6.24.2003
Fluid dynamics. Courtesy of NY Times science section today, interesting article.
Leonardo da Vinci started it. he seems to be lurking everywhere these days, or is it just me. reading Leo Steinberg's wonderful book, Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper. I think he missed one thing, though (while perceptively noting a million others). Leonardo not only caught duration & "sfumato" of multiple meanings in a gesture (in his "Last Supper") - but he also "preserved the unities", saved the appearances. It is an instant of time captured, rather than only a blurred spread of implications. It's both. That is, Christ's right hand, recoiling from the dish : it's not simply both or either recoiling from the dish and reaching for the eucharistic cup. It's rendered at the exact moment after his saying "one of you will betray me - he whose hand is in the dish with mine" - from which both Christ & Judas recoil - and also after he has just said "take, eat, this is my body, this is my blood of the new covenant", etc. His hand is still recoiling from the first statement; his left hand is moving toward the bread; his right hand will soon follow toward the wine. The disciples are responding, each in his own fashion, to both statements. The simultaneiity of this moment is memorialized, in a sense, as Steinberg notes, in 1 Cor. 11:23 : "the Lord Jesus the same night he was betrayed took bread and said, 'Take, eat : this is my body'" - which perhaps was Leonardo's pivotal reference.
But look at Peter, Judas & John. Some mysteries there that Steinberg doesn't deal with, & I'm not going to talk about now anyway. Much more to this painting than "meets the eye" of cursory attention.
Fluid dynamics. There's a lot of water in Minnesota : 10,000 lakes, Lake Superior, Mississippi. I'm doing 2nd chapter of my novel, tentatively titled On River Road (that will probably change).
Leonardo da Vinci started it. he seems to be lurking everywhere these days, or is it just me. reading Leo Steinberg's wonderful book, Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper. I think he missed one thing, though (while perceptively noting a million others). Leonardo not only caught duration & "sfumato" of multiple meanings in a gesture (in his "Last Supper") - but he also "preserved the unities", saved the appearances. It is an instant of time captured, rather than only a blurred spread of implications. It's both. That is, Christ's right hand, recoiling from the dish : it's not simply both or either recoiling from the dish and reaching for the eucharistic cup. It's rendered at the exact moment after his saying "one of you will betray me - he whose hand is in the dish with mine" - from which both Christ & Judas recoil - and also after he has just said "take, eat, this is my body, this is my blood of the new covenant", etc. His hand is still recoiling from the first statement; his left hand is moving toward the bread; his right hand will soon follow toward the wine. The disciples are responding, each in his own fashion, to both statements. The simultaneiity of this moment is memorialized, in a sense, as Steinberg notes, in 1 Cor. 11:23 : "the Lord Jesus the same night he was betrayed took bread and said, 'Take, eat : this is my body'" - which perhaps was Leonardo's pivotal reference.
But look at Peter, Judas & John. Some mysteries there that Steinberg doesn't deal with, & I'm not going to talk about now anyway. Much more to this painting than "meets the eye" of cursory attention.
Fluid dynamics. There's a lot of water in Minnesota : 10,000 lakes, Lake Superior, Mississippi. I'm doing 2nd chapter of my novel, tentatively titled On River Road (that will probably change).
6.20.2003
Josh Corey on "relational poetics". I haven't read the Fence issue, but I ask this :
Isn't this a time-honored crutch for good old bad writing : to turn "social relevance" into a theme or a technique or an ideal ??? It's a "branding" method.
The "others" are always subjective in a fallible way. "We" are relevant & "social" in an original, critical way.
But I guess I should read what he's talking about. This is starting to sound like I'm carping !!!
Isn't this a time-honored crutch for good old bad writing : to turn "social relevance" into a theme or a technique or an ideal ??? It's a "branding" method.
The "others" are always subjective in a fallible way. "We" are relevant & "social" in an original, critical way.
But I guess I should read what he's talking about. This is starting to sound like I'm carping !!!
then of course there's the flip side, the problems for sense & sensibility & living created by T*H*O*U*G*H*T*S. . .
TS Eliot's turn of the screw (Metaphysical poetry exhibited fusion of thought & feeling, everything downhill from there).
Comes back to the fact that poetry is as Mandelstam put it
NIGHTINGALE FEVER
thought/feeling/action/word/deed - compacted into small feather-winged container
flying NOW
TS Eliot's turn of the screw (Metaphysical poetry exhibited fusion of thought & feeling, everything downhill from there).
Comes back to the fact that poetry is as Mandelstam put it
NIGHTINGALE FEVER
thought/feeling/action/word/deed - compacted into small feather-winged container
flying NOW
My old checkers moves from Buffalo Poetics listwars.
Not the New, but the Now.
The Now is not emerging from the School of Carpitude.
Next I'll take on the NY School gen. 300.
Have the vision & ambition to be midstream.
This is one way to approach it.
Topic for discussion :
is this the choice - either find a way to turn poetry into a game - or be eaten alive by it ?
Deep game needs - the need to isolate the space so you can live in the larger world too; the desire NOT to be Poet 24/7. How this scrapes against or interacts with poetry club culture.
The problem for free thought created by club culture, the culture of poetry as S*E*N*S*A*T*I*O*N*A*L.
I was a poet in high school. I was a writer in junior high. I didn't need or want acceptance - I wanted publication.
Not the New, but the Now.
The Now is not emerging from the School of Carpitude.
Next I'll take on the NY School gen. 300.
Have the vision & ambition to be midstream.
This is one way to approach it.
Topic for discussion :
is this the choice - either find a way to turn poetry into a game - or be eaten alive by it ?
Deep game needs - the need to isolate the space so you can live in the larger world too; the desire NOT to be Poet 24/7. How this scrapes against or interacts with poetry club culture.
The problem for free thought created by club culture, the culture of poetry as S*E*N*S*A*T*I*O*N*A*L.
I was a poet in high school. I was a writer in junior high. I didn't need or want acceptance - I wanted publication.
Yes, I was probably being negative & stentorian the other day.
The crux for me : what constellation of beliefs & attitudes underlies the School of Carpitude?
I think it's a form of belief analogous to religion in Hellenistic times, when you had Christianity & Judaism & Gnosticism & neo-Platonism and so on.
The School of Carpitude (perhaps we could call it an emanation of the "post-avant period" of Language Poetry?) seems a little like Gnosticism & neo-Platonism, except its dual cosmos is "materialist" rather than idealist.
There is a better world over yonder, where spiritual phantoms have been dissipated, nationalism and militarism and imperialism and sexism and capitalism have been demolished, class and social relations have been justified, and life is free, groovy, bohemian & "material" (see Marx).
The polarity between Mainstream & Avant, between Quietude & Carpitude, is an echo effect of this more basic chasm, between Here & Yonder.
Another basic belief of the School of Carpitude is that Modernism was & is truly revolutionary, part of the engine of social revolution, through its enlightened disaffection from bourgeois conditions, leading us to Yonder. (This is reflected, for example, in the Carpitudists special interest in Russian Formalism & the Futurists, in tandem with their disinterest in the role & fate of the Russian Acmeists & their theoretical commitments.)
These basic Carpitude attitudes color their understanding of traditional poetics, of the role of the poet in the public sphere, of the relation between poetry & politics, and of the nature of language in general.
But it seems pretty apparent that the Quietude/Carpitude polarity, this intellectual construct, renders problematic or difficult any poetics which is built on a unitary model of the relations between the poet's role in society, and poetic speech. (In contrast to the supposed gains which might result from a "critical" or revolutionary concept of the role of poetry.)
The crux for me : what constellation of beliefs & attitudes underlies the School of Carpitude?
I think it's a form of belief analogous to religion in Hellenistic times, when you had Christianity & Judaism & Gnosticism & neo-Platonism and so on.
The School of Carpitude (perhaps we could call it an emanation of the "post-avant period" of Language Poetry?) seems a little like Gnosticism & neo-Platonism, except its dual cosmos is "materialist" rather than idealist.
There is a better world over yonder, where spiritual phantoms have been dissipated, nationalism and militarism and imperialism and sexism and capitalism have been demolished, class and social relations have been justified, and life is free, groovy, bohemian & "material" (see Marx).
The polarity between Mainstream & Avant, between Quietude & Carpitude, is an echo effect of this more basic chasm, between Here & Yonder.
Another basic belief of the School of Carpitude is that Modernism was & is truly revolutionary, part of the engine of social revolution, through its enlightened disaffection from bourgeois conditions, leading us to Yonder. (This is reflected, for example, in the Carpitudists special interest in Russian Formalism & the Futurists, in tandem with their disinterest in the role & fate of the Russian Acmeists & their theoretical commitments.)
These basic Carpitude attitudes color their understanding of traditional poetics, of the role of the poet in the public sphere, of the relation between poetry & politics, and of the nature of language in general.
But it seems pretty apparent that the Quietude/Carpitude polarity, this intellectual construct, renders problematic or difficult any poetics which is built on a unitary model of the relations between the poet's role in society, and poetic speech. (In contrast to the supposed gains which might result from a "critical" or revolutionary concept of the role of poetry.)
6.18.2003
Enjoying the commentary from 6 or 7 bloghouses on Quietude Theory. I haven't been able to work out a response, due to work & projects (on a sedate parallel with JK, perhaps, I'm writing a novel beginning with a 12-yr-old named "Henry") & the fact that this topic is hard for me to grasp.
My animus & vitriol toward the Silliman Quietude Theory is due I'm sure in part to the fact that I share some attitudes with the "experimental" crowd. The rumbling spiritual uproar of Poetic Nowness - reflected in microcosm every time we are moved & granted insight by a work of literary art - has a certain anarchic center of gravity which does not coincide automatically with Career in any sense. Career is built on the prudence, hope, practical planning, brainwork and moxie of individuals : Nowness is an uncontrollable communal snowball of literary criticism, response, persuasion, recognition, as well as that thing that happens when in our solitary cenacles[?] we read something really good. And the professionalization/care & feeding/curatorship of Creative Writing in the academy creates a certain incestuous, solipsistic dynamic (or I should say stasis) - somewhat like the patronage system in municipal politics - which sends "Tradition" through a kind of parallax distortion (with the of course proviso that there is plenty of genuine and valuable scholarship & teaching & criticism carried out there by poets who are also teachers, and by scholars who are genuine critics). Reading for school is not the same as reading for fun, as I learned (perhaps in deep mistakenness) back in 3rd grade.
But it would be a mistake to reduce this issue to the "poetry in academia" debate, since, for one thing, both Nowness & the supposed Quietude take place not only in the academy, but also, as Ron points out repeatedly, in the networks of literary Publication & its epiphenomena. &, for another thing, the most interesting aspect of the issue hovers around more strictly lit-crit areas, having to do with the development of modern poetics, the relation of innovation to tradition in art & poetry, the reflection of social reality in literature, etc.
Every poet brings a unique perspective to these questions, and they can be quite diverse, obviously. Some will consider poetry to be, essentially, a difficult craft, a genre of writing, which you practice in school and evolve in the context of contemporary literary magazine writing. Others will emphasize the osmosis of literary models and avatars, will pursue the literary history of modernism (Eliot, Pound, Stein, Stevens, and all their generations, etc. etc.) for keys to their own efforts, and as windows on the contemporary (this seems to have been my own bent for the last couple decades). Others will be enthusiastically attuned to the subversive youthful essence of poetry, its criticism of sleep & stasis & philistinism emanating from the garrets & clubs of romantic vital revolt (I know this sounds funny, but there it is). Others will use poetry as a kind of political language, a means of expressing a critique or alienation from capitalism, imperialism, mass culture, the middle class, etc.
What troubles me about the Quietude Theory (along with many similar formulas and attitudes emanating from the post-avant set) is that it reifies vast and various ranges of past poetries into a clump of Quietude, Mainstream, Official Verse Culture. It is this act of reification - a reductive conceptualization - which is the founding move creating ANOTHER clump : the post-avant camp itself. Suddenly there is a set of literary progressives, avant-gardists, who consider themselves both different and more enlightened than the mainstream "others". Within their subculture, they wallow in the vaunted minutiae of "neglected" poets, they excoriate the benighted taste AND politics of the "mainstream" : and in this very process they neglect the essential duty of the poet, whether from within the academy or outside it : to direct the poetic language of the present time - at its highest pitch of clarity, originality, complexity, simplicity, variety, social relevance, intellectual acuity, and aesthetic integrity - to the attention of the general public, the ordinary reader, the extraordinary reader : and NOT to abide (full of insolence, hypocrisy, and intellectual disgrace) in the cozy, incestuous, flabby, and musty nests of their own parochial nit-picking snob societies. The tradition of poetry is a perennial high-energy Now extending back to the bards and prophets of ancient Athens & Jerusalem & before, up to the contemporary "pressure of the time"; it will not be bottled & labeled by the reified, self-serving pigeonholes of the "post-avant", or the "Neo"-formalists, or the denizens of MFA snooze groves.
One can never, in an American context, dismiss the abiding presence, the inspired mastery, and the sometimes explosive relevance, of the obscure, the long-neglected, the marginal, the eccentric, the modest, the quiet, the experimental. But the reification which, in the schools of the post-avant, grants an automatic positive aura to some figures & works, and a corresponding negative aura to others, simply on the basis of "mainstreamity" (say, from among many possible examples, Olson & Lowell), is a specious exercise, an intellectual and aesthetic short-circuit, which obscures what actually has been accomplished in our poetry.
My animus & vitriol toward the Silliman Quietude Theory is due I'm sure in part to the fact that I share some attitudes with the "experimental" crowd. The rumbling spiritual uproar of Poetic Nowness - reflected in microcosm every time we are moved & granted insight by a work of literary art - has a certain anarchic center of gravity which does not coincide automatically with Career in any sense. Career is built on the prudence, hope, practical planning, brainwork and moxie of individuals : Nowness is an uncontrollable communal snowball of literary criticism, response, persuasion, recognition, as well as that thing that happens when in our solitary cenacles[?] we read something really good. And the professionalization/care & feeding/curatorship of Creative Writing in the academy creates a certain incestuous, solipsistic dynamic (or I should say stasis) - somewhat like the patronage system in municipal politics - which sends "Tradition" through a kind of parallax distortion (with the of course proviso that there is plenty of genuine and valuable scholarship & teaching & criticism carried out there by poets who are also teachers, and by scholars who are genuine critics). Reading for school is not the same as reading for fun, as I learned (perhaps in deep mistakenness) back in 3rd grade.
But it would be a mistake to reduce this issue to the "poetry in academia" debate, since, for one thing, both Nowness & the supposed Quietude take place not only in the academy, but also, as Ron points out repeatedly, in the networks of literary Publication & its epiphenomena. &, for another thing, the most interesting aspect of the issue hovers around more strictly lit-crit areas, having to do with the development of modern poetics, the relation of innovation to tradition in art & poetry, the reflection of social reality in literature, etc.
Every poet brings a unique perspective to these questions, and they can be quite diverse, obviously. Some will consider poetry to be, essentially, a difficult craft, a genre of writing, which you practice in school and evolve in the context of contemporary literary magazine writing. Others will emphasize the osmosis of literary models and avatars, will pursue the literary history of modernism (Eliot, Pound, Stein, Stevens, and all their generations, etc. etc.) for keys to their own efforts, and as windows on the contemporary (this seems to have been my own bent for the last couple decades). Others will be enthusiastically attuned to the subversive youthful essence of poetry, its criticism of sleep & stasis & philistinism emanating from the garrets & clubs of romantic vital revolt (I know this sounds funny, but there it is). Others will use poetry as a kind of political language, a means of expressing a critique or alienation from capitalism, imperialism, mass culture, the middle class, etc.
What troubles me about the Quietude Theory (along with many similar formulas and attitudes emanating from the post-avant set) is that it reifies vast and various ranges of past poetries into a clump of Quietude, Mainstream, Official Verse Culture. It is this act of reification - a reductive conceptualization - which is the founding move creating ANOTHER clump : the post-avant camp itself. Suddenly there is a set of literary progressives, avant-gardists, who consider themselves both different and more enlightened than the mainstream "others". Within their subculture, they wallow in the vaunted minutiae of "neglected" poets, they excoriate the benighted taste AND politics of the "mainstream" : and in this very process they neglect the essential duty of the poet, whether from within the academy or outside it : to direct the poetic language of the present time - at its highest pitch of clarity, originality, complexity, simplicity, variety, social relevance, intellectual acuity, and aesthetic integrity - to the attention of the general public, the ordinary reader, the extraordinary reader : and NOT to abide (full of insolence, hypocrisy, and intellectual disgrace) in the cozy, incestuous, flabby, and musty nests of their own parochial nit-picking snob societies. The tradition of poetry is a perennial high-energy Now extending back to the bards and prophets of ancient Athens & Jerusalem & before, up to the contemporary "pressure of the time"; it will not be bottled & labeled by the reified, self-serving pigeonholes of the "post-avant", or the "Neo"-formalists, or the denizens of MFA snooze groves.
