in the end zone

MAJOR CHORDS

In the shadow of a song of songs

the anthems are always major

chords.  Mendelssohn... (our

home in Hopkins)... everyone belongs.

Tonight the rival city-states,

the patriots, blow

ram’s horns.  O

say can you see... big potentates’

eyes dilate... Vergo rolls out

Hail Mary feint (over

Washington Monument) –

Crazy Horse Rushmore... Touch-

stone!  The transfixated crowd

explodes.  Ghost dance

in the end-zone – Lance

Galahad will take the shroud!

The mob desires to crown a king,

a king of everything.

Sponsors oblige, with bling –

the glittering circlet is a diamond ring

for nubile Woody Berge Ouvrante

(Cheerleader from the Bronx

Will Marry Uncle Onx

Next Year).  Preview this fête galante!

Apollinaire heard the cicadas

droning in the oak –

of how the wind spoke

dry coracles of wheat to Colchis

                    *

& the streetlight in the snowy dark

zones a frozen cross

against the pavement (Loss

for Brady : Bells Will Boom for Belichick).

We’ll laugh about this tomorrow

(or maybe in 2020).

How the crowd, honey,

decides – & doesn’t care, somehow.

They insist on sacrifice – Sacre

du Printemps, ma chérie.

Tiptoe to thundery

finale... just before the war (nacre

& objets d’art, Guillaume).

Leap to the metronome

over the Metrodome,

Sophie – you will survive this doom

of frightened infants in their uniforms;

Thin Blade Societies

& Rudra puberty

sodalities... unconscious norms

(they know not what they do).  Thread

woven for a future prince –

hearts, purple sequins

imprint Valentine wreath for his head;

he’s singing of an anti-kingdom

where his anti-father

(shedding all that bother)

chords an unquenchable welcome home.

2.3.19

be manifest, be imminent

TUSCAN HILLS

Nestled in his city of rivers & bridges,

hidden in his cabin

of Lincoln logs, alone

like that baby screech owl (wedged

in his cozy cottonwood hideout)

Hobo will contemplate

his May-time temperate

zone, his mild creation, riverine, remote.

Knotted by Amor – like an Incan quipu-

net, like a ruby bud

of that burbling Word

afloat so murkily nearby (his Brook of Q).

Ahav-be-manifest – be imminent

as hale touché-scapegoat

whose royal honey-kismet

soldered Okean to oak – bent

light to leaden doomroad (East

to West).  Jerusalem

gleams in the sun – shalom,

shalom to the returning one!  A feast

for the soul of yon American

blindfolded rambler.

Holy fool, shambler-

yurodivy, from Voronezh to San Fran

you’ll meander, like an old river

& mumble of a Union

equable & all-human –

soft Tuscan hills, moss-green forever.

5.3.18

mumbling toward spring

EARLY CAVE

To trace the plummeting ellipse

of these post-Easter flakes –

the hexagon each makes

a microcosm of the temple’s

lightweight, hollow honeycomb.

Awaiting his parousia...

ghost-dance Messiah,

Nazir out of Galilee-to-come.

Far-off tumult of primavera.

Genesis of purling springs.

Pale intermingling things

in punished neighborhoods (era

of Pharaoh, or Caesar).  Signals

from an early cave, or tomb.

Eternal vault (the womb

of patient Lazarus, of Jonah’s wails).

Natasha’s limp.... Clover’s marble

Isis-veil.  The keening

eye of Magdalen (far-seeing

heart).  A Galilean stable

where animals & refugees

breathe the same air.

Earth-time halts there –

her catenary thread a breeze

lifting twin pillars (Alpha &

Omega).  Planted so

in graveyard snow...

grain of renewal (to the end).

4.2.18

painting by Nancy Hart

my circuit is circumference

HONEY-OAK

Sunshine in June – one whole note

melts into the chord

of summer.  In the old

garden of Time, the poet’s boat

extends its shade toward evening twilight.

The golden ratio of the sunflower

stretches to the nth power

(its perihelion); clay speeds to insight,

cartwheeling uphill into angelic life –

that bright-gated City

whose anti-gravity

magnetic North amends all strife.

Through this fan-feathered diapason

of a planet, the limpid figure

of a limping friend, your

sister-dove (gray pebble, midnight sun);

her hazel eye takes in mortality

as a grave garden absorbs

the one whose goldfinch orb

will bend, in parallax fluidity

as rivers from Paradise stream forth

or a mustard seed

flares – life’s high meed –

a sunny gyroscope (balanced from birth).

