest this was, shortest).

 
We hesitated, at that triple fork.
Abysmal memory of past mis-steps
led to a halt there (under pensive lamps
of Solomon's-seal : overhung, green, dark).

 
Rondon dismounted, crowned his head with grass.
What is it, friend? I asked (disordered springs
unwound so many -) : "only the King's
old handkerchief," he laughed.  "For Lazarus,

 
or Nebuchadnezzar, lunch."  You would have wept,
Edith, plaited your brow with rue, to hear
this rude marvel of a gardener, this leveler,
pruning the precious commonwealth he kept!

 
With giant arm, he raised a shining scythe
(his iron divining rod, ruled with a rare
dolphin-device) - and with a single shear
unveiled a river (stately, steady) underneath.

OK, moving along with our turgid pilgrimage, here's the Read-Along-with-Rest Note, for Poem # 6 (for those of you who are new to this, I am providing some mini-Cliff Notes to the ongoing poem, which you can read in installments there). Maybe these helpful hints will allow Jonathan or some other wanderer in Gould blog-jungle to solve the puzzler posted previously.

6.1 : "House of Ice" - see here for hysterical background. "We were married there..." - ie. we were (complacently) a part of this social construct, rooted in autocratic fantasy & whim.

6.2 : "Dreams are hash" etc. - one of Wallace Stevens' gnomic aphorisms. Combined with Hamlet, it sets up an amalgam of poet-prophet, one who flings jeremiads. "Something rotten in the state of Denmark."

6.3 : "table set amidst mine enemies" - this is a line from one of the Psalms, praising God for "setting up" the Psalmist in security among his foes. Here employed ironically, considering the "table" where Hamlet reached its poisoned denouement, as well as the table of the Last Supper. "Courland" - the little duchy ruled by Empress Anna's new husband. "Cour" - ie. heart-land : another glance at Hamlet, who at some point mentions the tables of the covenant written on his heart, which he must uphold. "A cup and signet seal" - the seal - his father's royal seal - which Hamlet used (on board ship) to foil his uncle's plan to have him executed. That seal is covenantal, "promissory".

6.4 : "we hushed ourselves, behind a hedge of speech". The poets, in general, fail to fulfill their prophetic, critical social role. "The Empress collected..." - because of this critical failure, society continues to move along in its fantastic clockwork fashion, leading to soldiery and war at the end.

6.5 : Both earth and sun wait for expiation (brooding, drowning, wayward). "the earth (formed long ago for everyone)" - something primordial countering the rigid, frozen social structures created by human beings.

Jonathan Mayhew, one of my very fit though sweltering though very few readers, came all the way back from Spain to work on the Rest Note puzzler. & he's almost there. Anybody else want to catch this train? You have to name the poet, the poem, & the particular line.

Big clue : remember, this is a poem which began on April 26th, the day Teddy Roosevelt emerged alive from the Amazon jungle, & also the day Hart Crane disappeared into the Caribbean. And Teddy, in his memoirs, credits his lifelong interest in natural history to seeing a certain baby aquatic animal on the NYC fish market docks.

Very busy here at work today. Would like to Read-Along on poem #6, but probably won't have time today. However, I want to mention an extraordinary experience I had while writing #17, just posted. Synchronicity, I guess.

Let it be a riddle for you.

It has to do with the long post here, on 6/16. While writing the most recent section (#17) last night, I realized there was a single line, in a particular poem, by a certain poet, which aligned beautifully with one of the motifs of Rest Note (mentioned in that post on June 16th). So in #17 there are clues planted everywhere with regard to that single line.

To the 1st person who names the poet, the poem, and the particular line, I'll send a book.

I like how the Met & the NY Times came along & joined me on this trip. Hope to go see the Mayan show - that jade head with obsidian eyes.

17

 
The city below the terrace groaned with the roar
of many engines, and sometimes Hobo grew
confused.  Were there many birds, or only a few,
or one?  Or none at all - only the anger

 
of the wind, tripping a rippling mimicry
in the branches?  The roar was alien, inhuman...
or was it he himself who had lost some touch
of companionable union, some - democracy?

 
Yet... it felt O.K. to be absent, sometimes.
He could watch the cubiform city ratchet upward
into turbulent rondure... and he wondered
at things, as they rose to their occasions,

 
like slanting cranes, with unselfconscious grace.
(Sometimes, lifted over itself, the forest rested
for a while : a cresting, counterpointed
sarabande, trailing a surf of firs.)