One can never, in an American context, dismiss the abiding presence, the inspired mastery, and the sometimes explosive relevance, of the obscure, the long-neglected, the marginal, the eccentric, the modest, the quiet, the experimental. But the reification which, in the schools of the post-avant, grants an automatic positive aura to some figures & works, and a corresponding negative aura to others, simply on the basis of "mainstreamity" (say, from among many possible examples, Olson & Lowell), is a specious exercise, an intellectual and aesthetic short-circuit, which obscures what actually has been accomplished in our poetry.
6.13.2003
Tim's reading me. There's hope for the geezer. Now if Jimby will post a naked photo of me on HIS blog, I might make the "social" grade. Political, that's another thing. I will have to be run over by Ron's Buffalo Dodge 4-w KathunderKalliope for that to happen. Happy B-day, J. There. Social as a cutworm.
So let's, for a moment, underline the inimitable individuality of certain poetic exemplars. Let's shake the tin walls of Carpitude a little. The binaries get biffly when you remember the influence of the King James Bible & Shakespeare & the Romantics on Whitman & Dickinson; or the politically-alert careers of Quietudists Whittier & Wm Vaugn Moody; or the technical brilliance of Longfellow's innovations; or Poe (the anti-Quietudist)'s "traditional" metrics; or say, the career of radical Modernist, Pound disciple, Poe imitator, avatar of the New Critics, and Ashbery model, TS Eliot; or the street politics of Quietudist conscientious objector Robert Lowell; or the unpigeonholeable poetics of his friend Eliz. Bishop; or the bizarre "quietude" of scholar-poet John Berryman (have you read his essays - or his poems - or is he just another running dog of the quiet establishment?), which made it to the cover of Time, or hey, the career of quietudist establishment academic anarchist FBI McCarthy-tailed WW 2 Vet Portuguese translator poet Edwin Honig, etc.and so on. In fact, if the Critic will lift his eyes for only a moment from the venal obsession with Influence, Publication and Politics, or IPPocrisy, he might discover a constellation of actual poets writing actual poetry. . . amazing, isn't it?
Once again, Ron Silliman is elaborating his binary scheme of US poetics history, what might be called the "team schema" of literature, which is actually pretty traditional in its own right, going back to the battles between Establishment & Radical poets of mid-century, and back before that to the Modernists & the Georgians, and back before that to the experimenters (Whitman, Dickinson, Hopkins) & the rest of the Victorians. . . where would criticism be without these teams, these Quietudes & these Carpitudes? It makes you wonder whether American culture has actually produced ANY fully-developed poets in the last few generations, since the distinction of a fully-formed artist is to absorb & transcend such cliches & group phenomena. Where would Ron's radical Carpitude poets be without a Quietude to diss? Let's face it, 99% of experimental post-avant carpitude poetry is utterly forgettable mediocre braying (same percentage goes for Quietude ranks). & if that's the case, why the obsession with these camps? What critical value do we have in endlessly underlining the magical divide between Rads & Straights, decade after decade, if 99% of the work in both camps is crap? Aren't we just using dung beetle technology to build two huge a-symmetrical mounds of crap? Upon which Ron will sit (the Carpitude pile, to the left) & dish out his extravagant encomia (O brilliant, Mike Magee! just to cite one recent example [not that I have anything against Magee's parodic riffs on Emily Dickinson. My beef is with Silliman's critical scale of values, which transmutes the clever into the pathbreaking, etc.]. . .)
6.12.2003
Classic oppositional poetics statement by Ange Mlinko over at Ron's blog today.
O Buffalo, O Brown, O little clubhouses everywhere!
Oppositionalism is simply politics. It's motivated by a political desire to feel important, relevant to something larger than oneself, empowered; you could translate these attitudes into ANY professional field of endeavor and apply them seamlessly. Ironically, the us/them divide merely allows "us" to wallow in complacency, to create whole idioms & theoretical systems to support "marginality" at all cost & with all hypocrisy, to disregard many techniques of social poetry simply because they turn the mode & target of address away from the clique itself.
Ange Mlinko plays these themes on a simple oaten flute; Ron Silliman with full orchestra & pipe organ.
But this junk is not even worth talking about. I'm sure it will be turned into blog-hash for days now.
O Buffalo, O Brown, O little clubhouses everywhere!
Oppositionalism is simply politics. It's motivated by a political desire to feel important, relevant to something larger than oneself, empowered; you could translate these attitudes into ANY professional field of endeavor and apply them seamlessly. Ironically, the us/them divide merely allows "us" to wallow in complacency, to create whole idioms & theoretical systems to support "marginality" at all cost & with all hypocrisy, to disregard many techniques of social poetry simply because they turn the mode & target of address away from the clique itself.
Ange Mlinko plays these themes on a simple oaten flute; Ron Silliman with full orchestra & pipe organ.
But this junk is not even worth talking about. I'm sure it will be turned into blog-hash for days now.
6.11.2003
. . . the battle, in art, essentially, being between the imperial and the empyreal:
the contemplative (Mary's better portion) and the active (Martha's):
a spiritual battle in the soul between the whole Creation & partial goods (greed, lust, pride, anger);
("since the coming of John until now the Kingdom of Heaven has come by violence, and violent men take it by force; but it shall not be so among you. Verily I say unto you, the least of those in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John" - Gospel)
the 9 daughters of Mnemosyne (memory) being grandchildren of Zeus;
this is the subtext of July (Julius Caesar to Jubilee).
the contemplative (Mary's better portion) and the active (Martha's):
a spiritual battle in the soul between the whole Creation & partial goods (greed, lust, pride, anger);
("since the coming of John until now the Kingdom of Heaven has come by violence, and violent men take it by force; but it shall not be so among you. Verily I say unto you, the least of those in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John" - Gospel)
the 9 daughters of Mnemosyne (memory) being grandchildren of Zeus;
this is the subtext of July (Julius Caesar to Jubilee).
Here's the text in translation:
All three of my peaks glance upward;
a gentle triocular cupola is crowned;
and in sharp-edged empyreal beams
someone rotates around.
They are like three wells. . . and water
will suddenly swim to the brink of mutiny;
whenever a pail is lowered in, it must be
very carefully, very tenderly.
(I liked the way "empyreal" puns on "imperial", since this is, in a sense - if I'm right about the Streltsy theory - a meditation on the Moscow/Petersburg relationship : Petersburg the imperial western outpost, Moscow the mother-city, the home of the old religion : all of this enCAPsulated in the microcosm of the poet's trinitarian scalp. It fits well with the employment of the word "mutiny" in the 2nd stanza; also with Shvarts' famous tendency to mingle the spiritual/personal/erotic : the last stanza is somewhat "Greek" (Orthodox) in its Sapphic-erotic & concise undertones.)
"circumference" (ED via Shkspr's Head)
All three of my peaks glance upward;
a gentle triocular cupola is crowned;
and in sharp-edged empyreal beams
someone rotates around.
They are like three wells. . . and water
will suddenly swim to the brink of mutiny;
whenever a pail is lowered in, it must be
very carefully, very tenderly.
(I liked the way "empyreal" puns on "imperial", since this is, in a sense - if I'm right about the Streltsy theory - a meditation on the Moscow/Petersburg relationship : Petersburg the imperial western outpost, Moscow the mother-city, the home of the old religion : all of this enCAPsulated in the microcosm of the poet's trinitarian scalp. It fits well with the employment of the word "mutiny" in the 2nd stanza; also with Shvarts' famous tendency to mingle the spiritual/personal/erotic : the last stanza is somewhat "Greek" (Orthodox) in its Sapphic-erotic & concise undertones.)
"circumference" (ED via Shkspr's Head)
audblog audio postMy amateur translation, published in Nedge #4 (translation issue). When I was working on this I was reading a biography of Peter the Great. The image of "someone rotates around" brought to mind the mutiny of the Streltsy, Muscovite elite soldiers who rebelled against Peter in favor of his sister, and who were executed by hanging outside her (home confinement) bay windows. I learned later that the "three peaks" referred to the three swirls, or widow's peaks (rather unusual) in ES's own hair - which she relates to contemplative Trinitarian "eyes" in the top of her head, a cupola (Byzantine architecture, curve of eyes & eyebrows very prominent in Mandelstam's oeuvre). cf. earlier blog notes on circumference, microcosm, "Shakespeare's Head".
audblog audio postUntitled octet by Elena Shvarts (her name means "shining black" in Grk-Ger-Rus-Indo : insignia of her native city, the yellow-black eagle flag, the white nights), read very amateurishly by c'est moi. 1994, from her book "Birdsongs from the Golden Sea"(?) published by Pushkin House in 1995.
Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 23rd, Shakespeare's birthday, just 100 years after Pushkin's birth (April 23 is also St. George's Day, St. George being the traditional patron saint of both Russia and England). The first language he learned to read & write was English, though Russian was the spoken language. This background casts a curious light on his last novel in Russian, Invitation to a Beheading, a surreal tale about an artist-figure imprisoned in a fake totalitarian world which employs a hermetic token language, allowing no deviations, by means of which each person already "understands" what is being said, even before the "words" are spoken.
Nabokov's fiction often displays or plays up themes of alien intrusion or the clashing of disjunctive worlds.
There was a period, during the 60s, when my mother was slightly obsessed with Nabokov. She named a favorite campsite in the north woods (the north woods of Minnesota - of birch trees & pine, much like Siberia) "Mnemosyne Point", using one of the novelist's key words. The obsession spread to me; the last short story I wrote in high school was a Nabokovian pastiche of school memories & word games.
My absorption with Mandelstam was probably an echo of that earlier experience. The elegiac "ring" I attempted to close in the poem in memory of Joseph Brodsky (see hgpoetics archives for 1.9.03) - the ring of elegies beginning with Auden's for Yeats, echoed by Brodsky's for Eliot - was actually a revision of an earlier poem in which I recounted my adolescent effort to "become" Nabokov. The 3rd part of that poem - about the boy and the moth - fuses the two: it's based on a Brodsky poem on the same subject, which in turn was drawn from a Nabokov short story.
I haven't been blogging much lately because I'm trying to work on a novel - & reading Nabokov again. I feel sometimes like a character in some Nabokov parody of American life - or a smudged mirror-image of that Russian, who carried around an alien infusion of English since childhood. In the "post-avant" world of subcultural poetics, sometimes I feel like the protagonist (Cincinnatus) in Invitation to a Beheading.
The "plot", you may recall, of Stubborn Grew, is triggered by a search for a lost black cat named Pushkin, & leads to a "CATabasis", or journey to the underworld - the underworld of American "POEtics".
Nabokov's fiction often displays or plays up themes of alien intrusion or the clashing of disjunctive worlds.
There was a period, during the 60s, when my mother was slightly obsessed with Nabokov. She named a favorite campsite in the north woods (the north woods of Minnesota - of birch trees & pine, much like Siberia) "Mnemosyne Point", using one of the novelist's key words. The obsession spread to me; the last short story I wrote in high school was a Nabokovian pastiche of school memories & word games.
My absorption with Mandelstam was probably an echo of that earlier experience. The elegiac "ring" I attempted to close in the poem in memory of Joseph Brodsky (see hgpoetics archives for 1.9.03) - the ring of elegies beginning with Auden's for Yeats, echoed by Brodsky's for Eliot - was actually a revision of an earlier poem in which I recounted my adolescent effort to "become" Nabokov. The 3rd part of that poem - about the boy and the moth - fuses the two: it's based on a Brodsky poem on the same subject, which in turn was drawn from a Nabokov short story.
I haven't been blogging much lately because I'm trying to work on a novel - & reading Nabokov again. I feel sometimes like a character in some Nabokov parody of American life - or a smudged mirror-image of that Russian, who carried around an alien infusion of English since childhood. In the "post-avant" world of subcultural poetics, sometimes I feel like the protagonist (Cincinnatus) in Invitation to a Beheading.
The "plot", you may recall, of Stubborn Grew, is triggered by a search for a lost black cat named Pushkin, & leads to a "CATabasis", or journey to the underworld - the underworld of American "POEtics".
6.09.2003
I am a prairie dog. Early poem written by young prairie dog:
POEM
Why are the plains like memory,
and the sea like a daydream
where the sun breaks in pieces
of old musicals, blind summers?
The farmhouse far from the ocean
carries my death on waves of wheat,
and bears a heavy childhood too,
bearing a heavy child, my fields -
where we look away to
when the tools are put down
and our hands are free.
When the head leans on the doorpost
and the arms are folded, almost waiting,
the mind could become a river flowing south
and shaking with that human sound.
POEM
Why are the plains like memory,
and the sea like a daydream
where the sun breaks in pieces
of old musicals, blind summers?
The farmhouse far from the ocean
carries my death on waves of wheat,
and bears a heavy childhood too,
bearing a heavy child, my fields -
where we look away to
when the tools are put down
and our hands are free.
When the head leans on the doorpost
and the arms are folded, almost waiting,
the mind could become a river flowing south
and shaking with that human sound.
6.06.2003
Tim & David are talking about the definitions of "social poet".
Responding to Tim : 20th cent. lit is more than modernist anti-mass culture struggles. Think of Nabokov or Thos. Mann. Beneath the idea that there is no synthesizing of elite & mass culture is the assumption that there is no viable or culturally normative middle class.
It might be better to focus on the characteristics of poetry per se rather than trying to identify character traits or allegiances of individual poets. Because poetry-making is inherently social, and at the same time, social issues are irrelevant. How so? Because poetry-making is like other kinds of art-making : it involves a "primitive", childish kind of fetishization of objects. The poem for the poet is a fetishized object, a container for impulses of love & fascination. This is true regardless of the poet's social background, cultural assumptions, political ideals, intellectual allegiances, etc. So in a way poetry-making is a hobby, an obsession, a meeting-ground, A PLAY SPACE, where social categories lose their seriousness to some degree. & in this very un-seriousness resides its most important social function.
Responding to Tim : 20th cent. lit is more than modernist anti-mass culture struggles. Think of Nabokov or Thos. Mann. Beneath the idea that there is no synthesizing of elite & mass culture is the assumption that there is no viable or culturally normative middle class.
It might be better to focus on the characteristics of poetry per se rather than trying to identify character traits or allegiances of individual poets. Because poetry-making is inherently social, and at the same time, social issues are irrelevant. How so? Because poetry-making is like other kinds of art-making : it involves a "primitive", childish kind of fetishization of objects. The poem for the poet is a fetishized object, a container for impulses of love & fascination. This is true regardless of the poet's social background, cultural assumptions, political ideals, intellectual allegiances, etc. So in a way poetry-making is a hobby, an obsession, a meeting-ground, A PLAY SPACE, where social categories lose their seriousness to some degree. & in this very un-seriousness resides its most important social function.
6.05.2003
Perhaps a brief & partial literary timeline will reveal to some extent why I feel puzzled & alienated by the epiphenomena of New American jumbo shrimp, leading to various collisions of the late 90s on the Buffalo Poetics List.
HG Timeline
5.29.1952 - born in Minneapolis. Spends 1st year & a half in grandparents' apt. on Oak St., near U of M campus on Mississippi River.
ca. 1956 - recites first poem, for (workaholic) father, who writes it down on a key tag. Mother saves it:
Play, play,
it's time to play!
Play all day,
that's what I say!
Your work is done,
come out in the sun!
Play, play, play!
(He never abandoned the themes or the late 19th-cent. "pseudo-limerick" style of this early work.)
1957 - suffers from severe case of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare form of polio. Paralyzed up to neck for 2 months. Photo in Mpls Star Trib. upon recovery, in wheelchair, holding life-size Curious George monkey.
1959 - writes 1st short story, after hike in woods with Jamie Freeman & his older sister Mary. Short-story writing continues into high school.
1959-1969 - INTENSE, CONTINUAL reading of fiction. Favorites include Nabokov, Grass, Catch-22, many many. . .
1964 - Recites "Charge of the Light Brigade" from memory for 6th grade English class.