So the Messiah-bloom of Israel

like Joachim Fiore,

Henry Flower (ey

hey yo) anchors goodness to the Pole

                 *

Star, steadfast over midnight waters;

so Infinite Presence

arcs into salience

turtledoves & fiery matières

de Bretagne (Arthurian hide-&-seek

the Once & Future King

resolves, into a ring

of riven oaks & golden fleece).

The One Who Rose from the Dead

lives in our midst –

Who left his Holy Ghost

as marigold, to blaze undaunted

Hagia Sophia (with a million eyes);

American peacock (turkey?)

or Aramaic poppycock (see

how archaic our ways – how wise!) –

only Phoenix-Turtle comprehends

how from dream-song flame

Reality revolves the same

again... as when a potter bends

her starfish over azure sand

& lofting clay from seabed

into galactic Roundhead

Cavalier (old Charley-Horse le Grand)

curling himself into green honey-oak

until the lightning stroke

flashes – where thunder spoke

the wheel that spun Ezekiel (Rose-Boke).

6.20.17

breath of future time

ROSE ISLE

Providence must be frozen now –

near as cold as here.

There, in a corner

of RISD Museum, on the brow

of a painted rise – a late-medieval

child-world.  Horses

& men, innocent & coarse

in their gaudy armor, their carnival

smiles... all in a day’s work,

limns the rustic Master

of the Providence Disaster

(Crucifixion, id est).  The wolf-pack

crowds up a drowsy, lamb-shy

Messiah-King.  His large

eyes scan the callous surge

ringing those toxic letters – IN RI.

We learn dissonance from what blocks

our way.  The enemy

in the script – mythology

played to strength – flows through the locks

like Trickster (shifty for defense).

Jonah swims with the fish.

Jason or Gilgamesh –

the babe in the river-basket – immense

human soul-wheel spun from sloppy

river-clay, to stand

for Mama’s Best (hand

circumnavigating Ocean Sea

                 *
            *          *
                  *

like sunken Galileo Galilee).

Enameled figure, lambent

on his Southern Cross.  Bent

course, awaiting Arimathee.

Merely a muttered word you must

absorb, digest, like that

moist crumb from Josaphat

(bottom of the well of Cain’s mistrust).

Cain is unable to redeem himself.

The Minotaur blockades

all Ariadne’s braids.

Only a feather from Fiore’s shelf –

Joachim’s rapt ghost – might wave

a breath of future time

across Earth’s clumping rhyme

& waft her grey eye through its architrave.

The wooden limbs of Roger Williams,

still petrified atop

his cliff.  Scars crop

our hope – Man’s malice rims

the years with lime – yet still

the copper peristyle

of liberty’s Rose Isle

shines in its matrix (Man’s good will).

1.4.17 

a Jewish refugee

Welcome back to Henry's late-night improv.  Record cold in Minneapolis tonight (Keith Richard's birthday).  We see foxes, turkeys, deer, packs of coyotes, rabbits & owls in this neck of the Minneapolis metro area (SE, along the river, by the University, where both sides of my family have lived for the last 150 years).  A few blocks from weird John Berryman's last home (33 Arthur Ave.).

Advent.  The Messiah is coming.  A Jewish refugee, he nurses in a barn.

I myself identify with Shakespeare's dreamy, soulful, effete Henry VI (recast tonight on PBS - The Hollow Crown).  Wars of the Roses.  "We are two shadows cast by Henry's body", declares one conspirator.

Civil strife... was Shakespeare part of a fake-news, Tudor messianic cult?  Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?

Think not.  I perceive the Globe & other theaters were implicated with royal politics... yet echoed something older, something medieval (mystery plays).  The master plot of the medieval theater, of the Byzantine labyrinth, was this : all earthly political authority is subject to the King of Kings.

So when you listen closely to the Delphic pentameter strophes of the Bard, you can hear this parochial, medieval, local, humble, Franciscan, monastic, Dominican, scholarly, ancient, simple, salty, truthful royal whisper... something to which both Eliot & David Jones, in contrastive ways, were attuned... the sovereignty of the Son of Man.

There is a spiritual resistance audible in Shakespeare - isomorphic with Osip Mandelstam's "oath to the 4th Estate".  A resistance to the usurper, the tyrant, the oppressor - recognized by his fell signs of inhumanity : his lack of grace, his murderous ambition, his rejection of his own eternal soul (with its attendant values).  Shakespeare's Richard III (who wasn't actually so bad, in real life).

This is the straight redwood of righteousness... the prophets' vow.

