13
The old pilot in New Orleans told me
while we mopped up after monster K
each town declines from its first day
the way a spring becomes the Mississippi.
Every city has its ideal model
hidden in the plan of God (he was
an old-school evangelical); the mazy
stream swirls back to its original
source. The Sienese collective dream
pivots in mid-August (a virginal
Mary-go-round, with actual
horses and real money). Paradigm
of local Paradise : salvation history
rooted in medieval circular (1260
their Route 66). On a pinwheel, Gertie.
Merrily we roll along, merrily merrily...
But you fled from me
faster than I could ever run
(at the end of August, 2001).
Vanished (gone maiden, horse-
chestnut tree). I stumble after you
slower than the famous Colt
44 (slowest draw in the West);
crawling round a fleeting (nowhere)
laurel, beside a crystal (balled-
up) creek. In the shade of shady
perennials, dangling buildings, where
we hung up our rusty lyres (Ja-el).
6.28.2007
Fontegaia lucky 13...
It's always an uphill battle defending the greatness of Hart Crane. The attacks come in a steady, evenhanded critical stream over the decades.
He has many weaknesses, yes. But he's a great American poet because, to put it in a nutshell, he unites his music (melopoeia) and his imagery (phanopoeia), with an ecstatic-visionary quality (culminating in the concluding section of The Bridge (Atlantis).
Crane's "visionariness" is not like Pound's conservative/archaic mythologizing. Nor like Eliot's resignation/spiritual renunciation. It has, rather, a kind of "titanic" quality, which seems distinctly American - perhaps because it stems directly from Whitman. (Whitman got it from Emerson, & amplified/electrified it. Whitman is to Emerson as Bob Dylan is to the New England folkies.)
As I see it, this American "titanic/ecstatic" visionariness is not simple and pure : it contains a certain ambiguity. "Atlantis", according to the myth, was a high-tech civilization which fell, eons ago, through its own pride & corruption. Crane opens The Bridge with an epigraph from the Book of Job (something like "walking to & fro upon the Earth"), which was spoken by Satan.
The ambiguity I'm talking about stands at the core of that prophetic/apocalyptic mentality in which the poet/prophet, situated between Iron & Golden Ages, looks beyond the conditions of the present into a completely transformed future. One could diagram the situation like this :
[ Titanic-Atlantean high civilization / Present Age / Franciscan-Edenic future ]
- with the poet's vision wavering between, or blending together, all three "ages".
In both Judaism & Christianity, the path from present to future (from earth to kingdom of heaven, or from "this world" to the "world-to-come") goes through redemption and then resurrection (into a new form of angelic or heavenly "body").
The question of how such ideas are to be translated into personal life, and into history in general, has been answered in very different ways. But the visionariness I'm talking about ultimately stems, it seems to me, from an underlying awareness of some kind of crisis or disjunction - between "this world" and "paradise", or between the vicissitudes of mortal life and some kind of different, angelic realm (the pupa/coccoon/butterfly effect).
He has many weaknesses, yes. But he's a great American poet because, to put it in a nutshell, he unites his music (melopoeia) and his imagery (phanopoeia), with an ecstatic-visionary quality (culminating in the concluding section of The Bridge (Atlantis).
Crane's "visionariness" is not like Pound's conservative/archaic mythologizing. Nor like Eliot's resignation/spiritual renunciation. It has, rather, a kind of "titanic" quality, which seems distinctly American - perhaps because it stems directly from Whitman. (Whitman got it from Emerson, & amplified/electrified it. Whitman is to Emerson as Bob Dylan is to the New England folkies.)
As I see it, this American "titanic/ecstatic" visionariness is not simple and pure : it contains a certain ambiguity. "Atlantis", according to the myth, was a high-tech civilization which fell, eons ago, through its own pride & corruption. Crane opens The Bridge with an epigraph from the Book of Job (something like "walking to & fro upon the Earth"), which was spoken by Satan.
The ambiguity I'm talking about stands at the core of that prophetic/apocalyptic mentality in which the poet/prophet, situated between Iron & Golden Ages, looks beyond the conditions of the present into a completely transformed future. One could diagram the situation like this :
[ Titanic-Atlantean high civilization / Present Age / Franciscan-Edenic future ]
- with the poet's vision wavering between, or blending together, all three "ages".
In both Judaism & Christianity, the path from present to future (from earth to kingdom of heaven, or from "this world" to the "world-to-come") goes through redemption and then resurrection (into a new form of angelic or heavenly "body").
The question of how such ideas are to be translated into personal life, and into history in general, has been answered in very different ways. But the visionariness I'm talking about ultimately stems, it seems to me, from an underlying awareness of some kind of crisis or disjunction - between "this world" and "paradise", or between the vicissitudes of mortal life and some kind of different, angelic realm (the pupa/coccoon/butterfly effect).
6.27.2007
OK, lemme "unpack", as they say, just one obscure sentence from previous (in the context of earlier post this week, about the general aims & analogies of this Fontegaia poem).
The "sissy on a singing ass" fuses together : the loser-poet, St. Francis of Assisi, the "slow horse" (the donkey, Jesus's "colt" which carries him into Jerusalem as "King") of poetry (Pegasus), etc.
"Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn" : the "palio" was the small cloth or prize or "pallium" given to the winner of the Palio race in Siena - the cloth linked with the Virgin (patron of city of Siena), & through her to "Veronica's napkin", the cloth which supposedly showed an image of Christ's face.
"cast-off of your unbound/feat, mis-spoken jockey" : generally thinking of the difference between the "real" Jesus and the various cultural/religious shapings, (mis)appropriations & distortions - throughout the long, tangled history of Jewish-Christian dialogue & dispute - of his "image" (much like current iconic celebrity-simulacra).
"nailed/ in the Campo every time" : the Palio race is, for the jockeys, a risky proposition in several ways - not least the risk getting beaten up by angry partisans of one horse or another. Also Jesus (the "nailed"/"feat" - the losing horse).
- this is, of course, just one sentence - there are other things going on here (echoes of Hart Crane etc.), & more (& different) things in the other stanzas....
*
p.s. you don't need to know all this stuff, carry all this baggage, to "get" the poem (or maybe you do). Often I don't "know" it myself very clearly. I relax into the poem, following certain parameters (like an algorithm). Like the bit about the "shadow faster than light". Came along when I happened to remember a NY Times op-ed piece from last week by Margaret Wertheim : shadows (because they are literally no-thing) actually can travel faster than the speed of light. The experiment (or thought-experiment?) she discussed had to do with a very powerful light beam circling on its axis in space. At a very great distance (on the perimeter of the light's "orbit") the shadow cast would travel faster - cover more distance - than the light itself.
...A sissy on a singing ass will win
Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn
cast-off of your unbound
feat, mis-spoken jockey (nailed
in the Campo every time).
The "sissy on a singing ass" fuses together : the loser-poet, St. Francis of Assisi, the "slow horse" (the donkey, Jesus's "colt" which carries him into Jerusalem as "King") of poetry (Pegasus), etc.
"Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn" : the "palio" was the small cloth or prize or "pallium" given to the winner of the Palio race in Siena - the cloth linked with the Virgin (patron of city of Siena), & through her to "Veronica's napkin", the cloth which supposedly showed an image of Christ's face.
"cast-off of your unbound/feat, mis-spoken jockey" : generally thinking of the difference between the "real" Jesus and the various cultural/religious shapings, (mis)appropriations & distortions - throughout the long, tangled history of Jewish-Christian dialogue & dispute - of his "image" (much like current iconic celebrity-simulacra).
"nailed/ in the Campo every time" : the Palio race is, for the jockeys, a risky proposition in several ways - not least the risk getting beaten up by angry partisans of one horse or another. Also Jesus (the "nailed"/"feat" - the losing horse).
- this is, of course, just one sentence - there are other things going on here (echoes of Hart Crane etc.), & more (& different) things in the other stanzas....
*
p.s. you don't need to know all this stuff, carry all this baggage, to "get" the poem (or maybe you do). Often I don't "know" it myself very clearly. I relax into the poem, following certain parameters (like an algorithm). Like the bit about the "shadow faster than light". Came along when I happened to remember a NY Times op-ed piece from last week by Margaret Wertheim : shadows (because they are literally no-thing) actually can travel faster than the speed of light. The experiment (or thought-experiment?) she discussed had to do with a very powerful light beam circling on its axis in space. At a very great distance (on the perimeter of the light's "orbit") the shadow cast would travel faster - cover more distance - than the light itself.
6.26.2007
more Fontegaia...
12
Your shade shapes my circumference
faster than light. Horse, chariot fused
in one Black Sea brow. Hydroplane Muse,
hippopotamus from Ethiopia... my nonsense
rim. Spiral mote in the eye
of Hurricane Harry - gold glint
or old lint? - your transparent
dust-parenthesis mesmerized me
like the ME scrawled upside down
in undatable Greek along a curve
of vernal copper (Antikythera
treasure trove, kosmos in an
ancient ice-cream cone). We were there
on the Green Mountain, boys - sprung
cruising a dulcet Sienese ring
beyond the river of time (spry
ninefold harmony). The circle wheels
back forwards (like the last crab
in July) for Assisi Frank, Calabrian
Joe - upon an alphabet of eagles'
wings, or Justice in a tight-wound
J. A sissy on a singing ass will win
Veronica's napkin, pallidly drawn
cast-off of your unbound
feat, mis-spoken jockey (nailed
in the Campo every time).
Old sack of sheep's bones, Abram's
folly - U (hoarse whisper, wavy wand).
... & what do I mean, exactly, when I align poetry and horse-race?
- thinking less about contemporary po-biz, more about Pindar and Dante.
Pegasus stamps ground in Greece, sets off 9 Muses' Pierian Spring. What's that about?
The cicada-sound of poetry displays an animal otherness. It is a tradition unto itself. This uncanniness, this "call of the fife", is propelled by a powerful motive distinct from our ordinary utilitarian pragmatic fill-in-the-blanks provisional necessitous usage.
Such functional usage differs diametrically from that of the bower-bird (poet) who must be able to grasp the potential aesthetic value hidden in the cheapest bit of driftwood (drift words). It's an innate capability.
Poetry is the horse. We're just the jockeys.
The muse (fed by Pegasus) possesses the poet : the poet sings.
I'm for literary democracy, I believe poesie springs up everywhere; as Edwin Honig wrote, it's "a buzzing in the air". At the same time, however, I believe in the literary absolute, ie. the Tradition of Pegasus the Centaur.
A nation's or culture's literature is ultimately judged by its faithfulness, not to various socological parameters or editorial juggling, but to the literary absolute.
That's the start & finish line of the only race in town.
- thinking less about contemporary po-biz, more about Pindar and Dante.
Pegasus stamps ground in Greece, sets off 9 Muses' Pierian Spring. What's that about?
The cicada-sound of poetry displays an animal otherness. It is a tradition unto itself. This uncanniness, this "call of the fife", is propelled by a powerful motive distinct from our ordinary utilitarian pragmatic fill-in-the-blanks provisional necessitous usage.
Such functional usage differs diametrically from that of the bower-bird (poet) who must be able to grasp the potential aesthetic value hidden in the cheapest bit of driftwood (drift words). It's an innate capability.
Poetry is the horse. We're just the jockeys.
The muse (fed by Pegasus) possesses the poet : the poet sings.
I'm for literary democracy, I believe poesie springs up everywhere; as Edwin Honig wrote, it's "a buzzing in the air". At the same time, however, I believe in the literary absolute, ie. the Tradition of Pegasus the Centaur.
A nation's or culture's literature is ultimately judged by its faithfulness, not to various socological parameters or editorial juggling, but to the literary absolute.
That's the start & finish line of the only race in town.
I guess a critic might quibble with a style that requires so much machinery (see previous).
But maybe it only demands such for the special conditions of an offer of an excerpt in a snippet on a blog.
My method of working is a s-p-a-n, a r--a--n--g--e, a c~o~n~t~i~n~u~u~m.
I've written already many a short poem. Now I'm just a goon a-goone onna loong pilgrimaage, take it or leave it.
The self-publishing poet has a lot of strikes agin him-or-her, since for many a publisher & mag editor & reviewer & collegian, the chancet to manage an established pooblic oriffice like a Magazine or a Publinking House is the very Capstone of thems Career, & so... a DIY dope is an imp of an explicit challenge, of sorts & sortations.
Swipe it off the desktop, matey!
But maybe it only demands such for the special conditions of an offer of an excerpt in a snippet on a blog.
My method of working is a s-p-a-n, a r--a--n--g--e, a c~o~n~t~i~n~u~u~m.
I've written already many a short poem. Now I'm just a goon a-goone onna loong pilgrimaage, take it or leave it.
The self-publishing poet has a lot of strikes agin him-or-her, since for many a publisher & mag editor & reviewer & collegian, the chancet to manage an established pooblic oriffice like a Magazine or a Publinking House is the very Capstone of thems Career, & so... a DIY dope is an imp of an explicit challenge, of sorts & sortations.
Swipe it off the desktop, matey!
6.25.2007
Mumbled something here a few days ago contrasting present-day concept of form/beauty with that of Moderns 100 yrs ago - Joyce's autotelic "quiddity" vs. today's "intelligibility". The excerpt from Fontegaia I posted yesterday might suggest I'm not practicing what I preach... what the heck is this strange obscure garbled stuff? Especially if you haven't been following the whole loopy string-along poem...
Anyway, it's a work-in-progress, & there are limits to what I can clarify about it, but... It's from the 2nd section of Fontegaia, which has been focusing on the distinctive Sienese horserace called the Palio. What I've been doing is using features of the race & of Siena/Sienese history in general as a foundation, & also as a jumping-off place (metaphors for other things).
Gradually I'm working toward some structural parallels or analogies between :
- Palio/Siena
- poets & poetry (as horserace)
- history/eschatology (the concept of the "end of time" - Apocalypse, 4 Horsemen of, etc.)
Siena links (in my mind) with eschatology by way of Joachim of Fiore, St. Francis & franciscanism. The Palio race itself is, for the Sienese, a way of sort of "stopping time" - it celebrates & mythologizes the "original" independent city-state & its founding victory over Florence at the battle of Montaperti in 1260. 1260 or thereabouts was also supposed to be an apocalyptic date in Joachim's & Joachimite messianic thinking.
In my private symbolism here in this & other sections of the poem, the contemplative/unworldly loser-poet (kind of an image of poets in America generally) is identified with the visionary saint/hobo (Francis), who paradoxically wins the race by losing it - wins it riding his slow donkey (Francis called his own body - affectionately - his "ass", bearing burdens). Contemplative vision & spiritual poverty are "slow" in relation to the quick foxy worldly utilitarian thinking which surrounds the poet on all sides. & the confrontation between these two mighty forces (worldly & spiritual) has its analogy in the Book of Revelation & the Apocalypse itself - the end of time.
"Ramirez" (in the section posted previously & others) refers to the "outsider" Mexican artist Martin Ramirez, whose paintings of railroads & immured horsemen etc. I'm using as another sort of link in the nexus Francis/hobo/San Francisco/Siena/horsemen/Apocalypse. (As noted in an earlier post, Ramirez, who was famously mute most of the time, sent a message through his family to the wife he had left behind in Mexico - "I'll see you again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat", ie. at the apocalyptic Last Judgement & resurrection of the dead.)
For "Ezekiel" - cf. the Louis Armstrong version of that song (alluded to by Eugenio Montale in his poem "Ezekiel Saw the Wheels". Montale also wrote a poem titled "Palio").
The last line - "Father! the chariots..." - an excerpt (revision?) of prophet Elisha's cry as his mentor Elijah is taken up bodily to heaven in a fiery chariot - "the chariots of Israel and his horsemen!"
There - all clear now?
Anyway, it's a work-in-progress, & there are limits to what I can clarify about it, but... It's from the 2nd section of Fontegaia, which has been focusing on the distinctive Sienese horserace called the Palio. What I've been doing is using features of the race & of Siena/Sienese history in general as a foundation, & also as a jumping-off place (metaphors for other things).
Gradually I'm working toward some structural parallels or analogies between :
- Palio/Siena
- poets & poetry (as horserace)
- history/eschatology (the concept of the "end of time" - Apocalypse, 4 Horsemen of, etc.)
Siena links (in my mind) with eschatology by way of Joachim of Fiore, St. Francis & franciscanism. The Palio race itself is, for the Sienese, a way of sort of "stopping time" - it celebrates & mythologizes the "original" independent city-state & its founding victory over Florence at the battle of Montaperti in 1260. 1260 or thereabouts was also supposed to be an apocalyptic date in Joachim's & Joachimite messianic thinking.