1966 - Reads "For a Gift of Watermelon Pickle", a popular poetry anthology. Memorizes ee cummings' "In Just- Spring"
1969-70 - edits high school lit magazine, Talisman. Inspired by Padgett/Shapiro NY School anthology, begins writing imitations of Berrigan, Ashbery, et al. Many many favorites. Transfers childhood fascination/fetishization with toy soldiers to these poetic objects.
1969 - applies for C.O. draft status; takes student deferment.
1970 - for Senior Speech in high school, recites narrative poem in the persona of an anti-war protestor. During long ride to March on Washington, protagonist is seduced by "Dark Lady" in the back of the bus; ends up as aging hippie guru isolated in Rocky Mountains, his children having become successful businesspeople.
1970 - Berrigan imitations & soccer playing win admission to Brown University (rejected by several other colleges).
early 70s - takes full advantage of Brown "New Curriculum" by pursuing creative writing courses as much as possible. Wins 3 poetry awards in sophomore year.
1972 - depression after suicide of cousin Juliet Ravlin. (Blurry photo of Henry, Julie & sister Cara, ca. 1968, here.) Vocational uncertainties, social disorientations.
Late 1972 - reads Shakespeare's Sonnets. Uncanny sense that the Bard is addressing him directly. Frightened by this, changes major to history, renounces writing.
Summer 1973 - reads Bible while working on ranch in Wyoming.
Fall 1973 to 1976 - During 1st days of senior year at Brown, re-reads Sonnets. Has sudden manic breakdown when ghost of Shakespeare again seems to be "present" in the room. Initiates week of spiritual turmoil, soul at war between Bible & Shakespeare, paranoia about literary fame conspiracy & demonic possession, purchases gun, throws gun in Seekonk River. (Story told more fully in Glass of Green Tea - With Honig). Goes home to recuperate for a week (while there, shows complex new narrative poem about A. Hamilton & Aaron Burr to psychiatrist. Psychiatrist says he may not be able to respond very objectively since he's a direct descendant of Aaron Burr). Returns to Brown; drops out one month later. Becomes wandering solitary "Jesus freak", working odd jobs, playing guitar, reading, meditating, occasionally writing, Providence-Minneapolis-Cora, Wyo.-Denver-Los Angeles-S.F.-New York-London-Providence.
1975 - London. Works under the table at odd jobs. Plays guitar & harmonica in pub band. Applies for Mick Taylor's former job w/Rolling Stones. Discusses Bible & Wm. Blake with Keith Richards; attempted employment & attempted conversion of K. Richards both unsuccessful.
1976 - returns from London upon illness of grandfather; re-enters Brown & finishes B.A.
1977 - discovers poetry of Mandelstam (in translation). Reads Nadezhda Mandelstam memoirs (Hope Against Hope, Hope Abandoned). Begins slow process of recovering poetic capability independent of religious fervor.
1978 - Organizes/manages Kneecap Food Coop, a storefront food coop. Manages CETA project construction of community solar greenhouse based on geometry of "vesica" designs, found in John Michell's popular studies of prehistoric architecture & numerology of "New Jerusalem". (Site eventually torn down by Brown University for housing project.)
1979 - Marries Francesca Tagliabue, daughter of Maine poet John Tagliabue.
1980-83 - works as VISTA volunteer for various Providence community organizations. Continues attempts at writing; deepens interest in 20th-century moderns Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, Eugenio Montale, et al. Sustained study of Mandelstam's style, poetics, worldview as counter-weight to American traditions.
- to be continued (maybe) -
1983 - After partial dismantling of the VISTA program by the Reagan Admin., spent 10 mos. working as a "professional resume writer". Fired after not charging enough for resumes. Finds job at Brown U. Library (Door Guard). Begins posthumous literary life.
- to be continued again (???)
HG Timeline
5.29.1952 - born in Minneapolis. Spends 1st year & a half in grandparents' apt. on Oak St., near U of M campus on Mississippi River.
ca. 1956 - recites first poem, for (workaholic) father, who writes it down on a key tag. Mother saves it:
Play, play,
it's time to play!
Play all day,
that's what I say!
Your work is done,
come out in the sun!
Play, play, play!
(He never abandoned the themes or the late 19th-cent. "pseudo-limerick" style of this early work.)
1957 - suffers from severe case of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare form of polio. Paralyzed up to neck for 2 months. Photo in Mpls Star Trib. upon recovery, in wheelchair, holding life-size Curious George monkey.
1959 - writes 1st short story, after hike in woods with Jamie Freeman & his older sister Mary. Short-story writing continues into high school.
1959-1969 - INTENSE, CONTINUAL reading of fiction. Favorites include Nabokov, Grass, Catch-22, many many. . .
1964 - Recites "Charge of the Light Brigade" from memory for 6th grade English class.
1966 - Reads "For a Gift of Watermelon Pickle", a popular poetry anthology. Memorizes ee cummings' "In Just- Spring"
1969-70 - edits high school lit magazine, Talisman. Inspired by Padgett/Shapiro NY School anthology, begins writing imitations of Berrigan, Ashbery, et al. Many many favorites. Transfers childhood fascination/fetishization with toy soldiers to these poetic objects.
1969 - applies for C.O. draft status; takes student deferment.
1970 - for Senior Speech in high school, recites narrative poem in the persona of an anti-war protestor. During long ride to March on Washington, protagonist is seduced by "Dark Lady" in the back of the bus; ends up as aging hippie guru isolated in Rocky Mountains, his children having become successful businesspeople.
1970 - Berrigan imitations & soccer playing win admission to Brown University (rejected by several other colleges).
early 70s - takes full advantage of Brown "New Curriculum" by pursuing creative writing courses as much as possible. Wins 3 poetry awards in sophomore year.
1972 - depression after suicide of cousin Juliet Ravlin. (Blurry photo of Henry, Julie & sister Cara, ca. 1968, here.) Vocational uncertainties, social disorientations.
Late 1972 - reads Shakespeare's Sonnets. Uncanny sense that the Bard is addressing him directly. Frightened by this, changes major to history, renounces writing.
Summer 1973 - reads Bible while working on ranch in Wyoming.
Fall 1973 to 1976 - During 1st days of senior year at Brown, re-reads Sonnets. Has sudden manic breakdown when ghost of Shakespeare again seems to be "present" in the room. Initiates week of spiritual turmoil, soul at war between Bible & Shakespeare, paranoia about literary fame conspiracy & demonic possession, purchases gun, throws gun in Seekonk River. (Story told more fully in Glass of Green Tea - With Honig). Goes home to recuperate for a week (while there, shows complex new narrative poem about A. Hamilton & Aaron Burr to psychiatrist. Psychiatrist says he may not be able to respond very objectively since he's a direct descendant of Aaron Burr). Returns to Brown; drops out one month later. Becomes wandering solitary "Jesus freak", working odd jobs, playing guitar, reading, meditating, occasionally writing, Providence-Minneapolis-Cora, Wyo.-Denver-Los Angeles-S.F.-New York-London-Providence.
1975 - London. Works under the table at odd jobs. Plays guitar & harmonica in pub band. Applies for Mick Taylor's former job w/Rolling Stones. Discusses Bible & Wm. Blake with Keith Richards; attempted employment & attempted conversion of K. Richards both unsuccessful.
1976 - returns from London upon illness of grandfather; re-enters Brown & finishes B.A.
1977 - discovers poetry of Mandelstam (in translation). Reads Nadezhda Mandelstam memoirs (Hope Against Hope, Hope Abandoned). Begins slow process of recovering poetic capability independent of religious fervor.
1978 - Organizes/manages Kneecap Food Coop, a storefront food coop. Manages CETA project construction of community solar greenhouse based on geometry of "vesica" designs, found in John Michell's popular studies of prehistoric architecture & numerology of "New Jerusalem". (Site eventually torn down by Brown University for housing project.)
1979 - Marries Francesca Tagliabue, daughter of Maine poet John Tagliabue.
1980-83 - works as VISTA volunteer for various Providence community organizations. Continues attempts at writing; deepens interest in 20th-century moderns Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, Eugenio Montale, et al. Sustained study of Mandelstam's style, poetics, worldview as counter-weight to American traditions.
- to be continued (maybe) -
1983 - After partial dismantling of the VISTA program by the Reagan Admin., spent 10 mos. working as a "professional resume writer". Fired after not charging enough for resumes. Finds job at Brown U. Library (Door Guard). Begins posthumous literary life.
- to be continued again (???)
That young Ron in the 60s would see publication by a trade publisher of a book by Joe Ceravolo as evidence of some kind of cultural conspiracy seems paradigmatic for his later perspectives (the Manichean divide between Quietude & Carpitude, the war between NY School & Langpo, etc). It also seems inevitable given the mental constellation of "New American Poetry" : an approach which ab ovo shapes its poets as in struggle. No one is simply an American poet : one is a "NEW American poet, battling conformism, neglect, establishment poetics, and world politico-economic Evil". Maybe the effects are analogous to the way partisan loyalties obscure democracy per se.
Good blog-in by Ron today. Food for thought. The scramble for authority among different New American Poetry mullahs in 60s & 70s. Like a sport with fans & partisans. How can anybody write under these conditions? The desperate search for the right model among young wannabes. "Projectionism" should be the name for it. But of course it was exciting.
One of the best environments for poetry I ever encountered was a small group of poets who met off & on for a couple of years at Sylvia Moubayed's house in Providence. Edwin Honig, several local poets. It was not exactly a workshop; more like a round table. We'd take turns reading new poems & then comment on them. It wasn't perfect; but it was healthy. The poem is a toy, a self-contained work of art, an effort : it is symbiotic & inalienable both from the living poet who stands there & presents it, and also inalienable from the sympathetic, engaged, critical audience which listens & responds. The poem may have a history & a set of poetic choices & a projected ambition - but these remain in the background when it goes forth & has to stand up for itself & justify itself artistically in the presence of others.
One of the best environments for poetry I ever encountered was a small group of poets who met off & on for a couple of years at Sylvia Moubayed's house in Providence. Edwin Honig, several local poets. It was not exactly a workshop; more like a round table. We'd take turns reading new poems & then comment on them. It wasn't perfect; but it was healthy. The poem is a toy, a self-contained work of art, an effort : it is symbiotic & inalienable both from the living poet who stands there & presents it, and also inalienable from the sympathetic, engaged, critical audience which listens & responds. The poem may have a history & a set of poetic choices & a projected ambition - but these remain in the background when it goes forth & has to stand up for itself & justify itself artistically in the presence of others.
6.04.2003
HGpoiesis. A Marsden-Hartleyan, feline-Pushkinian, topogenetic, geometrical landscaping, elaborated in >Stubborn Grew & The Rose (ie. Forth of July). Here's the math problem:
Florida, the St. P. of America, drips Seaman HHC, spread-eagled, off S.S. Orizaba into Vortex near Cube. His body, recovered by Herman the Merman, is delivered to WW in the Delta (under the sigla MM, Bride of J). The coffdropped one miraculously swims upstream & is nursed back to health by Seaman HHG at Lake Itasca, aboard the S.S. Abbazero. Can you square this circle, using only one honeycomb? You may have to consult a Russian chess whiz.
Florida, the St. P. of America, drips Seaman HHC, spread-eagled, off S.S. Orizaba into Vortex near Cube. His body, recovered by Herman the Merman, is delivered to WW in the Delta (under the sigla MM, Bride of J). The coffdropped one miraculously swims upstream & is nursed back to health by Seaman HHG at Lake Itasca, aboard the S.S. Abbazero. Can you square this circle, using only one honeycomb? You may have to consult a Russian chess whiz.
Nada on subjective formalism vs. mathematical. She's right to counterbalance the model-making head trips with a more centered "mimesis" (the "canons" of Leonardo & predecessors - squaring the circle on the human microcosm - were centered on genitals or navel). But math is everywhere. Nada herself did some division (Nada divided by Ron = Ada with remain d'Or). Gaze into your navel you'll see a very physical umbilical cord back to nautilus spiral seashell.
Reading Rykwert on break. More interesting stuff from Aristotle & Plato's Sophist.
Thinks the term poiesis might have changed in late 7th cent. BC when poets started charging for their services & refining their techne (the main purpose being to create a monument to fame more lasting than marble - not their own fame, but their patron's - cf. Pindar). Poiesis before meant "making" more generally.
Distinctions between acquisitive techne - hunting, fishing, fighting - and productive techne - agriculture, shipbuilding, architecture, etc. Also distinctions between productive mimesis (the carpenter builds this table based on the concept "table") and imitative mimesis (the painter paints a copy of carpenter's "this" table).
acquisitive techne = rhetoric, sophism ?
productive techne = poiesis ?
(tendencies or sharp distinctions?)
Thinks the term poiesis might have changed in late 7th cent. BC when poets started charging for their services & refining their techne (the main purpose being to create a monument to fame more lasting than marble - not their own fame, but their patron's - cf. Pindar). Poiesis before meant "making" more generally.
Distinctions between acquisitive techne - hunting, fishing, fighting - and productive techne - agriculture, shipbuilding, architecture, etc. Also distinctions between productive mimesis (the carpenter builds this table based on the concept "table") and imitative mimesis (the painter paints a copy of carpenter's "this" table).
acquisitive techne = rhetoric, sophism ?
productive techne = poiesis ?
(tendencies or sharp distinctions?)
I guess I'm on the wheel of carpitude this morning myself.
Reading Joseph Rykwert, The Dancing Column. about architecture.
He writes that mimesis to the Greeks didn't mean "imitation" as in reflection in a mirror. More like construction on the pattern or in the manner of nature. Aristotle said art (in the widest sense) & nature operate toward goals in the same manner. Poiesis meant "making" in general : architecture, ship-building, poetry.
Maybe the estrangement of poets has something to do with the fact that they are undertaking a constructive project, a fabulative building. It's not rhetorical in essence (designed to sway others, influence others) : it's model-building. In order to stand it has to have an integrity or autonomy or center of gravity, a wholeness. Makes me think of the old (medieval) term for the guilds or craft skills : the skills of the carpenter, etc. were a particular "mystery".
This is odd because language is so outward-oriented, so oriented toward rhetoric & active purpose, toward moving to action. Poetic speech is aimed more at a contemplative telos, like music : music contains all kinds of emotive triggers, but its end is to be a pleasing/moving whole - an end in itself.
Dangerous to the polis because language is so powerful - creating an alternate world-view or whole - the way Shakespeare's "Globe" (the sum of his plays) stood there in sort of ambiguous relation to the actual royals & Macchiavellis he was entertaining.
More from Rykwert : "canon" comes from rule, measure. Leonardo da Vinci provided a kind of quintessence of "canon" in his drawing of a man arms outstretched squaring the circle. It wasn't a new idea at all, but his drawing brought it to a new precision & finesse. The canon of design based on the proportions of the human body as microcosm.
What did Emily Dickinson say about "my purpose[?] is circumference"? wish I could remember the exact wording.
Physiognomy. The globe of "Shakespeare's Head" (building in Providence) making a circuit of cosmos. Epigraph to chapter 2 of Stubborn Grew (from Tempest): "I think he will take this island home in his pocket and give it to his son for an apple"
Reading Joseph Rykwert, The Dancing Column. about architecture.
He writes that mimesis to the Greeks didn't mean "imitation" as in reflection in a mirror. More like construction on the pattern or in the manner of nature. Aristotle said art (in the widest sense) & nature operate toward goals in the same manner. Poiesis meant "making" in general : architecture, ship-building, poetry.
Maybe the estrangement of poets has something to do with the fact that they are undertaking a constructive project, a fabulative building. It's not rhetorical in essence (designed to sway others, influence others) : it's model-building. In order to stand it has to have an integrity or autonomy or center of gravity, a wholeness. Makes me think of the old (medieval) term for the guilds or craft skills : the skills of the carpenter, etc. were a particular "mystery".
This is odd because language is so outward-oriented, so oriented toward rhetoric & active purpose, toward moving to action. Poetic speech is aimed more at a contemplative telos, like music : music contains all kinds of emotive triggers, but its end is to be a pleasing/moving whole - an end in itself.
Dangerous to the polis because language is so powerful - creating an alternate world-view or whole - the way Shakespeare's "Globe" (the sum of his plays) stood there in sort of ambiguous relation to the actual royals & Macchiavellis he was entertaining.
More from Rykwert : "canon" comes from rule, measure. Leonardo da Vinci provided a kind of quintessence of "canon" in his drawing of a man arms outstretched squaring the circle. It wasn't a new idea at all, but his drawing brought it to a new precision & finesse. The canon of design based on the proportions of the human body as microcosm.