I confess, the inner world of Henry is quite unique & strange.  The sleepy king, the drowsy infant, bobbing along down the stream of his milky entitlement (the barn) - mumbling calm platitude-poems, radiating ridiculous ease, contentment... & only very slowly awakening to his fatal inheritance.

Oh yes : we must confront these usurpers.

I speak not of the minor satrapies, the lotos-eaters in the provinces, the solipsism of the echo-pond.

The poet's drawn to his true rivals in the lists, the spiritual enemies of Man : the despots, autocrats - the Putins, Erdogans - the Trumps, the Kim Jong-Uns, Dutertes, Xi Jinpings - the Stalins, Hitlers, Pol Pots... all the honchos riding out of Hell.

They will attack you, oak tree - like the termites gnawing at the life-marrow.  & yet the Child-King nestles in his oak-leaf hideout...will prevail against all Philistines (both high & low).

He is Man, after all.  Advent comes on.  Epiphany.

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.

Big Rabbit & the Can-Canute

TOTEM-GHOST

Winter.  An imperturbable water-serpent

flows smoothly south, under

the presiding MN-arch

(Peace Bridge).  Cloud-blanket (quiet, lambent

silverthought).  Ice-glancing light

of North Star State –

each ray will penetrate

the sixpack hexagons of Snow Rabbit

– that giant Bigfoot totem-ghost

Sophie & Phoebe rolled

to quasi-life (backyard).

Some Hiawatha Teotihuacan (host-

figure, phantom King).  Messiah

is a butterfly.  Love,

Love, and be loved, beloved

Bumblebee – amen, selah.

This glossy lala glossolalia

is like a peacock’s choral

cry, or agate-spiral

Saverin-Canute, out of Iona

(green Columba’s jaybird hymn).

At the spare crossrood

of naked servitude –

Boethius, Maximus, beaten

senseless – there Polaris burns,

& melts into the heart

of summer Ocean.  Start

your laddie-dance, lass – Roy returns.

1.26.16

Jesus Thoughts (9) : Election affinities

As it's Election Day here in the U.S., I will endeavor to steer this imaginary conversation toward the galaxy of spiritual election.

Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible.  I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.

Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator.  As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man.  The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme.  And this feature lays the groundwork for :
 2) this God is a Savior.  This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land).  The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry).  Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal.  The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.

When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah).  The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.

I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation.  The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator.  We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.

One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God.  The barrier is beginning to be broken down.  But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority.  The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round.  Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos).  The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized.  The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.

Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God.  But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship.  The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities.  The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews.  What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State).  The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.

The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority.  It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand.  Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty."  Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.

I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).

Jesus Thoughts (5) : fields of Messiah

Context is everything.  The framework, the field of the message-in-embryo nurtures its meaning, forms the protective husk of the traveling pigeon-signal.  Thus when we think & talk about Jesus we have to envision the wider field, the landscape, the ground upon which the Messiah-figure stands. 

We could start with the meaning of "Messiah" itself.  The root of the messianic phenomenon lies in the character & nature of Yahweh, the High God, the only God, as presented in Hebrew monotheism, the beliefs and practices of Judaism.  Two characteristics, it seems to me, distinguish Yahweh from other ancient mythologies of the divine.  First, is the monotheistic concentration of all power and benevolence in the one God, a creator-God, apart from whom nothing exists at all.  Second, is the active, personal character of Yahweh : as narrated in the Bible, God intervenes in history in a way that can be chronicled.  Yahweh is a saving God, coming to rescue the poor and oppressed, raining down judgement on the wicked - in this life, in this world.

This narrative depiction of Yahweh, as an actor in history as well as all-powerful Creator, lays the foundation for the prophetic expectation and reception of a Messiah : one who comes to fulfill all the promises of justice and salvation made by God to Israel (and through Israel, to the world).

And this is the context, I believe, in which we have to build a mental sketch (merely a conjectural hypothesis!) of Jesus's self-understanding : how he himself comprehended his vocation, his mission in life.  He believed himself to be the Messiah : the one called upon to fulfill the messianic expectations of the people of Israel.  From this original position flows the application of all of his spiritual, intellectual, charismatic and rhetorical gifts, and the expression of decisive moral choices, as he faced up to the consequences of his vocation.

Let's think about this for a moment in a yet wider context.  The Jewish "fulfillment of Scripture" in the embodiment - the personhood - of a Messiah shows imperfect parallels with the rhetorical denouements found in other philosophical & religious cultures.  Buddhism was embodied by the Buddha.  Platonic philosophy culminated (theoretically, as befits Plato) in a "philosopher king" who would implement, in the real world of history, the ethical paradigms of Platonism.  Aristotle, Plato's pupil, inculcated a living ruler - Alexander the Great, no less - with the precepts of his own philosophy.  What I'm looking at here is what might be (in my admittedly very sketchy and unsystematic review) a general tendency : the expressions of religious world order tend to become personified, embodied, expressed in action by representative figures (ie. the prophet Daniel's messianic "Son of Man").

