glare attracts birds

MIGRANT ZONE

      “But,” she added, “a tribute that kills thousands of birds?  Is that really 

                what we want?” – NY Times, 9.11.19

Little Alex was in love with them.

Would run out to the “woody

area” (floored with heavy

twisted vines) & note their thrum

of peregrine wing-calls; run back, report.

He was 20 when the Towers

fell.  Now he’s in the painters’

guild – swings from scaffolds out

in Portland (surfaced a new public school

this summer).  Everyone

knows someone so, dangling on

the perimeter of gravity (lead’s rule).

Edgar Brightman says, each body

is an etching of God’s mind –

that Personage who’s fond

of persons that we are (might be).

It is some Berryman-Osiris dream

of emerald Ireland, or

Mannahatta... out of mire-

bleared violets, one twin-beam

(ineffable, 4 miles up into night).

The glare attracts birds

(like glamorous words

of bright adhesive poem).  Raven, kite...

– bad omens, harnessed by our own

self-heightening memorials.

Yet... all my trials,

Lord.  DOVE LIBERATES LOVE’S MIGRANT ZONE.

9.11.19

New York Times, 9.11.19

winter river

MOTTLED BEND

Driving through wintry Iowa

in the rain (at the end

of autumn).  Mottled bend

of browns & grays... the tall silo

lost in a sea of plowed soil;

Theophilus, with his lonesome

boat (Grandpa’s handsome

grain elevator).  Fruits of toil –

pyramid for wheat-rain

in a grain-ear (last

trump, sounding).  Blast

of train-horn... all over again?

The hearth-stone flares like a bald eagle

lost on the road (between

La Porte City &

Davenport).  Feathered angle

set upon shoulders.  Nobody.

Just a Memphis priest,

Melchizedek... last

shall be first (least greatest, boy).

They laid the foundation stone

like Chartres rock.

Under the most black

dirt they could find (the Masons, son) –

on 15th April, 1791

(two generation

before Abe Lincoln).

Hearth-blaze in corner (soldered one).

12.20.18

with Grace (in memory)

MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATION

                  i.m. Grace Tagliabue (1922-2018)

In that heavenly kingdom of Como, or Maine,

his ready bird-feather

will already be there

with you, Grace – to bring peace, to make plain

the origin of the Cosmos in love & joy –

his valiant light-heart

casting out fear with an art

like child’s play.  & you (his chief toy,

rest, dream) would be there, too –

answering love with love

from the deep, from above,

tracing that birdsong in robin’s egg blue

& loops of moss-green watercolor.

Since poetry – imagination –

is manuscript illumination,

you chose to let John’s words flower

like parchment flesh in a bath of rebirth –

& as time slowly waltzes us

toward our last contra dances

you help wash our feet on Earth

& ready us for that elfin circle-dance

in the kingdom of children &

animals & grains of sand

all sparkling in the galaxies... entrancing

Entrance to Eternity (your linen

wheel of emerald palm-

prints... infant calm

babble of Phoebe)... heaven’s amen, amen.

    with grace, from Grace, by grace 

                                3.29.18

a flower for Bloomsday

CIRQUE MATRIX

Gray Hobo-bird faces a problem :

how to save his own long

featherweight fern song?

How to rewind a strung-out poem?

Effigies & icons flashing by

like ripples in his eye –

Burchfield, El Anatsui...

Hartley, Martin, Klimt... Johnny

Jasper... fond winter raven-

oeuil of Master Bruegel...

Pompey, in the empty well

of Yahweh, was befuddled – No One

There.  The clear plein air of Quaker

meeting house, of Shaker

chair.  The carpenter’s

simplicity of Philadelphian law-

oracles.  We hold these truths...

But Hobo’s murmuring his

Nil Reed Candace house;

his prairie wind blows wild (Ruth’s

trail through mazy corn, tracking

Boaz from Goshen-land).

With poem-in-a-can

in hand (his pemmican) & Red Wing

Thunderbird-Woodpecker perched

atop his hat, he moseys,

slouching, sea to sea;

aboard his polar bear canoe (birch-

                 *

light) he circulates a mystery –

where be this Henry Church

round whom leaf-sundials march?

Planted in Resurrection Cemetery?

Or hidden in a holm oak tree?

The painted whisper gallery

enshades invisibility.

Will he sleepwalk forever, Poetry?

The milkweed monarch fans meekness.

This moth is camouflaged

brown dust.  The sagebrush

rolls through red deserts, the cedars

pine for Juniper (slate-blue).

Time’s broom sweeps clean

but tiny seeds remain.

A microcosmic mustard-yellow

gyroscope (spun in Ravenna

backwater) balances

Galilee on Providence;

the bicycle with one duo-antenna

twirls its silver spokes into

a rose-wheel window.