What did Emily Dickinson say about "my purpose[?] is circumference"? wish I could remember the exact wording.
Physiognomy. The globe of "Shakespeare's Head" (building in Providence) making a circuit of cosmos. Epigraph to chapter 2 of Stubborn Grew (from Tempest): "I think he will take this island home in his pocket and give it to his son for an apple"
Ron's the Pope of the School of Carpitude. Always griping, always canonizing.
Draw a large circle of 132" diameter. Call it "X", or "Fame & Influence". Place all poets published by standard presses, receptors of standard awards, etc. in this circle. On the perimeter of this circle draw a small circle, "Y", called "Sub-Fame & Opposition". Place all poets not published by standard presses, not recipients of standard awards, etc. in this circle.
Place yourself in the center of circle "Y". As loud as possible, begin grousing about circle "X". Create a Heroic Historical Narrative of circle "Y", which endows its poets with Moral & Political Authority & General Romantic Sexiness & Youthful Radical Originality & Cool Tattoos & the Elixir of Eternal Youth & Alternative Canonicity & Total Post-Avant-Garde Credentials. Turn Circle "X" into the Foil or Shadow of Circle "Y", allowing the latter to Shine with all the more Brilliance in the eyes of your Alternative Post-Avant Oppositional Morally Superior Aesthetically Savvy Subculture. Hubba hubba.
O grinding binaries of Carpitude!
Draw a large circle of 132" diameter. Call it "X", or "Fame & Influence". Place all poets published by standard presses, receptors of standard awards, etc. in this circle. On the perimeter of this circle draw a small circle, "Y", called "Sub-Fame & Opposition". Place all poets not published by standard presses, not recipients of standard awards, etc. in this circle.
Place yourself in the center of circle "Y". As loud as possible, begin grousing about circle "X". Create a Heroic Historical Narrative of circle "Y", which endows its poets with Moral & Political Authority & General Romantic Sexiness & Youthful Radical Originality & Cool Tattoos & the Elixir of Eternal Youth & Alternative Canonicity & Total Post-Avant-Garde Credentials. Turn Circle "X" into the Foil or Shadow of Circle "Y", allowing the latter to Shine with all the more Brilliance in the eyes of your Alternative Post-Avant Oppositional Morally Superior Aesthetically Savvy Subculture. Hubba hubba.
O grinding binaries of Carpitude!
6.02.2003
Parallels between writing a poem, having self-consciousness, and Nicolas Cusanus' theory of "learned ignorance".
The idea that, because our ideas about God & Reality are always (even if only slightly) incommensurate with those things in themselves, it follows that we inhabit a human universe, in which all knowledge is metaphorical & creative, human-produced, including our metaphors for God. Absolute knowledge is a delusion; art alone creates an authentic model (because it's only a model), because the model makes allowance for the unknown, because the creative model is an imitation of divine free creation. (The Incarnation is the only "hard evidence" of the specifically human meaning of the universe.)
But one doesn't NEED such justifications (any more than one needs a poem).
The idea that, because our ideas about God & Reality are always (even if only slightly) incommensurate with those things in themselves, it follows that we inhabit a human universe, in which all knowledge is metaphorical & creative, human-produced, including our metaphors for God. Absolute knowledge is a delusion; art alone creates an authentic model (because it's only a model), because the model makes allowance for the unknown, because the creative model is an imitation of divine free creation. (The Incarnation is the only "hard evidence" of the specifically human meaning of the universe.)
But one doesn't NEED such justifications (any more than one needs a poem).
6.01.2003
Thinking of JD walking around Hanoi being depressed & ecstatic ("great capacity for joy").
Nada asks why she wrote "hummingbird fever".
My guess is she was thinking of the book Nightingale Fever, a study of Mandelstam (who originated the phrase), Akhmatova & Pasternak (? or Tsvetaeva), by British poet & translator D.M. Thomas.
Or it could be coincidence.
My guess is she was thinking of the book Nightingale Fever, a study of Mandelstam (who originated the phrase), Akhmatova & Pasternak (? or Tsvetaeva), by British poet & translator D.M. Thomas.
Or it could be coincidence.
5.31.2003
14
. . . and around the bend, into the Delta.
In the evening, under the sign of Venus -
the old hobo, inverting his deep felt hat
(like character for lamb), full of manna
and sunlight. Fading into the crowd,
an unknown soldier (like hermit thrush,
like nightingale, like goldfinch) -
like Bluejay, solo, behind Shakespeare's Head
warbling, hidden in the Hermitage, his lonesome
tune. For a hidden honeymoon. Shshsh. . .
Persephone purrs a phi design, a river-wish
out of fiddleheads (in Neva-Neva land). Hmm. . .
. . . hmm. Overhead, a silvery W
(into the white night) shines for you
*
a figure for Beloved, or Jerusalem
(justice and Jubilee) - your goldfinch M.
And there, the search through delta-land
(for the wry show and tell of broken
vows, and vows unbroken - for the one
Eurydice, for Mary of the wedding-band)
comes to an end: where an almond spiral
in the snowy hexagon becomes a honeycomb,
and Pushkin the exiled star comes home,
comes home, and the nigredo of the fall
becomes the spring-stir of David's
Nazarean white-blue smile, or Nile -
with sound of whirring wings awhile,
awhirl, awhile. Cat's eyes (redivivus).
5.31.03
. . . and around the bend, into the Delta.
In the evening, under the sign of Venus -
the old hobo, inverting his deep felt hat
(like character for lamb), full of manna
and sunlight. Fading into the crowd,
an unknown soldier (like hermit thrush,
like nightingale, like goldfinch) -
like Bluejay, solo, behind Shakespeare's Head
warbling, hidden in the Hermitage, his lonesome
tune. For a hidden honeymoon. Shshsh. . .
Persephone purrs a phi design, a river-wish
out of fiddleheads (in Neva-Neva land). Hmm. . .
. . . hmm. Overhead, a silvery W
(into the white night) shines for you
*
a figure for Beloved, or Jerusalem
(justice and Jubilee) - your goldfinch M.
And there, the search through delta-land
(for the wry show and tell of broken
vows, and vows unbroken - for the one
Eurydice, for Mary of the wedding-band)
comes to an end: where an almond spiral
in the snowy hexagon becomes a honeycomb,
and Pushkin the exiled star comes home,
comes home, and the nigredo of the fall
becomes the spring-stir of David's
Nazarean white-blue smile, or Nile -
with sound of whirring wings awhile,
awhirl, awhile. Cat's eyes (redivivus).
5.31.03
from Time Flowers
13
Every J-stroke spins a tiny whirlpool
into the slow current. So Hobo's needy
pilgrimage into a weedy labyrinth seeds
water with its offspring, unscrolled
schools that merge into a mazy matrix.
Lackland or Lackawanna, longing for pap
or papa, he paddles, curling, down path P -
half-man, half-something, worm or asterisk -
toward a double-breasted Venus, scratched
in primitive shorthand (like a W) across
his blinded sky. Primordial, coarse
hunger. Springs Epiphany - cross-hatched
and sketched by those two brothers (allies
now) drawn (by Leo) to Madonna's knees.
*
The star-node hums, the almond crossword
over hexagonal snow, dodecagyn Rhodes.
Pent in a primal nest, a wedding bower,
garden of Cyrus or Solomon, in May-time,
at the end of May, as the breeze trims
petals sailing overhead - sweet hour
of flickering light and shade above the river
O my beloved. Before rivers tumbled,
or brothers battled - before God humbled
Babel, turned speech to dust. Forever
and forever, in the pregnant bud, the seed
renews itself, returning to its maker -
was (before Abram traveled out from Ur)
wild crossroad. Hobo follows your lead.
5.31.03
(note: a "J-stroke" is the steering-stroke in a canoe)
13
Every J-stroke spins a tiny whirlpool
into the slow current. So Hobo's needy
pilgrimage into a weedy labyrinth seeds
water with its offspring, unscrolled
schools that merge into a mazy matrix.
Lackland or Lackawanna, longing for pap
or papa, he paddles, curling, down path P -
half-man, half-something, worm or asterisk -
toward a double-breasted Venus, scratched
in primitive shorthand (like a W) across
his blinded sky. Primordial, coarse
hunger. Springs Epiphany - cross-hatched
and sketched by those two brothers (allies
now) drawn (by Leo) to Madonna's knees.
*
The star-node hums, the almond crossword
over hexagonal snow, dodecagyn Rhodes.
Pent in a primal nest, a wedding bower,
garden of Cyrus or Solomon, in May-time,
at the end of May, as the breeze trims
petals sailing overhead - sweet hour
of flickering light and shade above the river
O my beloved. Before rivers tumbled,
or brothers battled - before God humbled
Babel, turned speech to dust. Forever
and forever, in the pregnant bud, the seed
renews itself, returning to its maker -
was (before Abram traveled out from Ur)
wild crossroad. Hobo follows your lead.
5.31.03
(note: a "J-stroke" is the steering-stroke in a canoe)
audblog audio post Numbers 13 & 14 from the second chapter of Time Flowers, called "At the Sign of Shakespeare's Head". Written today, Walt Whitman's birthday. Happy Birthday, Walt -
(You can read along, in post to follow.)
5.30.2003
Responding to A. Alcalay's quote under Kasey's limetree :
Allan Bloom writes in Closing of the American Mind: a person can become an American in one day.
Allan Bloom writes in Closing of the American Mind: a person can become an American in one day.
Wasn't vague, Bon Jourdan - I just didn't get it. Your inconsistencies were inconsistent with my contradictions.
My long poems an endless ball of insufficiency-twine. A recent section from Time Flowers, the sequel to the sequels that is supposed to tie together all the threads (ha ha):
12
La notte di Santa Andre trovai al fine della quadratura del cerchio e in fine del luce e della notte e della carta dove scrivero fui concluso, al fine dell'ora. - Leonardo da Vinci
At the end of the light, and of the night,
and of the paper on which I was writing...
his hand scribbling like a ball tumbling
left, and downhill, reiterating its broken
symmetry, surveying what unfinished
circumference on the diameter
of a vanishing point (spidery
spiral, infinite clue). Shshsh...
sound of raven-feather footwork (Genius
At Play). Outside, dogwood flowerets
disintegrate into rainy night. Tacit
geometry (J to BD) undeciphered
into dust-motes. His last gathering scattered
everywhere. Only the whorling chalice hesitates.
* *
*
Unbeknownst, Love fortifies and shields
against the complicated tyrannies,
their mazed evasions, mockeries.
And from a spiral fiddlehead builds
springs becoming mammoth summer, streams
vast Mississippis out of baby rivulets
toward delta-home of serpentine returns:
O lightning worm-word, regal David's dream
and cry! There be angelic balances
at work in this, acumen beyond our ken -
plainness grows beautiful (La Gioconda's
unsymmetric smile's intelligence).
12
La notte di Santa Andre trovai al fine della quadratura del cerchio e in fine del luce e della notte e della carta dove scrivero fui concluso, al fine dell'ora. - Leonardo da Vinci
At the end of the light, and of the night,
and of the paper on which I was writing...
his hand scribbling like a ball tumbling
left, and downhill, reiterating its broken
symmetry, surveying what unfinished
circumference on the diameter
of a vanishing point (spidery
spiral, infinite clue). Shshsh...
sound of raven-feather footwork (Genius
At Play). Outside, dogwood flowerets
disintegrate into rainy night. Tacit
geometry (J to BD) undeciphered
into dust-motes. His last gathering scattered
everywhere. Only the whorling chalice hesitates.
* *
*
Unbeknownst, Love fortifies and shields
against the complicated tyrannies,
their mazed evasions, mockeries.
And from a spiral fiddlehead builds
springs becoming mammoth summer, streams
vast Mississippis out of baby rivulets
toward delta-home of serpentine returns:
O lightning worm-word, regal David's dream
and cry! There be angelic balances
at work in this, acumen beyond our ken -
plainness grows beautiful (La Gioconda's
unsymmetric smile's intelligence).
Poetry as language of desire & insufficiency (Orpheus needing Eurydice etc.). Broken symmetry.
Poetry as embodied language, pregnant. Inherently catholic and scandalous. Title poem from Way Stations:
The child honoring you in dreams,
embrasure of innocence, tender shoots
of early radiance - your figure
landscape, unfamiliar town, scent
of May lilacs along a worn road.
Not to be known yet,
only a heavy cloud pregnant
with summer rain
(iron mortality, rust
of decline not yet to be);
gathering up your skirts
you make your way, slow path
beyond the jealous decorations,
fever of scorn, offended pride,
dry branches crackling - a bonfire.
Poetry as embodied language, pregnant. Inherently catholic and scandalous. Title poem from Way Stations:
The child honoring you in dreams,
embrasure of innocence, tender shoots
of early radiance - your figure
landscape, unfamiliar town, scent
of May lilacs along a worn road.
Not to be known yet,
only a heavy cloud pregnant
with summer rain
(iron mortality, rust
of decline not yet to be);
gathering up your skirts
you make your way, slow path
beyond the jealous decorations,
fever of scorn, offended pride,
dry branches crackling - a bonfire.
Fluttering about Flaublog. Reminds me of little lame Pantaloon-man's query/comment about whether there is something substantial in the connection between the work & the life in considering poetry - whether poets "teach" by exemplary life, not only in their works (at least I think that was what JK was pondering at the time).
Steve "owes me $15" Evans is right that the sociability of blogging tends against the solitude needed for some kinds of thinking & writing. Didn't "Shirley Bean" leave off blogging for just that reason? ON T'OTHER HAND, blogging cain't be rudduced to critical expository pose.
Seems to me more like a curious wallow in the realities of office downtime communication, an interstice which allows for expanded creative acting-up or self-presentation. Thus the pleasant VARIETY of blahgpo acts. Which to my thinkin' circles around again to JK's question. Jordan, by the way, sounds almost Sillimanesque in his defense of blogging as political (see "tense/unheeded" comments of yesterday). But is poetry political? Damn straight - so's the Pope.
I tend to agree that the poetry & the poet are inseparable. This doesn't mean we have to delve with vulgar curiosity into the biographical mulch. I think all I'm saying is that the "public informality" of blogging reinforces the presence of poet In Persona qua poet. Words are darn pow'rful, as my Uncle Ned used to say on the porch. Many authors have a curiously impersonal approach to writing - even poets. For them literature is a form of channeling - the results vary depending on talent & scruples. Blogging in an interesting way combines power (of language) & informality (diaries, letters, conversation). In that combination lies the odd feeling of personal presence & immediacy which blogging provides.
I realize I'm rambling. I think whut I'ma tryin to say is that deep down I have a hunch that poetry is NOT channeling - either of accepted power-hegemonic social discourses (cultural or subcultural), or of exemplary classic models. & why not ?? because deep down the person & the word are indistinguishable. The vocation of the writer transmutes or fuses person & word. The poet stands with her or his word to the end of time & none other's - the rest is echo chamber, channeling, feedback, follow the signs please. & the informal immediacy of blogging perhaps reinforces that impression. It gets back to what I was theorizing way back in Jan or Feb about poetry versus prose as illustrated by poetic NOWNESS vs prose MIMESIS.
Either that, or blogging is just another kind of ego tripping. That too. Shorter Wanted Posters Wanted, Shorty.
Steve "owes me $15" Evans is right that the sociability of blogging tends against the solitude needed for some kinds of thinking & writing. Didn't "Shirley Bean" leave off blogging for just that reason? ON T'OTHER HAND, blogging cain't be rudduced to critical expository pose.
Seems to me more like a curious wallow in the realities of office downtime communication, an interstice which allows for expanded creative acting-up or self-presentation. Thus the pleasant VARIETY of blahgpo acts. Which to my thinkin' circles around again to JK's question. Jordan, by the way, sounds almost Sillimanesque in his defense of blogging as political (see "tense/unheeded" comments of yesterday). But is poetry political? Damn straight - so's the Pope.
I tend to agree that the poetry & the poet are inseparable. This doesn't mean we have to delve with vulgar curiosity into the biographical mulch. I think all I'm saying is that the "public informality" of blogging reinforces the presence of poet In Persona qua poet. Words are darn pow'rful, as my Uncle Ned used to say on the porch. Many authors have a curiously impersonal approach to writing - even poets. For them literature is a form of channeling - the results vary depending on talent & scruples. Blogging in an interesting way combines power (of language) & informality (diaries, letters, conversation). In that combination lies the odd feeling of personal presence & immediacy which blogging provides.