In my private symbolism here in this & other sections of the poem, the contemplative/unworldly loser-poet (kind of an image of poets in America generally) is identified with the visionary saint/hobo (Francis), who paradoxically wins the race by losing it - wins it riding his slow donkey (Francis called his own body - affectionately - his "ass", bearing burdens). Contemplative vision & spiritual poverty are "slow" in relation to the quick foxy worldly utilitarian thinking which surrounds the poet on all sides. & the confrontation between these two mighty forces (worldly & spiritual) has its analogy in the Book of Revelation & the Apocalypse itself - the end of time.
"Ramirez" (in the section posted previously & others) refers to the "outsider" Mexican artist Martin Ramirez, whose paintings of railroads & immured horsemen etc. I'm using as another sort of link in the nexus Francis/hobo/San Francisco/Siena/horsemen/Apocalypse. (As noted in an earlier post, Ramirez, who was famously mute most of the time, sent a message through his family to the wife he had left behind in Mexico - "I'll see you again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat", ie. at the apocalyptic Last Judgement & resurrection of the dead.)
For "Ezekiel" - cf. the Louis Armstrong version of that song (alluded to by Eugenio Montale in his poem "Ezekiel Saw the Wheels". Montale also wrote a poem titled "Palio").
The last line - "Father! the chariots..." - an excerpt (revision?) of prophet Elisha's cry as his mentor Elijah is taken up bodily to heaven in a fiery chariot - "the chariots of Israel and his horsemen!"
There - all clear now?
6.24.2007
Fontegaia revving up again.
11
Summer in Providence. Infinite
depth (I cannot plumb). Kingdom
of sidewalk dragon-world. Microcosm
(in your heart). Radius (toward Planet
X). That your heart find peace
unknown in a world of highways -
where old Hobo goes crazy (Ramirez
portfolio; San Francisco long-term lease).
The secret love that croons in the cast-
off harbor (in the distance, under the
copperhead bridge) - lovely plot
of oblong racetracks (Franny's ass
comes in last) - shaded by hands
quicker than light (early morning
straw in the Campo). Ezekiel saw
dem wheels a'glory - tottering
in the ring of a pickled Babylon
(no way, nowhere). Remembered
first light in Jerusalem (embered
aubade). Muttered his symbolon
for foregone generations. Poets wheel
like horses - a mud-splattered ellipse
snorting the finish line through nostrils
of bloodswelled eclipse (each parallel
its own infinity - each bursting heart
harnessed by mesmerized hoofbeat
to the end). Until bells (replete with
time) doom-boom : Father! the chariots...
6.22.2007
Feeling crushed by indifference this week. Probably the letdown after recent obsession with re-doing my books.
Depressed by (1) lack of interest in my poetry, (2) extent of my own obliviousness/evasion regarding the true situation, (3) the fact that I'm depressed by this stuff.
I observe layers of Poetry World, wherewith none of which I belong. The younger set (soi-disant bohemia, NY School, Langpo, jeunes academiques, etc). The academic professionals. The magazine editors.
This (my current) state of mind leads to screwy ideas, usually.
Poetry itself, the art form, the vocation, has these vague layers too. But to explore the phenomenon takes patience, attention, even some study... the crowded scenes militate against such things (although, by the same token, generosity & openness & collaboration & sharing are the beginning of wisdom).
Ted Berrigan warned against the "language meanies" (by which he meant perhaps the Langpos, or perhaps literary mandarin/snobs in general). But the populist slangy informal attitude (everybody in the Big Tent) doesn't do complete justice to poetry either.
Poetry can be elusive; it's not always going to show its hand to lazy readers, ambitious scenesters or shallow hangers-about. It's not always going to be visible, even.
Then, or now & again, a terrific talent emerges through a popular mode or style, by complexifying it with subtlety & feeling & knowledge. Grafting other things onto it. I could see that possibly happening sometime within the NY School milieu (maybe it already has, what do I know).
(Which reminds me of another New Yorker feature this week, on master engineer/architect Cecil Balmond. Fascinating article, Hart Crane would have loved this guy. Engineers like bridges especially, because they're function/form is so intense, focused, all right there visible. Engineering is the channeling of gravity through structure. Balmond talks about algorithmic design... want to read his book (Informal).)
Some secret gravity leads poetry & the poet toward the center of the cultural life of an era. It's not going to happen within the perfected idiom of a particular school/style. It's not going to happen within the dutiful (& ambitious) realm of academic-professional poets. It's not going to happen within the (self-centered) vain hoo-rah of the populist/hipster carnival.
The gravity involved has something to do with a poet obsessed and driven to find a way of talking to everyone, ie. communicating, about the concerns of the present moment with a new vision of those concerns and either a very personal, characteristic means of expression or a very clear transparent impersonal means of expression.
Again, it's the sense that poetry involves something uncanny, which can't be manipulated, channeled or domesticated. The idea of the poet's social role which I was trying to get at in earlier post : close to the prophetic, that is, somewhere between Iron Age & Golden Age. That's why the poet at this range won't settle down within the established cultural routines : there's some furor going on, something percolating & molten at the core of the culture itself.
These ponderings perhaps only the crazy & twisted sour grapes of someone who doesn't fit in to Poetry World at the moment... take them with a grain of salt, please - don't be demagogued by me... plus it's Friday afternoon & I simply must get out of the library...
Depressed by (1) lack of interest in my poetry, (2) extent of my own obliviousness/evasion regarding the true situation, (3) the fact that I'm depressed by this stuff.
I observe layers of Poetry World, wherewith none of which I belong. The younger set (soi-disant bohemia, NY School, Langpo, jeunes academiques, etc). The academic professionals. The magazine editors.
This (my current) state of mind leads to screwy ideas, usually.
Poetry itself, the art form, the vocation, has these vague layers too. But to explore the phenomenon takes patience, attention, even some study... the crowded scenes militate against such things (although, by the same token, generosity & openness & collaboration & sharing are the beginning of wisdom).
Ted Berrigan warned against the "language meanies" (by which he meant perhaps the Langpos, or perhaps literary mandarin/snobs in general). But the populist slangy informal attitude (everybody in the Big Tent) doesn't do complete justice to poetry either.
Poetry can be elusive; it's not always going to show its hand to lazy readers, ambitious scenesters or shallow hangers-about. It's not always going to be visible, even.
Then, or now & again, a terrific talent emerges through a popular mode or style, by complexifying it with subtlety & feeling & knowledge. Grafting other things onto it. I could see that possibly happening sometime within the NY School milieu (maybe it already has, what do I know).
(Which reminds me of another New Yorker feature this week, on master engineer/architect Cecil Balmond. Fascinating article, Hart Crane would have loved this guy. Engineers like bridges especially, because they're function/form is so intense, focused, all right there visible. Engineering is the channeling of gravity through structure. Balmond talks about algorithmic design... want to read his book (Informal).)
Some secret gravity leads poetry & the poet toward the center of the cultural life of an era. It's not going to happen within the perfected idiom of a particular school/style. It's not going to happen within the dutiful (& ambitious) realm of academic-professional poets. It's not going to happen within the (self-centered) vain hoo-rah of the populist/hipster carnival.
The gravity involved has something to do with a poet obsessed and driven to find a way of talking to everyone, ie. communicating, about the concerns of the present moment with a new vision of those concerns and either a very personal, characteristic means of expression or a very clear transparent impersonal means of expression.
Again, it's the sense that poetry involves something uncanny, which can't be manipulated, channeled or domesticated. The idea of the poet's social role which I was trying to get at in earlier post : close to the prophetic, that is, somewhere between Iron Age & Golden Age. That's why the poet at this range won't settle down within the established cultural routines : there's some furor going on, something percolating & molten at the core of the culture itself.
These ponderings perhaps only the crazy & twisted sour grapes of someone who doesn't fit in to Poetry World at the moment... take them with a grain of salt, please - don't be demagogued by me... plus it's Friday afternoon & I simply must get out of the library...
Liked the poem in this week's New Yorker by Lawrence Raab. (Always a red-letter day when I like a New Yorker poem. 3 times a year or so.)
*
Mercury must be in retrograde, or sumpin'. Or the weather's too nice. Or I'm in one of my discouragement phases. Hence lack of blogging, & stalled in Fontegaia poem. (Or maybe I'm on a new plateau.)
*
Mercury must be in retrograde, or sumpin'. Or the weather's too nice. Or I'm in one of my discouragement phases. Hence lack of blogging, & stalled in Fontegaia poem. (Or maybe I'm on a new plateau.)
6.15.2007
Naturally, in them here states all eyes are focused on the resurrection of an old car...
My countrymen, dreaming and drinking down
the livelong day in your smooth Cadillacs,
Americans made of nostalgia, playing the clown
on roads past the high school railroad tracks
- go on, play the radio, shoot for the moon;
your little boy up from grasslands not for hire
is building a tricycle in the backyard, and soon
he'll step inside a brand new chariot of fire.
Reading remarkable study by Jon Levenson, Resurrection and the restoration of Israel. On changing (& misunderstood) concepts of resurrection in Judaism. Reminded me for some reason of the poem below.
You could think of this poem as a commentary on the solitude of anyone who turns to making poems. Acknowledgement, acceptance, recognition can be a long, long time coming.
Better not to dwell on it. But lately I'm haunted by a (delusional?) feeling of anticipation...
The poem was written about 25 years ago.
You could think of this poem as a commentary on the solitude of anyone who turns to making poems. Acknowledgement, acceptance, recognition can be a long, long time coming.
Better not to dwell on it. But lately I'm haunted by a (delusional?) feeling of anticipation...
The poem was written about 25 years ago.
IN THE CLAY
Adam, under the rain.
Under the somber branches.
To soften, to cross out
the scrawl in the clay -
evening in summer,
buried, sleeping.
*
Your name is blind,
your name, nowhere.
Your name in the ice,
in amber, solid memory.
An outline under the
compass of my lips.
*
Blessed be the name
in the rainy dusk,
on the long road
under the bridges;
blessed silence
for hearing you.
*
Under the old rain,
motionless, lips
flower - a rose
in the slow night;
breathing, solitary,
heavy with time.
Lattoral & Tributary talkin about big Ole.
Olson would have "dug" Viola Sachs.
Olson : the thrill of soldering chunks of metal. Soldering, that is, local unknown minutiae of backwater New England flaking-paint tenement-town nothingness to the grand movements of the C-c-c-cosmos (by cosmosis).
The Imagination of Grandiosity. Walla-walla-halloo! (Pain in the neck, mostly, to ye true olde stoic scrappy New England sourpuss-lemon stock.)
Olson would have "dug" Viola Sachs.
Olson : the thrill of soldering chunks of metal. Soldering, that is, local unknown minutiae of backwater New England flaking-paint tenement-town nothingness to the grand movements of the C-c-c-cosmos (by cosmosis).
The Imagination of Grandiosity. Walla-walla-halloo! (Pain in the neck, mostly, to ye true olde stoic scrappy New England sourpuss-lemon stock.)
6.14.2007
My baby pint-sized books will slowly filter into consciousness now, impinging on American culture... sort of a lit-model resurrection of "Henry" from out the sub-sub-librarian grave... (that's the dream-song plan anyway...)
I'm what they call a Person of the Book, I guess. Not only have I been a bookworm forever, & worked in a library for almost a quarter of a century : my own ponderings & writings are all caught up with metaphysics & religion & scripture. My life took a sharp & fateful turn when I read the Bible at age 19. I was baptized Episcopalian from infancy; at age 50 (old sinner by then) I started finally going back to church.
This is all prelude to saying that there can be people in the world like me who are not part of the global pious-moralist-fundamentalist-superstitious cultural pressure of our era.
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." What is faith? As I understand it, faith is an inner conviction (despite the lack of complete knowledge or information) that something is true. It's a prudent, considered hunch, a choice between possibilities rather than firm facts.
One's view of the substance of experience in its entirety can be focused by such faith-judgements - even if they are understood to be provisional, subject to change.
So my personal poetics or metaphysics or understanding of history or anthropology are all colored by these hunch-beliefs. There is no getting away from it. My artistic development has been shaped by the prior shaping of my worldview.
NONETHELESS. ALL THAT BEING SAID... the fact remains that I am an adopted Rhode Islander (there are two Gould Islands in Narragansett Bay) and a partisan of Roger Williams.
Williams had a concept he called "soul liberty". Which, as I understand it, refers to the free activity of the individual mind in search of grounds for those inner convictions understood as "faith". Williams, simply put, devoted his entire life to the defense of soul liberty. He understood that the inner union between a person and the divine had to be one of true conviction and free choice. Any manifestation of what he (& others) called "enforced religion" was a grotesque 3-pronged insult : an insult to the authentic substance of faith; an insult to intellectual freedom; and an insult to the peace of a (self-governed) community, made up of people holding to diverse beliefs.
This particular conviction of Williams was the historical origin of the separation of church and state as we know it; of the concept of religious tolerance as we know it; and of the oldest surviving secular state in the Western world - Rhode Island.
One of the key elements of Williams' philosophy was an idea related to the medieval concept of natural law (as a young man, Williams was a student-assistant to Edward Coke, the great English barrister, famed for his defense of Parliament and "ancient right" against the encroachments of the Crown). The idea is that humankind, as made in the image of God, displays the God-given, natural capacity to know right from wrong and to achieve self-governance in lawful, peaceful commonwealths. Williams, the friend of Narragansett chiefs, loved to harp on the idea that non-Christian nations (such as the Narragansetts) could be wiser, kinder, gentler, more civilized, more peaceful than many so-called "Christian" nations. (Of course, according to RW, such refined virtuous gentle & civilized pagans would sadly miss out on the Kingdom of God and eternal life, but that was an utterly separate issue.)
This history is part of the "epic theme" I dealt with in my sort of Olsonesque poem In RI. Written back in the early 90s.
(this post was inspired in part by Frederick Wiseman's documentary, shown on PBS last night, about the ordinary workings of the Idaho state legislature... a fine film! Reminded me of my time (back in the early 80s) as a VISTA volunteer, when I worked for community groups as a "legislative analyst" at the RI state house.)
This is all prelude to saying that there can be people in the world like me who are not part of the global pious-moralist-fundamentalist-superstitious cultural pressure of our era.
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." What is faith? As I understand it, faith is an inner conviction (despite the lack of complete knowledge or information) that something is true. It's a prudent, considered hunch, a choice between possibilities rather than firm facts.
One's view of the substance of experience in its entirety can be focused by such faith-judgements - even if they are understood to be provisional, subject to change.
So my personal poetics or metaphysics or understanding of history or anthropology are all colored by these hunch-beliefs. There is no getting away from it. My artistic development has been shaped by the prior shaping of my worldview.
NONETHELESS. ALL THAT BEING SAID... the fact remains that I am an adopted Rhode Islander (there are two Gould Islands in Narragansett Bay) and a partisan of Roger Williams.
Williams had a concept he called "soul liberty". Which, as I understand it, refers to the free activity of the individual mind in search of grounds for those inner convictions understood as "faith". Williams, simply put, devoted his entire life to the defense of soul liberty. He understood that the inner union between a person and the divine had to be one of true conviction and free choice. Any manifestation of what he (& others) called "enforced religion" was a grotesque 3-pronged insult : an insult to the authentic substance of faith; an insult to intellectual freedom; and an insult to the peace of a (self-governed) community, made up of people holding to diverse beliefs.
This particular conviction of Williams was the historical origin of the separation of church and state as we know it; of the concept of religious tolerance as we know it; and of the oldest surviving secular state in the Western world - Rhode Island.
One of the key elements of Williams' philosophy was an idea related to the medieval concept of natural law (as a young man, Williams was a student-assistant to Edward Coke, the great English barrister, famed for his defense of Parliament and "ancient right" against the encroachments of the Crown). The idea is that humankind, as made in the image of God, displays the God-given, natural capacity to know right from wrong and to achieve self-governance in lawful, peaceful commonwealths. Williams, the friend of Narragansett chiefs, loved to harp on the idea that non-Christian nations (such as the Narragansetts) could be wiser, kinder, gentler, more civilized, more peaceful than many so-called "Christian" nations. (Of course, according to RW, such refined virtuous gentle & civilized pagans would sadly miss out on the Kingdom of God and eternal life, but that was an utterly separate issue.)
This history is part of the "epic theme" I dealt with in my sort of Olsonesque poem In RI. Written back in the early 90s.
(this post was inspired in part by Frederick Wiseman's documentary, shown on PBS last night, about the ordinary workings of the Idaho state legislature... a fine film! Reminded me of my time (back in the early 80s) as a VISTA volunteer, when I worked for community groups as a "legislative analyst" at the RI state house.)