 
The spindle in the trees turned silver, a last
bright flare (vortex of each hobo passage).
Just as Teddy arose at the end (the adage
of the jade tree on his brow) and cast

 
an eye toward his unbalanced friend.  He felt
how much they had suspended from each other
(as Ulysses S. must have, in the memoir-
shiver of his battles won).  Lionheart

 
he was, and dungeon too - a Lazarus
among the tombs, attentive to the zone
buried in that nutty chest of his (someone's
cicada, cricketing).  It muttered, Paradise.

On we go with the mystifoggy Rest Note Read-Along :

Poem # 5 :

In conformity with the principle of variation outlined previously, we're back with "Hobo" at the cliffside in Prospect Park, Providence (see postcard above, in HG Poetics header).

5.2 : "wordy backbone" - Hobo is on the "spine" of the ridge which runs down the old section of Providence. & he's thinking "cosmologically" about verbalizing a concept of the universe.

5.3 : "Bramble, Tennessee" - vague subtext here, word-games. Hobo is linked with both Lazarus & Teddy Roosevelt (on his "amble" through the jungle, or the "brambles"). & as Moses heard God in the burning bush, Lazarus heard a voice which drew him out of the crypt. "Tennessee" - pun on "see ten". Why? Clementine, on the edge of the cliff - like the "chestnut tree" that Hobo talks to (see stanza 5.5) - is a figure for a sort of muse or Beatrice (Dante : "Beatrice is a nine"), who leads the poet through the nine rings of hell to the earthly paradise. It's part of a narrative structure, too - this poem (Rest Note) is built in part on series of nine sections - which are actually (hidden) tens. Ie. "see ten". If you look at Rest Note # 10, it is actually a section of double length. Each larger part of Rest Note is to contain 19 sections, in the pattern 9-1-9 : but the center section (ie. #10) is double. Therefore each part actually has 20 poems ("see tens").

Got that? Awful turgid, huh?

The rest of this poem is pretty self-explanatory.

5.6-7 : "As every living being..." - Hobo talking to trees in the park, Lazarus listening to a compelling voice from within the grave... these are metaphors for the structural relationship between person & word, poet & poem.

5.7 : "western rim" - from Prospect Park, you can see the western ridge, like the rim of a bowl, on the other side of downtown Providence.

16

                ...they placed the mask in a tomb and left it there, 
                probably assuming that it would never be seen again by 
                human eyes.  That didn't matter.  Its energy would pulse  
                away in the dark, endlessly germinating.           
                                           - NY Times, 6.16.06

 
In his dream, Lazarus smelled the earth again.
With the cricket sound, and the slow mourning dove.
Only a faint scent - grass, wildflowers, clover.
It was like a memory from long ago, a sign.

 
The voice he thought he had heard outside,
in the light of the cave-door - gentle, jocular,
supplicating, sweet - now (in camera obscura)
- as if he were the cave - whispered inside.

 
As if the whole earth were a memory,
a lost tune.  Mnemonic tones, crooned
below the dove (camouflaged in its moan)
came from the planet's axis - reliquary,

 
rounding, regulant.  Washed in the stream,
Vermilion.  Now, overhead stood the sun;
Lazarus emerged.  Everyone
stretched up to him (to hobble him home).

 
Such was the dream of Lazarus, asleep in clover.
His eyes (obsidian) glazed from figments
of jade - his face like a tree (blue-green,
light pine, darkened to jasper, riverine.)

 
Only a mask - a mask of listening.
The ear to the ground - under the ground.
For the hum in the mirror, the hurtling bond
in the words : I am here (echoing, anchoring).

 
The pledge extended foliage of quiet shade.
The scent (of jonquilled soil) was tender, too.
An evening dove, atop a stony portico
of grim façade (totem of arcane crusade).

I'm probably losing people with the murkiness of these last 2 entries (#14 and 15). & my explications don't explick much, either. But #15 is sort of an allegorical sketch or illustration of some underlying elements of #14.

The argument is, to put it very sketchily, that relationship & mutuality are substantial, fundamental, inescapable aspects of existence, reality, however you want to put it. There is the saying of Heraclitus, something to the effect of "living each other's death, dying each other's life." & this mutuality - this reciprocity - has consequences for the way we use language. All kinds of covenants and verbal bonds are examples of situations in which we must come to terms in order to live together.

The example in poem #15 of "drawing straws" in order to choose an individual to bear a certain inescapable burden is just a sketch of one such (implied) situation.