I realize I'm rambling. I think whut I'ma tryin to say is that deep down I have a hunch that poetry is NOT channeling - either of accepted power-hegemonic social discourses (cultural or subcultural), or of exemplary classic models. & why not ?? because deep down the person & the word are indistinguishable. The vocation of the writer transmutes or fuses person & word. The poet stands with her or his word to the end of time & none other's - the rest is echo chamber, channeling, feedback, follow the signs please. & the informal immediacy of blogging perhaps reinforces that impression. It gets back to what I was theorizing way back in Jan or Feb about poetry versus prose as illustrated by poetic NOWNESS vs prose MIMESIS.
Either that, or blogging is just another kind of ego tripping. That too. Shorter Wanted Posters Wanted, Shorty.
5.29.2003
1952 for me, Joe. I thought 5/29/52 had a nice symmetry for the Big Day. - H.Grand Poohbah
5.28.2003
Today is saint's day of Guillem de Gellone. One of Charlemagne's lieutenants, fought in Spain; memorialized in French chansons de geste. Entered religious order, founded monastery & school at Gellone, in southern France. According to some historians, descended from Jewish nobility from Baghdad who migrated to Narbonne. A distant relative, I think, I like to think.
William Blackstone was buried on Study Hill, Cumberland, RI on this date in 1675. The next day his property was burnt to the ground by a band of King Philip's men.
- "Talking of corpses," - the Consul poured himself another whiskey and was signing a chit book with a somewhat steadier hand while Yvonne sauntered toward the door -"personally I'd like to be buried next to William Blackstone -" He pushed the book back for Fernando, to whom mercifully he had not attempted to introduce her. "The man who went to live among the Indians. You know who he was, of course?" The Consul stood half toward her, doubtfully regarding this new drink he had not picked up.
- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry lived in Vancouver. Yesterday digging through the files I found the first letter (I think) I ever received - a postcard from Vancouver, from my grandmother Ravlin. Colorized photo of twins in papooses. I was 14 months old. Tomorrow I'll be. . . sheesh.
William Blackstone was buried on Study Hill, Cumberland, RI on this date in 1675. The next day his property was burnt to the ground by a band of King Philip's men.
- "Talking of corpses," - the Consul poured himself another whiskey and was signing a chit book with a somewhat steadier hand while Yvonne sauntered toward the door -"personally I'd like to be buried next to William Blackstone -" He pushed the book back for Fernando, to whom mercifully he had not attempted to introduce her. "The man who went to live among the Indians. You know who he was, of course?" The Consul stood half toward her, doubtfully regarding this new drink he had not picked up.
- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry lived in Vancouver. Yesterday digging through the files I found the first letter (I think) I ever received - a postcard from Vancouver, from my grandmother Ravlin. Colorized photo of twins in papooses. I was 14 months old. Tomorrow I'll be. . . sheesh.
5.27.2003
Funny scene in JF Powers novel, Wheat That Springeth Green. Father Joe has new young assistant-curate, but Diocese didn't bother to tell him his name. Joe doesn't want to embarrass him by asking, or embarrass himself by calling the Diocese, so he calls the police & asks for the name of the owner of the curate's VW parked in rectory driveway. Police won't give out the info. Curate listens in from other room, leaves poorly-typed note (curate is learning how to type) later in Father Joe's desk: "THe info you re quested : William Aloysius Schmidt".
Then follows dialogue likes of which I've never read before: Father Joe, trying to figure out how to deal with this without giving anything away, pretends that the curate must have called for the info about a third party. Curate plays along (he only confronts Joe later). So the two of them have this straight-faced discussion about this make-believe third person. . .
Had to be there. It's a wonderful novel.
Then follows dialogue likes of which I've never read before: Father Joe, trying to figure out how to deal with this without giving anything away, pretends that the curate must have called for the info about a third party. Curate plays along (he only confronts Joe later). So the two of them have this straight-faced discussion about this make-believe third person. . .
Had to be there. It's a wonderful novel.
5.24.2003
Reading 3rd vol. of Eric Pankey, Cenotaph. Also checked his 1st 2 vols at downtown Public today (For the New Year - no apparent reference to Auden - & Heartland). Something happened with 3rd vol (Apocrypha). First 2 are standard boilerplate MFA style (except better - subdued & careful - makes the simple phrases sound without excess. Both his parents were accountants (like GG?)). Poetry & money.
But Apocrypha was a leap forward. Weight of Stevens & Donne & Bible & Shakespeare - and he was EQUAL TO IT : the wit & design & language all in balance, quite extraordinary. Models of excellence.
Then something happened : some personal trouble or reaching some limit of inspiration. These 2 books following Apocrypha read like a record of spiritual impasse. The response was uneven : confession, slackness, backing & filling, occasional successes, depression & some despair. Hard to read without feeling pity & sadness, because he's honest, he doesn't fake (though he repeats himself sometimes), but the meditations are dry, angst-ridden. I feel like I'm looking at the limit of orthodox US expression here.
Curious to read the latest vol. (which crossed my desk & got me started on him), Oracle Figures.
EP. Exemplary initials . . .
See insane peroration of Bluejay in Stubborn Grew, pp. 87-91. Here the Ojibwa outcast casts Amurrcan Litachore in the shadow of the aesthetic Ass of the Providence Atheneum, a neo-classical private library where the most famous photo of EP (Edgar Poe, not Ezra Pound) was taken, not long before his death, when he came (drunk & disorderly) to Providence to woo & snake-oil local poetess Sarah Helen Whitman into marriage & a new American Literary Arsistocracy. The subtext is Notebooks of Arthur Gordon Pym, which pivots on race war fear & the Peter & Paul Islands in mid-Atlantic; meanwhile (1848) Thomas Dorr was in RI prison for inciting the Dorr War, a miniature figurine RI constitutional re-revolution over extension of the franchise - but only to immigrant workers, not to African-Americans (so same supported the anti-Dorr faction, the South County landowners & aristocracy). Bluejay rhymes Poe's racist southern snobbery with Pound's pecking orders in a general condemnation of elitist "Greek" slavery:
"O.K. Now lookee here carefully, now. De cussin
blasted shippin outa hell lands at Desolation
Island, see? Dem duded white pengoons all dressy
wit de alba trapses onna trapeezes widda net, see?
Anna black doorman o backdoor man, see
he holdin up the whole thing wid one pinky -
an it ain't even yarn. Odd, man - lamby-pamby!
- an he crost Atlantic belowdicks, chain up to a T.
Na square dat wid dem rocksaglory, right -
P an P, sturdy an steady inna middle ova tight
sea - upright, man! Like Pizza Polevaulter, key!
Heavin an whole inna earth, alright! Y'follow?
So hey I sieze you got deez double dabblin upside-
arse-o-cats, real hep, man! Formula Tide,
like washin oeuvre everthin wid words t'swallow
aplenty! So soak dis formula, Hen:
Q2 (-E2 - P2) = -J2.
See, you got yo EP an yo EP, both ovum laird
o' th'Catkills. But even they gotta peepee, man!
An they gotta drop they shots an tiss inth toilet
juss like you an me! You with me?
We talkin catshit! Iz all kinda murmuree,
lowdown, muddy an mutteree, backassed - an wet!"
Bizarre as may be, this should be understood in the narrative context of a Henry/Bluejay - Dante/Virgil catabasis or descent into Hell, in search of Henry's lost black cat, Pushkin, stolen on Halloween - the analogy being Dante's emergence from (a literary) Hell into Purgatory through Satan's ass (figured locally in Stubborn as the abandoned railway tunnel under the Atheneum & the RISD art museum).
"Time was I ain't shot my wad inta Yoi yet either.
But iz comin, man. We down among the trainin' ground,
the jailbait. There's Dorr down there, soundin
mighty low below the courthouse, a mere nether-
unworldly goose he is, too. An here come his whiteface
double, po ol' Poe! 1848 slidin like a dyin worm
down Benefit, shoes achin, head achin widda storm
a Whitman onna brain - yeah, the coal lady in lace!
Burnin coal, waitin by the window, lookin down
from the broken wall - one helluva Helen firin him!
Afloat in his mind he wander up to th'Atheneum,
get his blacknwhite ticklelily icon taken
with a crown to his brow an his eyes awry, forever
an ever. He was damned an good at them posterior
analytics - helluva chilly mathematical germcarrier,
Poe. Black n white everthing goes t'him - steer
for the po-po-Pole, amen! I mean, Dorr's dyin
bloated an blighted down in jail fo the franchise,
an Poe's upstairs brushin his teeth, realize -
dig Helen in the whitey semperequal sepulcryin
shame, man! She comin back like a ghost,
lil muddy, but o'clay! Cistern in the grounsoon!
Yeah, he play one limpin aristocat, that one -
that only lonely Poe, po man - evbody get lost."
Again this has to be understood in the context of the Orpheus story which frames Stubborn, & the Poe obsession with the "dead lady", and the fact that Dorr was being held in prison in a basement cell only a couple of blocks from where Poe was reeling insanely up & down Benefit St, & the fact that Rhode Island was deeply & centrally engaged in the slave trade from the beginning, & the fact that the "Dorr War" was riven by racism & Napoleonism (Dorr was often likened physically & politically to little Nappy), and the fact that the only RI fatality of the farcical Dorr War (a Massachusetts carpenter was also shot by mistake, standing in his doorway) was a bystander named Gould (one of my relatives). Politics is local.
But Apocrypha was a leap forward. Weight of Stevens & Donne & Bible & Shakespeare - and he was EQUAL TO IT : the wit & design & language all in balance, quite extraordinary. Models of excellence.
Then something happened : some personal trouble or reaching some limit of inspiration. These 2 books following Apocrypha read like a record of spiritual impasse. The response was uneven : confession, slackness, backing & filling, occasional successes, depression & some despair. Hard to read without feeling pity & sadness, because he's honest, he doesn't fake (though he repeats himself sometimes), but the meditations are dry, angst-ridden. I feel like I'm looking at the limit of orthodox US expression here.
Curious to read the latest vol. (which crossed my desk & got me started on him), Oracle Figures.
EP. Exemplary initials . . .
See insane peroration of Bluejay in Stubborn Grew, pp. 87-91. Here the Ojibwa outcast casts Amurrcan Litachore in the shadow of the aesthetic Ass of the Providence Atheneum, a neo-classical private library where the most famous photo of EP (Edgar Poe, not Ezra Pound) was taken, not long before his death, when he came (drunk & disorderly) to Providence to woo & snake-oil local poetess Sarah Helen Whitman into marriage & a new American Literary Arsistocracy. The subtext is Notebooks of Arthur Gordon Pym, which pivots on race war fear & the Peter & Paul Islands in mid-Atlantic; meanwhile (1848) Thomas Dorr was in RI prison for inciting the Dorr War, a miniature figurine RI constitutional re-revolution over extension of the franchise - but only to immigrant workers, not to African-Americans (so same supported the anti-Dorr faction, the South County landowners & aristocracy). Bluejay rhymes Poe's racist southern snobbery with Pound's pecking orders in a general condemnation of elitist "Greek" slavery:
"O.K. Now lookee here carefully, now. De cussin
blasted shippin outa hell lands at Desolation
Island, see? Dem duded white pengoons all dressy
wit de alba trapses onna trapeezes widda net, see?
Anna black doorman o backdoor man, see
he holdin up the whole thing wid one pinky -
an it ain't even yarn. Odd, man - lamby-pamby!
- an he crost Atlantic belowdicks, chain up to a T.
Na square dat wid dem rocksaglory, right -
P an P, sturdy an steady inna middle ova tight
sea - upright, man! Like Pizza Polevaulter, key!
Heavin an whole inna earth, alright! Y'follow?
So hey I sieze you got deez double dabblin upside-
arse-o-cats, real hep, man! Formula Tide,
like washin oeuvre everthin wid words t'swallow
aplenty! So soak dis formula, Hen:
Q2 (-E2 - P2) = -J2.
See, you got yo EP an yo EP, both ovum laird
o' th'Catkills. But even they gotta peepee, man!
An they gotta drop they shots an tiss inth toilet
juss like you an me! You with me?
We talkin catshit! Iz all kinda murmuree,
lowdown, muddy an mutteree, backassed - an wet!"
Bizarre as may be, this should be understood in the narrative context of a Henry/Bluejay - Dante/Virgil catabasis or descent into Hell, in search of Henry's lost black cat, Pushkin, stolen on Halloween - the analogy being Dante's emergence from (a literary) Hell into Purgatory through Satan's ass (figured locally in Stubborn as the abandoned railway tunnel under the Atheneum & the RISD art museum).
"Time was I ain't shot my wad inta Yoi yet either.
But iz comin, man. We down among the trainin' ground,
the jailbait. There's Dorr down there, soundin
mighty low below the courthouse, a mere nether-
unworldly goose he is, too. An here come his whiteface
double, po ol' Poe! 1848 slidin like a dyin worm
down Benefit, shoes achin, head achin widda storm
a Whitman onna brain - yeah, the coal lady in lace!
Burnin coal, waitin by the window, lookin down
from the broken wall - one helluva Helen firin him!
Afloat in his mind he wander up to th'Atheneum,
get his blacknwhite ticklelily icon taken
with a crown to his brow an his eyes awry, forever
an ever. He was damned an good at them posterior
analytics - helluva chilly mathematical germcarrier,
Poe. Black n white everthing goes t'him - steer
for the po-po-Pole, amen! I mean, Dorr's dyin
bloated an blighted down in jail fo the franchise,
an Poe's upstairs brushin his teeth, realize -
dig Helen in the whitey semperequal sepulcryin
shame, man! She comin back like a ghost,
lil muddy, but o'clay! Cistern in the grounsoon!
Yeah, he play one limpin aristocat, that one -
that only lonely Poe, po man - evbody get lost."
Again this has to be understood in the context of the Orpheus story which frames Stubborn, & the Poe obsession with the "dead lady", and the fact that Dorr was being held in prison in a basement cell only a couple of blocks from where Poe was reeling insanely up & down Benefit St, & the fact that Rhode Island was deeply & centrally engaged in the slave trade from the beginning, & the fact that the "Dorr War" was riven by racism & Napoleonism (Dorr was often likened physically & politically to little Nappy), and the fact that the only RI fatality of the farcical Dorr War (a Massachusetts carpenter was also shot by mistake, standing in his doorway) was a bystander named Gould (one of my relatives). Politics is local.
5.23.2003
Reading a 2nd vol. of Eric Pankey, The Late Romances. Not at the same level of the earlier book (Apocrypha) but still many good poems. I'm sure he's too bourgeois for the School of Louditude (funny, Kasey!)
He's learned a Stevens manner that plays well, a trumpet with bravura & intensity, using the mute.
He's learned a Stevens manner that plays well, a trumpet with bravura & intensity, using the mute.
Stumbled upon a new poet, Eric Pankey (new to me). Read his book Apocrypha practically in one sitting.
This is incredibly good poetry. Out of Stevens, mostly, I guess, & Bible & Shakespeare. Fantastic poet. I don't usually find something I like like this. Am looking into his more recent books.
This is incredibly good poetry. Out of Stevens, mostly, I guess, & Bible & Shakespeare. Fantastic poet. I don't usually find something I like like this. Am looking into his more recent books.
5.22.2003
Phoebe flies to Rome today, for summer school further north. Same school her mother attended 35 yrs ago. La mia bella figlia. Dans les mains de la Charite, j'espere. On steep Angell St., into an art gallery at lunchtime. The show is "Italia", by Michael Sherman : watercolors & paintings, landscapes, cityscapes. Va bene.
Not fair to blame poets for the sad state of education, culture, politics. . .
& a lot of it isn't even sad.
Critical pincers.
writing poems
criticism
fame : 2 sides of the brain & a side of hash with croutons. A canna Makitcohere, chef.
Poem : indefensible heavy breathing. Quite an achievement in its own realm but easily dismissed.
Heavy breathing + acute hearing.
Patience & fortitude.
Careful with those pincers on onionskin graph paper.
Fair to be aware of the heavy angels on watch overhead : the angels of education, culture, politics. . . Miltonic sibillance on granite. . . Brodsky with a hawk on his wrist.
& a lot of it isn't even sad.
Critical pincers.
writing poems
criticism
fame : 2 sides of the brain & a side of hash with croutons. A canna Makitcohere, chef.
Poem : indefensible heavy breathing. Quite an achievement in its own realm but easily dismissed.
Heavy breathing + acute hearing.
Patience & fortitude.
