Shakespearean marzipan

THREE BEARS

Behind fine axe-hewn basalt

of the Incan hive, an eye

like Aaron Siskind, maybe –

quick, delicate, alert.

Mortised ramparts of any state

mark its mandala-border;

stone blooms of order

warp twisters of love & hate.

Only this human heart of flesh

harbors invisible diamond –

petal-scent of almond,

marzipan snowstorm (baked fresh).

Imagine one simplified snowflake

in three dimensions, spinning

like a gyroscope (one wing,

one leg) after one thunder-shake

of glassy dome – Will’s trident, maybe

in a late romance (Blackfriar’s

globe).  King Henry sires

trouble for himself – falls into sea

pursued by Bear.  Near Normandy,

flagship goes down – she’s lost,

it seems – until at last

Hermione steps forth, sleepy...

La Paix (familial, civil, global)

breathes yet, to dance once more.

It was Sir Thomas More,

lapped in bearskin, at the North Pole

                 *

who played the bear, who played the fool;

who played Disoriented Lamb

bleating I am, I am,

who flit the snowflake (melting soul);

his mother (Everywoman, from

Mulberry Street) wept

for the shame; she slept,

& it was glory in the end.  Hum

flickers (pictures in a whisper gallery).

The cranium of Unknown

Soldier wears the crown.

Empires of high frozen sophistry

shudder beneath an infant’s smiling

gaze.  It’s not the wise

who find the way (surprise!)

but every lovey-dovey Sing-Sing

resident – repentant heart, meek

mule.  Chaste planetary

hearth, Psyche-egalité –

bright thunder-akme... slant, oblique

world-pirouette... Hagia Sophia

in a peacock’s fan.  Tango,

barefoot kid’s fandango

under the sky-vaults in Ravenna –

light of my light & yours,

Waltz of Three Bears

by Mendelssohn.  Flares

Franciscan, by Pacific shores.

6.14.17

Sarah down with stomach bug. We watched video, Joe Gould's Secret. I had to go & read the book (by Joseph Mitchell), which we happened to have in the house, since it was a favorite of Sarah's father (born in Manhattan) (Up in the Old Hotel).

Gould is definitely a relative, though I can't seem to trace him on Google genealogy. He told Mitchell his family settled near Boston in 1635 (likewise); "the Goulds were the Goulds when the Cabots & the Lodges were clamdiggers."

Interesting Mitchell/Joyce connections (Mitchell's fascination with bars, and with Finnegans Wake, which according to the intro, he read "at least six times").

I recognize a number of personality traits. Both in Joe Gould, & in the Gould world (New England crusty) he left behind.

His phantom Oral History. Much of local Stubborn Grew grew out of, & refers to, an oral history project I did in the old Af-Am section of Providence, along Benefit St. (the first thing oral history prof. Allen Smith asked me was, "are you related to Joe Gould?")

Bluejay leads Henry there, as part of their catabasis.

& the bookends in FW, basically.

Pound mentioned Gould as an unknown "native hickory". He was a friend of EE Cummings & Aaron Siskind. Apparently Siskind's Village studio was one of the repositories for Gould's strange notebooks.

It's got me wondering whether Siskind allowed a photo of his to grace my first book (Stone) because of my name.

p.s. Is McSorley's Ale House still in business?

I have to get Sarah at the train station in a few minutes, a bit rushed here. But feeling warm & happy about Cambridge reading yesterday, courtesy of the mysterious Jim Behrle. Happy to meet Allen Bramhall & Beth, and hear him read his [afraid to use conventional adjective] poetry, which I enjoyed a great deal.

A fine thing today to see Allen had been reading my poems in Stone (written 30 yrs ago) & liking something he read.

About the photo : it was taken on Houston St, in my high school friend Chris Kraemer's loft looking over at the World Trade Center, in 1975. Chris was a promising photographer in NY, who made a living as a builder (he is an archetypal Finn from MN, whose dad ran a hardware store there). He knew some bigshot artists at the time, Vito Acconci, Susan Acolella(? - don't know who I'm talking about). Also a whacky Russian sculptor named Ernst Niesvestny. When Stone was published, Chris arranged a little party at his studio someplace in Williamsburg. I remember sitting on a huge wooden crucifix sculpture he had laid out on the floor, being toasted with vodka. The title Stone, of course, was an imitation of Mandelstam's first book, Kamen ("Stone") - an acronym of akme ("acmeism"). So this party felt appropriate. Chris married a New Zealand clothing designer so she could get a green card, & they ended up staying together & having kids. He lives out in the Bay Area now. That's his typewriter & cot (I use a Sears Constellation myself). I was living with them for a few months in NY, helping Chris on interior painting jobs etc, before going over to London to try to take Mick Taylor's place in the Rolling Stones.


(p.s. Monday morning : through Denny Moers, a former student of Robert Creeley & studio assistant to Aaron Siskind, I was able to get an actual Siskind photo for the cover of Stone - some sections of Inca wall in Cuzco. The Inca/stone/Mandelstam/Vallejo configuration shows up 25 yrs later in the penultimate sections of Forth of July. Yesterday was the traditional anniversary, by the way, not only of the death of John the Baptist, but of the execution of Atahualpa, the last Inca ruler.)