With this in mind - this sense of Jesus shaping his mission as a messianic fulfillment - perhaps we can appreciate his message itself in greater depth.  His message, to put it simply, is that he is opening the door to God.  God as the universal, ever-living fulness of an overwhelming love, wisdom & mercy : as the eternal cosmic Mind of creative lovingkindness, out of which all creatures have emerged.  Thus, in this vision, we are re-shaped, "reborn", as "children" of this God - children, with Jesus, of his divine "Father".  & so we begin to share a new life in this new, divine-human nature.  Moreover, Jesus aims to create a community in which "we shall all be one."  Through the recognition of our common "creaturehood" - offspring of a divine Mind - we begin to live together according to the precepts of such an understanding - the original Logos, what "was from the beginning."

The message is challenging, radical & strange.  It is also rooted in ancient worldviews & conceptions which we sometimes fail to grasp today.  But it is "possible, possible"... when we go back to the original comprehension or insight : that is, when we ask ourselves, "why is there something at all, rather than nothing?"  When we consider : "What if human consciousness and action, as we know it on this planet, represent a ratio, an analogy, a proportion - ie., a Logos - with a universal Consciousness from which reality proceeds (is given)?"

Jesus Thoughts (1) : 1st things

First things first.  First of all, dear reader, please keep in mind : this is a blog.  An informal space for notations.  Scribbled on the fly, extemporaneous, incomplete - in the narrow spaces between work assignments, or in the late hours, after work & everything else.  It's not going to be elegant or highly organized, I promise.

First things first.  Religion, needless to say, sustains a moral dimension - a demand for personal commitment, self-sacrifice, existential change.  If it were only a matter of words, of comfortable speculations, it would obviously not carry much weight.  I'm a sub-librarian, in an academic library: the dangers of tweedy detachment and abstraction are real.  Possibly I've already dropped irrevocably into the pit of effeteness, complacency.  You, the reader, will have to be the judge in that regard.  Beware.

First things first.  In my own experience, to think about Jesus, God, & Christianity, is to gaze into a deep - maybe infinite - well of mystery.  "Food for thought", yes... an endless supply.  I walk to work in the morning, thinking perhaps Vermont has thrown itself together (to paraphrase Stevens) - that I've seen the truth, that I have a foothold, a slight grasp : only to be pulled up short again by an equally-strong sense of uncertainty - of hiddenness (especially re: the resurrection).

But then, on the other hand, I do admit to having felt something like Poe's Eureka-thrill... Eureka!  I have found it!  If I hadn't, I wouldn't be bothering with even this rough draft of preliminaries.

First things first.  We map reality - a synthesis of imagination and experience.  And then we interpret and refine our maps.  The map of ancient religion, the worldview of ancient humanity, begins with God.  The existence of God, on this particular map, means that reality in toto is rooted in a creative, ordering consciousness.  Let's call it (rough sketch) "God the Father, the Mother, the Origin, the Source".  We can't understand Jesus without first recognizing this founding "principle".  Nor can we begin to comprehend Jesus without knowing something about the matrix of Judaism in which he lived : a culture and faith which was, and is, motivated and devoted to this universal God. 

Jesus' mission - to put it in the most reductive nutshell possible - was to proclaim and celebrate the personal, mysterious, loving presence of this God - the Father, the Parent, of whom he was (& is) the Child, the human Son, the Image.  Jesus was an ecstatic, dynamic, eloquent and charismatic teacher, healer and leader, all in one (think Martin Luther King and his impact for a partial contemporary analogy).  And what was the core of his message?  That through himself - Jesus - this God was revealing himself and entering the space of human history, in order to bring all of humanity into the Family whose original is metaphysical, cosmic, and paradisal. 

Thus Jesus calls himself the Way, the Door, the Gate.  As the looked-for prophetic Messiah, he represented God's "seal" upon human history.  As the Messiah, he played the hero, and walked through Death : in the process leading the rest of us into the presence/comprehension/awareness of life and consciousness beyond time & death.  The recognition of this metaphysical dimension of "eternal life" was not offered as a means to a detachment from mortal, ordinary, earthly life (as the Gnostics and Stoics proposed) : but to reconcile and balance the material and spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical, time and eternity, soul and body.  In such a balance, rooted in vision, each person, and humanity as a whole, can be redirected toward rightness (justice), joy, hope, and peace.