6.13.2007
I think of Wallace Stevens as pondering along some such path as this...
The mind is creative, the imagination is primordial, originary - since experience is unavoidably subjective : the world we know is the world as we see and experience it.
Thus the vivid, bracing, inventive, concrete perception of poetry offers reality made new - re-shaped anew (or, reality in a new light). Thus the "supreme fiction" displaces the worn-out myths which have congealed into doctrinal belief.
Poetry in this sense is representative of art & artist generally. Which are, in turn, representative of free creative conscious perception generally.
This is very basically the "standard model" of the Artist, since Emerson, the Romantics, etc. And I accept it, I agree with it, for what it's worth : a working credo for the nourishing of creative talents & aims. But it ain't the whole story.
Interesting juxtaposed reading these days : Pope Benedict on St. Bonaventure (Theology of History of St. Bonaventure) on the one hand; a critical study of Finnegans Wake on the other (Joyce, Dante and the poetics of literary relations, by Lucia Boldrini).
I have the feeling Bonaventure would have found FW out of court (even though Joyce is so deeply fascinated with both Christianity and the notion of creative world-making).
Joyce is awfully deep & subtle, but he seems to shape the book in a sort of circular, "Buddhist" (or Hindu) framework : life circles around & around like a river forever & ever. For Bonaventure, the assertion of "the eternity of the world" was one of the primal marks of Aristotle's pagan error. For Bonaventure, the world is a creation, and history has a singular plot (even if B's version of that history has a certain circular quality about it : history is the story of the world being sent forth from God, pivoting on Christ, and returning to God).
I've got my own inklings about this, which I won't go into now...
But getting back to the "Stevens" bit above... I feel more & more on kind of a Nicholas of Cusa/Byzantine tack, with the central notion of the human/divine imago... that is, there are human creators (with maximum freedom) & yet there is also Creation - these 2 perplexibly & unaccountably meshed (like 2 circles) together... & there is the Event at the center...
Christianity : revelation (the event) trumps reason.
Poetry : the actual (drama) trumps abstraction (discourse).
There's a kind of parallel or analogy there... (worked out in History...)
The mind is creative, the imagination is primordial, originary - since experience is unavoidably subjective : the world we know is the world as we see and experience it.
Thus the vivid, bracing, inventive, concrete perception of poetry offers reality made new - re-shaped anew (or, reality in a new light). Thus the "supreme fiction" displaces the worn-out myths which have congealed into doctrinal belief.
Poetry in this sense is representative of art & artist generally. Which are, in turn, representative of free creative conscious perception generally.
This is very basically the "standard model" of the Artist, since Emerson, the Romantics, etc. And I accept it, I agree with it, for what it's worth : a working credo for the nourishing of creative talents & aims. But it ain't the whole story.
Interesting juxtaposed reading these days : Pope Benedict on St. Bonaventure (Theology of History of St. Bonaventure) on the one hand; a critical study of Finnegans Wake on the other (Joyce, Dante and the poetics of literary relations, by Lucia Boldrini).
I have the feeling Bonaventure would have found FW out of court (even though Joyce is so deeply fascinated with both Christianity and the notion of creative world-making).
Joyce is awfully deep & subtle, but he seems to shape the book in a sort of circular, "Buddhist" (or Hindu) framework : life circles around & around like a river forever & ever. For Bonaventure, the assertion of "the eternity of the world" was one of the primal marks of Aristotle's pagan error. For Bonaventure, the world is a creation, and history has a singular plot (even if B's version of that history has a certain circular quality about it : history is the story of the world being sent forth from God, pivoting on Christ, and returning to God).
I've got my own inklings about this, which I won't go into now...
But getting back to the "Stevens" bit above... I feel more & more on kind of a Nicholas of Cusa/Byzantine tack, with the central notion of the human/divine imago... that is, there are human creators (with maximum freedom) & yet there is also Creation - these 2 perplexibly & unaccountably meshed (like 2 circles) together... & there is the Event at the center...
Christianity : revelation (the event) trumps reason.
Poetry : the actual (drama) trumps abstraction (discourse).
There's a kind of parallel or analogy there... (worked out in History...)
6.12.2007
"Competence" : I'd agree with J. on this one. Just hearing that word makes you want to run screaming from Poetry Room. It's like somebody in ill-fitting polyester suit walking in on ballet practice looking for IRS paperwork from 1974. Excuse me, could I speak with Col. Competent? Oh, he's over at Competence Hall, rm 666, CREATIVE WRITING. The competents will get their comeuppance.
J. Latta, as always... Lights are on, somebody's home. He has a fine-grained way of reading... I think I stand back more & look at the picture from a slight distance. Take his Crane "Cape Hatteras" comments of today. Faulkner's telling a tale, with his droning southern rambling drawl-whisper. Crane, on the other hand, is painting a mural. His individual sections of The Bridge are like odes, or (in this case) Charles Sheeler machine-landscapes. An ode has a big frame : kind of unfair to nip & tuck at individual lines or stanzas, without taking a look at the whole thing. Thus "Hatteras" should be looked at as part of a wheel (or ring of suspension guy-wires, or rainbow) - one of the tones in a huge tone-poem. Look at "Hatteras" through the other panes : ie., the opening invocation to Columbus, or the closing rhapsody, or the ode to 19th-century clipper ships. Each ode should first be taken in & measured in terms of its scope as a whole song among a series of songs, before (over)-reacting to in-grained mannerisms...
Another way to think about the quoted stanza, too, is as parody. "Power's script" shifts the substance of true poetic-visionary power - "The Bridge" as comprehending a new perception of civilization on earth - shifts it to the machinery of power itself, and thus its "script" is diluted or corrupted. So the stanza includes gimcrack takes on Rimbaud's lines from "Illuminations".
Eliot did something similar, it's said, with the 3rd of the 4 Quartets. The whole thing is a self-parody.
I guess this is all special pleading, but anyway.
Another way to think about the quoted stanza, too, is as parody. "Power's script" shifts the substance of true poetic-visionary power - "The Bridge" as comprehending a new perception of civilization on earth - shifts it to the machinery of power itself, and thus its "script" is diluted or corrupted. So the stanza includes gimcrack takes on Rimbaud's lines from "Illuminations".
Eliot did something similar, it's said, with the 3rd of the 4 Quartets. The whole thing is a self-parody.
I guess this is all special pleading, but anyway.
6.08.2007
It seems John Latta, in his Hart Crane post of today, is providing an illustration for the concepts I've been pondering here lately : the poet/seer & Beauty's dislocation...
JL is sharp to point out how Crane muddles & roughens up his own acute (prose) notations as he turns them into poetry...
but I have a different take on this, and I think "The Idiot" is a better poem than John suggests (Crane's complaints aside). The juxtaposition of the prose and the poem serve to point up the difference between prose and poems; and it's not just a stylistic difference. The essential difference illustrated here is between prose, as anecdote or reportage, and a poem as both song and symbolic representation.
I read this poem as a kind of parable : the poet-speaker actually identifies with the idiot boy, who scans the heavens through his tin can and sings his wacky Dio gracias tune. The "song" of the poem essentially seals this identification, asserting a kind of harmonic relation or hidden unity among things or events (subjective, objective) which are (on the surface) jarring, absurd or pathetic. "The Idiot" is an artifact of Crane's laborious effort to "sing his own song" : ie., Crane forges an initial anecdote into the pattern of his typical style/tone/voice/theme, the unified substance of his work as a whole. Look at how that "late" (for Crane) poem mirrors this earlier one :
CHAPLINESQUE
We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.
For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!
And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.
The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
Note how, in "The Idiot", Crane has "faced [or re-faced] the dull squint" with the idiot's "squint lanterns". He has echoed the moonlight/ashcan with the tin can/telescope. The humorous/perilous social role outlined for the poet in "Chaplinesque" still holds in "The Idiot".
JL laments the loss of Crane's initial clear reportage in the process of composition; but (unlike most 20th-cent. poets) he's not writing prose. Not only is he not writing prose; he's making a peculiar song which asserts the fundamental difference between the poet and everything "prosaic". The distinction is epitomized in an old Ojibwa term : dream song.
JL is sharp to point out how Crane muddles & roughens up his own acute (prose) notations as he turns them into poetry...
but I have a different take on this, and I think "The Idiot" is a better poem than John suggests (Crane's complaints aside). The juxtaposition of the prose and the poem serve to point up the difference between prose and poems; and it's not just a stylistic difference. The essential difference illustrated here is between prose, as anecdote or reportage, and a poem as both song and symbolic representation.
I read this poem as a kind of parable : the poet-speaker actually identifies with the idiot boy, who scans the heavens through his tin can and sings his wacky Dio gracias tune. The "song" of the poem essentially seals this identification, asserting a kind of harmonic relation or hidden unity among things or events (subjective, objective) which are (on the surface) jarring, absurd or pathetic. "The Idiot" is an artifact of Crane's laborious effort to "sing his own song" : ie., Crane forges an initial anecdote into the pattern of his typical style/tone/voice/theme, the unified substance of his work as a whole. Look at how that "late" (for Crane) poem mirrors this earlier one :
CHAPLINESQUE
We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.
For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!
And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.
The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
Note how, in "The Idiot", Crane has "faced [or re-faced] the dull squint" with the idiot's "squint lanterns". He has echoed the moonlight/ashcan with the tin can/telescope. The humorous/perilous social role outlined for the poet in "Chaplinesque" still holds in "The Idiot".
JL laments the loss of Crane's initial clear reportage in the process of composition; but (unlike most 20th-cent. poets) he's not writing prose. Not only is he not writing prose; he's making a peculiar song which asserts the fundamental difference between the poet and everything "prosaic". The distinction is epitomized in an old Ojibwa term : dream song.
I wrote here a few days ago about Beauty and Purpose and other capital-letter topics. The idea (taken from Christine Perkell's study of Virgil) that the poet has a particular social role, as mediator between the Iron & the Golden Age - that is, between necessity and freedom, history and paradise...
Chaucer was doing something like this in the Canterbury Tales & other writings. Poetry here has a social-ethical aspect, interpreting and judging the mores of society.
There has been great resistance, since the end of the Victorian period at least, to the notion of didacticism in poetry. Poetry is either too detached (Symbolism) or revolutionary (Futurism) or autotelic (Modernism) to serve as a medium for ethical counsel or social critique.
It's not hard to think of many exceptions to this rule, of course. 20th-cent. poets from Yeats to our contemporaries have addressed social-political issues. But there is an understandable hesitation, on the poets' part anyway, to assign any ulterior purpose to art. Beauty exists for its own sake; the forms of art are self-generated and self-sustaining, growing out of the inherent dynamism of beauty and invention.
Here's how I resolve this dilemma (this morning, anyway) : the harmonious character of beauty (expressed in art) is indeed self-sustaining & self-contained, like a gyroscope floating on a string - and this is precisely what is "revolutionary" (disturbing to the world's business-as-usual) about it.
The poet as social interpreter, counselor & critic is simply the poet who has become conscious of the exile/dislocation/estrangement which is already rooted and inherent in the relation between beauty and the world's turmoil : and who takes responsibility for the consequences.
*
Addendum : of course, Virgil & the other ancient writers didn't leave it at that. That is, the relation between Beauty and the world's trouble (say, History) is not static and a-historical. The key, again as Perkell points out, is this dual notion of beauty (Aristotle), one part of which takes into account the object's purpose or telos. Because humankind also has a telos - a spiritual goal, adumbrated (very basically) by the perennial reality (under many guises) of Beauty/Truth/Goodness - the manifestation of Beauty in art somehow serves that spiritual telos. Suddenly we no longer have a static reality, but a world-in-development, as an expression of essential human aims (philosophers & theologians can argue about the divine vs. human vs. natural origins of those aims).
This gets me, anyway, back to Joachim of Fiore. According to the theologian formerly known as Ratzinger, 13th-cent. Joachim (revised & corrected by Bonaventure) played a pivotal role in a shift in Christian theology - away from Augustine's more static vision of the Two Cities (Earthly & Heavenly, temporal and eternal), toward a kind of quasi-prophetic perspective, which looks to the historical future for a concrete expression of spiritual harmony on earth (call it Peace, or the Kingdom of God, or the Jubilee, etc.).
*
The poet, then, stands midway between Iron and Gold - "representing" (making representations of) Beauty - in Mandelstam's figure, playing the flute, or the fife... showing signs of things to come... "quickening" (Eliot's term) at the sound...
*
An illustration (from the King James Bible, Gospel of Luke, ch. 7):
"24 And when the messengers of John were departed, he began to speak unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind?
25 But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts.
26 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet.
27 This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.
30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.
31 And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like?
32 They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.
33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil.
34 The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!
35 But wisdom is justified of all her children."
*
- of the "fife", that is :
32 They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.
Chaucer was doing something like this in the Canterbury Tales & other writings. Poetry here has a social-ethical aspect, interpreting and judging the mores of society.
There has been great resistance, since the end of the Victorian period at least, to the notion of didacticism in poetry. Poetry is either too detached (Symbolism) or revolutionary (Futurism) or autotelic (Modernism) to serve as a medium for ethical counsel or social critique.
It's not hard to think of many exceptions to this rule, of course. 20th-cent. poets from Yeats to our contemporaries have addressed social-political issues. But there is an understandable hesitation, on the poets' part anyway, to assign any ulterior purpose to art. Beauty exists for its own sake; the forms of art are self-generated and self-sustaining, growing out of the inherent dynamism of beauty and invention.
Here's how I resolve this dilemma (this morning, anyway) : the harmonious character of beauty (expressed in art) is indeed self-sustaining & self-contained, like a gyroscope floating on a string - and this is precisely what is "revolutionary" (disturbing to the world's business-as-usual) about it.
The poet as social interpreter, counselor & critic is simply the poet who has become conscious of the exile/dislocation/estrangement which is already rooted and inherent in the relation between beauty and the world's turmoil : and who takes responsibility for the consequences.
*
Addendum : of course, Virgil & the other ancient writers didn't leave it at that. That is, the relation between Beauty and the world's trouble (say, History) is not static and a-historical. The key, again as Perkell points out, is this dual notion of beauty (Aristotle), one part of which takes into account the object's purpose or telos. Because humankind also has a telos - a spiritual goal, adumbrated (very basically) by the perennial reality (under many guises) of Beauty/Truth/Goodness - the manifestation of Beauty in art somehow serves that spiritual telos. Suddenly we no longer have a static reality, but a world-in-development, as an expression of essential human aims (philosophers & theologians can argue about the divine vs. human vs. natural origins of those aims).
This gets me, anyway, back to Joachim of Fiore. According to the theologian formerly known as Ratzinger, 13th-cent. Joachim (revised & corrected by Bonaventure) played a pivotal role in a shift in Christian theology - away from Augustine's more static vision of the Two Cities (Earthly & Heavenly, temporal and eternal), toward a kind of quasi-prophetic perspective, which looks to the historical future for a concrete expression of spiritual harmony on earth (call it Peace, or the Kingdom of God, or the Jubilee, etc.).
*
The poet, then, stands midway between Iron and Gold - "representing" (making representations of) Beauty - in Mandelstam's figure, playing the flute, or the fife... showing signs of things to come... "quickening" (Eliot's term) at the sound...
*
An illustration (from the King James Bible, Gospel of Luke, ch. 7):
"24 And when the messengers of John were departed, he began to speak unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind?
25 But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts.
26 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet.
27 This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.
29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.
30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.
31 And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like?
32 They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.
33 For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil.
34 The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!
35 But wisdom is justified of all her children."
*
- of the "fife", that is :
32 They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.
Allen Bramhall, fellow seasoned veteran of the American Muse Stakes (pronounced "mistakes"), says some kind words about me, & leaves his brand new book on my grave. (Hope he doesn't mind me swiping his photo...)
6.07.2007
6.05.2007
Ratzinger writes about Bonaventure's concept of "revelation".
"Revelation" is the result of an inspired capability to recognize the truth beneath the "veil" of the scriptural "letter". Thus an inspired hermeneutics (the ability to interpret aright) = revelatory vision.
Counterpointed by humility - exemplified by St. Francis, whose approach was to live out the Sermon on the Mount "sine glossa" (without "glosses" or special interpretations) - ie., simply, literally, taking Christ's commandments at face value.
Since Joachim & Bonaventure (in very different ways) expected the working-out of salvation history as the increasing influence of the Holy Spirit in the world, by way of "spiritual" (contemplative)
"Revelation" is the result of an inspired capability to recognize the truth beneath the "veil" of the scriptural "letter". Thus an inspired hermeneutics (the ability to interpret aright) = revelatory vision.