In other words, the world is not simply our (philosophical) oyster, an object made to order for our contemplation. Or, anyway, perhaps it's not only that. We are engaged in an ethical conversation, in which the shared burdens of life are under negotiation and tested - & we are tested, as part of this process.

It's a question of - what is justice?

Just rambling...

When I, hopefully, get to the end of this part of Rest Note (#19), I will add #11-19 to the others over at Alephoebooks. & maybe by the time I get to the Read-Along for these latter sections, some of this will make more sense. & meanwhile, maybe some people are becoming more attuned to my lingo, & can interpret for themselves.

15

 
Hobo on a promontory, talking to the trees.
Hedged in by oaks, on the cliffside - ruby
infant leaves, clinging tenaciously
to the chestnut.  A fleet of tough extremities.

 
He mumbles toward her, as toward the figure
of an absent friend - a representative,
a token of regret.  Tentative
gestures of a shaken leaf accent his verbal

 
burr. We was surrounded, honey - runnin
hard.  Somebody had to jump the wall.
We drawed straws - I tuck the damn fall.
We each made the vow - now come the doin.

 
From the ridge-spine, Providence, like a foggy lake
of shimmery concrete.  The tree-murmur
his covenant now - magnetic susurrus,
uncharted wilderness.  Words left their wake -

 
shorn calibrations, ex-commonwealth;
vectors of prescience; gabled reproof.
9-storied sorties toward that aloof
pride of lions - your bespoken tithe.

 
A trickle of honey, under the locust beans,
in the shade of the heat of the day.  Kingfisher
diving like a naval jay; the sky, cloudier
today; a sober stillness in the evergreens.

 
Hobo turns his face in the breeze of his mind.
In order to lose it there, to loosen it.
Yet the ineradicable echo of the chestnut,
anchoring, remains - the tears in the blind.

Read-along-with Rest Note :

Poem # 4 :

I'll be brief, because the article in today's NY Times Weekend arts section, about the Maya exhibit at the Met, is a better companion to this poem.

4.1 : Readers might want to check out another Times article, from the Science section of May 16th, "On Ancient Walls a New Maya Epoch", for more info. "gaunt John" - ie. John of Gaunt, character in Richard II. "Quatrefoil" - 4-leaf clover. See image of open-mouthed god sculpture surrounded by quatrefoil ornament in the 5.16 Maya article.

4.2 : "Dogwoods... ridge" - specific place, Prospect Park in Providence, where old man/hobo is on bench (cf. other sections).

4.3 : "one vine short" etc. - see Psalm 80, about the vine that spreads to the borders of the land.

4.4 : "I am a stranger..." - line from Richard II. Lazarus-hobo is still waking up, orienting himself.

4.6 : "Dr. Saturno" - see Times 5.16 article. Dr. Saturno is an archaeologist.

I've been offering Rest Note read-alongs, so I thought I'd add some emergency obscurity relief comments on the section just posted (#14).

In line with the alternation/ABA/ring-structure I described in previous read-alongs, there's a link between # 14 and a previous section, # 6 (posted here previously, & also over at Alephoebooks).

The ideas cluster around the word "seal". In poem #6, there's an allusion to the royal seal which Hamlet used, on board ship, to outwit his uncle's plan to have him executed. The first stanza of #14 (see below) is a fairly literal description of the Minnesota State Seal (a farmer, plowing, looks over shoulder at Sioux horseman, galloping away). In the background here, too, is Stevens' great late poem, "An Old Man Asleep" - "...the redness of the River R").

Teddy Roosevelt, as recounted in the C. Millard book, dated his own powerful interest in natural history to a childhood visit to the NYC fish market, where he saw a dead baby seal on a plank (I think I've got that right).

So I'm punning on seal - as natural fact, curiosity - and as insignia, representation of authority. Nature (natural law) & custom (positive law).

I understand this is a huge stretch - I mean more in my head than in the poem, as yet.

So what do I mean by the "seal"? It's the "character" - the "type" (as in typesetting) forged by Vulcan (volcanic) fire. It's nature's mortal seal on the particularity of each living creature. Thus the subdued allusions in #14 to Hart Crane's poem "Emblems of Conduct", as well as to Wordsworth's great brief poem which begins "A slumber did my spirit seal". These are in the background here.

