Fontegaia, still buzzing...

20

 
If there is to be   a Jubilee indeed
it will seep like sap   from the reign of Pax
at ease there   on her footrest (stacks
of worn-out shields)   recumbent on her seedy

 
couch   & it will be deep-lasting, steady-flowing
like an Amazon or Nile   carrying along all sorts
of vessels   large & small   freighted with quaint
& local cargo   with room in the hold   for going

 
far into the interior   of summer   & it will be
something like this   elusiveness   in the backyard
after work   the day's heat lifting   when the shade
of the maples (my vision focusing)   seems (faintly,

 
barely) to open   another eye   behind my eyes
something   dilates (almost)   an eye of memory
& this fragile overlay   of now & then   is sweet
to me   & slightly bitter too   (an almond joy

 
from Mendelssohn)   & Jubilee will not be solely
this or that   but the whole orchestra   in concert
we want no less   than childhood happiness   afloat
in the midst   of a gentle civilization   Heidi &

 
Henry   astride their   duelling pianos   practicing
for each other across   Arthur Street   & the hoopoe
(through a hula-hoop)   shuttling across their   purple
passages   love-sick like   Solomon & Sheba   testing

 
each other   with spelling bees &  hard questions
while the bees build archways   of paired eyebrows
sun & moon   silver & gold   blue & green &
rise overhead   in streams of   free B-flight formations

[note : Mendelssohn is a neighborhood in Hopkins, MN. Pax, here, refers to the figure in the Siena Town Hall fresco.]

So Fontegaia is drawing to a close, along with (I think) maybe this whole long-poem jag I've been on for - if you count all these long poems - 20 years.

I hate to come across as intentionally arcane, obscure, obfuscatory in Fontegaia. That's not my aim; I'm a very simple fellow. If it's obscure in the end, it's a failure. But then, often my previous self-explications de texte have left me with a bad aftertaste.

Nevertheless, I feel like expatiating briefly... - so what is "Siena" in this poem?

1. the home of the little Fontegaia fountain
2. a nexus of medieval & Renaissance visual art
3. a sort of little sister to Dante's Florence
4. an early example of a "free city", with a republican government & proto-democracy
5. a government of elected officials (for a few decades, 13th-14th cent.) known as "the Nine"
6. the town with the most-famous & ancient "Palio" horse race
7. a center of Franciscan Christianity (St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bernardino)
8. a kind of outpost or offshoot of Byzantine art & culture
9. a place that was specifically pointed out to me...

Taking all this into account, then, Siena serves as a kind of sounding-board, or catalyst, where these elements (& others) interact to form new things.

Right now (in this final chapter) you see a lot of imagery around numbers - esp. "nine". I don't want to get too explicit (since I'm still in progress!). But I'm trying to suggest some relations between poetry & knowledge, poetry & civil society (political philosophy), poetry & religion.

Dante famously wrote that "Beatrice is a Nine". No one's ever been quite sure what he meant - but the prevailing notion is that he's referring to some representation of the Trinity (3 being a factor of 9).

Maybe I'm working out something similar. "J" - the mysterious muse or instigator (in many guises) of all my quatrain efforts, since Stubborn Grew through Fontegaia - can be understood as a kind of mark or hieroglyph : a curling spiral, or inverted nine, or...

The "Palio" horserace - focus of chapt. 2 of Fontegaia - is a sort of extended riff on poetry-as-Pegasus. Now Pegasus, & Medusa, & Perseus, & Cassiopeia, & Ethiopia, & the 9 Muses, are all intertwined in the original Greek myths.

The Muses were actually a mythical figuration of the Apollonian (rational) spirit in poetry : they each represented a different facet of the ancient organization of knowledge & the arts (history, comedy, tragedy, lyric, astronomy, dance, etc.). Orpheus, the Greek ur-poet, was a representative or missionary of Apollo (thus his fate - torn apart by the maenads of Dionysius, the devotees of irrational passion, fury).

In Fontegaia, I'm developing (sketching out, let's say) a dual transformation : first, shifting between Hellenic & Hebraic elements (or muses); second, shifting between Apollonian & Dionysian aspects.