Where did Harry go,

Hobo?  He’s hidden in Otranto

glass.  He’s riding Pegasus

into a cirque matrix –

cartwheeling carny tricks

as Henry Flower Wilderness.

6.16.17

Willow River twilight

ANOTHER YULE

Civilization is a natural good.

Valleys are honeycombed

with anthills – tombed

with moral titans (Lincoln would

live up to his Memorial).

Government’s innate,

then – our pleasant fate

to be so compagnevole,

says Alighieri (after Harry

Woodpecker).  D.C.

marbled with majesty

will have a double Jubilee

this year – May 29th (the K

of Camelot’s birthday);

crowds cry hurray

up to the pint of vanishing

& glory glory hallelujah.

I love my country too.

But pride, you know,

leads oft to suicide – King Saul,

alas, fell on his sword, & Henry’s

Clover (sad antithesis

of photosynthesis) was

mortised into concave penury

(her veil of Isis hoovered out

of Iowa).  Her star

twirls like Ishtar

above a Willow River twilight

               *

where gold prairie meets the far

horizon (at the green

mountain, where shriven

penitents climb to the door).

Pride be the world’s blockade.

Banners of orange black

& green (by Jasper Jack)

are complementary, not made

for nought.  Pete? Smoky Pete’s

still lively, though John’s

jotting paper crayons

with encaustic slivers now.  Wheat’s

blonde for Brother Jim’s Great

Purple Hairstreak – what

a butterfly!  Yet

there’s no sketchy moral shortcut

to self-centered celebrations

for a nation, in this world

of woolly worms curled

into cottonwood canyon-

cocoons.  No idle soul-solace

– an oxymoron in

the China cookie tin.

True penitence proceeds apace,

slowly, like Frank’s old shaky mule

inching to San Francisco.

Sorrow made your child go

sailing.  Grief tacks up another Yule.

3.16.17

Euxine seagull arcs

FISHING BOATS

The old watercolor over the mantle

in my mother’s house – the twin

gray fishing boats, the brown

warehouse, the whitewashed walls.  Gentle

Gloucester, Massachusetts (Grace

Ravlin pinxit – Grandpa’s

cousin, from Kaneville, Illinois).

Soft clouds, the upright crosspieces

of lank lanyards (still sea-green

harbor, granite walk).

Thinking of another work –

lone lady at Mount Vernon, culling

flowers for George Washington.

And of another Maximus –

not Gloucester’s famous

philosophe, but Maximus, blue unicorn

who sketched with Euxine seagull arcs

on stumps (his amputated

medium) one delicate

& sibylline solution.  Sparks

fly upward from the hearth of Love

– fly outward, penetrate

wolf-packs of gulag-state.

This heart simmers like kiln-hot stove

or croon of turtledove, hidden...

violet in tall field grass,

cricket near an underpass.

Willow by slow river (Magdalen).

7.11.16

Grace Ravlin, Gloucester Harbor (ca. 1928)

Languid, voluptuous, orange

This poem forms a pair with the previous one (see yesterday's blog entry).

TRANSPARENT SPRING

This wheel’s unseen circumference

includes a coffee can

from Hart – a Savarin,

no? – looping a salience

of tulip spires (languid, voluptuous,

orange).  For Hart, Johns

sounded gray Ocean

& signaled with a palm Love’s

one transparent spring (from deep

to deep).  A little tree –

lemon? – mustard, maybe;

the orange flourish of a steep

green trumpet, embracing its iron

lattice like a bride

in May... no one can hide

from Love’s almond dominion.

This doctrine bides each alteration.

A sigh amid these wheels

rides wingèd heels

from scythe to seedy germination –

Time’s origin (space-flowering).

Leaf-whispers from a pair

of olive trees, who share

one catenary pattern... stirring

life-draft, dangled from twin pillars,

lifted toward Pacific

azure – scarred, terrific

sentinels of hope (hers, yours).

4.13.16

Tulips (Nancy Hart)

Jasper circumference

GRAY PAINT

The vast Flemish panorama

coheres in a raven’s eye.

Through haunted oaks, high

wind tosses bugle-calls (taran 

tara).  Bruegel’s gray paint congeals

on the perimeter

of the sea... Demeter

wanders like a Walloon reels

caterwauling, Persephone!

In Flanders grass, poppy-

purpura (like the sea

around a stubby Orizaba) –

only the poem is humble

enough to bear the yoke

of a poshlost rude joke.

She won’t let you stumble,

Psyche, in your edgy sundance.

That quatrefoil in the blue

mortuary was for you,

poilu (Apollinaire) – entrance

to complete volume of sibylline

Mnemosyne.  Pine

tree pantomime... a line

of sketchy aquamarine (shan shui).

A jasper circumference defines

our Atlantean task,

to reconcile each mask

of pathos (in a matrix of threadlines).