First things first.  I'm laying out some basic elements, foundations.  No doubt you've heard them before.  But to start with the basics might lead further....

You can't blame poets, though, for making gestures toward a messianic realm. That's their main job, I guess : evoking a utopia hidden in plain sight.

Curious how left-politically-oriented literary readings, like Josh's - now that Marxism appears finished for the most part as a systematic economics, and as a political movement - re-animate the Benjamin/Adorno term "messianic". As though there's a ratio between actual political conditions (since 1989) and the level of vague utopian-mystical emphasis in some literary circles.

I find these equations between "late-late-capital conditions" and changes in poetic style sort of tedious and depressive, or oppressive. Something a-historical and attenuated about them : general spleen about working conditions & politics gets larded with these pretentious comments on the latest poetic in-group fringe phenomena. "Late-late-capitalism" : how baroque, considering current conditions in India, China, and around the world : how utterly irrelevant as a descriptor.

For me Catholic Church doctrines on economics are more subtle & relevant, since the Church has had to find a way to balance things like Polish independence & Western capitalism, liberation theology & theology per se, and living & working conditions not just in the socialist & capitalist countries but throughout the world. This balancing act, along with the Church's longstanding tradition of concern for Labor, has filtered into its analyses. I certainly don't agree with everything they come out with, but I like the late Pope's criticisms of both capitalism & socialism; I like the notions presented in several U.S. & Vatican church documents on economics, which make a claim for both private property and economic justice.

Compared with certain populist & Catholic strains of economic thinking, a lot of American literary leftism comes across as effete & impractical. Yet according to these critics, whole schools of poetry are built on supposedly deep reactions of American poets to economic & political conditions. May be more rhetorical heat than light in those reactions.

possibly the only other non-Russian poet comparably preoccupied with Mandelstam was Paul Celan.

note "Magdalen" reference in Voronezh poem quoted ("For Natasha Shtempel").

mandel (almond), magdala, amygdala (seat of memory in the brain?)

almond tree : ancient emblem of Jewish people

mandelstam - "almond branch" (blooms in January)

little tree (cf. Forth of July, various places, & this from Island Road)

David (poet-king), Messiah : "the branch"

Have been reading lengthy entries on Islam in my old Enc. Britannica.

Curious analogies drifting through on coffee break. Poets up in arms over war. Muhammad (founder of Islam) like the ultimate "acknowledged legislator". Surahs of Q'uran came to him from Allah transmitted by angel Gabriel while he was in a sweat-trance. Analogy (very distant) to previous speculations here about poetry as epileptic response to crisis - main crisis being transition from adolescence to adulthood ("mystical wedding").

Analogies between Muhammad & David (poet-warrior) & prophets (bearers of God's Word) & Messiah. "a sword issued from his mouth". Islam emerging out of, & distinguishing itself from, Judaism & Christianity.

Monotheism as opposed to pagan polytheism. Like a lens in the desert coming into focus. How it becomes (in the prophetic word) a governing principle or gyroscopic mechanism. Governance of crisis & charismatic poetic "ejaculation". Governance. Mandelstam & Akhmatova on the counter-authority of poetry. Akhmatova & Stalin die on the same day (March 5th). (Dostoevsky both epileptic & prophetic.)

Epilepsy or charismatic possession. Power transferred to or emanating from divinity, rather than humanity. Religio = "binding". Black Stone of Mecca; black stone in Jerusalem where Abraham bound Isaac & where Muhammad ascended into heaven (leaving his footprint).

Meteoric stone carried in small covered "ark" on the back of a camel in pre-Islamic Arabia. Possible origin of tablets of the law in Ark of the Covenant. Theme of William Blackstone & the pebble-boomerang in Forth of July.

Henry & Bluejay in the garden behind Shakespeare's Head. Images of Gulf War & Presidency in Stubborn Grew.

Mandelstam:

"The poem is a stone fallen from heaven.
No one will judge it."

Adolescence and paternal authority. Song & Dionysius & panic. in the "bull's eye". (Blackstone & his white bull.)

Islam faced questions about human reason & autonomy from the beginning. The Sunni emphasis on peaceful consensus was in part a reaction against earlier developments; & the Wahhabite radical purism (akin to Qutb & Al Qaeda ideology) had its precursors from very early on. Dynamics internal to Islam.

William Blackstone, upon leaving his Boston home & going into Rhode Island: "I left England to get from under the power of the Lord Bishops, & here I am fallen into the hands of the ministers."

Roger Williams & "soul liberty".