The underlying argument is that poetry figures reality holistically : as measure : dance. The dance is actually underwritten by the fusion of nature, good will, and knowledge. The agent (& also consequence) of this fusion is what is called "grace" and "wisdom". The innate or potential actuality of human good will is represented (in social experience) as conscience and natural law - that is, the global/universal awareness of good & evil (irrespective of race, ethnicity, cultural traditions, local conditions, etc).

Law & government are essentially the formalization of this innate natural law or (potential) good will - actualized on behalf of the whole, of the common good. When knowledge of the good unites with good will, the outcome is wisdom, expressed as grace. Without good will, law & government fail, are futile.

In the poem, "Siena" is both governed by "the Nine" and expressed by "the nine (muses)". The "ring-dance" of the Sienese maidens in the civic fresco by Lorenzetti is meant to be an image of the synthesis of art & political actuality, of poetry & history, of Apollo (knowledge, light) & Dionysius (passion, rhythm)... in measure.

"9" as a visual icon - the spiral, "J", the fountain - presents a kind of symbolic "square root" of this number. But this is so complicated I'd rather not get into it here, right now.

[p.s. I realize my presentation of "grace" here leaves out the whole theological dimension. In a theological sense, this is the other side of the coin : grace itself is the agent of the fusion of knowledge and good will - since without divine grace, the human will is too corrupt to receive (to understand) truth or knowledge.]

On my lunch break, trying to read article about Siena buildings, actually thinking haphazardly about post of earlier this morning, about my life's "silliness", thinking all writers are silly, their work is hidden from sight, their lives - their real life - goes into their writing-work... which reminded me of my grandfather, the engineer, whose life was hidden in building projects in the midwest almost 100 years ago... thinking of writers as engineers, then chanced to read in the Siena book that the top of the famous Mangia tower in the Campo was designed by Lippo Memmi... which was a nice little thing for me to find, since it revealed some continuity in my work, by way of this poem, written long before the current "Siena" project (Fontegaia)... now I realize that Lippo Memmi's model for his icon of the Magdalen (in the RISD museum down the hill) was probably Sienese...

Mumbled something here a few days ago contrasting present-day concept of form/beauty with that of Moderns 100 yrs ago - Joyce's autotelic "quiddity" vs. today's "intelligibility". The excerpt from Fontegaia I posted yesterday might suggest I'm not practicing what I preach... what the heck is this strange obscure garbled stuff? Especially if you haven't been following the whole loopy string-along poem...

Anyway, it's a work-in-progress, & there are limits to what I can clarify about it, but... It's from the 2nd section of Fontegaia, which has been focusing on the distinctive Sienese horserace called the Palio. What I've been doing is using features of the race & of Siena/Sienese history in general as a foundation, & also as a jumping-off place (metaphors for other things).

Gradually I'm working toward some structural parallels or analogies between :

- Palio/Siena
- poets & poetry (as horserace)
- history/eschatology (the concept of the "end of time" - Apocalypse, 4 Horsemen of, etc.)

Siena links (in my mind) with eschatology by way of Joachim of Fiore, St. Francis & franciscanism. The Palio race itself is, for the Sienese, a way of sort of "stopping time" - it celebrates & mythologizes the "original" independent city-state & its founding victory over Florence at the battle of Montaperti in 1260. 1260 or thereabouts was also supposed to be an apocalyptic date in Joachim's & Joachimite messianic thinking.

In my private symbolism here in this & other sections of the poem, the contemplative/unworldly loser-poet (kind of an image of poets in America generally) is identified with the visionary saint/hobo (Francis), who paradoxically wins the race by losing it - wins it riding his slow donkey (Francis called his own body - affectionately - his "ass", bearing burdens). Contemplative vision & spiritual poverty are "slow" in relation to the quick foxy worldly utilitarian thinking which surrounds the poet on all sides. & the confrontation between these two mighty forces (worldly & spiritual) has its analogy in the Book of Revelation & the Apocalypse itself - the end of time.

