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.

cosmic Sing-Sing

WHEAT-BLADE

Gold catkins dangle from a twisted birch

like those heavy earrings

Empress Theodora strings

into mosaic (grey papyrus bark

afloat above Ravenna choirs

of San Vitale). The canoe

of state is lighter now –

only a woven fingershell or

chorale, a threadbare catenary

smile strung like a veil

from cosmic pole to pole

(north, south... from sunny Sydney

up to autumn-grey Paris).

There’s no place like home.

Kansas... or Burchfield foam

of leafy wind, of writhing tree...

unheimlichkeit unleash of slings.

Lincoln... King... JFK.

World-axle with Ojibway

wing-nut (rust of bee-stings).

Hexagons, unraveling.

The 6 paths of Black

Elk – diamondback

seal of universal Spring

shedding bright tombs of tattoos

into a gathering

of cosmic Sing-Sing –

prisoners in liberation blues

               *

& grays (old Frederick Douglass

understood the sinuous

ways of shifty US).

Let Egalité ring, sang Liberty lass.

So the cedar gazebo of the Word

(a flexible oracle

or circular coracle)

swims in a spiral toward the absurd

happiness of the whole creation –

the chaste eye of Union

at the heart of the onion-

dome of humanism (egalitarian)

welds in its molten planetary core

the future of affectionate

recognition.  Incarnate

octopus of Chinese lantern, your

Guillaume d’Orange Franciscan gate

frames solidarity

amid ecstatic charity

whorled in a fiddlehead agate

or Ariadne labyrinth

(primordial Spring).

Blue Vermilion thing

with stubborn terebinth

or almond flower (ancient

indomitable people-

bloom) – tall steeple

wheat-blade, waving, lambent.

4.24.17

down a river to the Keys

LIGHT RHYMES

End of summer on the river path.

Light almost plaintive

through cottonwood leaves,

a frieze of tall pillars.  A froth

of rambling wildflowers, tender lavender

nameless to me – it’s not

rhodora, in this woodlot

astride mud-coppery earth-bender...

So Hobo goes mumbling along.

A road of melancholy

adoration (holy

fool, remembering a door, a song-

agate)... rowing, rowing down

a river to the Keys.

Angling through trees,

light rhymes with breeze (a wind-sown

octave); a fleet bird whistles

through hearkening cedars.

Her labyrinth of tears

might be a simple maze of thistles –

a hobo circus of circumference

around the dense mast

of a coracle.  Its ballast

is adhesive mutuality – love-sense

smiling through some kid’s affection

for a friend... Mendelssohn

in harmony, one

ark out of many waters (milky lesson).

9.19.16

for the Samaritans of Skala Sikaminias

ROOSTERS CROW

                                       for the rescuers

A gray light shines through the normal world

a silver-scale dawnlight

like the sea-sound in the right

chord on an oud, like a sail unfurled

on a cedar mast, standing simply free

on a fishing boat, out of Skala

Sikaminias, on Lesbos.  Ah,

sighs the wind, for the drowned refugee –

Oh, keens the seaman, for the ghost

of his son (a scarecrow

helped to shore).  Hard row

now, for Samaritans – for the host

village, gasping by the sea, in the normal

world, in the feathered light

of the mourning dove, so quiet

here (in the soughing wind, in the tall

cedars, in the shy bird’s nest, in the forest

dusk, in the soft

dawnlight, in the gray gull’s loft,

in the normal world).  Plain salt is best.

On a concrete floor, someone traced a star

like an octagon, in a Sapphic

ode – under harsh traffic,

under raving codes, like a graven bar

on a looping ply.  In a rosy key

sailors skim toward home –

from a morning comb,

roosters crow for Lesbos (merrily).

8.18.16

*for more information on sources of this poem, see today's New York Times article

shadow of a shadow

SILVER THREAD

A raven stitches broken arcs

over Lebanon cedars,

through layers of cinders

on sands of Galilee.  These marks

print tracks, embed the shadow

of a shadow (of

a shadow).  Whose love

cooled into bottled borders, crow-

foot scars?  Etched into sealed eyelids

the guardians of sleep

administer fear, & reap

nightmare (endless cycle in the Cyclades).

I have no wrath, hums the writhing

wheel of flame – my smile

will melt stalactite guile

until their funny bones come lurching

from the humus... rows of soldiers

thrown from stone, their hearts

wrung into speaking parts.

Her modulation wove its sutures

out of the basalt lid of night.  The ocean

gathers all its woe into

moist glance of pain... you

hear her sigh.  Love’s Jonah-sign

one silver thread – gray clouds,

gray sea, gray gull, gray

dove... & every way

her wing turns (lifting raven-moods).

7.14.16

experimental Restoration Play

RAVEN-SPELT

Cedar shade of Galilee,

Aesculapian shepherd

staff of serpent-

skin, shed (leafing royalty

in vernal memory).  Magdala

Stone of good deeds done

O spouse of rustic sun

& witness won... lowly Messiah

come & gone (& come again).

Time flowers on the lips

& salty fate slips

into diamond lantern (homespun

dream of overflowing glee) – a shout

of joy from a windblown seed

of newness sown (whorled

Jubilee) – canoe-galleon, afloat

round Milky Road (unquenchable

Eternity) – that lights

gold Magna Carta rights

welded in smiling crucible

of Manitou.  So on this day

Canonicus & Charles II

framed (raven-spelt) new

Charter, for primordial Way –

experimental Restoration Play

within green cedar

fane – firm oaken chair

of planetary cheer (our Ripening Day).

7.8.16

Roger Williams Memorial, Prospect Terrace, Providence

* Note : on this day in 1663, King Charles II of England signed the charter creating the new colony of Rhode Island.  Written, and sponsored (in London) by Roger Williams and Thomas Clarke, the charter pioneered a new form of government, founded on principles of religious toleration and popular sovereignty.

the principle of the epic poem

STAR-FIELDS

A monarch sails transparent air

over a sea of grass

toward Mexico cedars.

June hums softly into summer

orchestra – a Symphony

of Ocean River (flutes

by Apollinaire).  Broom-roots

of harmony brush copper tympani

with nervous splendor.  The principle

of the epic poem – Hart

Crane’s plangent part

for solo Jonah (sailor’s pipe)

merges with cat-gut chords

of choral hymn, Atlantean –

sagas of Everywoman,

Everyman (adze-edge word-hoards).

A stone spun from heaven... King

Tut’s meteoric dagger,

sanded to plow much bigger

meadows.  Star-fields of the tongue

flicker from familiar cave –

shape speech to love,

vault from worm-grave

to groves of cedar (almond nave

upon a flame-stream, evergreen

to save).  Pine-needles

tingle with seedling-

cones; wings fan (bright V-formation).

6.7.16

Lake Vermilion (sunset, 6.5.16)