Counterpointed by humility - exemplified by St. Francis, whose approach was to live out the Sermon on the Mount "sine glossa" (without "glosses" or special interpretations) - ie., simply, literally, taking Christ's commandments at face value.
Since Joachim & Bonaventure (in very different ways) expected the working-out of salvation history as the increasing influence of the Holy Spirit in the world, by way of "spiritual" (contemplative)
Have been reading a book by the current Pope Benedict (formerly Joseph Ratzinger) : Theology of History of St. Bonaventure. Recent delving into Joachim of Fiore led to it. Bonaventure appears to have been influenced (to a degree) by Joachim's writings.
Drawn to this complicated area while working on Fontegaia poems (some posted here recently). Siena, palio, all that. The palio race as metaphor for various other things (the "racing" of the poets, the eschatology of the human race...)
Maybe I've blundered into a spot where it gets more difficult to say anything, without sounding facile, glib, "profane"... doesn't feel like writer's block (I know very well what that is).
Joachim, Bonaventure, Virgil's "audacious" poet (see post below) - all of them looking into the future...
Drawn to this complicated area while working on Fontegaia poems (some posted here recently). Siena, palio, all that. The palio race as metaphor for various other things (the "racing" of the poets, the eschatology of the human race...)
Maybe I've blundered into a spot where it gets more difficult to say anything, without sounding facile, glib, "profane"... doesn't feel like writer's block (I know very well what that is).
Joachim, Bonaventure, Virgil's "audacious" poet (see post below) - all of them looking into the future...
6.01.2007
My books are in pretty good shape now. They're all a handy, lovable pocket-size, except for the complete 1-vol. Forth of July.
Poetry : speech made beautiful.
But then, how do you define "beauty"?
Umberto Eco on Joyce on Aquinas on Aristotle...
Eco sheds clear light on an oscillation between Symbolism/Modernism, Symbolism/Acmeism, Plato/Aristotle, idealism/materialism... the halves of these binaries overlap.
More later, hopefully. Must get coffee.
*
J. Latta quoting Kundera today. Want to read that book, too. Though Kundera seems to have developed a fiction vs. poetry polemic. He condescends to the poets. A worthy antagonist, I guess.
*
My post of yesterday, on the duplex perplexity of it all (verbal toy or compelling vision?) is what got me asking myself about Beauty.
Joyce (see Eco link, above) follows the general materialist trend of the 20th century, when he tweaks Aquinas' 3rd of the three aspects of Beauty (integritas, consonantia (proportion), claritas) - claritas - toward the radiant actuality of the thing-in-itself. The artist's "epiphany" is a recognition of this unique and particular radiance - the essence of the thing itself - its quiddity.
Joyce's attitude paralleled the Russian Acmeist revolt against Symbolism (at the same period - around 1910 - roughly, birth of Modernism). The Acmeists aimed to praise and celebrate this world (not the cloudy otherworld of the Symbolists) - mirrored in the autotelic craftsmanship of the Modernist art-work.
I think if we took Aquinas' triform definition as a starting-point today, we might bend it slightly differently.
Poetry : speech made beautiful.
Beautiful : and beauty is a kind of end-in-itself. The existence of a work of art is justified by its beauty.
But what is beauty? Joyce's equation relating to the 3rd aspect (clarity = radiance = object's quiddity) - perhaps, for us, falls slightly short.
Today we might relate claritas to intelligibility.
Radiance is not merely self-contained in the object, autotelic, self-generated. Claritas (as well as integritas or wholeness and consonantia or proportion) interpenetrates, transcends its own borders, surpasses itself. The harmony of these aspects is both 1) reflected in the perceiving mind, and 2) echoed & magnified in general experience or reality as a whole. Thus the object is radiant with its own quiddity, but only in the context of universal wholeness or integrity.
This is a shift I guess slightly away from Aristotelian analytics toward Platonic synthesis. But both Aristotle and Aquinas can show a continuum or relation (which Modernism downplayed) between the object's quiddity and universality. Eco's comments (see link above) point the way.
In Aristotle, art understood as craft shows a duplex beauty. An axe can be both 1) beautiful to look at, and 2) beautiful or fitting in fulfilling its purpose, its end (telos). The axe is designed so as to chop wood beautifully. The ship is beautiful in fulfillment of its practical purpose - it sails well.
As Eco notes, for the ancients and the medievals, humankind's existence was understood as having a spiritual purpose or telos. Inasmuch as art serves that end, it is beautiful in Aristotle's second sense. Beauty, Goodness and Truth coalesce in that spiritual telos. Here is where Plato unites with Aristotle.
The radiance of intelligibility is a measure of an art work's integration with universal human purposes. Truth, vision, wisdom... this is the range toward which art can rise, by way of claritas-intelligibility.
Can you see where I'm tending with this?
I'm going back to the issues raised yesterday, with reference to Virgil and the mystery of the poet. The "audacity" of the poet is a spiritual audacity : the willingness to stand at the border between "Iron Age" and "Golden Age". Between humanity's universal purposes, and more short-term (seemingly practical) aims and desires.
In this sense the poet is only a more acute representation of the writer in general or the artist in general, just as the writer or artist is only a "signifier" for Everyman and Everywoman, for humanity in general. That is, the contradictions at the heart of human experience - between now and forever, earth and heaven, self and other, universal and particular - are signified - emblematized - by the artist.
It's this inward contradiction which accounts for the "outsiderness" of the artist - again, perhaps most acutely represented by the poet. In the context of practical America, consider the unique (& very personal, very idiosyncratic) estrangements at the core of the lives of Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Poe, Pound, Eliot, Crane, Bishop... etc. et al.
Because the oscillation between Iron and Gold, earth and heaven, body and soul has both psychological and political - personal and social - ramifications.
"I had come to hear that great things might be true. This I was told on the Christopher Street ferry. Marvelous gestures had to be made and Humboldt made them. He told me that poets ought to figure out how to get around pragmatic America. He poured it on for me that day. And there I was, having raptures, gotten up as a Fuller Brush salesman in a smothering wool suit, a hand-me down from Julius. The pants were big in the waist and the shirt ballooned out, for my brother Julius had a fat chest. I wiped my sweat with a handkerchief stitched with a J."
- Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift
*
p.s. of course the 20th-cent. Moderns illustrated their own forms of "spirituality". There's a spiritual-scientific aspect to the artist's personal renunciation in pursuit of the "objective correlative" or the Joycean epiphany. Yeats's "profane perfection of Mankind".
But then, how do you define "beauty"?
Umberto Eco on Joyce on Aquinas on Aristotle...
Eco sheds clear light on an oscillation between Symbolism/Modernism, Symbolism/Acmeism, Plato/Aristotle, idealism/materialism... the halves of these binaries overlap.
More later, hopefully. Must get coffee.
*
J. Latta quoting Kundera today. Want to read that book, too. Though Kundera seems to have developed a fiction vs. poetry polemic. He condescends to the poets. A worthy antagonist, I guess.
*
My post of yesterday, on the duplex perplexity of it all (verbal toy or compelling vision?) is what got me asking myself about Beauty.
Joyce (see Eco link, above) follows the general materialist trend of the 20th century, when he tweaks Aquinas' 3rd of the three aspects of Beauty (integritas, consonantia (proportion), claritas) - claritas - toward the radiant actuality of the thing-in-itself. The artist's "epiphany" is a recognition of this unique and particular radiance - the essence of the thing itself - its quiddity.
Joyce's attitude paralleled the Russian Acmeist revolt against Symbolism (at the same period - around 1910 - roughly, birth of Modernism). The Acmeists aimed to praise and celebrate this world (not the cloudy otherworld of the Symbolists) - mirrored in the autotelic craftsmanship of the Modernist art-work.
I think if we took Aquinas' triform definition as a starting-point today, we might bend it slightly differently.
Poetry : speech made beautiful.
Beautiful : and beauty is a kind of end-in-itself. The existence of a work of art is justified by its beauty.
But what is beauty? Joyce's equation relating to the 3rd aspect (clarity = radiance = object's quiddity) - perhaps, for us, falls slightly short.
Today we might relate claritas to intelligibility.
Radiance is not merely self-contained in the object, autotelic, self-generated. Claritas (as well as integritas or wholeness and consonantia or proportion) interpenetrates, transcends its own borders, surpasses itself. The harmony of these aspects is both 1) reflected in the perceiving mind, and 2) echoed & magnified in general experience or reality as a whole. Thus the object is radiant with its own quiddity, but only in the context of universal wholeness or integrity.
This is a shift I guess slightly away from Aristotelian analytics toward Platonic synthesis. But both Aristotle and Aquinas can show a continuum or relation (which Modernism downplayed) between the object's quiddity and universality. Eco's comments (see link above) point the way.
In Aristotle, art understood as craft shows a duplex beauty. An axe can be both 1) beautiful to look at, and 2) beautiful or fitting in fulfilling its purpose, its end (telos). The axe is designed so as to chop wood beautifully. The ship is beautiful in fulfillment of its practical purpose - it sails well.
As Eco notes, for the ancients and the medievals, humankind's existence was understood as having a spiritual purpose or telos. Inasmuch as art serves that end, it is beautiful in Aristotle's second sense. Beauty, Goodness and Truth coalesce in that spiritual telos. Here is where Plato unites with Aristotle.
The radiance of intelligibility is a measure of an art work's integration with universal human purposes. Truth, vision, wisdom... this is the range toward which art can rise, by way of claritas-intelligibility.
Can you see where I'm tending with this?
I'm going back to the issues raised yesterday, with reference to Virgil and the mystery of the poet. The "audacity" of the poet is a spiritual audacity : the willingness to stand at the border between "Iron Age" and "Golden Age". Between humanity's universal purposes, and more short-term (seemingly practical) aims and desires.
In this sense the poet is only a more acute representation of the writer in general or the artist in general, just as the writer or artist is only a "signifier" for Everyman and Everywoman, for humanity in general. That is, the contradictions at the heart of human experience - between now and forever, earth and heaven, self and other, universal and particular - are signified - emblematized - by the artist.
It's this inward contradiction which accounts for the "outsiderness" of the artist - again, perhaps most acutely represented by the poet. In the context of practical America, consider the unique (& very personal, very idiosyncratic) estrangements at the core of the lives of Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Poe, Pound, Eliot, Crane, Bishop... etc. et al.
Because the oscillation between Iron and Gold, earth and heaven, body and soul has both psychological and political - personal and social - ramifications.
"I had come to hear that great things might be true. This I was told on the Christopher Street ferry. Marvelous gestures had to be made and Humboldt made them. He told me that poets ought to figure out how to get around pragmatic America. He poured it on for me that day. And there I was, having raptures, gotten up as a Fuller Brush salesman in a smothering wool suit, a hand-me down from Julius. The pants were big in the waist and the shirt ballooned out, for my brother Julius had a fat chest. I wiped my sweat with a handkerchief stitched with a J."
- Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift
*
p.s. of course the 20th-cent. Moderns illustrated their own forms of "spirituality". There's a spiritual-scientific aspect to the artist's personal renunciation in pursuit of the "objective correlative" or the Joycean epiphany. Yeats's "profane perfection of Mankind".
Noticed that labels I created in the index using a slash (ie. form/structure, church/state) were not searchable. I've renamed them, using dashes, etc.
5.31.2007
I'm quite pickled & packed now, what with my Index of labels & pocket-size books. (Basically have been avoiding difficult patch in poem I'm working on.)
My blog is a self-enclosed discourse-world, fully self-sufficient, quite disconnected from the established Organs of Poesie. What does it all mean?
My obsessive interests, my speculations & hortatory p'lemics, my vast ambitious compile-ations...
My unease with the duplex nature of versifyin' in the world (toy, serene pastime, abject tomfoolery, useless hobby, voice of revolt, vehicle of civilization, wisdom & learning, visionary prophecy...)
My non-place in all the places of Poe-Land...
Got me thinking about a book I read many years ago, by Christine Perkell - The Poet's Truth. About Virgil's Georgics. Couldn't find it in the library, but I see it's online.
Wherein the poet's role (& its "audacity") is contrasted (Orpheus vs. Aristaeus) with that of the practical farmer. The poet channels "Golden Age" values (pity, peace, non-violence) against the present "Iron Age" (of war, necessity, competition, violence).
Maybe more on this later.
My blog is a self-enclosed discourse-world, fully self-sufficient, quite disconnected from the established Organs of Poesie. What does it all mean?
My obsessive interests, my speculations & hortatory p'lemics, my vast ambitious compile-ations...
My unease with the duplex nature of versifyin' in the world (toy, serene pastime, abject tomfoolery, useless hobby, voice of revolt, vehicle of civilization, wisdom & learning, visionary prophecy...)
My non-place in all the places of Poe-Land...
Got me thinking about a book I read many years ago, by Christine Perkell - The Poet's Truth. About Virgil's Georgics. Couldn't find it in the library, but I see it's online.
Wherein the poet's role (& its "audacity") is contrasted (Orpheus vs. Aristaeus) with that of the practical farmer. The poet channels "Golden Age" values (pity, peace, non-violence) against the present "Iron Age" (of war, necessity, competition, violence).
Maybe more on this later.
OK, this is it for the tinkering for a while. I've re-done the book of early poems, Way Stations, with a new cover (actually an old design from a chapbook of 18 yrs ago).
5.30.2007
5.29.2007
The Grassblade Light, 2nd volume in long poem Forth of July (& a sequel to Stubborn), is also now available in pocket-size edition. I'm getting a little better at photo-editing. This book includes images from the original chapbooks (which now make up the poem's 7 chapters).
I suppose all these kaleidoscopic editions are rather bewildering. But I'm pleased with the changes. The books are handier, better-looking, & more individualized (not to mention less expensive). Look out, Penguins !
I suppose all these kaleidoscopic editions are rather bewildering. But I'm pleased with the changes. The books are handier, better-looking, & more individualized (not to mention less expensive). Look out, Penguins !
5.25.2007
Stubborn Grew now joins the pocket-size editions. Includes the original collages (& some new illustrations). You can preview it there.
5.24.2007
The subject labels posted today gather up some of the main themes of HG Poetics. It's a very informal catalog... much has been left out.
Hopefully a few intrepid explorers will enjoy finding their own way through the labyrinth.
Hopefully a few intrepid explorers will enjoy finding their own way through the labyrinth.
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : history (label : subject/history).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
There are many others...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
There are many others...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : painting (label : subject/painting).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
There are many others...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
There are many others...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : consciousness (label : subject/consciousness).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many others): icon, Peirce, subjectivity, "J"...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many others): icon, Peirce, subjectivity, "J"...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : HG poems (label : subject/HG poems).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : Henry (label : subject/Henry).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are others) : breakdown, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry's books, Shakespeare...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are others) : breakdown, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry's books, Shakespeare...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : long poems (label : subject/long poems).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many others):
American poetry, Dante, narrative, numerology, Stubborn Grew...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many others):
American poetry, Dante, narrative, numerology, Stubborn Grew...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : polemics (label : subject/polemics).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many others) : carpitude, cheese poetics, community, ideology, satire, social role...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many others) : carpitude, cheese poetics, community, ideology, satire, social role...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : poetics (label : subject/poetics).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many, many others) :
allusion, beauty, commentary, complexity, incarnational poetics, literary absolute, mathematics, musicality, negative capability, paraphrase, reader, recapitulation, time...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Related topics (there are many, many others) :
allusion, beauty, commentary, complexity, incarnational poetics, literary absolute, mathematics, musicality, negative capability, paraphrase, reader, recapitulation, time...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : Russia (label : subject/Russia).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Some related topics (there are many others) :
byt, Futurism, Glazov-Corrigan, Potebnia, Russian Ark, Russian art, Tom Epstein, translations, Tsvetaeva...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Some related topics (there are many others) :
byt, Futurism, Glazov-Corrigan, Potebnia, Russian Ark, Russian art, Tom Epstein, translations, Tsvetaeva...
Here is a cluster of Index labels under the subject : criticism (label : subject/criticism).
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Some related topics (there are many others) :
Acmeism, academy, affinities, American culture, American poetry, Aristotle, classic, classicism, Coleridge, commentary, disinterestedness, holism, investigative poetics, Modernism, postmodernism, Russian poetry, style, wholeness...
I haven't linked to every term in the numerical series for some of these labels (i.e. criticism2, criticism3...), but only to the initial term (i.e. criticism). (See Index for more on this.)