"Ramirez" (in the section posted previously & others) refers to the "outsider" Mexican artist Martin Ramirez, whose paintings of railroads & immured horsemen etc. I'm using as another sort of link in the nexus Francis/hobo/San Francisco/Siena/horsemen/Apocalypse. (As noted in an earlier post, Ramirez, who was famously mute most of the time, sent a message through his family to the wife he had left behind in Mexico - "I'll see you again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat", ie. at the apocalyptic Last Judgement & resurrection of the dead.)

For "Ezekiel" - cf. the Louis Armstrong version of that song (alluded to by Eugenio Montale in his poem "Ezekiel Saw the Wheels". Montale also wrote a poem titled "Palio").

The last line - "Father! the chariots..." - an excerpt (revision?) of prophet Elisha's cry as his mentor Elijah is taken up bodily to heaven in a fiery chariot - "the chariots of Israel and his horsemen!"

There - all clear now?

I'm on jury duty this week, so blogging will be minimal. Here's another scribble for Fontegaia chapt. 2 :

6

 
The swelling crowd fills the Campo-conch
like the roar of the sea - contrada banners
swoop and flutter, sailing - glory to Siena!
Horses, horsemen jostle in the cinch

 
of the lead-rope - twilight inches forward
from the bell-tower - the tenth horse
starts his run... the race is on (hoarse
cries of rival jockeys, lashes of calf-pud).

 
Peacock rivalry, testosterone.
O vain people!  Chasing a bloody rag
around the haybales (for a brag).
This is about the poets (non-Verona).

 
You hold the key to the highway, cowboy
(sucking your pacifier).  It's cold
in the mountains (iron manifold) -
where snow locks up the almond eye

 
in a hexagon of exempla - where the race
wheels around a cast-off labyrinth
and the frothing beast (ninth
horse of the Apocalypse) reflects your face.

19

 
Siena - Wolf-Town - threefold knot
in the twisted thread of Tuscan roads!
Above ambivalent pools of frescoes
your campanile vaults skyward - shot

 
from earth, a mason's amaryllis;
image of aspiring civitas (exponential
offshoot of such covenants of mutual
encouragement as We the People is).

 
A tiny peasant-pilgrim in the painted hills
clambers up through ninefold rings of
steppe, vineyard, wall, alcove... dove-
sprinkled street... piazza-shell,

 
city hall... radiant mirror-
wall... and there takes a final step 
into vertiginous icon-gyroscope -
a spiralling, unfathomable sphere

 
(an airy labyrinth, a darkling glass, 
a dream).  Tuscany's free-standing
city-state, ripening so, unknowing
what catastrophe was come to pass :

 
what reaper traveled up the pilgrim path
to meet them at the apex of their glory.
Black Death, Black Death, memento mori.
All roads lead through Rome (to Golgotha).

a "9" is an upside-down "J". both are spirals. fascinating, isn't it?

I'm looking at various emanations of "9" in relation to the Siena poems. "The Nine" was the name for the commune governors during one period (when Lorenzetti's murals were done). Siena has 9 gates.

I'm thinking of the nine circles in Nicholas of Cusa's "Game of Spheres", too.

"J", of course, is very important in Stubborn & other places.

I'm looking at the spirit/nature, divine/human, substance/image, nature/art dichotomies... in terms of number & geometry.

Duccio's (& many other medieval & renaissance painters') designs were based on ratios having to do with the square & its diagonal (an irrational number, the square root of 2).

N. of Cusa, I'm sure found this of interest. Creation/incarnation (or Cusa's "infinite", for that matter) can only be analyzed by means of "irrationality" or immeasurability.

does a J reflect 9, or vice versa?

Dante, somewhere in the Commedia, writes: "Beatrice is a 9". (Beatrice, of course, was a sort of avatar of/from that other "J")

Holy Roman Emp. Henry VII, Dante's messianic Arrigo, died near Siena on a Friday in 1313.

I gotta finish muh poem.

A blown husk that is finished
                                   but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
             where the salt hay whispers to tide's change.