4.8.16

MLK in memory

Time only grows on you.  48 years ago this April, a gray, rainy Saturday, my dear friend Tom Fleming & I joined a long memorial/protest walk for Martin Luther King, pacing slowly through Minneapolis.  I remember circling Lake Calhoun (Calhoun...) - everyone in a somber mood, but walking & talking together - a public ceremony, an opportunity to meet others, neighbors, fellow citizens.  

20 years later, Tom would be gone, a victim of the AIDS epidemic.  But we were there that day.

Have been reading Iris Murdoch's little book of philosophy, The Sovereignty of Good.  Of course, MLK was a sort of sovereign of goodness.  A great witness to Murdoch's fundamental idea - that the Good is a substantial, unified-if-various Something : a spiritual entity known deep within ordinary people of all backgrounds.  A shared thing, a public thing, a common good, a universal benchmark - the one goal of human striving (out of our own weakness, wrongness & disgrace).  The thing we hope for, a something hopeful.  This is one dimension - a philosophical aspect, you might say - of the spiritual testament & legacy of Martin Luther King.  A hopeful call for justice, & shared happiness : the equal dignity of all human being, under the wings of infinite blessing & grace.

PEASANT DANCE

                                    i.m.MLK

Only an unpretentious oil

beside the door, my mother

painted, 50 years

ago.  Backyard.  Spring soul

of morning, golden-green – the glow

dappled with jet-black

flock of starlings, yakking &

feeding there (framed by two

young oaks, & the backs of houses).

Bring your gift, starling,

to the altar of everything –

Ocean River, inexaustible goodness.

O parallactic mercy of

these diamond facets!  Water-

falls of liberty – your

moral law, Dove-

cote!  Who moves through Memphis stone

like mild summer breeze

or shady swing-trapeze,

to milky matrix of the human

sun.  Love’s stern ethos is

a camouflage – justice

for joy – ray, source...

O King of Arthur St., she sees

you!  One glance of moist radiance

out of the Black Sea book

of Always... there, look!

Her garden summons (Peasant Dance).

1.18.16 

Backyard, Arthur St., early 1960s (by Mary Gould)

Spring's on the way (even in Minnesota). An old painting by my mother - 2 old Minnesota babushki. Looks a little Sienese.

Good reading on Sienese art & the cultural-political background - Sienese Painting, by Timothy Hyman. Very helpful to me. (I know I've mentioned this before.)

City-republic vs. politics of Empire, Aristocracy & Church. The comune of "the Nine". Art history from the Sienese vs. the standard Florentine perspective (Vasari).

Duccio's art was the last of the Byzantine & the first of the Italian. Sienese fusion of mystical remoteness and urban street vernacular.

I'd like this Siena to take shape as a metaphor for America (& for Providence, & for experience generally).

Byzantium : Mankind is the imago of God. Siena : art is the imago of humanity. The dialectic of these two positions, played out in the symbolic-psychological sphere of religious ideology (iconolatry, iconoclasm, idolatry)... still with us today. (ie. are the words of "sacred books" to be taken literally or symbolically? Or somewhere in between?)

Red-blue states. Imperial purple. On the nether side of Duccio's Maesta altarpiece, in the scenes of the Passion narrative, Christ's garments are always red & blue (except in the Transfiguration & post-Resurrection scenes, where they are gold).

(p.s. "Ramirez" in previous post : reference to Martin Ramirez, subject of marvelous show
currently at American Folk Art Museum in NY)

4

 
The quiet in paintings... more quiet
than whisper of hand and horsehair.
Sound of small waves, the patter
of rain.  Vanishing point (silent).

 
Something labors at the perpendicular
of the planes... where sweet cacophony
of vernal streets extends coarse (funny)
tendrils in a chorus of counterparts

 
the sea-depths of the air beckon
into tremulous reaches (embodied
cloud-light).  And the painter's eye
steadied so (calm reconnaissance

 
of lion-glance) edges toward
molten serpentine... where
a principle (urbane particulars'
hewn symmetry) is its reward :

 
dead reckoning of dancers in a round,
or masons of a bow-taut campanile.
Dread judgement of the Nine (final).
Eagles' mantle (burial mound).

- new installment in current poem (Autumn Door, tentatively) -

2
                   San Leonardo al Lago, c. 1370

 
Four sides of a barrel-vaulted ceiling
are filled with angels singing - playing
archaic, bulbous instruments, leaning
upward (past vermilion-winged

 
seraphim) to the apex of the vault.
Presentation, Betrothal, Annunciation and
Assumption.  Dense veinèd marble (amended
by dream).  Revolving riddle (spectral salt).