Some related topics (there are many others) :
Acmeism, academy, affinities, American culture, American poetry, Aristotle, classic, classicism, Coleridge, commentary, disinterestedness, holism, investigative poetics, Modernism, postmodernism, Russian poetry, style, wholeness...
I'm going to try adding some homemade subject labels to the Index. The aim is to facilitate searching. These labels will be links to a small cluster of labels on a general topic. I'm sure I'll miss some... also, the number of labels I can add to each post is severely limited. So I'll include a list of related (unlinked) labels in the body of the post.
All the subject labels will be in this form : subject: (ie. subject:criticism).
In order to do this I'll have to post a separate blog entry for each subject. I'm not going to include each separate label in a numbered series (ie. criticism, criticism2, criticism3...) - only the first one (ie. criticism).
Please bear with me... this is an experiment.
All the subject labels will be in this form : subject: (ie. subject:criticism).
In order to do this I'll have to post a separate blog entry for each subject. I'm not going to include each separate label in a numbered series (ie. criticism, criticism2, criticism3...) - only the first one (ie. criticism).
Please bear with me... this is an experiment.
5.23.2007
Something to read... (see Index)
http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Byzantium
or this one...
http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/language poetry
(often I favor the earlier entries...)
http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Byzantium
or this one...
http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/language poetry
(often I favor the earlier entries...)
What's a classic, then?
A classic is a work that remains interesting - necessary - on many levels and in various dimensions of society. That is, valuable to both young lovers & old scholars.
Classic (the adjective) does not by any means equate to famous, successful, traditional, formal, classical, classy, etc.
It does, however, have connotations of original or ground-breaking. Because a classic is - somehow - both inimitable and foundational. It sets the pattern or template for something new which becomes perennial. A true invention.
5.22.2007
Labeling the archives still... almost done...
I thought this one from Dec. 2004 was a pretty good starter-document for would-be critics...
Sort of chimed with a fleeting thought I had yesterday : that the deeper intent of the "serious poet" is - not to become famous, but to become a classic.
I thought this one from Dec. 2004 was a pretty good starter-document for would-be critics...
Sort of chimed with a fleeting thought I had yesterday : that the deeper intent of the "serious poet" is - not to become famous, but to become a classic.
5.21.2007
5.18.2007
Now my Index is in pretty good shape, I hope. But I'm only about a third of the way through the archives, so will keep at it.
The fact that I circle around a few obsessive hobby-horses over & over might be an advantage. Adds a diachronic dimension. The topics mesh, occasionally - so the reader can sort of wander through the labyrinth. No doubt much of it is eminently skippable - but the skips aren't long, entries are short.
Labels add coherence to my incoherence, make HG Poetics more reader-friendly (maybe). It's like a catalog. No accident I work in a library. A new kind of book, I guess.
This is also an opportunity for self-examination... maybe more on that later.
The fact that I circle around a few obsessive hobby-horses over & over might be an advantage. Adds a diachronic dimension. The topics mesh, occasionally - so the reader can sort of wander through the labyrinth. No doubt much of it is eminently skippable - but the skips aren't long, entries are short.
Labels add coherence to my incoherence, make HG Poetics more reader-friendly (maybe). It's like a catalog. No accident I work in a library. A new kind of book, I guess.
This is also an opportunity for self-examination... maybe more on that later.
5.17.2007
Index to HG Poetics
Below is a list of all current labels for HG Poetics topics. I don't know yet how to create direct links from this index, but you can Do It Yourself : just copy this url : http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/... - and after the final slash, add on whichever individual topic (from the list below) you want to investigate.
Example : http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Joachim of Fiore
There are also a few "subject" labels. These links provide clusters of related topics - for example, "subject:criticism" collects some of the labels covered by this general subject.
(I've added a link to this post at INDEX on the sidebar, & will update it as it grows.)
Note : there is a neo-medieval glitch in my scriptorium. Because I am loth to choose an updated Blogger template (I love ye old HG Poetics), these labels currently show a maximum of 20 posts only. I don't know how to tweak the html to fix this. So for topics with over 20 entries, I've used the identical label, and numbered them (ie. Mandelstam, Mandelstam2; or Rest Note, Rest Note2, Rest Note3...). To read all the entries on these topics, you have to search each numbered label separately.
(It's easy, actually. Just enter the url - for example, http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Rest Note. Then, to see the other entries for this label, just add a number (2, 3, 4...) at the end of the url, and go there - ie., http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Rest Note2 )
"A" "Henry" "J" "J"2 "M" "W" 1001 Nights 11 1132 132 20th century 20th-century poetry 29 5.28 5.29 9.11 Aaron Beck abject Abolone Abraham academy Acmeism Acmeism2 Acmeism3 acorns action Adagia Adam Kirsch Admiralty adolescence Adorno aesthetics aesthetics2 affinities affirmation Africa Agamben AIDS AIEE Poetry Aizenberg Akhmatova Al Franken Al-Khidr Alan Shaw Alastair Fowler Albright Alcalay alchemy Aleksandr Wat Aleppo Alexander Deriev Alexandrov Alfred Schwaid algorithms Alice Notley alienation Allan Bloom allegory Allen Bramhall Allen Grossman Allen Tate allusion almond Altieri Amazon ambition Ambler America American culture American poetry American poetry2 American poetry3 American Renaissance American speech Americana Amsterdam analogy Anastasios Kozaitis Ancient Light Ancients Andrei Rublev Andrew Ford Andrey Gritsman Ange Mlinko Angel angels Anne Hutchinson Anne Lauterbach Anne Winters Anny Ballardini Anny Ballardini2 Anselm Berrigan antennae Antheil anthologies anthology Anthony Hecht Anthony Lane anti-intellectualism anti-poetry anti-war poems Antichrist Apex of the M apocalypse Appalachia Aquinas architecture Arendt argument Ariadne Ariosto Aristotle Arizona Ark Arnason ars est celare artem Ars Interpres art Arthur Miller artifact artifice Ashbery Asian poetry assassination Athens/Jerusalem Atlantean Atlantis atonement Auden audio recitation Auerbach Austin Farrer authority autonomy Autumn Door Autumn Leaves avant-garde babble Bachelard Bacigalupo Bacon Bahr ballades baptism Barbara Guest Basilique Sainte-Madeleine Baudelaire Baxter Hathaway Beatrice beats beauty beauty2 Beckett Bede bees Beethoven Behrle belief Bellow bells Ben Jonson Benchley Benedict XVI Beowulf Bergson Berkeley Berryman Berryman2 Berryman3 Bhagavad Gita Bible Bible2 Biehrl Billington binaries bird-clock birds birthdays Black Madonna blackface Blackmur Blackstone Blackstone2 Blake Blanchot blogs Bloomsday Blue Guitar Bluejay Bluejay2 blues bluntness Bly boats Bob Dylan Boethius bohemian Bonaventure book bookworm Borges botany Bourdieu Bowling for Columbine breakdown breeze Brent Cunningham Brian Corman Brian Henry Brian Phillips Bridge Broch Brodsky Brodsky2 Brooks brothers Brown Univ. Bruegel Buck Downs Budick Buffalo Poetics List Burning Deck butterflies byt Byzantium cabala Cain-Abel calendar calendar2 calendar3 calendar4 Calvin Coolidge camouflage Campion Campo Candice Millard Cantor Cantos capitalism Captain Gago Cara Gould Carol Christ Caroline Gordon carpitude Cassiopoeia Cassirer Castel del Monte cat catabasis catachresis catenary Catherine Daly Catherine Drinker Bowen cattywompus Cavafy cavaliers CD Wright Celan Ceravolo Chagall Champollion Chan's chapbook Chapel Chapel Hill Chaplinesque chariot charismatic charity Charles Bernstein Charles Olson Charles Olson2 Charles Simic Charles Williams Charles Wright Chaucer cheese poetics Chet Baker Chicago Chicago School Chicago School2 Chicago School3 childhood children's fiction Chinese painting Chopin Chretien de Troyes Chris Kraemer Chris Lott Chris Murray Christian Bok Christianity Christopher Middleton church church-state Cianci cicadas Cid Corman ciphers circumference cities civil society civilization Clarence Brown clarity Clark Coolidge classic classicism Claudia Rankine Cleanth Brooks Clement of Alexandria Clio Clive James Cloisters close readings clown coda coincidentia oppositorum Coleridge Colette Fournier collage color comic commandments commentary commentary2 common good communication community community organizing complexity composition composition2 composition3 Conceptual Poetics conchology conducting Confessional poets Confidence Man confusion conjectures Conrad Aiken consciousness contemplation contests Coppo di Marcovaldo coracle cosmology Costaguana coterie counterfeiting covenants cowboys creation creative writing Creeley crickets criticism criticism2 criticism3 criticism4 criticism5 criticism6 Crusades culture Cusanus Cusanus2 Cushman D'Annunzio Dale Smith Dana Gioia dance dancing Daniel Green Daniel Pritchard Dante Dante2 Dante3 Dark Lady dark matter Darwin David Cashman David Hess David Jones David Kellogg David Kennedy David Orr daydreams decadents decorum deeds deep image Degas Delmore Schwartz Delos Sackett delusions democracy Dennett Denny Moers depth Derek Walcott desire detachment dialogue Diane Gilliam Fisher Dickinson diction difficulty digital emunction dilettantism Dirk Bogarde discourse disinterestedness disjunction dissonance divine Providence DM Thomas documents Dogtown Dolphy domestic hellenism Don Share Donald Justice Donne Dorn Dorr doubleness doubloon Douglas Bush Dove Street Dove Street2 Dove Street3 doves drama dream songs dream-vision dreams Drew Gardner ducats Duccio Duemer duende Dugan Duluth dynamic symmetry early poems early poems2 early poems3 Easter Ecclesiastes Eco economic justice Ed Dorn Edgar Wind Edmund Burke Edmund Wilson education Edward Coke Edward Taylor Edwin Honig ee cummings Ehrenpreis Eileen Tabios Einstein ekphrasis Elder Olson Eleanor Cook elegy Elena Shvarts Elena Shvarts2 Elijah Elio Eliot Eliot Weinberger Eliot2 Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Robinson Elizabeth Willis Emanuel Ax embodiment Emerson emotion empathy Empson England English poetry enigma epic epicurean epilepsy Epiphany epistemology epistles equality equanimity equilibrium Eric Selinger Erica Dorf error Erwin Schrodinger espionage essays essays2 eternal return eternity ethics Ethiopia Everyman evil exile expatriates experience experimentalism Fagles failure fair faith Falstaff fame family family crest famine Famous Reporter fate father Faust Fawcett Fellini Felstiner feminine feminism Ferrini fibonacci Ficino film finish Finnegans Wake fire first idea fitness flarf Flaubert fluency folk poetry Fontegaia Fontegaia2 Fontegaia3 Fontegaia4 Fontegaia5 Fontegaia6 Fontegaia7 Fontegaia8 form-content form-structure form-structure2 form-structure3 form-structure4 formalism Forrest Gander Forth of July Forth of July2 Forth of July3 Forth of July4 Forth of July5 Forth of July6 fortress Foust Fox Point Fragment from Purg. frames France Frank Samperi Franz Wright Frayn Frederick II free verse freedom fresco Frisbee Fulcrum fullness fundamentalism Futurism Gabriel Gudding Gabriel Gudding2 Galvin Galway Kinnell Gandhi Gardner Gary Sullivan Gateway Arch gender generals Genesis genius genre Geoffrey Hill geometry George Henry Gould George Kline Gerrit Lansing Gertrude Stein gesture ghazals Ghelderode ghost dance Giants in the Earth Gill Gillian Rose Giotto Glass of Green Tea Glazov-Corrigan Glenn Gould glose glut GM Hopkins Go Little Sparrow God Godel Golden Gate goldfinch Goncharov good will Gospels Gould ancestors Gould Island Goulds government grace Grace Ravlin Grain Elevator Grand Fenwick Grassblade Light Grassblade Light2 Grassblade Light3 Greeks Green Constellation Green Tea Greenblatt Greene Grenier grey grid Grunewald Guatemala Guggenheim Guillaume Barre Guillem de Gellone Gumilev Gunslinger Guy Davenport gyroscope H.D. H.L. Humes hacks Halliday Halloween halos Hamlet Hamlet's Mill harmony Harold Bloom Harold Kaplan Harriet blog Harry Howe Harry Mulisch Hart Crane Hart Crane2 Hart Crane3 Hart Crane4 Harvey Shapiro Hat Hawkwood heaven Hebraism Hecht Heckenberger Hedy Lamarr Heidegger Hejinian Helen Gardner Helen Vendler Helen Whitman Hellenism Hen biography Hendrix Heninger Henry bio3 Henry bio4 Henry bio5 Henry bio6 Henry bio7 Henry Adams Henry bio Henry bio2 Henry bio7 Henry IV Henry James Henry music Henry music2 Henry music3 Henry redivivus Henry Thunder Winnebago Henry V Henry VII Henry's books Heraclitus hermeneutics hermetic heroic poetry heroism Hersh Herzog Hess Hessler hesychasm heteronyms HG in print HG Poetics HG Poetics2 HG timeline hg video Hiawatha hidden hieroglyphics hieros gamos history history2 Hitchens Hobo/hobos Hobo/hobos2 Hoboken hokum Holbein Holderlin holism Holocaust homelessness hoopoe hope Horace horses horseshoe Houlihan House Organ Human Manifesto human nature Human Poetics humanism Humboldt's Gift hummingbird humor IA Richards IB Singer Icarus icon idealism identification identity ideology idiom Ignatius Donnelly Ignatow ignorance illness image image2 imagination Imagism imago Dei improvisation impulse In RI In RI2 incarnation incarnational poetics independence index India Point Indian pipes indie-crit individualism infinity influences injustice insufficiency integrity intellect intelligent design intention interlocutor interviews intuition inventions investigative poetics involuntary memory Iran Iraq Iraq2 Irma Brandeis iron irony Irwin Is Islam Island Road Island Road2 Island Road3 isomorphism Israel Italy Izenberg J. Lesselbaum Jack Birss Jack Kimball Jack Spandrift Jacket magazine Jackson Pollock James D. Bloom James F. Cotter James Gould James Madison James Merrill James Ravlin James Wood James Wright Jasper Johns jazz Jeff Clark Jeff Greenspoon Jeffery Bahr Jeffrey Walker Jennifer Moxley Jeremiah Jerusalem Jerusalem Chamber Jessica Stern Jesus jewelry Jews JF Powers JFK Jim Chapin Jim Harrison Joachim of Fiore Joan Houlihan Joan Retallack Joe Gould John Barr John Irwin John Keats John Latta John Latta2 John Latta3 John Latta4 John McKay John Michell Jonathan Ivry Jordan Davis Jordan Davis2 Joseph Conrad Joseph Cornell Joseph Mitchell Joseph Rock Joseph Roth Josh Corey Josh Corey2 Joshua Clover journalism Joyce Jubilee Judaism judgement jug bands Julie Christie Juliet Julietta 484 Julius July July2 jungle just war justice K-2 poetry Kafka Kalevala Kant Kantorowicz Karen Donovan Karl Young Kasey Mohammad Kasey Mohammad2 Katrina Kay Ryan Keith Waldrop Keith Ward Kenneth Cox Kenneth Warren Kent Johnson Kent Johnson2 Kent Johnson3 Keppel-Jones Kermit Roosevelt Kerouac KGB Bar Khlebnikov kickshaws Kim Lyons kingfisher kingship Kinsella kinship Kirsch knowledge Koeneke Kooser Kristin Prevallet Kruchenyk Kublai Khan