Careful with those pincers on onionskin graph paper.
Fair to be aware of the heavy angels on watch overhead : the angels of education, culture, politics. . . Miltonic sibillance on granite. . . Brodsky with a hawk on his wrist.
speaking of harmony, & Larkin, this Larkin poem was quoted by James Wood in latest New Yorker, in his very fine, beautiful review of Adam Nicolson's new book on the making of the King James Bible, God's Secretaries:
CUT GRASS
Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.
Wood's review is a mini-tour of English literary tradition, showing how influential was the music of the King James Bible. I hear Whitman too in these lines, another offshoot of Biblical music. (& had stopped to notice a white lilac earlier in the day)
I like the quietude of this elegiac mowing.
CUT GRASS
Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.
Wood's review is a mini-tour of English literary tradition, showing how influential was the music of the King James Bible. I hear Whitman too in these lines, another offshoot of Biblical music. (& had stopped to notice a white lilac earlier in the day)
I like the quietude of this elegiac mowing.
5.21.2003
Reading Closing of the American Mind. A great jeremiad. If he's right (& he is right about a lot of things), poets are "performing" in the midst of an era of extreme cultural & educational decadence & misdirection. The so-called mainstream/oppositional distinction is meaningless in this environment, a tendentious distraction : we no longer remember or comprehend the role of reading in the enlightenment of "souls" (as Bloom puts it) or the sustenance of American culture.
Monsieur Silliman ecrit :
"I've sometimes wondered if the ease with which the first generation New York School connected with New York trade publishers wasn't simply an accident of proximity, but also occurred at least in part because the NY School, at least until Mr. Berrigan showed up - and this really is Ted's great contribution to this tendency - did not challenge the paradigm that American poetics was a tributary of British letters, a paradigm that has been central to all variants of the school of quietude."
I wisht I could draw a flow chart for M. Silliman's stereotype-construction house of canards. It would start with some tweedy quietudinous Brit guy like Larkin emitting quietude rays from under his olde British Library deske, stunning all them well-published quietoads like the oily NY School into sleepy success & fame, until Mr. Berrigan clump along & mud his GRREAT Contribution, swingin Americoid poesie back into its rumbustious Americoke raw uncooked redskin rebbolushionerry tuff cookies that we really are deep down. Down wid School of Quietude ! Down wid NY Pebbleshires ! Up wid US !
"I've sometimes wondered if the ease with which the first generation New York School connected with New York trade publishers wasn't simply an accident of proximity, but also occurred at least in part because the NY School, at least until Mr. Berrigan showed up - and this really is Ted's great contribution to this tendency - did not challenge the paradigm that American poetics was a tributary of British letters, a paradigm that has been central to all variants of the school of quietude."
I wisht I could draw a flow chart for M. Silliman's stereotype-construction house of canards. It would start with some tweedy quietudinous Brit guy like Larkin emitting quietude rays from under his olde British Library deske, stunning all them well-published quietoads like the oily NY School into sleepy success & fame, until Mr. Berrigan clump along & mud his GRREAT Contribution, swingin Americoid poesie back into its rumbustious Americoke raw uncooked redskin rebbolushionerry tuff cookies that we really are deep down. Down wid School of Quietude ! Down wid NY Pebbleshires ! Up wid US !
Wrote yesterday about Bellow coming from generation that blurred fiction & autobiography (Mailer, et al.). But Ravelstein is done so gracefully, it's further evidence (in my book) that reality is occasionally fabricated in advance for fiction or art, that the model finds the painter.
Wonder if Valery has anything to say about this.
Wonder if Valery has anything to say about this.
Finished Ravelstein. Bellow's character certainly not "effete", edit that out. Maybe occasionally peevish. & Ravelstein, the stand-in for Allan Bloom, not an "intellectual snob". He has the attitude of a big academic, screening out the students who don't make his grade, sometimes in an unkind way. Not the same as snobbery.
Started reading Closing of the American Mind. Wish I'd read it 10 yrs ago when it came out, & followed the controversy more closely. But then I just wasn't interested. It's a polemic. Am just getting into it. He sharply contrasts the older notion of equality based on natural rights, the basis of the Constitution & Declaration of Independence, with the newer ideology he calls "openness", which promotes the dignity & autonomy of diverse cultures over the universality of human nature. Very controversial at the height of the culture wars.
Started reading Closing of the American Mind. Wish I'd read it 10 yrs ago when it came out, & followed the controversy more closely. But then I just wasn't interested. It's a polemic. Am just getting into it. He sharply contrasts the older notion of equality based on natural rights, the basis of the Constitution & Declaration of Independence, with the newer ideology he calls "openness", which promotes the dignity & autonomy of diverse cultures over the universality of human nature. Very controversial at the height of the culture wars.
5.20.2003
Reading Saul Bellow's Ravelstein. Because he's fun to read, most of the time, and because the novel is an homage or roman a clef of sorts for his late friend Allan Bloom, author of Closing of the American Mind. My curiosity piqued by Times article outlining the genealogy of the neo-conservatives around Bush & Pentagon "descended" from U. Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss (Joe Duemer & I talked around this a few weeks ago). Strauss, I think, is the character "Davarr" in the novel, though he's only mentioned in passing. Pentagon's Wolfowitz was a student of Bloom.
Bellow is "philosophical" in the pleasure he takes in big questions & big ideas, the way he addresses them both directly & obliquely, and the way he makes them accessible through humor, irony, and plain speaking. He comes from a generation of novelists that blurred fiction & autobiography; his character "Chick" is transparently Bellow himself. This leads to some self-indulgent writing, but Bellow's role, as a serious "thinker" in fiction, adds an extra dimension in a novel about a figure like Bloom, an educator so concerned with Platonic dialogue, the classics & the function of cultural heritage in thought & inquiry. "Chick" is the poet in Bloom's philosophical grove.
Interestingly, as Ravelstein is dying, his concerns turn from "Athens" toward "Jerusalem", as his conversations with Chick begin to focus on the fate of Jews in the 20th century. Through an episode about another thinly-disguised U. Chicago prof, a famous mythographer with a Nazi-sympathizer past (Mircea Eliade, I think), Ravelstein speaks about the Jewish sense of shock & isolation in a 20th-century in which the world seems eager to destroy them all; the great demonic ideologies of Stalin & Hitler, & the millions who gave their silent or vocal assent to them.
This reality underlies some of the multiple paradoxes in a novel about a Jewish classicist "invert" (his term) calling for a return to Western civilized values; another is the interplay between philosophical "clear-sightedness" and human cold-heartedness (Ravelstein's intellectual snobbery; the narrator's exhausted, somewhat effete disdain for the "rabble" of the underclass). Both characters come across as complex - humane & cold, warm & full of joie de vivre, hope, self-doubt. Not despair, though.
Is it possible that the neo-con emphasis (descended from Strauss?) on moral certainty, absolute vs. relative good & evil, could lead to a realpolitik in which ends justify the means (a sort of "moral hardheadedness" which is actually inhumane)? That would be an ironic twist. But I haven't even read Bloom's book (now I want to), nor do I really understand the innards of neo-con policymaking (sorry, Joe).
I wonder where Bellow came up with the name Ravelstein. Reminds me of course of my mother's unusual maiden name, Ravlin. I always thought it was a variant of Rawlin or Rawlins, maybe old french in origin? Dunno. Stubborn Grew & sequels are on one level a memorial to several Ravlins. The books were triggered by a simple elegy for my uncle James Ravlin (who was the same generation & could have stepped straight out of a Bellow novel), & turned into a complex elegy for his daughter Juliet.
Bellow is "philosophical" in the pleasure he takes in big questions & big ideas, the way he addresses them both directly & obliquely, and the way he makes them accessible through humor, irony, and plain speaking. He comes from a generation of novelists that blurred fiction & autobiography; his character "Chick" is transparently Bellow himself. This leads to some self-indulgent writing, but Bellow's role, as a serious "thinker" in fiction, adds an extra dimension in a novel about a figure like Bloom, an educator so concerned with Platonic dialogue, the classics & the function of cultural heritage in thought & inquiry. "Chick" is the poet in Bloom's philosophical grove.
Interestingly, as Ravelstein is dying, his concerns turn from "Athens" toward "Jerusalem", as his conversations with Chick begin to focus on the fate of Jews in the 20th century. Through an episode about another thinly-disguised U. Chicago prof, a famous mythographer with a Nazi-sympathizer past (Mircea Eliade, I think), Ravelstein speaks about the Jewish sense of shock & isolation in a 20th-century in which the world seems eager to destroy them all; the great demonic ideologies of Stalin & Hitler, & the millions who gave their silent or vocal assent to them.
This reality underlies some of the multiple paradoxes in a novel about a Jewish classicist "invert" (his term) calling for a return to Western civilized values; another is the interplay between philosophical "clear-sightedness" and human cold-heartedness (Ravelstein's intellectual snobbery; the narrator's exhausted, somewhat effete disdain for the "rabble" of the underclass). Both characters come across as complex - humane & cold, warm & full of joie de vivre, hope, self-doubt. Not despair, though.
Is it possible that the neo-con emphasis (descended from Strauss?) on moral certainty, absolute vs. relative good & evil, could lead to a realpolitik in which ends justify the means (a sort of "moral hardheadedness" which is actually inhumane)? That would be an ironic twist. But I haven't even read Bloom's book (now I want to), nor do I really understand the innards of neo-con policymaking (sorry, Joe).
I wonder where Bellow came up with the name Ravelstein. Reminds me of course of my mother's unusual maiden name, Ravlin. I always thought it was a variant of Rawlin or Rawlins, maybe old french in origin? Dunno. Stubborn Grew & sequels are on one level a memorial to several Ravlins. The books were triggered by a simple elegy for my uncle James Ravlin (who was the same generation & could have stepped straight out of a Bellow novel), & turned into a complex elegy for his daughter Juliet.
5.16.2003
5.15.2003
Have been away in Minnesota for a few days.
May just stay away.
The Romans put a rose over the door to indicate "do not disturb" or secret, hence the term "sub rosa". I didn't know that when I wrote this old thing, back in the 70s.
HUE
Words kind as rain pour down
from mothers and fathers of gentle eye.
Bees have hidden in the hive's head
a little sunlight fallen on the field.
Small planets hover in the immense
blue Pacific of starlit. . .; morning
mumbles rustling branches of night
into morning glories, and a rose
resides, lightly bearded with snow,
on the ancient wall above your door.
*
My parents live near the River Road in Minneapolis, along the Mississippi, only a block or so from where they both grew up. Circles in nature.
The height of my novel-devouring period was when I was about 16. I loved the smell of a new paperback, lingered over its shape & size & lettering. Tin Drum, & . . .
May quit blogging & try to close that circle myself. Don't feel like this is my world, really, gang. Back in RI, sub Rhody, sub-sub-sub-librunque.
May just stay away.
The Romans put a rose over the door to indicate "do not disturb" or secret, hence the term "sub rosa". I didn't know that when I wrote this old thing, back in the 70s.
HUE
Words kind as rain pour down
from mothers and fathers of gentle eye.
Bees have hidden in the hive's head
a little sunlight fallen on the field.
Small planets hover in the immense
blue Pacific of starlit. . .; morning
mumbles rustling branches of night
into morning glories, and a rose
resides, lightly bearded with snow,
on the ancient wall above your door.
*
My parents live near the River Road in Minneapolis, along the Mississippi, only a block or so from where they both grew up. Circles in nature.
The height of my novel-devouring period was when I was about 16. I loved the smell of a new paperback, lingered over its shape & size & lettering. Tin Drum, & . . .
May quit blogging & try to close that circle myself. Don't feel like this is my world, really, gang. Back in RI, sub Rhody, sub-sub-sub-librunque.
5.09.2003
5.08.2003
from the Projo yesterday:
"A $14 brooch purchased three years ago at a Bristol antiques shop has turned out to contain a priceless purple pearl, according to Alan Golash, a Newport antiques dealer."
Purple pearls come from quahogs, a Rhode Island treat. But they are so rare. This one may have been found by Native Americans, who used quahog shells & pearls as wampum. A 10-mm. pearl is considered very, very large. This pearl is 14-mm. The new owner is calling it the Pearl of Venus (Ben Franklin visited Providence once, bringing his telescope, to observe the Transit of Venus. see Transit St. in Fox Point.)
Providence has always been a jewelry capital. The Projo photo shows an enormous purple globe set in an ivory brooch with gold trim and an interesting octagonal design, reminiscent of course of the prosodical structure of Grassblade Light.
"A $14 brooch purchased three years ago at a Bristol antiques shop has turned out to contain a priceless purple pearl, according to Alan Golash, a Newport antiques dealer."
Purple pearls come from quahogs, a Rhode Island treat. But they are so rare. This one may have been found by Native Americans, who used quahog shells & pearls as wampum. A 10-mm. pearl is considered very, very large. This pearl is 14-mm. The new owner is calling it the Pearl of Venus (Ben Franklin visited Providence once, bringing his telescope, to observe the Transit of Venus. see Transit St. in Fox Point.)
Providence has always been a jewelry capital. The Projo photo shows an enormous purple globe set in an ivory brooch with gold trim and an interesting octagonal design, reminiscent of course of the prosodical structure of Grassblade Light.
Webster's says "booby" refers to any of several small gannets of tropical seas; any of several American ducks; an awkward foolish person; the poorest performer or lowest scorer in a group. A modification of Spanish bobo, from L. balbus, meaning "stammering".
"babble", on the other hand, derives from ME babelen, prob. of imit. origin.
"babbitt metal" - an alloy used for lining bearings. to "babbitt" is to line or furnish with babbitt metal.
Which reminds me of this early prom, circa 1971:
CONVERSATIONS WITH TIME TO SPARE
"We have three now, we have three now, we have three. Keep those three."
"We have three minutes, ladies and gentlemen:
Jake, Maria, and Bobo of Minneapolis.
Jake and Maria are alone together
with the creek and the sun will watch itself
go down in a puddle, now watch Bobo,
he's going to fall,
do it Maria -"
compass dance. Jake, Maria and
being here makes it all so necessary to refer back
inside the orange for another point of view.
"This man is a. . . foot." A foot, yes, but
one of the best. He's not any kind of foot,
he's an ordinary foot. Leave him,
crowd, the summer will enjoy him -
he'll answer back with frequent, often
dazzling postcards, with details from his life
in toenail clippings, articles of hair, smiles.
"I suppose you're all wondering why I called you Herby.
It's an easy-going sort of name,
one which
you might as well throw away as construct into
subtle, silent postcards." (three, three, three. . .)
The kids in the front yard are playing statue.
It's a subtle, humorous game - several
domesticated animals join in too - the grandparents
play croquet or sit on the porch,
relaxing in the hot air,
in their friendly, birthday skins.
"babble", on the other hand, derives from ME babelen, prob. of imit. origin.
"babbitt metal" - an alloy used for lining bearings. to "babbitt" is to line or furnish with babbitt metal.
Which reminds me of this early prom, circa 1971:
CONVERSATIONS WITH TIME TO SPARE
"We have three now, we have three now, we have three. Keep those three."
"We have three minutes, ladies and gentlemen:
Jake, Maria, and Bobo of Minneapolis.
Jake and Maria are alone together
with the creek and the sun will watch itself
go down in a puddle, now watch Bobo,
he's going to fall,
do it Maria -"
compass dance. Jake, Maria and
being here makes it all so necessary to refer back
inside the orange for another point of view.
"This man is a. . . foot." A foot, yes, but
one of the best. He's not any kind of foot,
he's an ordinary foot. Leave him,
crowd, the summer will enjoy him -
he'll answer back with frequent, often
dazzling postcards, with details from his life
in toenail clippings, articles of hair, smiles.
"I suppose you're all wondering why I called you Herby.
It's an easy-going sort of name,
one which
you might as well throw away as construct into
subtle, silent postcards." (three, three, three. . .)
The kids in the front yard are playing statue.
It's a subtle, humorous game - several
domesticated animals join in too - the grandparents
play croquet or sit on the porch,
relaxing in the hot air,
in their friendly, birthday skins.
The medieval quietist-pietist attitude is unfashionable even in theological circles. Liberation Theology considers metaphysics & eternity to be unknowable categories. The Hebrew God is the God of freedom & justice & Jubilee. In radical Christian theology we inhabit a Lewis Carroll mirror-world of injustice, all our words colored by its falsity, already fated for dissolution with the coming of world renewal.