 
Magnetic occlusion of an infant kiss
seals the fate of the Chosen One
(matrix of surprise design -
absolute one-day fresco, this)

 
on the nether half of the altarpiece, the cross-
hairs of the children's stories (crown
of the skull).  When he comes into his own
(the worm quartet, the limbs of Lazarus).

The painter Grace Ravlin was my grandfather's cousin. They grew up together in Kanesville, Illinois. She was quite active back in the early decades of the last century : Morocco, Tunisia, France, the southwest etc. The government of France owns several of her paintings. There's a nice one of a Red Cross parade down 5th Ave. during WW I.

I'll be part of the roundtable discussion at this gallery exhibit in Somerville on Oct. 12th. How I got to be an authority in this area, along with Jacques Lacan & other Giants of Intellect, is a surprise to me. (Apparently the curator read an essay of mine published in Mudlark about 10 years ago.)

Focusing so much on poetry & painting these days, I should re-read Elizabeth Willis' Turneresque. I see Catherine Daly is working on a review.

         ...there
Everyone knows, serious life
Is elsewhere.

I'm searching for an equivalent to the word "image" as applied to poetry, which is not limited to the sense of a visual picture or illustration.

What I'm thinking of is the way a poem indicates, points toward something, by way of suggestion or allusion or evocation. That "something" may be a physical thing or an idea; but what the poem does is offer a verbal embodiment or gesture or narrative.

In painting, the wholeness of an image is valued (the way the parts of a picture are subordinate to or supportive of an integrated whole): the painting projects a unified image, something the viewer can grasp as such.

If there is something similar in poetry, we would have a verbal embodiment as a kind of accessible or recognizable whole: there would be a substance (intellectual, sensible) imparted by the poem to the reader.

Some poems impart that substance purely through harmonics. That is, there may not be much of a visual element at all; the verbal formulation may be abstract and discursive; but the language may work through its harmonics to create this kind of embodiment, which I'm relating to the idea of "image". Sound, rhythm, and diction alone may create this harmonic envelope.

Yeats was very interested in this notion of poetic holism, the formation of images which are both exact and precise, on the one hand, and full of open implication, on the other, and the holism of the entire poem, and groups of poems (see good book by Engelberg[?], The Vast Design).

I'm interested in how "embodiment" - whether through actual visual images, or through allusive, evocative language - lends itself to natural vision & sensation, returning the poem to the ground of ordinary experience. A poem's finish or fitness would seem to have a lot to do with its capacity to transfer a complete embodiment or image from poem to reader.

And it seems that these concerns are not emphasized in poetry much these days : there's more focus on baroque distortions of diction and syntax, jarring juxtapositions or rhetorical exaggeration for effect (I know there's a term for this out there... - catachresis, I thought of it!), the dilemmas of undecideability. These all seem like surface phenomena. There's less focus on holistic embodiment and its transferences, and more on immediacy, shock, surprise.

The Magpie on the Gallows


 
 
Bruegel willed his last work to his wife.
We look down a slope of leafing trees
toward a weatherbeaten gallows, where
a small black-white magpie has alighted.
A group of cheerful peasants goof and
tumble waltzing down the hill, merge
with the background (sketchy, indistinct).
Beyond the rickety gray wooden frame
a May-time vista opens wide (vast, mild,
serene) to mountains, sunlit castles, sky.

 
Everything returns at last to the wife,
the bride, the mother in the landscape.
Mendelssohn – a dream my mother had
(her miniature oils were its expression,
the world I recognize is their reflection).
Out of summers buried deep, the longing
streams: the tripod of the firmament
rests on a point of irrational blind
balance: the magpie rumors – wars, 
scandals – skitter across an icy surface.

 
Bruegel’s image seems to say, the world
outlives our quarrels with our dying;
our quarrels and our dying flit away
enfolded in a subtler nature (one
we cannot fathom yet, but witness
here – peering into the limpid curve,
the tender distances, the calm horizon).
Remnants of an ancient controversy
teeter on the hillside... but the magpie
(casual now, indifferent) soon vanishes.

PENTECOST IN AN INITIAL A

                 
                    Stefano da Verona, ca. 1430-35


 
 
These old piles of leathery parchment
fused all the arts – the odd square notes
in plainsong for the choir, the Latin
poetry, and, crowning everything,
such illustrations!
          
                     – this letter A
formed by a pair of rainbow-colored
dragons, whose entwined tongues
sprout leaves.  In the upper swirl,
God the Father sits aloft on wavy
cloud, from which descends
a blue dove, floating over twelve
disciples curled in a circle (within
the hulking serpent’s tail) around 
a taller Virgin Mary.
              
                      So everything
begins again – this time everyone
pregnant with the dove’s bright
fire.  And now the choir begins
to sing:
   
            antequam Abraham fieret 
            ego sum

[the Latin reads: "Before Abraham was, I am"]