Kundera Kwinter La Paz labor labyrinth Laforgue landscape Langdon Hammer language language poetry language poetry2 language poets Lanthanum Lanthanum Road Lanthanum2 lanthanum3 Lanthanum4 Lanthanum5 lanthanum6 Larkin Last Supper lastingness Laura Carter law law of identity Lawrence Lazarus Lee Smolin Leggett Len Deighton Leo Steinberg Leo Strauss Leonardo Leopardi Lermontov Leslie Caron letters (alphabet) letters (alphabet)2 Lev Rubinstein Levenson library life light limericks Lincoln line Lippo Memmi Lippo Vanni Lisa Jarnot literacy literalism literary absolute literary democracy literary friendship literary ghosts literary models literary time literary values little tree logic logos London long poems long poems2 long poems3 Longfellow longing Lorenzetti Lorine Niedecker Louis Menand lousanna Louth love love poetry love2 Lovecraft Low Lowell Lucky lyric Mackie Magdalen magi mainstream Mairead Byrne Malcolm Lowry male chauvinism malice Mallarme Malte mandala Mandelstam Mandelstam2 Mandelstam3 Mandelstam4 Mandelstam5 Mandelstam6 Mandelstam7 manifesto mappamondo marginality Marian Anderson Marianne Moore Mark Scroggins Marlow Marlowe Marsden Hartley Martin Luther King Martin Ramirez Marvell Mary Douglas Mary Karr mask mathematics matrix Matthew Arnold Matthias Mauron maxims maxims2 maxims3 Maximus Maximus the Confessor Maxine Moore May 29 Mayakovsky Mayans Mayhew Mayhew2 Mayhew3 maze Mazzotta McCaffery McClatchy McKane meaning Medusa Mel Gibson melancholy Melchior Melchizedek Melville Melville2 memoir Memorial Day memory memory2 Mendelssohn neighborhood Merrill Gilfillan Merwin messiah metaform metaphor metaphysics metapoetry meteorite metrics Michael Andre Bernstein Michael Eskin Michael Gizzi Michael Gould Michael Harper Michael Moore Michael Theune microcosm Middle Ages middle voice Midwest Midwest Elegies Mike Magee Mike Snider militarism Milman Parry Milosz Milton mimesis Minneapolis Minnesota Minnesota2 Mississippi MLK Moby Dick modernism modernism2 modernity Moevs monasticism monotheism Montaigne Montale moon moralism morality Moschos mosquitos mother Mount David movies Mudlark Mukarovsky mundus Muriel Spark muse muse2 music music2 musicality Musil My Byzantium mystery mystery plays myth Nabokov Nabokov2 Nada Gordon Nadezhda Mandelstam Nancy Kendrick Nancy Pollak narcissism Narragansetts narrative Nathanael West National Poetry Foundation national security Native American Nativity natural law naturalist nature Naumov Nazarene Neanderthals necessity Nedge nef negative capability Negus Nemirovsky neo-classicism neo-medieval Netherlandish art New Americans New Criticism New England New Orleans New Orleans2 New Yorker New Zealand Newman Newport Nicholas Laughlin nightingale Nikolaev Nile nine Noam Chomsky nocturne nominalism nonviolence normative Northrop Frye nostalgia Nostromo notes Notes Toward and so on novels novels2 Novus Ordo Seclorum nowness numerology numerology2 Nuttall NY School NYC O'Donovan O'Hara Oak Tree Day OBERIU obfuscation obituary objective correlative Objectivists objectivity Oblomov obscurity ocarina Ocean State octets Octopus magazine Odysseas Elytes Ohmann oikos Ojibwa old poets olive Omry Ronen Onegin Oppen oppositionalism oppositionalism2 oracles oral poetry order Orhan Pamuk origami originality orotund Orpheus Orpheus2 Orthodoxy Oscar Williams osier otfe otherworldliness Ovid Packer painting painting2 Pale Fire Palio Pankey parable Paraclete paradise Paradise Lost paradox Paragraph paraphrase pariah Paris Pascal Pasternak pastoral Paterson path P pathos Paul Fry Paul Lake Paul Mariani Paula Tatarunis Pavese Pawtucket Peanuts pearls Peirce pencils Penelope penny pentameter perfect Perloff permanence Perry Miller persiflage Pessoa Peter Marquez Peter Murphy Peter O'Leary Peter Riley Peter S. Thompson Petrie Petroski phaser Philip Guston Philip K. Dick Philippe Claudel philosophy phlogiston photos photos2 photos3 photos4 photos5 physics piano Picardy 3rd Pico Piers Plowman Pindar pines Pinsky pivot Plato play pleasure Pleiades plot Plumbline poetry po-biz po-biz2 po-biz3 po-biz4 po-biz5 Poe poems poet vs. State poetic schools poetic schools2 poetic schools3 poetic schools4 poetic word poetic word2 poetic word3 poetics poetics2 poetics3 poetics4 poetics5 poetry Poetry Magazine Poetry Mission poetry-prose poetry-prose2 poetry2 poets poiesis point polemics polemics2 polemics3 polemics4 polis politics politics2 politics3 Pope popularity populism possible post-avant postmodernism postmodernism2 Potebnia pottery Pound Pound2 poverty power pragmatics praise President prestige Prickett Prof. Hinkel professionalization projectivism prophecy prosody Prospect Park Prospect Terrace protest Proust proverb Providence Providence Journal Providence Review Providence2 Prynne Przybylski psalms psyche psyche2 Puerto Rico puns Purgatory Pushkin Pushkin2 Pushkinism Pynchon Quartermain quatrain Queen of Spades quickening quietude quietude2 quietude3 quipu Qutb R.A. York R.S. Crane R.S. Crane2 race Rachel Blau du Plessis Rachel Wetzsteon radio railroad Rakosi Ralph Maud Ralph Wessman Randall Jarrell Rasula rationalism Ravelstein Ravlin read-along reader readings readings2 realism reality reality2 reason recapitulation recitation redemption Regina Derieva Reginald Shepherd regional rejected poems rejected poems2 religion religion2 religious persecution Renaissance Rene Girard renewal repose resonance Rest Note Rest Note2 Rest Note3 Rest Note4 Rest Note5 Restoration era resurrection revelation reverie reviews rhetoric Rhode Island Rhode Island2 Rhodian Manifesto rhodora rhyme Richard Dawkins Richard II Richard McKeon Richard Swinburne ridda riddle Riffaterre righteousness rightness Rilke Rimbaud ring-structure Rite of Spring rivers rivers2 Robert Alter Robert Archambeau Robert Archambeau2 Robert Bly Robert Duncan Robert Frost Robert Vincent Robinson Roger Williams Roger Williams2 Rogier van der Weyden Roland Rolling Stones Romanticism Rome Ron Silliman Ron Silliman2 Ron Silliman3 Ron Silliman4 Ronen Rosmarie Waldrop Ross McDonald Rostropovich Rothko roundheads Rousseau Royal Palm royal seal Rumsfeld Runciman Russell Russia Russia2 Russian Ark Russian art Russian Formalism Russian poetry Russian poetry2 Rykwert Saarinen sabbath sadness Saenz salience Sam Hamill Samizdat magazine Samuel Greenberg Sanford Budick Sanford Schwartz Sappho Sasquatch Sassetta satire Saturn Saul Bellow scapegoat Schell schtick Schwerner science scripture sculpture secularism Seine self-parody self-publishing self-reflexive sensibility seraph seriousness service sestina sexism sexuality Shakespeare Shakespeare's Head Shakespeare2 Shanna Compton shape poems Shattuck Sheba Sherry Brennan Sherwood Anderson ships Shirley Jackson Shklovsky Sibelius Siena Siena2 silence Simon Dedeo Simone Martini Simone Weil Simonides simplicity sincerity Sir Thomas Browne Siskind Skidan Skunk Hour slang slimy rime Snider social role social role2 social role3 social role4 sociology soil solipsism Somatic Mirror song song2 sonnets Sophie sophism Sophocles soul soul freedom sound speech speed Spinoza spirituality spleen sports Spring Quartet St. Francis St. George St. Louis St. Luke St. Patrick St. Paul St. Petersburg St. Petersburg2 Staiger Stalin Stanley Moss star statues Steele Stefans Stepanchev Stephanie Young Stephen Burt Stephen Ellis Steve Evans Stevens Stevens2 Stevens3 Stoicheff Stone stones string theory structure4 Stuart Blazer Stubborn Grew Stubborn Grew2 Stubborn Grew3 Stubborn Grew4 study style subject:consciousness subject:criticism subject:Henry subject:HG poems subject:history subject:long poems subject:painting subject:poetics subject:polemics subject:Russia subjectivity sublime submarines suicide Suite Francaise Sukenick summer Superman Supreme Fiction surpassing surprise Susan Brown Susan Howe Susan Stewart swing Sylvia Moubayed Sylvia Petrie symbol Symbolism synthesis Tagliabue Talisman talk Tarkovsky Tartt taste Tate tautology technique Ted Berrigan teleology telos Temple Emanu-el temple-cleansing Tennyson terrorism Terry Eagleton text Thanksgiving The Hat the person the person2 The Return theism theme Theocritus theology theology2 theory Theune Thilleman Thoreau Tim Yu Timaeus time Time Flowers time travel time-space time2 Timothy Hyman Tiscione To Natasha Shtempel Tocqueville Toledo tolerance Tom Chandler Tom Clark Tom Davis Tom Epstein Tom Fleming Tom Raworth Tomlinson Tony Tost torque torture toys TR tradition tradition2 tradition3 transcendentalist Transit of Venus translations transumption Treadwell trees trickster Trinity triptych trobar clus tropics trumpets trusty truth Tsvetaeva tunnels Turing turtles Tutu Twins typewriter typology Unconquerable World Underground City understanding understatement United States unity universalism Updike Urs von Balthasar ut pictura poiesis utopia vagueness Valentine's Day Valery Valis Vallejo Vancouver Vasily Grossman venants Vendler Venus Vertigo vesica Vico Victorians Vienna Viereck Viola Sachs violence Virgil Virgin vision vision2 Voronezh Vvedensky W Wachtel Waitts Wanda Landowska war War and Peace war2 Washington Watermelon Pickle waves Way Stations Way Stations2 Way Stations3 WC Williams weather Weinberger Weinstein weirdness Weldon Kees well wellness wheel of Virgil Whitman Whitman2 wholeness wholeness2 Wilbur Willa Cather William Dalrymple William Gould William Logan William Safire Williams Winesburg Ohio Winters wisdom wit Witz Wolfram wonder work worldview writer's block WW Brown WW I Wyatt Wyoming Yeats Yourcenar YouTube Yvor Winters Zaccheus Gould zeitgeist Zolli Zukofsky
... so take Path P into labyrinth HG P.
Example : http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Joachim of Fiore
There are also a few "subject" labels. These links provide clusters of related topics - for example, "subject:criticism" collects some of the labels covered by this general subject.
(I've added a link to this post at INDEX on the sidebar, & will update it as it grows.)
Note : there is a neo-medieval glitch in my scriptorium. Because I am loth to choose an updated Blogger template (I love ye old HG Poetics), these labels currently show a maximum of 20 posts only. I don't know how to tweak the html to fix this. So for topics with over 20 entries, I've used the identical label, and numbered them (ie. Mandelstam, Mandelstam2; or Rest Note, Rest Note2, Rest Note3...). To read all the entries on these topics, you have to search each numbered label separately.
(It's easy, actually. Just enter the url - for example, http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Rest Note. Then, to see the other entries for this label, just add a number (2, 3, 4...) at the end of the url, and go there - ie., http://hgpoetics.blogspot.com/search/label/Rest Note2 )
"A" "Henry" "J" "J"2 "M" "W" 1001 Nights 11 1132 132 20th century 20th-century poetry 29 5.28 5.29 9.11 Aaron Beck abject Abolone Abraham academy Acmeism Acmeism2 Acmeism3 acorns action Adagia Adam Kirsch Admiralty adolescence Adorno aesthetics aesthetics2 affinities affirmation Africa Agamben AIDS AIEE Poetry Aizenberg Akhmatova Al Franken Al-Khidr Alan Shaw Alastair Fowler Albright Alcalay alchemy Aleksandr Wat Aleppo Alexander Deriev Alexandrov Alfred Schwaid algorithms Alice Notley alienation Allan Bloom allegory Allen Bramhall Allen Grossman Allen Tate allusion almond Altieri Amazon ambition Ambler America American culture American poetry American poetry2 American poetry3 American Renaissance American speech Americana Amsterdam analogy Anastasios Kozaitis Ancient Light Ancients Andrei Rublev Andrew Ford Andrey Gritsman Ange Mlinko Angel angels Anne Hutchinson Anne Lauterbach Anne Winters Anny Ballardini Anny Ballardini2 Anselm Berrigan antennae Antheil anthologies anthology Anthony Hecht Anthony Lane anti-intellectualism anti-poetry anti-war poems Antichrist Apex of the M apocalypse Appalachia Aquinas architecture Arendt argument Ariadne Ariosto Aristotle Arizona Ark Arnason ars est celare artem Ars Interpres art Arthur Miller artifact artifice Ashbery Asian poetry assassination Athens/Jerusalem Atlantean Atlantis atonement Auden audio recitation Auerbach Austin Farrer authority autonomy Autumn Door Autumn Leaves avant-garde babble Bachelard Bacigalupo Bacon Bahr ballades baptism Barbara Guest Basilique Sainte-Madeleine Baudelaire Baxter Hathaway Beatrice beats beauty beauty2 Beckett Bede bees Beethoven Behrle belief Bellow bells Ben Jonson Benchley Benedict XVI Beowulf Bergson Berkeley Berryman Berryman2 Berryman3 Bhagavad Gita Bible Bible2 Biehrl Billington binaries bird-clock birds birthdays Black Madonna blackface Blackmur Blackstone Blackstone2 Blake Blanchot blogs Bloomsday Blue Guitar Bluejay Bluejay2 blues bluntness Bly boats Bob Dylan Boethius bohemian Bonaventure book bookworm Borges botany Bourdieu Bowling for Columbine breakdown breeze Brent Cunningham Brian Corman Brian Henry Brian Phillips Bridge Broch Brodsky Brodsky2 Brooks brothers Brown Univ. Bruegel Buck Downs Budick Buffalo Poetics List Burning Deck butterflies byt Byzantium cabala Cain-Abel calendar calendar2 calendar3 calendar4 Calvin Coolidge camouflage Campion Campo Candice Millard Cantor Cantos capitalism Captain Gago Cara Gould Carol Christ Caroline Gordon carpitude Cassiopoeia Cassirer Castel del Monte cat catabasis catachresis catenary Catherine Daly Catherine Drinker Bowen cattywompus Cavafy cavaliers CD Wright Celan Ceravolo Chagall Champollion Chan's chapbook Chapel Chapel Hill Chaplinesque chariot charismatic charity Charles Bernstein Charles Olson Charles Olson2 Charles Simic Charles Williams Charles Wright Chaucer cheese poetics Chet Baker Chicago Chicago School Chicago School2 Chicago School3 childhood children's fiction Chinese painting Chopin Chretien de Troyes Chris Kraemer Chris Lott Chris Murray Christian Bok Christianity Christopher Middleton church church-state Cianci cicadas Cid Corman ciphers circumference cities civil society civilization Clarence Brown clarity Clark Coolidge classic classicism Claudia Rankine Cleanth Brooks Clement of Alexandria Clio Clive James Cloisters close readings clown coda coincidentia oppositorum Coleridge Colette Fournier collage color comic commandments commentary commentary2 common good communication community community organizing complexity composition composition2 composition3 Conceptual Poetics conchology conducting Confessional poets Confidence Man confusion conjectures Conrad Aiken consciousness contemplation contests Coppo di Marcovaldo coracle cosmology Costaguana coterie counterfeiting covenants cowboys creation creative writing Creeley crickets criticism criticism2 criticism3 criticism4 criticism5 criticism6 Crusades culture Cusanus Cusanus2 Cushman D'Annunzio Dale Smith Dana Gioia dance dancing Daniel Green Daniel Pritchard Dante Dante2 Dante3 Dark Lady dark matter Darwin David Cashman David Hess David Jones David Kellogg David Kennedy David Orr daydreams decadents decorum deeds deep image Degas Delmore Schwartz Delos Sackett delusions democracy Dennett Denny Moers depth Derek Walcott desire detachment dialogue Diane Gilliam Fisher Dickinson diction difficulty digital emunction dilettantism Dirk Bogarde discourse disinterestedness disjunction dissonance divine Providence DM Thomas documents Dogtown Dolphy domestic hellenism Don Share Donald Justice Donne Dorn Dorr doubleness doubloon Douglas Bush Dove Street Dove Street2 Dove Street3 doves drama dream songs dream-vision dreams Drew Gardner ducats Duccio Duemer duende Dugan Duluth dynamic symmetry