Curious times : militant Islam would impose faith by force. Militant secularism would rationalize its own dominations. Militant Christianity would proselytize by rote & verbal formulae. Militant Judaism insists on a tribal literalism. Militant Hinduism parades its superstitions. Militant Buddhism (?) dreams away the world.
The concept of personal salvation of immortal soul is for the artist. Artists are those who act in response to beauty in nature, or proportion. The idea of the Redemption, leading to the resurrection of my soul and of the whole cosmos - it's an artistic vision, a fictional plot. Epiphanies. Stephen Dedalus : "Signatures of all things I am here to read." (or something like that.) Whitman : the grass is "God's handkerchief, designedly dropt" (or something like that). The artist begins to read paradoxical Nature as suffused with signs of strange hope. Dostoevsky : "Beauty will save the world."
"Hope." Bob Hope. RI State motto. "Anchor of the soul." Sir Edmund HILLary achieved the summit of Everest on 5/29/1953, 500 yrs to the day after the fall of the last Roman Empire (Byzantium, 1453).
This theme of metaphysical resurrection through love informs the psychomachia, the whole plot, of Island Road.
Curious times : militant Islam would impose faith by force. Militant secularism would rationalize its own dominations. Militant Christianity would proselytize by rote & verbal formulae. Militant Judaism insists on a tribal literalism. Militant Hinduism parades its superstitions. Militant Buddhism (?) dreams away the world.
The concept of personal salvation of immortal soul is for the artist. Artists are those who act in response to beauty in nature, or proportion. The idea of the Redemption, leading to the resurrection of my soul and of the whole cosmos - it's an artistic vision, a fictional plot. Epiphanies. Stephen Dedalus : "Signatures of all things I am here to read." (or something like that.) Whitman : the grass is "God's handkerchief, designedly dropt" (or something like that). The artist begins to read paradoxical Nature as suffused with signs of strange hope. Dostoevsky : "Beauty will save the world."
"Hope." Bob Hope. RI State motto. "Anchor of the soul." Sir Edmund HILLary achieved the summit of Everest on 5/29/1953, 500 yrs to the day after the fall of the last Roman Empire (Byzantium, 1453).
This theme of metaphysical resurrection through love informs the psychomachia, the whole plot, of Island Road.
Joe writes:
"Henry, if what you say is true, it is an even more cynical view of the administration than the one I've been advancing. It is the lie calculated & perfected. If it is true I expect to wake up tomorrow morning & discover that I have become a large insect."
Well, it's probably not true. (& for your sake, I hope not, Gregor.) Our exchanges are impelling me to look more closely at the neo-Straussians et al. There must be a worldview for American politics & foreign policy which is not so elitist & reactionary (in the sense of reacting against threats to dominance).
Have been reading Sir Thos. Browne, Religio Medici. Certainly not a political thinker. An amateur religious philosopher & essayist who meditates on the meanings of mortality, faith, salvation. Curious paradox comes to mind, reading him : there is no path to the betterment of world conditions without unworldliness.
How so? I guess it must be a medieval outlook - which differentiates it from the classicist worldliness of the powermongers. What is this medieval outlook? Awareness of human fallibility & mortality. Life in this world an illusory stage-play. Only relief is the paradoxical gift of eternal life through the project of soul-salvation. (This is a meaningless absurdity to many, and I hesitate even to post it here. You have to see it, recognize it in the fabric of reality, inwardly, to believe it.)
So the common good is balanced on a vanishing point : a Lenten awareness of our limitations on earth and our hope in eternity. The stereotypifying (Renaissance) critique of this medieval perspective is that unworldliness leads to fatalism & disinterest in world improvement. But there's another aspect to it : the same awareness leads individuals to moderate their pride, fear, vanity, ambitions and passions to a transcendent, charitable end.
So, enough sermonizing for today. Browne is a lovable writer, inimitable stylist. Makes me ready to read Donne's essays & Geo. Herbert. Boy do I sound like Ol Possum today. Maybe it's spring rain outside. Providence is full of flowering trees.
"Henry, if what you say is true, it is an even more cynical view of the administration than the one I've been advancing. It is the lie calculated & perfected. If it is true I expect to wake up tomorrow morning & discover that I have become a large insect."
Well, it's probably not true. (& for your sake, I hope not, Gregor.) Our exchanges are impelling me to look more closely at the neo-Straussians et al. There must be a worldview for American politics & foreign policy which is not so elitist & reactionary (in the sense of reacting against threats to dominance).
Have been reading Sir Thos. Browne, Religio Medici. Certainly not a political thinker. An amateur religious philosopher & essayist who meditates on the meanings of mortality, faith, salvation. Curious paradox comes to mind, reading him : there is no path to the betterment of world conditions without unworldliness.
How so? I guess it must be a medieval outlook - which differentiates it from the classicist worldliness of the powermongers. What is this medieval outlook? Awareness of human fallibility & mortality. Life in this world an illusory stage-play. Only relief is the paradoxical gift of eternal life through the project of soul-salvation. (This is a meaningless absurdity to many, and I hesitate even to post it here. You have to see it, recognize it in the fabric of reality, inwardly, to believe it.)
So the common good is balanced on a vanishing point : a Lenten awareness of our limitations on earth and our hope in eternity. The stereotypifying (Renaissance) critique of this medieval perspective is that unworldliness leads to fatalism & disinterest in world improvement. But there's another aspect to it : the same awareness leads individuals to moderate their pride, fear, vanity, ambitions and passions to a transcendent, charitable end.
So, enough sermonizing for today. Browne is a lovable writer, inimitable stylist. Makes me ready to read Donne's essays & Geo. Herbert. Boy do I sound like Ol Possum today. Maybe it's spring rain outside. Providence is full of flowering trees.
5.07.2003
OK Joe, finished the Hersh article. Interesting resonance between the business about Plato & Strauss ("the noble lie"), and your earlier remarks on Joseph Conrad. Plato didn't care much for democracy, did he?
But again, it seems to me that Hersh is sidestepping the factor of Saddam in this whole game. It's my guess that before they went to the UN, the Pentagon people & others in the Admin. had assessed a number of different outcomes very carefully. & the decision to overstate the WMD issue, the decision to seemingly deliberately waffle in their presentation to the UN of rationales for going to war (I'm saying it seemed almost deliberately weak, in shuffling from one justification to another) - these were messages designed not to persuade the US public in favor of war, so much as a disinformation strategy directed at Saddam himself. This was the trap they laid : allow the UN to fibrillate; present obviously weak & sloppy evidence (the British stuff drawn from magazine articles, etc.); waffle in your rationales; let Saddam think he was getting away with it, encourage him in his intransigence. It worked like a charm, both with the French & Germans & Russians, and with Saddam. As I say, he fell right into it. We have to remember there was something of a precedent for this, in the lead-up to the Gulf War. Whether or not the US ambassador was deliberately leading him on, in that fateful meeting just before the invasion of Kuwait, it was an obvious example of Saddam's tendency to read ambivalence or signs of weakness as a go-ahead to follow his own grandiose schemes.
Did they have to do it that way? Well, Saddam was given his chance. He could have come clean starting with the massive report on his weapons programs in December 2002, which Blix declared far from complete or accurate. But he remained in character. And it may be ironic, if my scenario here is accurate, that this psychotic master of deceit was himself finally brought down by a Venus fly-trap of diplomatic illusions.
But again, it seems to me that Hersh is sidestepping the factor of Saddam in this whole game. It's my guess that before they went to the UN, the Pentagon people & others in the Admin. had assessed a number of different outcomes very carefully. & the decision to overstate the WMD issue, the decision to seemingly deliberately waffle in their presentation to the UN of rationales for going to war (I'm saying it seemed almost deliberately weak, in shuffling from one justification to another) - these were messages designed not to persuade the US public in favor of war, so much as a disinformation strategy directed at Saddam himself. This was the trap they laid : allow the UN to fibrillate; present obviously weak & sloppy evidence (the British stuff drawn from magazine articles, etc.); waffle in your rationales; let Saddam think he was getting away with it, encourage him in his intransigence. It worked like a charm, both with the French & Germans & Russians, and with Saddam. As I say, he fell right into it. We have to remember there was something of a precedent for this, in the lead-up to the Gulf War. Whether or not the US ambassador was deliberately leading him on, in that fateful meeting just before the invasion of Kuwait, it was an obvious example of Saddam's tendency to read ambivalence or signs of weakness as a go-ahead to follow his own grandiose schemes.
Did they have to do it that way? Well, Saddam was given his chance. He could have come clean starting with the massive report on his weapons programs in December 2002, which Blix declared far from complete or accurate. But he remained in character. And it may be ironic, if my scenario here is accurate, that this psychotic master of deceit was himself finally brought down by a Venus fly-trap of diplomatic illusions.
Joe, no, I hadn't read the Hersh article. I started it this morning. Yes, the circle of influence from Chalabi & his group to Intelligence & on to policy is weird & scary. But Hersh doesn't emphasize the Saddam factor. If, as the defector-brothers claimed, all the anthrax etc was destroyed before the 1st inspections, why did Blix himself continue to say that Saddam was stonewalling (in 2002-3)? Why not just produce the evidence detailing how & when the material was destroyed? But Saddam didn't want to do that. He clung to his secrets to the end & thought he could play the UN off against the US. Even if most of the stuff was destroyed by then, he wanted to preserve his autonomy - the OPTION to start up again as soon as the heat was off. That was a very bad choice on his part. I find him more weird & scary than Chalabi & Wolfowitz et al., & I'm glad he's gone (I understand that more than a few Iraqis feel the same).
I've changed the name on the link for David Hess's blog to "Rabid Imagiste". But it will still get you there.
5.06.2003
Mustered on a blogroll, please. Hold the fleadom flies.
Noah U. Frumm Adamopoulet.
Astenographer Kozate'm.
Jumpin Jimby McBaseburl.
Ned Davis.
Davie Jefferson.
Ketch Heck.
Jonathan Seagull Butterfly Mayhue.
Oogle-Google Uhuru.
Rodwin Slimbermode.
Dick Lumbago.
General Lee Verboze.
Smite B. Eamey.
Kray Z. Muhtabollism.
Wheeze Buster.
Enwy U.N. Glood.
Jedediah Doomer.
Noah U. Frumm Adamopoulet.
Astenographer Kozate'm.
Jumpin Jimby McBaseburl.
Ned Davis.
Davie Jefferson.
Ketch Heck.
Jonathan Seagull Butterfly Mayhue.
Oogle-Google Uhuru.
Rodwin Slimbermode.
Dick Lumbago.
General Lee Verboze.
Smite B. Eamey.
Kray Z. Muhtabollism.
Wheeze Buster.
Enwy U.N. Glood.
Jedediah Doomer.
Sir Thomas Browne was born on Oct. 19, 1605. He died 77 years later on the same day.
Recommended reading : Religio Medici.
Recommended reading : Religio Medici.
Joe Duemer writes:
"There is a tremendous gap between what the administration said were the reasons for invading Iraq & the actual reasons on which they acted. Apparently, the purpose of this war was rhetorical--to demonstrate American willingness to project power preemptively without regard to previous international agreements. I take this to be a radical revision of America's role in the world. In the imperfect would we inhabit, which evil would be worse, to have left Saddam in power a little longer (while working for his downfall), or trashing the reputation of the US among our allies & even our enemies?"
As the man said, Joe, it's a matter of emphasis. You're being rhetorical yourself here, by reducing the Iraq war to "making a statement". The administration is serious about sponsoring democratic reform in Iraq as part of a strategy to push the Middle East toward much-needed democratization & liberalization on many fronts. I disagree about the "tremendous gap" you allege. As I said previously, the parameters of the Bush war on terrorism were made perfectly clear months before the US even went to the UN for a new resolution. & I believe they will find legitimate & serious evidence of WMD development and alliances with terror networks. There was very good reason to secure the oil fields, no matter who benefits from them. The failure to protect cultural sites was a huge mistake, but not evidence of massive bad faith or deceit. The argument that "because there are lots of dictatorships we're not bothering with, it's inconsistent to attack Iraq on that basis" is faulty logic, & makes no strategic sense in the context of a struggle against a fearsome terror adversary rooted in Middle Eastern networks & ideology (al Qaeda et al.).
Well, we are not going to agree on this issue. I think the position of total condemnation of the late war is rather weak. As I outlined toward the end of my last post, I think a stronger & more productive viewpoint could be developed, which accepts the reality of, & necessity for, a global war against terrorism, and which supports the project of confronting & holding to account both rogue dictatorships & terrorist networks, while at the same time closely analysing how the Republican Party is shaping that necessity for its own partisan ends (primarily, by putting the US on a perpetual war footing, "creating" useful enemies as a replacement for missing & formerly-useful Cold War antagonists, in the context of a go-it-alone global posture emphasizing military dominance). Democratic & other opposition parties could frame the war on terrorism within a different set of priorities, including global economic development, new diplomatic strategies, and an emphasis on social justice, civil rights & economic opportunity here in the US.
"There is a tremendous gap between what the administration said were the reasons for invading Iraq & the actual reasons on which they acted. Apparently, the purpose of this war was rhetorical--to demonstrate American willingness to project power preemptively without regard to previous international agreements. I take this to be a radical revision of America's role in the world. In the imperfect would we inhabit, which evil would be worse, to have left Saddam in power a little longer (while working for his downfall), or trashing the reputation of the US among our allies & even our enemies?"
As the man said, Joe, it's a matter of emphasis. You're being rhetorical yourself here, by reducing the Iraq war to "making a statement". The administration is serious about sponsoring democratic reform in Iraq as part of a strategy to push the Middle East toward much-needed democratization & liberalization on many fronts. I disagree about the "tremendous gap" you allege. As I said previously, the parameters of the Bush war on terrorism were made perfectly clear months before the US even went to the UN for a new resolution. & I believe they will find legitimate & serious evidence of WMD development and alliances with terror networks. There was very good reason to secure the oil fields, no matter who benefits from them. The failure to protect cultural sites was a huge mistake, but not evidence of massive bad faith or deceit. The argument that "because there are lots of dictatorships we're not bothering with, it's inconsistent to attack Iraq on that basis" is faulty logic, & makes no strategic sense in the context of a struggle against a fearsome terror adversary rooted in Middle Eastern networks & ideology (al Qaeda et al.).
Well, we are not going to agree on this issue. I think the position of total condemnation of the late war is rather weak. As I outlined toward the end of my last post, I think a stronger & more productive viewpoint could be developed, which accepts the reality of, & necessity for, a global war against terrorism, and which supports the project of confronting & holding to account both rogue dictatorships & terrorist networks, while at the same time closely analysing how the Republican Party is shaping that necessity for its own partisan ends (primarily, by putting the US on a perpetual war footing, "creating" useful enemies as a replacement for missing & formerly-useful Cold War antagonists, in the context of a go-it-alone global posture emphasizing military dominance). Democratic & other opposition parties could frame the war on terrorism within a different set of priorities, including global economic development, new diplomatic strategies, and an emphasis on social justice, civil rights & economic opportunity here in the US.
5.05.2003
Pondering, while dawdling around pretty Fox Point (all the trees & flowers flow'ring), how to respond to Joe D.'s comments.
Not that anybody besides Joe & Anastasios is interested, but anyway.
Joe. Your statements coalesce around 3 points, among some others:
1) confronting "the lie" (ala Heart of Darkness);
2) the evasions of the Bush position before the latest war;
3) the relation between speech, dialogue & ethics.
I respond in reverse order:
3) In an ideal world, all problems will be resolved through peaceful dialogue & negotiation. But let's remember that in a non-ideal world, NOT ONLY do we witness the prevalence of the use of force & violence to serve selfish interests; we also witness the futility of language. We see false dialogue and timeserving debates carried on not just by the affected parties in a situation, but by 3rd parties taking advantage of crises by self-serving obfuscation & abuse of language. Sometimes "consensus" is impossible when you have the opposing interests of 2 or 3, meddled with by 15 other interested or "neutral" parties. For example, to read what happened at the UN before the latest war as simply a morality tale about US arrogance, is quite reductive; I think it is hard to deny that the stress of the crisis pressed France & Germany into hypocritical, self-serving positions, which underwrote Saddam's crazed intransigence.
2) I disagree with you that Bush Administration behavior leading up to this war was rendered ambiguous & murky by lies & hidden agendas. You seem to have 2 sides to your position : 1st, that Bush et al. have a hidden agenda(s); 2nd, that their vaunted "moral clarity" is in reality verbal cover for the unilateral use of force.