- famous late Cantos lines. faintly, New Englandly. I can identify with the sentiment. can't get no traction these years. but maybe My Siena be another start. (the motion toward Siena has many sources, some which I don't feel like mentioning at the moment)

Ol Ez, the long poems... guys talking about Olson & Zuk again... Olson, Zuk... then another 40 years? (per M. Scroggini). ya missed sumpin' there, boys.

This long poem thing, the whole grandeurosity... kind of a throwback to an archaic sort of poet's Authority. Has its authoritarian aspect. which is part of the reason I tried to throw Hart Crane & Mandelstam & thems two's inimitable negative capabilities into the mix.

Mandelstam had that old birch cane kind of old-poet mana. Me-ums vs. Stalin. & boy he done it too, in 12 rounds. but he & Crane had such utterly different personality-atmospherics from Pound Ol'Wmszuk.

The only real authority is that "light sings eternal". Granted to the poet who penetrates to it & lets it shine.

I'm looking at Pound's search, search... & at what he missed (hidden in plainest sight).

& here I am, & I gets no respeck, not from the flitterati, nor the scholastic ham-jambons.

a little more from My Siena :

10

                         The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth.
                         A woman shall compass a man.
                                                        Jer. 31:22


 
In the quiet womb of what shall be
The estranged, homesick word flies back to its nest
Of abiding peacefulness.
                          Alighieri and
Ezra circle home again, through the door
Beneath a bookstore's rocking sign
For Wisdom (coracle) - touched
By patient, penetrant
Forgiveness - lifted
From the jaws of Leviathan.

 
The womb absorbs their eccentricity.
An unexpected equilibrium takes hold.
The empty wind and the words it carries
Ruffle the water and reflect unspoken things.
What was justice for the High Commissioner
Becomes a pathway for the downcast immigrant -
That baby refugee, whose throbbing wail
(Still untranslateable) will parse
The future tense.

Here are two more short sections (present for Jonathan):

1

 
The blithe young maidens dancing in a ring
In the peaceful street, in the ancient hill town
In the painting, slowly fading on the wall
In the ancient hill town -
How many were there?  Five, seven, nine?
All in a ring - did they sing a counting game?
One, two, three... faster, faster!
Only a ring now (one dizzy blur).


 
2

 
The path from the beautiful day
Through the summer maze, through the needle's eye
Back into sunlight.
                      The blind step
From a screenless porch, to fly through the air
And roll in pliant grass...

 
- different eras, different names and flags
For the human effort.  The mute donation
Of the groundlings : wholeness
Counting up to one

 
And one (the hermit's witness).

Working on a new project again, provisional title : My Siena. Can't post much here (bad luck & superstition). Here's one measly section.

8

 
The Sunday thought, hexaemeral,
Assembles the weeks of years of
Heaviness.  Its frame seems
To recall the shape of
Woman or guitar;
Out of a round
O floats your
(mute) rest-
Note.

9

                       in Siena

 
The world ground onward in a cube of salt.
Salt was the law and salty was the sea.
The enthroned king, the striving peasantry,
maidens in a ring - salt was their vault.

 
A campanile rose in a stony square.
Below, horsemen in leopard skins dissolved
from shade to shadow - into beasts resolved.
Their eager cries raced upward, into air.

 
He found a corner in that crowded town.
Within the square confinement of a frame
the lawless world within his compass came.
Salt was the law.  The sweat was all his own.

Enjoyed today's lecture at the Hotel.

I keep thinking of the Middle Ages. Must be the time of year or something. I don't idealize the Middle Ages; I'm just vaguely, sleepily aware of some affinities.

Sienese painting as opposed to Florentine realism.

John writes about change & its dominion... I think about the force of time & seasons - as regulative, urging us back into a round. I think about peasants & farmers & Bruegel & my ancestors. The oxen of Saturn. Reading in Mazzotta's Dante book about the dual character of Saturn - its influence over the sort of dry leaden durability & materialism of workers in the earth, on the one hand, and its mystico-spiritual influence over theologians & poets, on the other (the "Age of Saturn", the Golden Age, the Edenic time of Adam & Eve the gardeners).

. . . 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!)