early poems early poems2 early poems3 Easter Ecclesiastes Eco economic justice Ed Dorn Edgar Wind Edmund Burke Edmund Wilson education Edward Coke Edward Taylor Edwin Honig ee cummings Ehrenpreis Eileen Tabios Einstein ekphrasis Elder Olson Eleanor Cook elegy Elena Shvarts Elena Shvarts2 Elijah Elio Eliot Eliot Weinberger Eliot2 Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Robinson Elizabeth Willis Emanuel Ax embodiment Emerson emotion empathy Empson England English poetry enigma epic epicurean epilepsy Epiphany epistemology epistles equality equanimity equilibrium Eric Selinger Erica Dorf error Erwin Schrodinger espionage essays essays2 eternal return eternity ethics Ethiopia Everyman evil exile expatriates experience experimentalism Fagles failure fair faith Falstaff fame family family crest famine Famous Reporter fate father Faust Fawcett Fellini Felstiner feminine feminism Ferrini fibonacci Ficino film finish Finnegans Wake fire first idea fitness flarf Flaubert fluency folk poetry Fontegaia Fontegaia2 Fontegaia3 Fontegaia4 Fontegaia5 Fontegaia6 Fontegaia7 Fontegaia8 form-content form-structure form-structure2 form-structure3 form-structure4 formalism Forrest Gander Forth of July Forth of July2 Forth of July3 Forth of July4 Forth of July5 Forth of July6 fortress Foust Fox Point Fragment from Purg. frames France Frank Samperi Franz Wright Frayn Frederick II free verse freedom fresco Frisbee Fulcrum fullness fundamentalism Futurism Gabriel Gudding Gabriel Gudding2 Galvin Galway Kinnell Gandhi Gardner Gary Sullivan Gateway Arch gender generals Genesis genius genre Geoffrey Hill geometry George Henry Gould George Kline Gerrit Lansing Gertrude Stein gesture ghazals Ghelderode ghost dance Giants in the Earth Gill Gillian Rose Giotto Glass of Green Tea Glazov-Corrigan Glenn Gould glose glut GM Hopkins Go Little Sparrow God Godel Golden Gate goldfinch Goncharov good will Gospels Gould ancestors Gould Island Goulds government grace Grace Ravlin Grain Elevator Grand Fenwick Grassblade Light Grassblade Light2 Grassblade Light3 Greeks Green Constellation Green Tea Greenblatt Greene Grenier grey grid Grunewald Guatemala Guggenheim Guillaume Barre Guillem de Gellone Gumilev Gunslinger Guy Davenport gyroscope H.D. H.L. Humes hacks Halliday Halloween halos Hamlet Hamlet's Mill harmony Harold Bloom Harold Kaplan Harriet blog Harry Howe Harry Mulisch Hart Crane Hart Crane2 Hart Crane3 Hart Crane4 Harvey Shapiro Hat Hawkwood heaven Hebraism Hecht Heckenberger Hedy Lamarr Heidegger Hejinian Helen Gardner Helen Vendler Helen Whitman Hellenism Hen biography Hendrix Heninger Henry bio3 Henry bio4 Henry bio5 Henry bio6 Henry bio7 Henry Adams Henry bio Henry bio2 Henry bio7 Henry IV Henry James Henry music Henry music2 Henry music3 Henry redivivus Henry Thunder Winnebago Henry V Henry VII Henry's books Heraclitus hermeneutics hermetic heroic poetry heroism Hersh Herzog Hess Hessler hesychasm heteronyms HG in print HG Poetics HG Poetics2 HG timeline hg video Hiawatha hidden hieroglyphics hieros gamos history history2 Hitchens Hobo/hobos Hobo/hobos2 Hoboken hokum Holbein Holderlin holism Holocaust homelessness hoopoe hope Horace horses horseshoe Houlihan House Organ Human Manifesto human nature Human Poetics humanism Humboldt's Gift hummingbird humor IA Richards IB Singer Icarus icon idealism identification identity ideology idiom Ignatius Donnelly Ignatow ignorance illness image image2 imagination Imagism imago Dei improvisation impulse In RI In RI2 incarnation incarnational poetics independence index India Point Indian pipes indie-crit individualism infinity influences injustice insufficiency integrity intellect intelligent design intention interlocutor interviews intuition inventions investigative poetics involuntary memory Iran Iraq Iraq2 Irma Brandeis iron irony Irwin Is Islam Island Road Island Road2 Island Road3 isomorphism Israel Italy Izenberg J. Lesselbaum Jack Birss Jack Kimball Jack Spandrift Jacket magazine Jackson Pollock James D. Bloom James F. Cotter James Gould James Madison James Merrill James Ravlin James Wood James Wright Jasper Johns jazz Jeff Clark Jeff Greenspoon Jeffery Bahr Jeffrey Walker Jennifer Moxley Jeremiah Jerusalem Jerusalem Chamber Jessica Stern Jesus jewelry Jews JF Powers JFK Jim Chapin Jim Harrison Joachim of Fiore Joan Houlihan Joan Retallack Joe Gould John Barr John Irwin John Keats John Latta John Latta2 John Latta3 John Latta4 John McKay John Michell Jonathan Ivry Jordan Davis Jordan Davis2 Joseph Conrad Joseph Cornell Joseph Mitchell Joseph Rock Joseph Roth Josh Corey Josh Corey2 Joshua Clover journalism Joyce Jubilee Judaism judgement jug bands Julie Christie Juliet Julietta 484 Julius July July2 jungle just war justice K-2 poetry Kafka Kalevala Kant Kantorowicz Karen Donovan Karl Young Kasey Mohammad Kasey Mohammad2 Katrina Kay Ryan Keith Waldrop Keith Ward Kenneth Cox Kenneth Warren Kent Johnson Kent Johnson2 Kent Johnson3 Keppel-Jones Kermit Roosevelt Kerouac KGB Bar Khlebnikov kickshaws Kim Lyons kingfisher kingship Kinsella kinship Kirsch knowledge Koeneke Kooser Kristin Prevallet Kruchenyk Kublai Khan Kundera Kwinter La Paz labor labyrinth Laforgue landscape Langdon Hammer language language poetry language poetry2 language poets Lanthanum Lanthanum Road Lanthanum2 lanthanum3 Lanthanum4 Lanthanum5 lanthanum6 Larkin Last Supper lastingness Laura Carter law law of identity Lawrence Lazarus Lee Smolin Leggett Len Deighton Leo Steinberg Leo Strauss Leonardo Leopardi Lermontov Leslie Caron letters (alphabet) letters (alphabet)2 Lev Rubinstein Levenson library life light limericks Lincoln line Lippo Memmi Lippo Vanni Lisa Jarnot literacy literalism literary absolute literary democracy literary friendship literary ghosts literary models literary time literary values little tree logic logos London long poems long poems2 long poems3 Longfellow longing Lorenzetti Lorine Niedecker Louis Menand lousanna Louth love love poetry love2 Lovecraft Low Lowell Lucky lyric Mackie Magdalen magi mainstream Mairead Byrne Malcolm Lowry male chauvinism malice Mallarme Malte mandala Mandelstam Mandelstam2 Mandelstam3 Mandelstam4 Mandelstam5 Mandelstam6 Mandelstam7 manifesto mappamondo marginality Marian Anderson Marianne Moore Mark Scroggins Marlow Marlowe Marsden Hartley Martin Luther King Martin Ramirez Marvell Mary Douglas Mary Karr mask mathematics matrix Matthew Arnold Matthias Mauron maxims maxims2 maxims3 Maximus Maximus the Confessor Maxine Moore May 29 Mayakovsky Mayans Mayhew Mayhew2 Mayhew3 maze Mazzotta McCaffery McClatchy McKane meaning Medusa Mel Gibson melancholy Melchior Melchizedek Melville Melville2 memoir Memorial Day memory memory2 Mendelssohn neighborhood Merrill Gilfillan Merwin messiah metaform metaphor metaphysics metapoetry meteorite metrics Michael Andre Bernstein Michael Eskin Michael Gizzi Michael Gould Michael Harper Michael Moore Michael Theune microcosm Middle Ages middle voice Midwest Midwest Elegies Mike Magee Mike Snider militarism Milman Parry Milosz Milton mimesis Minneapolis Minnesota Minnesota2 Mississippi MLK Moby Dick modernism modernism2 modernity Moevs monasticism monotheism Montaigne Montale moon moralism morality Moschos mosquitos mother Mount David movies Mudlark Mukarovsky mundus Muriel Spark muse muse2 music music2 musicality Musil My Byzantium mystery mystery plays myth Nabokov Nabokov2 Nada Gordon Nadezhda Mandelstam Nancy Kendrick Nancy Pollak narcissism Narragansetts narrative Nathanael West National Poetry Foundation national security Native American Nativity natural law naturalist nature Naumov Nazarene Neanderthals necessity Nedge nef negative capability Negus Nemirovsky neo-classicism neo-medieval Netherlandish art New Americans New Criticism New England New Orleans New Orleans2 New Yorker New Zealand Newman Newport Nicholas Laughlin nightingale Nikolaev Nile nine Noam Chomsky nocturne nominalism nonviolence normative Northrop Frye nostalgia Nostromo notes Notes Toward and so on novels novels2 Novus Ordo Seclorum nowness numerology numerology2 Nuttall NY School NYC O'Donovan O'Hara Oak Tree Day OBERIU obfuscation obituary objective correlative Objectivists objectivity Oblomov obscurity ocarina Ocean State octets Octopus magazine Odysseas Elytes Ohmann oikos Ojibwa old poets olive Omry Ronen Onegin Oppen oppositionalism oppositionalism2 oracles oral poetry order Orhan Pamuk origami originality orotund Orpheus Orpheus2 Orthodoxy Oscar Williams osier otfe otherworldliness Ovid Packer painting painting2 Pale Fire Palio Pankey parable Paraclete paradise Paradise Lost paradox Paragraph paraphrase pariah Paris Pascal Pasternak pastoral Paterson path P pathos Paul Fry Paul Lake Paul Mariani Paula Tatarunis Pavese Pawtucket Peanuts pearls Peirce pencils Penelope penny pentameter perfect Perloff permanence Perry Miller persiflage Pessoa Peter Marquez Peter Murphy Peter O'Leary Peter Riley Peter S. Thompson Petrie Petroski phaser Philip Guston Philip K. Dick Philippe Claudel philosophy phlogiston photos photos2 photos3 photos4 photos5 physics piano Picardy 3rd Pico Piers Plowman Pindar pines Pinsky pivot Plato play pleasure Pleiades plot Plumbline poetry po-biz po-biz2 po-biz3 po-biz4 po-biz5 Poe poems poet vs. State poetic schools poetic schools2 poetic schools3 poetic schools4 poetic word poetic word2 poetic word3 poetics poetics2 poetics3 poetics4 poetics5 poetry Poetry Magazine Poetry Mission poetry-prose poetry-prose2 poetry2 poets poiesis point polemics polemics2 polemics3 polemics4 polis politics politics2 politics3 Pope popularity populism possible post-avant postmodernism postmodernism2 Potebnia pottery Pound Pound2 poverty power pragmatics praise President prestige Prickett Prof. Hinkel professionalization projectivism prophecy prosody Prospect Park Prospect Terrace protest Proust proverb Providence Providence Journal Providence Review Providence2 Prynne Przybylski psalms psyche psyche2 Puerto Rico puns Purgatory Pushkin Pushkin2 Pushkinism Pynchon Quartermain quatrain Queen of Spades quickening quietude quietude2 quietude3 quipu Qutb R.A. York R.S. Crane R.S. Crane2 race Rachel Blau du Plessis Rachel Wetzsteon radio railroad Rakosi Ralph Maud Ralph Wessman Randall Jarrell Rasula rationalism Ravelstein Ravlin read-along reader readings readings2 realism reality reality2 reason recapitulation recitation redemption Regina Derieva Reginald Shepherd regional rejected poems rejected poems2 religion religion2 religious persecution Renaissance Rene Girard renewal repose resonance Rest Note Rest Note2 Rest Note3 Rest Note4 Rest Note5 Restoration era resurrection revelation reverie reviews rhetoric Rhode Island Rhode Island2 Rhodian Manifesto rhodora rhyme Richard Dawkins Richard II Richard McKeon Richard Swinburne ridda riddle Riffaterre righteousness rightness Rilke Rimbaud ring-structure Rite of Spring rivers rivers2 Robert Alter Robert Archambeau Robert Archambeau2 Robert Bly Robert Duncan Robert Frost Robert Vincent Robinson Roger Williams Roger Williams2 Rogier van der Weyden Roland Rolling Stones Romanticism Rome Ron Silliman Ron Silliman2 Ron Silliman3 Ron Silliman4 Ronen Rosmarie Waldrop Ross McDonald Rostropovich Rothko roundheads Rousseau Royal Palm royal seal Rumsfeld Runciman Russell Russia Russia2 Russian Ark Russian art Russian Formalism Russian poetry Russian poetry2 Rykwert Saarinen sabbath sadness Saenz salience Sam Hamill Samizdat magazine Samuel Greenberg Sanford Budick Sanford Schwartz Sappho Sasquatch Sassetta satire Saturn Saul Bellow scapegoat Schell schtick Schwerner science scripture sculpture secularism Seine self-parody self-publishing self-reflexive sensibility seraph seriousness service sestina sexism sexuality Shakespeare Shakespeare's Head Shakespeare2 Shanna Compton shape poems Shattuck Sheba Sherry Brennan Sherwood Anderson ships Shirley Jackson Shklovsky Sibelius Siena Siena2 silence Simon Dedeo Simone Martini Simone Weil Simonides simplicity sincerity Sir Thomas Browne Siskind Skidan Skunk Hour slang slimy rime Snider social role social role2 social role3 social role4 sociology soil solipsism Somatic Mirror song song2 sonnets Sophie sophism Sophocles soul soul freedom sound speech speed Spinoza spirituality spleen sports Spring Quartet St. Francis St. George St. Louis St. Luke St. Patrick St. Paul St. Petersburg St. Petersburg2 Staiger Stalin Stanley Moss star statues Steele Stefans Stepanchev Stephanie Young Stephen Burt Stephen Ellis Steve Evans Stevens Stevens2 Stevens3 Stoicheff Stone stones string theory structure4 Stuart Blazer Stubborn Grew Stubborn Grew2 Stubborn Grew3 Stubborn Grew4 study style subject:consciousness subject:criticism subject:Henry subject:HG poems subject:history subject:long poems subject:painting subject:poetics subject:polemics subject:Russia subjectivity sublime submarines suicide Suite Francaise Sukenick summer Superman Supreme Fiction surpassing surprise Susan Brown Susan Howe Susan Stewart swing Sylvia Moubayed Sylvia Petrie symbol Symbolism synthesis Tagliabue Talisman talk Tarkovsky Tartt taste Tate tautology technique Ted Berrigan teleology telos Temple Emanu-el temple-cleansing Tennyson terrorism Terry Eagleton text Thanksgiving The Hat the person the person2 The Return theism theme Theocritus theology theology2 theory Theune Thilleman Thoreau Tim Yu Timaeus time Time Flowers time travel time-space time2 Timothy Hyman Tiscione To Natasha Shtempel Tocqueville Toledo tolerance Tom Chandler Tom Clark Tom Davis Tom Epstein Tom Fleming Tom Raworth Tomlinson Tony Tost torque torture toys TR tradition tradition2 tradition3 transcendentalist Transit of Venus translations transumption Treadwell trees trickster Trinity triptych trobar clus tropics trumpets trusty truth Tsvetaeva tunnels Turing turtles Tutu Twins typewriter typology Unconquerable World Underground City understanding understatement United States unity universalism Updike Urs von Balthasar ut pictura poiesis utopia vagueness Valentine's Day Valery Valis Vallejo Vancouver Vasily Grossman venants Vendler Venus Vertigo vesica Vico Victorians Vienna Viereck Viola Sachs violence Virgil Virgin vision vision2 Voronezh Vvedensky W Wachtel Waitts Wanda Landowska war War and Peace war2 Washington Watermelon Pickle waves Way Stations Way Stations2 Way Stations3 WC Williams weather Weinberger Weinstein weirdness Weldon Kees well wellness wheel of Virgil Whitman Whitman2 wholeness wholeness2 Wilbur Willa Cather William Dalrymple William Gould William Logan William Safire Williams Winesburg Ohio Winters wisdom wit Witz Wolfram wonder work worldview writer's block WW Brown WW I Wyatt Wyoming Yeats Yourcenar YouTube Yvor Winters Zaccheus Gould zeitgeist Zolli Zukofsky
... so take Path P into labyrinth HG P.
5.15.2007
Allen Bramhall is reading my book in Starbucks, says kind word. New England, May (2007). This is old country. Poets in moss & old manses. Makes me happy.
I've been (ant-like) labeling the 4 years and 2600 posts of HG Poetics; soon, hopefully, there will be an actual Index of HG Obsessions & Hobby-Horses. But now it's time to go back to Fontegaia, chapt. 2...
photo by Richard Benjamin
10
Spring wheels around once more. Air
grows temperate. Providence in flower
swells and sighs, exhales its myrrh
(lilac, viburnum, mountain laurel).
Slow contrail traces a white thread
across evening sky. Paints one
straight line (evanescent
fresco). Distant chord
of freight-train horn. Plangent
sundown. Next door, kids toss
horseshoes (last trace of race-
horse). Clang (iron fundament).