Lurking on another level are allusions to Mandelstam & his "emblematic" encounter with Stalin ("wolf-meal" - links an Old English lament & Mandelstam poem about exile; "'star' for star", etc.). The "House of Ice" in #6 is a kind of satire on tyranny as traditional political status quo. Nabokov also lurks in the poem posted previously - #13 (see if you can find him). What I'm groping toward, actually, is a rather Nabokovian notion of a spiritual otherworld, which balances "this" world by means of enigmatic, emblematic, writerly tokens, insignia (cf. that other Hamletian Stephen Dedalus, in Ulysses - "signatures of all things I am here to read", or so it goes, something like that...) (p.s Happy Bloomsday, JayJay, & H.C. Everybody).

(This Nabokov thing runs very deep in me. It comes, I think, from his strong influence on my reading when I was around 13-14. There is a kind of subconscious melding of the vocation of writer with the spirit of Nabokov in my mind : & that, perhaps, is the ghostly imprint of his "character". But I digress...)

There is a sort of continuum being set up between social power (the freight train & its long echo imprinted on the night), TR's presidency as a social symbol, and Crane's symbolic death (becoming "one with the fishes") - going back to the conjunction noted between the date of TR's emergence from the jungle, & the date of Crane's death.

The vague notion presented in these lines is that of a duality between the "body left with Calypso" and, on the other hand, the homing spirit of Ulysses. What remains of the body is an emblem (the "jasper bandolier") - which in turn echoes the "banderole" - the symbolic curtain dividing heaven & earth - mentioned (& noted in the notes) in the opening poem (#1).

It's obvious from these notes that I'm describing an ongoing process of symbolization, which hopefully will become more exact & clear in sections to come... then again, much of the iceberg, in my particular house of ice, remains underwater, implicit - & that's as it should be.

One of the more obscure sections, I guess...

14

 
The hollow hoot of the freight train sets it seal
on a limitless night.  Plowman leans on a line,
glancing over his shoulder (fleeting scene
of red-tipped feathers - Red's farewell).

 
Spirits shuttle to the shady gates (engulfed
in fanes of wheedling arms) and Vulcan sets
the type with rugged characters - Calypso,
Circe; the scalds, the scars.  Wolf-

 
meals, in the blue forest; a rustic war
of mirror-brethren, fixed in their Medusa-
headrest.  Slumber's their insignia :
engravings of engraving, "star" for star.

                                
                   *

 
As you move toward sleep, the leavings of the loom
loom over the deep... over the speechless
limbs.  A boy who wanted to play with dolphins
feeds the sharks (its name, its doom).

 
He frets your opulent asides, the festal
trumpetings, the wails of whales; you feel
closer to home, Ulysses, as you steal
a green wink from the morbid burial's

 
abiding score.  You left his earthy body
on Calypso's shore, and for Penelope
you clipped his jasper bandolier (she
toys with it in the grass... tombs it away).

Keep on Readin'-Along-with Rest Note :

Poem #3 :

Pretty simple & straightforward.

3.1 : "Walk with me..." - the "turtle-dove" invoked in poem #1, here (maybe), replies, with a command to the speaker. (Lazarus still "dead to the world.")

3.2 : "empty sounds" - see C. Millard on the sudden crashing noises of the jungle (jolting, scary). Likened here to a walk through poetry.

3.3 : "tock-tock" - the woodpecker reminds the speaker of (crucifying) nails being driven in at the "crossroad". The speaker is a bit unnerved, in the forest. "Nature was judgement." : nature itself crucifies (we are mortal creatures). "Truth - very particular" : cf. phrase in next stanza : "everything got everything else".

3.4 : "torture chamber" : again, see Millard on the Darwinian ferocity of rainforest ecology. "everything got everything else" : the voracious gourmet organisms are very particular. The two senses of "got" - knowledge ("I get it") and acquisition ("I eat it") represent the jungle as ultimate post-Edenic cul de sac. The tree of knowledge has become a poisonous wilderness. Suffering is the sum (the crossroads).

3.5 : "Back, forth..." - represents the "turn" of the (poetic) story. Contrast the arcadian image of the back-forth swingset, its equilibrium. Maybe the goal of the Lazarus-Ulysses journey (home, on earth).

3.6 : "sound was sound" - the same word oscillates (like a swing) between its two meanings, and in doing so, confirms its own "soundness". A sort of provisional answer to the anxieties in #1 & 2 about poetic solipsism - even if it's an unproven assertion. [cf. A = A : Mandelstam's "Acmeist" law of identity - vs. anxious, otherworldly Symbolism.]

3.7 : the murmured assertion of the "voice" - what "might be said" - leads onward to hopeful concluding stanza...