I think they have been pretty clear & forthright about their agenda. After 9/11, a global war on terror was declared; regimes engaging in terror, harboring terrorists, or unlawfully dealing in WMDs, would be considered enemies of the US and subject to attack. They had a difficult case in attempting to align the UN for war against Iraq, for lack of specific evidence of immediate threat; but I think their overall position was strong and convincing. The sanctions arrangement was a brutal failure; Saddam & his criminal mafia had ejected weapons monitors back in 1998; Saddam refused to comply fully with resolution 1441 (the 12000 pp document was a joke). It is clear in the aftermath that Saddam chose intransigence & self-defeating delusion, because his entire regime was built on oppression, lies & violence; he had no fallback position.
I think the second part of your argument (moral clarity as verbal cover), is more interesting, and leads to a consideration of your point #1): the supreme value in confronting "the lie".
There was an interesting article in the Week in Review section of the Sunday Times, about the genealogy of the Bush neo-cons from philosopher Leo Strauss. Somehow, when disciples of Strauss like Wolfowitz & Perle move into power positions, the philosophical notion that ethical absolutes are just that, and were outlined clearly for our civilization by the ancient Greeks, gets elided or translated into a concept of political "realism", wherein power or force can be projected in an aggressive way as long as the moral purpose or aim is clear and correct. This is not that different from the traditional "realists" of foreign policy, except that the latter were maybe more circumspect about projecting arrogance along with power.
The whole situation seems extremely new & complex, & doesn't lend itself to snap judgements or finger-pointing from any side. There is some truth in the analogy between the challenge represented by Islamic fundamentalist terrorism & state tyranny (Iraq, Iran, N. Korea) combined with weapons dealing, on the one hand, and the challenge represented by totalitarianism in the previous century, and I think that those self-righteous ones who don't want to sully their moral platitudes or their knee-jerk hatred of the US government with considerations of historical reality, are not really engaging in any useful activity in the realm of foreign policy. Another side of the equation, however, is the imbalance throughout the world between stable & rich 1st-world democracies, and the poverty-stricken regions of the Middle East, Asia, Latin America & Africa. Here is where the severe limitations of moral self-righteousness and a concept of national security based solely on military might become very clear. It's mirrored in a domestic policy which has found a way to equate "moral realism" with social darwinist individualism and laissez-faire.
& this leads me to a third aspect of this whole situation that interests me, and get's at the notion of your point #1 (confronting "the lie"). I think it might be good to look at the Straussian world-view of the power-playing neo-cons, not in isolation, but as an element of Republican party politics. In other words, it's USEFUL to develop an aggressive, power-projecting foreign policy grounded in the "moral clarity of Western democratic tradition" - since it provides a raison d'etre for a national party with a somewhat narrow demographic base, in the absence of Cold War stringencies.
Maybe I'm moving here in the direction of a John Kerry : attempting to combine a forthright attitude toward terrorism & dictatorship, on the one hand, with a demystification of a (partisan) politics based solely on glorified "force projection", on the other.
Not that anybody besides Joe & Anastasios is interested, but anyway.
Joe. Your statements coalesce around 3 points, among some others:
1) confronting "the lie" (ala Heart of Darkness);
2) the evasions of the Bush position before the latest war;
3) the relation between speech, dialogue & ethics.
I respond in reverse order:
3) In an ideal world, all problems will be resolved through peaceful dialogue & negotiation. But let's remember that in a non-ideal world, NOT ONLY do we witness the prevalence of the use of force & violence to serve selfish interests; we also witness the futility of language. We see false dialogue and timeserving debates carried on not just by the affected parties in a situation, but by 3rd parties taking advantage of crises by self-serving obfuscation & abuse of language. Sometimes "consensus" is impossible when you have the opposing interests of 2 or 3, meddled with by 15 other interested or "neutral" parties. For example, to read what happened at the UN before the latest war as simply a morality tale about US arrogance, is quite reductive; I think it is hard to deny that the stress of the crisis pressed France & Germany into hypocritical, self-serving positions, which underwrote Saddam's crazed intransigence.
2) I disagree with you that Bush Administration behavior leading up to this war was rendered ambiguous & murky by lies & hidden agendas. You seem to have 2 sides to your position : 1st, that Bush et al. have a hidden agenda(s); 2nd, that their vaunted "moral clarity" is in reality verbal cover for the unilateral use of force.
I think they have been pretty clear & forthright about their agenda. After 9/11, a global war on terror was declared; regimes engaging in terror, harboring terrorists, or unlawfully dealing in WMDs, would be considered enemies of the US and subject to attack. They had a difficult case in attempting to align the UN for war against Iraq, for lack of specific evidence of immediate threat; but I think their overall position was strong and convincing. The sanctions arrangement was a brutal failure; Saddam & his criminal mafia had ejected weapons monitors back in 1998; Saddam refused to comply fully with resolution 1441 (the 12000 pp document was a joke). It is clear in the aftermath that Saddam chose intransigence & self-defeating delusion, because his entire regime was built on oppression, lies & violence; he had no fallback position.
I think the second part of your argument (moral clarity as verbal cover), is more interesting, and leads to a consideration of your point #1): the supreme value in confronting "the lie".
There was an interesting article in the Week in Review section of the Sunday Times, about the genealogy of the Bush neo-cons from philosopher Leo Strauss. Somehow, when disciples of Strauss like Wolfowitz & Perle move into power positions, the philosophical notion that ethical absolutes are just that, and were outlined clearly for our civilization by the ancient Greeks, gets elided or translated into a concept of political "realism", wherein power or force can be projected in an aggressive way as long as the moral purpose or aim is clear and correct. This is not that different from the traditional "realists" of foreign policy, except that the latter were maybe more circumspect about projecting arrogance along with power.
The whole situation seems extremely new & complex, & doesn't lend itself to snap judgements or finger-pointing from any side. There is some truth in the analogy between the challenge represented by Islamic fundamentalist terrorism & state tyranny (Iraq, Iran, N. Korea) combined with weapons dealing, on the one hand, and the challenge represented by totalitarianism in the previous century, and I think that those self-righteous ones who don't want to sully their moral platitudes or their knee-jerk hatred of the US government with considerations of historical reality, are not really engaging in any useful activity in the realm of foreign policy. Another side of the equation, however, is the imbalance throughout the world between stable & rich 1st-world democracies, and the poverty-stricken regions of the Middle East, Asia, Latin America & Africa. Here is where the severe limitations of moral self-righteousness and a concept of national security based solely on military might become very clear. It's mirrored in a domestic policy which has found a way to equate "moral realism" with social darwinist individualism and laissez-faire.
& this leads me to a third aspect of this whole situation that interests me, and get's at the notion of your point #1 (confronting "the lie"). I think it might be good to look at the Straussian world-view of the power-playing neo-cons, not in isolation, but as an element of Republican party politics. In other words, it's USEFUL to develop an aggressive, power-projecting foreign policy grounded in the "moral clarity of Western democratic tradition" - since it provides a raison d'etre for a national party with a somewhat narrow demographic base, in the absence of Cold War stringencies.
Maybe I'm moving here in the direction of a John Kerry : attempting to combine a forthright attitude toward terrorism & dictatorship, on the one hand, with a demystification of a (partisan) politics based solely on glorified "force projection", on the other.
5.04.2003
5.03.2003
I wonder if G. Gudding has ever read The Dream Life of Balso Snell.
Nathanael West, a.k.a. Nathan Weinstein, went to Brown U. His sister married SJ Perelman, another Providence/Brown satirist. Does GG realize mulch of his themes etc., his "Theory of Ass" etc., are already in ovum there?
Does the West realize that when it refers to "the West" it is really referring to Nathan Weinstein???
The Dream Life covers most of the foibles of writers & would-be writers & bloogers.
"'Oh!' Balso exclaimed, carried away by these memories of his youth. 'Oh!' his mouth formed an O with lips torn angry in laying duck's eggs from a chicken's rectum."
Mr. Gudding late of Fargo or someplace out there, fills his tank in Providence, before making the great Westward journey.
Nathanael West, a.k.a. Nathan Weinstein, went to Brown U. His sister married SJ Perelman, another Providence/Brown satirist. Does GG realize mulch of his themes etc., his "Theory of Ass" etc., are already in ovum there?
Does the West realize that when it refers to "the West" it is really referring to Nathan Weinstein???
The Dream Life covers most of the foibles of writers & would-be writers & bloogers.
"'Oh!' Balso exclaimed, carried away by these memories of his youth. 'Oh!' his mouth formed an O with lips torn angry in laying duck's eggs from a chicken's rectum."
Mr. Gudding late of Fargo or someplace out there, fills his tank in Providence, before making the great Westward journey.
5.02.2003
Here's part of the passage from Stubborn. Do you reckon the infinite-dimensional continuum? Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
There was a line - so that the generations live.
The perpendicular of purple death.
A parallaxal pyramid - wrath
(raging) rearified, in the infinitive: to give.
The source of all the rivets of the domes
of Justinian - True Cross,
Hellenic, Palestinian - the Jews,
the jotted Giotto-ghettos of a million Romes.
The line (an X, a circle)
- wonder of synecdoche.
One left-out gypsy -
solitary - oracle.
Bends against love-bubbles in the clay -
a pen-cone pinecone - equable
through fearful Hell.
De materialibus ad immaterialia.
There was a line - so that the generations live.
The perpendicular of purple death.
A parallaxal pyramid - wrath
(raging) rearified, in the infinitive: to give.
The source of all the rivets of the domes
of Justinian - True Cross,
Hellenic, Palestinian - the Jews,
the jotted Giotto-ghettos of a million Romes.
The line (an X, a circle)
- wonder of synecdoche.
One left-out gypsy -
solitary - oracle.
Bends against love-bubbles in the clay -
a pen-cone pinecone - equable
through fearful Hell.
De materialibus ad immaterialia.
I don't think Ron Silliman quite understands the H.D. poem, though I'm glad he pointed to it.
He overstates & overrates both the fury & the personal.
I see the poem as a balance, a conjunction of opposing forces. The poet is contemplating the contrast between the furious moralism of the Greeks (this woman betrayed her Greek husband for a Trojan & "caused" the 10-yr war) - a kind of ugly moralism - & the physical beauty of Helen - a kind of amoral beauty. These opposites form a tragic "bind", which the Greeks would like to resolve by putting her in the grave, and which Helen defies by her continuing presence - IN THE POEM ITSELF. By becoming a container of the beautiful, the poem then takes on a contemporary resonance, a kind of implicit attack on American philistine moralism. So it circles around on its pivot of balanced opposites.
Ron recognizes what he calls the "controlled" fury here - but (oddly for a Language poet!) he turns it into an occasion for speculating on the emotions & biography of the poet. I don't think that's the issue - I don't think H.D. is expressing her "fury" - she's expressing a tragic sense of life - & the agon - the "bind" - which motivates the uncanny charisma, the fascination, of works of art. Yes, of course we can always extrapolate personal aspects - but I think too often they are over-emphasized. Critics run to explain WHAT H.D. must have been furious about - something in her personal life, some social injustice - & by rationalizing the poem they only continue the philistine process of dismissing, marginalizing, & missing its IRRATIONAL (or supra-rational or inexplicable) beauty.
He overstates & overrates both the fury & the personal.
I see the poem as a balance, a conjunction of opposing forces. The poet is contemplating the contrast between the furious moralism of the Greeks (this woman betrayed her Greek husband for a Trojan & "caused" the 10-yr war) - a kind of ugly moralism - & the physical beauty of Helen - a kind of amoral beauty. These opposites form a tragic "bind", which the Greeks would like to resolve by putting her in the grave, and which Helen defies by her continuing presence - IN THE POEM ITSELF. By becoming a container of the beautiful, the poem then takes on a contemporary resonance, a kind of implicit attack on American philistine moralism. So it circles around on its pivot of balanced opposites.
Ron recognizes what he calls the "controlled" fury here - but (oddly for a Language poet!) he turns it into an occasion for speculating on the emotions & biography of the poet. I don't think that's the issue - I don't think H.D. is expressing her "fury" - she's expressing a tragic sense of life - & the agon - the "bind" - which motivates the uncanny charisma, the fascination, of works of art. Yes, of course we can always extrapolate personal aspects - but I think too often they are over-emphasized. Critics run to explain WHAT H.D. must have been furious about - something in her personal life, some social injustice - & by rationalizing the poem they only continue the philistine process of dismissing, marginalizing, & missing its IRRATIONAL (or supra-rational or inexplicable) beauty.
That's actually me from State, Anastasios. I work in the Laundry Div. under an assumed name (Chauncey Quzzeemious P'oblique). Nobody else reads our blogs, so you might want to invent some imaginary friends soon too soon. Too. Soon. Like maybe Url Shay D'Ottcomb, one of my "heros". Or Ladybird Dropsing, Queen of Later Florida.
Thinking about the Cantorian infinite-dimensional line, come to think of it, there's quite a bit along those lines in the 3rd chapter of Stubborn Grew ("Once in Paradise"). It's a chapter about painting, perspective, Berkeleyan-Romantic vision, etc. Wish I had the book here, various stanzas. . .
There was a line, so that the generations live.
Source of all the. . .onion domes,
.. . million ghetto'd Romes.
. . . of the infinitive : to give.
*
A point. Then a line to the end of the.
Forms frame for all the others.
The other colors.
De materialibus ad immaterialia.
*
The point is in the line now, Dino.
De-materialize a bus ad?
(I know I'm mixing this up. Will post corrections when I can.)
There was a line, so that the generations live.
Source of all the. . .onion domes,
.. . million ghetto'd Romes.
. . . of the infinitive : to give.
*
A point. Then a line to the end of the.
Forms frame for all the others.
The other colors.
De materialibus ad immaterialia.
*
The point is in the line now, Dino.
De-materialize a bus ad?
(I know I'm mixing this up. Will post corrections when I can.)
It was a good day to walk to India Point today. The grass still green, the leaves just coming out. A lot of activity in the harbor : tugboats, dredgers, freighters. I bought some mini-binocs just to watch them (feel free to notify Homeland Security). There's a Russian sub there, used in film "K-19", now a museum, complete with Soviet flag etc. : the Julietta 484. The center book of the Big One, Grassblade Light, is an octagonal Russian-style poema, plotted on an Orphic search (by way of Petersburg) for my cousin Juliet. Sort of like Kafka said, sit on a park bench & the world will come & lie down at your feet.
Translato-logorrheia : Stubborn Grew et al. happened because one day I was able to pick up a Mandelstam mask & put it on.
Rhode Island has more hair salons per square inch than. We're a very small very Big Hair state. Passed one coming back on Hope St: Hairoglyphics. As I may have mentioned already a hundred times, RI Statehood Day is May 29th. The state motto is "Hope". Bob Hope & I share the same birthday (5/29). He's the stand-up, I'm the sit-down.
Grassblade Light has 7 chapters in 8 sections. Each section has 28 poems of 28 lines each, with a center poem of 64 lines, making 29 poems total, in a [14/1/14] array (there are variations - it's a matter of broken symmetry - but the total lineation is almost exact for each section). The poem moves generally from RI to Russia to the Mississippi delta up to MN (the "North Star state") and back to RI. The central chapter 4 is a double chapter, 2 sections centered on a single line : Love is our North Star high up above.
Translato-logorrheia : Stubborn Grew et al. happened because one day I was able to pick up a Mandelstam mask & put it on.
Rhode Island has more hair salons per square inch than. We're a very small very Big Hair state. Passed one coming back on Hope St: Hairoglyphics. As I may have mentioned already a hundred times, RI Statehood Day is May 29th. The state motto is "Hope". Bob Hope & I share the same birthday (5/29). He's the stand-up, I'm the sit-down.
Grassblade Light has 7 chapters in 8 sections. Each section has 28 poems of 28 lines each, with a center poem of 64 lines, making 29 poems total, in a [14/1/14] array (there are variations - it's a matter of broken symmetry - but the total lineation is almost exact for each section). The poem moves generally from RI to Russia to the Mississippi delta up to MN (the "North Star state") and back to RI. The central chapter 4 is a double chapter, 2 sections centered on a single line : Love is our North Star high up above.
The normative = the humane imagination. Sympathy & ethical response in conditions of crisis & ennui & powerlessness. The Just One will suffer calumny, spite, slander, malice, hatred, treachery and violence in order to stand beside the weak & utter the truth. What's that line from the Bhagavad Gita at the end of the Waste Land, Anastasios? "Sympathise - [something] - Control" . . . (I guess it's on your blog)!
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