Amazon remains the same (zone
of absent plenitude). Bugs drone
in unison (to Judgement Day). Bone
rots (waits); iron = rust; only word
is adamant (alpha to omega, end
to end). And water shapes it
(preternatural stream) like tropic
parakeet - like warbling Reverend
in Nev-Neverland (a rainbow
collar over morning gray).
Light filters the prism, day
trembles (hand in sky)... so
evening to morning wheels toward
Everytown. Providence (primordial
prototype) is in the droning bell
now - is everlasting word.
photo by Richard Benjamin
Finished Suite Francaise. Moving, beautiful, heart-rending. Tremendous. Goes into "metafiction", as at the end you read her journal entries, in which she plans new sections of the novel (fascinating entry into compositional process), & comments with searing clarity, insight, irony, on the situation in France and her own impending doom (she was murdered, as was her husband, in Auschwitz). Astonishing story of this book's survival.
(Interesting to read this after having read H.L. Hymes' Underground City.)
(Interesting to read this after having read H.L. Hymes' Underground City.)
5.14.2007
Reading Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky. Here's NY Times review.
Listened to fascinating interview on NPR with Christopher Hitchens, about his recent book God is Not Great. He is a very witty guy. Valuable sacred cow-punching.
Yet for me there are these 2 basic possibilities : either there is "higher consciousness" or not. I go with the former. Even without such things as the "argument for design" etc. You don't need to be a philosopher to recognize the beauty of the universe and the poignancy of life.
It's a profound intellectual (or spiritual) step, to accept the notion of the (granted, mysterious) "personal" quality of the universe : that life is ordered - somehow - around consciousness.
I call it the Byzantium waltz. (An icon represents the divine, and the divine imago, as one.)
This is at the root of my own (somewhat eccentric, I suppose) concept of the normative, the classic, the Acmeist, the Pushkinian, the human, the Hellenic-Hebraic, the Joycean, the Mandelshtam-Celanian, the Dantean-Montalean...
& at the root of my particular distinction between the synthetic song-imagination of poetry, and every other kind of discourse.
Listened to fascinating interview on NPR with Christopher Hitchens, about his recent book God is Not Great. He is a very witty guy. Valuable sacred cow-punching.
Yet for me there are these 2 basic possibilities : either there is "higher consciousness" or not. I go with the former. Even without such things as the "argument for design" etc. You don't need to be a philosopher to recognize the beauty of the universe and the poignancy of life.
It's a profound intellectual (or spiritual) step, to accept the notion of the (granted, mysterious) "personal" quality of the universe : that life is ordered - somehow - around consciousness.
I call it the Byzantium waltz. (An icon represents the divine, and the divine imago, as one.)
This is at the root of my own (somewhat eccentric, I suppose) concept of the normative, the classic, the Acmeist, the Pushkinian, the human, the Hellenic-Hebraic, the Joycean, the Mandelshtam-Celanian, the Dantean-Montalean...
& at the root of my particular distinction between the synthetic song-imagination of poetry, and every other kind of discourse.
5.11.2007
5.10.2007
I sent poet Gabriel Gudding a poem written a few years ago. I thought he might like it because he has a Providence connection, & because it involves a mysterious someone named "Clio" - which is his daughter's name too.
Lo & behold - it turns out these two Clios were most likely one and the same !
I'm amazed... it's as if three writers were playing a game of secret messages...
(re-affirms my faith in a "special providence" of poets - a belief (superstition?) instilled years ago as I read Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir, Hope Against Hope...)
Lo & behold - it turns out these two Clios were most likely one and the same !
I'm amazed... it's as if three writers were playing a game of secret messages...
(re-affirms my faith in a "special providence" of poets - a belief (superstition?) instilled years ago as I read Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir, Hope Against Hope...)
Reading more about Joachim of Fiore these days. I think I'm sort of preparing for next phase of Fontegaia chapter - from the Siena Palio horserace to the 4 horses of Joachim's Apocalypse.
Joseph Ratzinger (currently Pope) wrote a book about St. Bonaventura's theology of history which touches on Joachim. I'm going to look it up.
There's kind of a thread which ties together (in my mind, anyway) Joachim - the Franciscans - San Francesco - Giotto & other painters - hobo America - my Siena poem. (There's also a thread linking Joachim - Vico - Joyce - & me.)
Tying together all these threads about time & history & horseraces & world-renewal. The article on the Antikythera mechanism (basically a very elegant cosmic clock) is in there too somehow.
What is the cornerstone of the wholeness of the poem? Why, the Moon, of course (says the loony poet)! The 7-day week and the lunar cycle... solar reflection (consciousness)... Forth of July (7/4, or "28")...
Joseph Ratzinger (currently Pope) wrote a book about St. Bonaventura's theology of history which touches on Joachim. I'm going to look it up.
There's kind of a thread which ties together (in my mind, anyway) Joachim - the Franciscans - San Francesco - Giotto & other painters - hobo America - my Siena poem. (There's also a thread linking Joachim - Vico - Joyce - & me.)
Tying together all these threads about time & history & horseraces & world-renewal. The article on the Antikythera mechanism (basically a very elegant cosmic clock) is in there too somehow.
What is the cornerstone of the wholeness of the poem? Why, the Moon, of course (says the loony poet)! The 7-day week and the lunar cycle... solar reflection (consciousness)... Forth of July (7/4, or "28")...
5.09.2007
Mandelstam : "an arch appears in my muttering".
For me, this is one of the most concise & precise characterizations of the poetic process.
Artists testify to the creative experience as a moment which begins when the art-work coalesces, forms an integral whole. Sometimes the poet intuits this process in advance. It's an act of imagination and synthesis. This is the point : the art work is some kind of organic-conceptual whole.
The poem fits together : its sound, its imagery, its plot, its meaning(s). A new invention, a little world unto itself.
Paintings fit together, novels fit together, musical compositions fit together... & poems - rhythmic incantations - also fit together.
This fitness & integrity of the unique art-work - within its very particular and specific mode - prose narrative, drama, music, visual art, poetry - this wholeness - is its ruling characteristic, without which the work does not really exist.
Of course there will be crossings and shadings between verse and prose, narrative and lyric, lyric and dramatic. Novels & plays will be written in verse, prose will intrude into poems, etc. But this does not negate the primary requirement of aesthetic wholeness, whatever the specific genre or rhetorical mode.
If you start with wholeness, and then look at the particulars of diction and style, you might be able to distinguish more precisely the difference between the achieved poem and the merely textual discourse, scribble, speech, imitation, or harangue.
For me, this is one of the most concise & precise characterizations of the poetic process.
Artists testify to the creative experience as a moment which begins when the art-work coalesces, forms an integral whole. Sometimes the poet intuits this process in advance. It's an act of imagination and synthesis. This is the point : the art work is some kind of organic-conceptual whole.
The poem fits together : its sound, its imagery, its plot, its meaning(s). A new invention, a little world unto itself.
Paintings fit together, novels fit together, musical compositions fit together... & poems - rhythmic incantations - also fit together.
This fitness & integrity of the unique art-work - within its very particular and specific mode - prose narrative, drama, music, visual art, poetry - this wholeness - is its ruling characteristic, without which the work does not really exist.
Of course there will be crossings and shadings between verse and prose, narrative and lyric, lyric and dramatic. Novels & plays will be written in verse, prose will intrude into poems, etc. But this does not negate the primary requirement of aesthetic wholeness, whatever the specific genre or rhetorical mode.
If you start with wholeness, and then look at the particulars of diction and style, you might be able to distinguish more precisely the difference between the achieved poem and the merely textual discourse, scribble, speech, imitation, or harangue.
5.07.2007
What a cussed vexed bone of contention is this eternal debate over tradition & innovation, Moderns & Antients... in these matters, I come across often enough as a ponderous prig, which is not what I want...
Where do I stand, then?
As I see it, the world itself is "poetry", in Wallace Stevens' general sense - and there are many kinds of expressions or reflections of same offered by all kinds of artists, visual, musical, performance, comic, prosaic, dramatic, etc. & etc... - all kinds of unique inventive amalgams of various arts...
- but as for me, I want to keep playing up an (optional) distinction between prose & poetry, because I have something "thematic" or topical invested in the notion of "the poetic Word" as a very high kind of exalted song-vision... - & exalted doesn't have to mean ponderous or serious or prim, just inspired & ecstatic...
- such things can never be programmatic - because when they do become so, they lose their inner rightness, become sentimental or exclusionary... & life's poetry is not programmable, it is not an acquisition of any kind....
Where do I stand, then?
As I see it, the world itself is "poetry", in Wallace Stevens' general sense - and there are many kinds of expressions or reflections of same offered by all kinds of artists, visual, musical, performance, comic, prosaic, dramatic, etc. & etc... - all kinds of unique inventive amalgams of various arts...
- but as for me, I want to keep playing up an (optional) distinction between prose & poetry, because I have something "thematic" or topical invested in the notion of "the poetic Word" as a very high kind of exalted song-vision... - & exalted doesn't have to mean ponderous or serious or prim, just inspired & ecstatic...
- such things can never be programmatic - because when they do become so, they lose their inner rightness, become sentimental or exclusionary... & life's poetry is not programmable, it is not an acquisition of any kind....
5.05.2007
Where the "experimentalists" get it wrong : they forget that calculation = prose.
Poetry is the surge of music pressing against every form of utilitarian, merely functional speech. The poet shapes reality through song : we forget how different this behavior is, how different it sounds.
& I'm not talking (in obscurantist, pseudo-romantic, sub-intellectual, "mystical" fashion) about poetry vs. reason. Ultimately these opposites meet : that's what song celebrates.
Poetry is the surge of music pressing against every form of utilitarian, merely functional speech. The poet shapes reality through song : we forget how different this behavior is, how different it sounds.
& I'm not talking (in obscurantist, pseudo-romantic, sub-intellectual, "mystical" fashion) about poetry vs. reason. Ultimately these opposites meet : that's what song celebrates.
re previous post : of course, red flags pop up at the mention of "natural development". As well they should. In art, everything is conceptual.
Everything except the medium itself. By "song" in poetry I refer back to previous posts about the idea of poetry as perennial fluency, or a sort of omnipresent bee-hum.
This sounds sub-intellectual, sentimental, merely visceral - until you consider the possibility that the medium is a vehicle for forms of intelligible-conceptual invention, communication, aesthetic-conceptual syntheses : complexes inexpressible by any other means.
Thus what I suggest as "natural development" is not so much a WC Williamsish, Emersonian, Whitmanic or Poundian version of American origination, as a movement of American (literary) civilization toward fusion/assimilation with world history and culture as a whole : the echo of (global) perennial fluency in an American dialect.
The postmodern/"New American" emphasis on informality, slang, minor modes - this was a healthy reaction to many strange literary-historical-Modernist pomposities & perversities... yet we need to recognize its limitations, its "period style" aspects. Just as we need to understand that the prosaic materialism of the Language School closed the door on most of the normative distinctions between poetry and prose, and thus on the distinct qualities and resources of poetry.
Everything except the medium itself. By "song" in poetry I refer back to previous posts about the idea of poetry as perennial fluency, or a sort of omnipresent bee-hum.
This sounds sub-intellectual, sentimental, merely visceral - until you consider the possibility that the medium is a vehicle for forms of intelligible-conceptual invention, communication, aesthetic-conceptual syntheses : complexes inexpressible by any other means.
Thus what I suggest as "natural development" is not so much a WC Williamsish, Emersonian, Whitmanic or Poundian version of American origination, as a movement of American (literary) civilization toward fusion/assimilation with world history and culture as a whole : the echo of (global) perennial fluency in an American dialect.
The postmodern/"New American" emphasis on informality, slang, minor modes - this was a healthy reaction to many strange literary-historical-Modernist pomposities & perversities... yet we need to recognize its limitations, its "period style" aspects. Just as we need to understand that the prosaic materialism of the Language School closed the door on most of the normative distinctions between poetry and prose, and thus on the distinct qualities and resources of poetry.
5.04.2007
dicey dichotomies
Robert Archambeau's recent remarks on the "Battle of Chicago" (Brit Poetry Wars) echo the various histories of stylistic division on these shores (SoQ/Post-Avant, New Americans/New Critics, Experimentals/New Formalists, Raw/Cooked, Moderns/Victorians, etc. etc.).
Have been wondering (in a vague way) this week whether these dichotomies are not symptoms of something deeper, more elusive - something involved with the nature of poets & poetry generally...
If to make a poem is to take a particular step into the social, public arena, perhaps there's a basic binary there - the step is either joining or defying (or escaping, or avoiding). Either yes or no.
The trouble is, every poet is a jumble of yes and no - mixed together in a unique, unrepeatable way. Often the efforts to align or group poets (mainstream or oppositional, for example) involve eliding the uncomfortable fact that group defiance is just the obverse of group joining.
It seems best to focus on the aims and motives of a particular work, rather than aligning poets with groups or styles. Because the most accomplished writing often involves a process of distinguishing or differentiating - which is the method by which the work says something clear, determined and new.
As for me, I'm a chaos of mixed motives & feelings. Discouragement over (non)recognition - combined with fear of entrapment in what seems like self-enclosed, ingrown aestheticism (part of me doesn't like being a poet). & on another level, the difficulty involved in balancing poetry with other kinds of thought (religion, philosophy...). Poetry & thought don't always work together. They're like two headstrong horses on a chariot...
Have been wondering (in a vague way) this week whether these dichotomies are not symptoms of something deeper, more elusive - something involved with the nature of poets & poetry generally...
If to make a poem is to take a particular step into the social, public arena, perhaps there's a basic binary there - the step is either joining or defying (or escaping, or avoiding). Either yes or no.
The trouble is, every poet is a jumble of yes and no - mixed together in a unique, unrepeatable way. Often the efforts to align or group poets (mainstream or oppositional, for example) involve eliding the uncomfortable fact that group defiance is just the obverse of group joining.
It seems best to focus on the aims and motives of a particular work, rather than aligning poets with groups or styles. Because the most accomplished writing often involves a process of distinguishing or differentiating - which is the method by which the work says something clear, determined and new.
As for me, I'm a chaos of mixed motives & feelings. Discouragement over (non)recognition - combined with fear of entrapment in what seems like self-enclosed, ingrown aestheticism (part of me doesn't like being a poet). & on another level, the difficulty involved in balancing poetry with other kinds of thought (religion, philosophy...). Poetry & thought don't always work together. They're like two headstrong horses on a chariot...
5.03.2007
Received first copies of new pocket-size version of some of my books. This is how I want them to be! Small, handy, inexpensive, easy to put in pocket etc.
Now I'd like to roam the country like Walt or Vachel, spread them around.
*
(Tinkered a little with Way Stations, added photo on back.)
(Also tidied up Dove Street. Now they are really just right.)
(And tweaked Chapel Hill, added photo. Done.)
Now I'd like to roam the country like Walt or Vachel, spread them around.
*
(Tinkered a little with Way Stations, added photo on back.)
(Also tidied up Dove Street. Now they are really just right.)
(And tweaked Chapel Hill, added photo. Done.)
5.01.2007
Fontegaia burbles on. I wonder who understands this.
9
Proud Guidoriccio (upon his stallion
clad in rich honey-gold and black) still rides
over the blank space of an absent mappamondo.
Year after year, mesmerized horsemen
replay the triumph of their city-state.
Res publica del popolo - an April quattrocento
renascence - young lovely Sienese (memento
mori) twirling the ridda hand-in-hand, sweet
and sedate... (O Primavera). Plague
brought down the curtain on them all.
Only a somber scolding wraith (dismal
Baptist with bare talon-toes) raged
through the chastened aftermath.
The merchants (in their wills) heaped
ashes on their brows. The Reaper reaped.
Wheedling warlords waded in (bloodbath).
Yet... neither libertine nor puritan, bells
drone on. Sound like an iron whisper
flows in waves across the sleepy air.
An equilibrium (Diana, Dionysius).
Like the slowest horse in the race - Ramirez
hobo-caballero, con crayon - swaying
King Bumblebee, atop dawdling (braying)
donkey (or sleepy waiter Biff - sez
the magic circus-word is : hippopotamus)
riding an iron horse through his peculiar
tunnel of love (Chet's trumpet, silver).
And the iron rose through disaster (us)
and the rust of river-water - through
august Augustus, Augustine's hip hippo, all
wolverine Rome, cavernous Constantinople -
til it roosted in a glinting horseshoe
buried in speechless soil (black earth
of curious Rus). Like the copper penny
of a saturnine pilgrim - unearthed now,
uncanny. So the Campenone berthed.
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