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.

night sea journey

SALT-SPARK

                          I mean the bedrock of our freedom – a bedrock of our

                          freedom is the right to worship freely. – G.W. Bush, 2.27.17

A light snow fell the first of March.

Ash Wednesday,

Will Blackstone would say.

Antithesis to Caesar’s march,

this errant solitaire into Rhode Island.

Where his friend Rog Williams

established bedrock freedoms,

planting Providence to stand

all time to come.  Like some great cedar

rooted in the granite eye

of personal soul liberty –

Milk River journey (if you dare).

Dark night of Jonah’s foundering.

Black scar of raven-

knife, Earth’s oven-

kiln.  Poe’s ghastly pondering...

Job’s pain.  Pound’s acid bath of hate.

So take this flake of ash.

Solder hexagonal gash

ice red across your brow, ingrate.

Within the creaking iron rose mandala

where Time slowly, slowly

runs to stillness.  Sea-

rose, sea-bell... whispers, ephphatha.

When the Eternal comes, emerging

from Leviathan

like an infant infantryman.

Unknown soldier, Everyhen, merging

                    *

with your sunken sun... a crown surging

from Lake Vermilion

– soul-memoire’s pain

et vin (violet lilac, ever-urging).

So the shy brown hermit lends his Lent

for ghost dance baptism

to Roger’s freedom-rhythm.

Chaste kamen of Magdalen, arc-bent

in parallax beneath the surface –

retinal curve of stone

lifted, of death undone

by innocence... & you will trace

the light thread-path, proportional –

like hazel-wand, or Blue

Morpho – wing true

monarch (black-yellow jag, regal)

from Providence to Mexico.

Across the night sea

gulf, Psyche, Persephone –

along an agate spiral go

into your copper spring turned green.

Slow wheel in clay...

a simple Lincoln penny,

twirling planet on a mast of pine –

the fiery root – Cautantowwit

& Manitou – the Spirit

blazing perfect light –

salt-spark of snow – sun-chariot.

3.1.17

thy brother calls thee

CATENARY TED

The cosmos hangs from a thread, a

lifeline.  Yes, Flem

was with us, up at Verm –

helped Dad, me & Jim (brother)

dig the cabin foundation.  Flem’s

father was MN State

Epidemiologist;

Flem died of AIDS.  There are these themes,

signs... the padre of Hart Crane,

manufacturing Life-Savers...

Abraham with scimitar

squeakin’ by with a warning... O Cain,

thy brother calls thee from the ground.

Hobo sleeps by the river;

his thyrsus nods, a glimmer

of August grass.  Mullein, dock... diamond

pine-cone (piñata by the Po).  The tree,

the tall cedar of life,

Malcolm!  She’s your wife,

you know.  Nehushtana of Liberty.

Evergreen, year-round.  The shadow

owl knows (lives there) –

Spinoza cave-winds tear

up the forgery of terror (low

blow put into Vladimir Kiev-doom).

I’m singin’ with the stars,

Flem, Jim – after the wars.

Mr. Catenary Ted bojangles home.

8.31.16

Green confetti for Bunny Rabbi

SOLOMON’S SEAL

Morning sunlight on the riverbank.

Old bridge in the background.

Hubbub of human sound

gone quiet here – some time to think.

The ranks of cottonwoods draw shapes

in four dimensions – homesick

willows by Euphrates,

brooding vaults of shady Chartres,

cloisters clad with marigolds

on orange heights (Monte

Cassino) – where they

summon up papyrus scrolls

like hopeful honeybees, reviving

scribble-cribs in royal reels

of pearly Solomon’s seal –

fern, aloe, acacia... (ever-living

green confetti, for Easter Rabbi).

I pace these precincts with

a vagrant slouch, as if

I’d missed the point.  & then I see

you! – bright invincible

companion – always there

in your cloud-rocking chair

at End of Time, & trouble –

familiar storyteller, Indian Guide

whose hearth blazes from Southern

Cross to blue Vermilion – within

Love’s angled arc (smile-wide).

3.25.16