Back to the Bull Moose

Sent this comment to the blog digital emunction just now :

"People gen­er­ally on the left (as in this post) wonder at the seem­ing dis­junct between Amer­i­can qui­etism & the impov­er­ish­ment of the middle class of recent decades. But there is a basic con­ser­v­a­tivism in Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence which has to do with the desire of indi­vid­u­als & fam­i­lies to manage & dis­trib­ute their own wealth, the pros­per­ity & well-​being they have labored at them­selves. This is at the root of the idea that “the best gov­ern­ment is that which gov­erns least.” Now those on the left may mock this posi­tion, as deluded-​sucker false con­scious­ness; but there it is – the basis of the dis­junct.

Some­body will figure out a con­vinc­ing cen­trist vision – some­thing like Pop­ulism or TR Pro­gres­sivism. Because the solu­tion is not in some economist’s math­e­mat­i­cal pro­jec­tions or sta­tis­tics; the solu­tion is in Amer­i­can soci­ety as a whole, making a com­mit­ment, with con­fi­dence, to a new sense of a shared common good. It’s not down with cap­i­tal­ism; it’s up with fair­ness & good gov­er­nance (TR’s trust-​busting as one exam­ple).

Part of the prob­lem is that Tocqueville’s repub­lic began with town­ship democ­racy. Vil­lage self-​governance is hard to trans­late to the scale of con­tem­po­rary nation-​states. But this is the exper­i­ment we must take ahold of, with… gusto… !"

(p.s. in this regard, see my "Teddy in the Amazon jungle" poems in Rest Note.)

Lear-Lanthanum.

p.s. now linked to some of my books at Amazon. The only link missing as yet is my book partially set in the Amazon (Rest Note)...

A new (& final) edition of Rest Note is now available. This includes the complete Fontegaia.

Yesterday was a very good day for Fontegaia-poem. Reached a sort of turning-point in the design. (I knew it was coming, but I didn't know how it would go.)

You never know how such things will turn out, but in a way it feels oddly predetermined. Embryonic, & then born. Some of it you plan; some of it just appears, like magic. I feel grateful for the symmetries & synchronicity.

Here's an example : I think of this poem as a kind of companion or coda to the long poem Forth of July (7/4). I reached its pivot or turning-point yesterday (4/7).

Here's another : I planned the pairing of "1-3-2" and "1132 pm" in the framing poems (#13 & 15). But I didn't even notice the pairing of composers (Beethoven - Quartet 132; Mozart - Requiem) until this morning.

My poetry, anyway, is a kind of give-&-take, an interaction. The section just finished struck me as an example of how the compositional process can liberate the writer from his/her own preconceptions about it. Now possibly I can move forward in a slightly different vein. I have a rough idea of where it's going.

I'm simply operating an alternative poetry making/dissemination process. It's outside the usual channels, parallel. I know the poems are not easy reading on the web. But anybody who's really interested in looking at them more closely (& who has a computer) can download them pretty cheaply from here, or buy the book. The current chapter (#4) is not in there yet, but if all goes well it will be fairly soon.