No, Ron Silliman, you cannot purvey Great New Poetry to me every three days. I don't buy your economy of millions of Great Poets kept down by a conspiracy of mainstream schools of quietude. I don't care if it's impossible to read everything being published. A critic can have standards even if the view is restricted.
There is something to be said for running the gauntlet of mainstream publication : it enforces necessary solitude & purpose.
The standard may be something finicky & whimsical on the surface. But it will allow the poet time to win the critic over despite the strictest judgement.
Even if poetry is blooming everywhere, I still want the critic to find it rare, profound, substantial, absolutely convincing. I want the critic to be tough to win over, knowledgeable, sensible, responsive.
I want poetry to go & hide somewhere, in some old abandoned shack in Hungary maybe, to get away from all these glib, pretentious poets.
This gets back to Jordan's comment about the "yucky" feeling of doing reviews.
3.11.2003
Thus maybe the encyclopedic or didactic aspects of epic (the catalog of ships; Pound's lectures; Dante's or Joyce's grids of correspondences) are secondary to, or subsumed by, a PLOT, a personal story, the shadow of the hero or the anti-hero or the poet. Why? because poetry is a voracious force-field, a conjunction of opposites, a conjunction of word & flesh, knowing & being. This is the telos or aim of its powerful energies : embodiment.
This vortex or vanishing point of poetry, where knowing & being, soul & body meet in the pleroma of the word.
& the epic becomes the "personal epic", the tale of the tribe becomes the mirror of the person, the microcosm, the reader.
What is the paradigm for this literary shape? It is "incarnational". The paradigm is the Gospels, where the telos of history is the Person, and God incarnate returns like Odysseus as the alpha-omega of the entire Scriptural-historical process.
This vortex or vanishing point of poetry, where knowing & being, soul & body meet in the pleroma of the word.
& the epic becomes the "personal epic", the tale of the tribe becomes the mirror of the person, the microcosm, the reader.
What is the paradigm for this literary shape? It is "incarnational". The paradigm is the Gospels, where the telos of history is the Person, and God incarnate returns like Odysseus as the alpha-omega of the entire Scriptural-historical process.
. . . but then, isn't poetry where, through speech, we try to fuse "knowing" & "being"?
Which is a futile vain Quixotic effort. & we end up representing human nature through failure.
Comic gargantuan example : Charles Olson. His "Maximus" gains from its ungainliness. The reader's imagination is swayed by the image of the fat man in squalid little apartment in Maximus-town, trying to "say" the Great Unsayable. The mundane seeps in around the edges & gives the would-be Ezra color & humanity.
Another example : Montale. He was very aware of being the voice of the "man in the middle", between transcendent glory and human pettiness. His poems build on the contradiction.
You end up with a doubleness : a sort of incarnate word (poetic language - full, packed, weighted, embodied - Keats), & the shadowy feeble negatively-capable poet who utters it.
Which is a futile vain Quixotic effort. & we end up representing human nature through failure.
Comic gargantuan example : Charles Olson. His "Maximus" gains from its ungainliness. The reader's imagination is swayed by the image of the fat man in squalid little apartment in Maximus-town, trying to "say" the Great Unsayable. The mundane seeps in around the edges & gives the would-be Ezra color & humanity.
Another example : Montale. He was very aware of being the voice of the "man in the middle", between transcendent glory and human pettiness. His poems build on the contradiction.
You end up with a doubleness : a sort of incarnate word (poetic language - full, packed, weighted, embodied - Keats), & the shadowy feeble negatively-capable poet who utters it.
3.10.2003
In an email, David Hess replied to the previous posting here to say that his distinction between knowing/being was partly an echo of DH Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature. He said he was thinking more of the way some Modernists set themselves up (say in epic forms) as guides to general knowledge (Pound, Olson), in a way that poets of "being" (say, Oppen, Celan) never would.
I responded to say that there might be some validity in this distinction; but that some strains of postmodernism, drawing from Heidegger & Derrida among others, make such a distincton impossible, since the status of both knowledge & being becomes "illegible". & that this might be one reason that, as DH wrote on his blog, the language poets, for example, couldn't decide between "system" & "anti-system".
It seems like down the ages very few poets have had the capability to articulate, in their own poetry, its epistemological status in relation to other forms of knowledge. How is poetry a form of knowing, if it is? One of the most interesting books I've read on this issue is Jerusalem & Albion, by Harold Fisch (Schocken Books, 1964). It might be that reflection on this issue (which is also the question of the nature of poetic speech) would be productive - lead to new understandings of the poet's role.
Of course, meditating on the nature of poetry has also been the yeast & the grist for everlasting cliches & sentimentalizations : what's unusual is a poet who can think philosophically or scientifically while writing poetry.
I responded to say that there might be some validity in this distinction; but that some strains of postmodernism, drawing from Heidegger & Derrida among others, make such a distincton impossible, since the status of both knowledge & being becomes "illegible". & that this might be one reason that, as DH wrote on his blog, the language poets, for example, couldn't decide between "system" & "anti-system".
It seems like down the ages very few poets have had the capability to articulate, in their own poetry, its epistemological status in relation to other forms of knowledge. How is poetry a form of knowing, if it is? One of the most interesting books I've read on this issue is Jerusalem & Albion, by Harold Fisch (Schocken Books, 1964). It might be that reflection on this issue (which is also the question of the nature of poetic speech) would be productive - lead to new understandings of the poet's role.
Of course, meditating on the nature of poetry has also been the yeast & the grist for everlasting cliches & sentimentalizations : what's unusual is a poet who can think philosophically or scientifically while writing poetry.
David Hess blogs nimbly among the concepts, & creates some critical synergy out of comments by Ron, Nada, Jack Kimball, et al. He writes:
"O'Hara's poems always seemed very contemplative to me even though they were
full of what you might call 'action'. It strikes me how (taboo word acoming)
accessible they are despite their range of cultural knowledge/materials. Pound
reassured the reader that they needn't know Greek or Italian to understand his
poetry as he himself believed he didn't need to know Chinese to understand its
ideograms. But since he positions himself as a bestower of culture -- culture as a
repository of knowledge that can just be passed around like a hot potato, like
money really -- one must know it.
In O'Hara expressiveness and contemplativeness are not mutually exclusive.
Thinking is not equated with knowing. You do not need to have heard which
symphony he's talking about to "get it." Poets of knowledge, Eliot and Pound, and
poets of being, O'Hara or Oppen or Reznikoff or Celan. I believe the language
poets, to make a sweeping generalization, never knew which kind they wanted to
become. To be systematizers or anti-systematizers -- the dilemma is at the core
of the question of the avant-garde."
Let's take this dichotomy between knowledge/being, system/anti-system, & think about it for a minute. A poem is basically a set of gestures, speech acts, words, united in some kind of aesthetic system (or form of beauty). Because the system is not always obvious to us doesn't mean it isn't there. (sounds like a quote from Zap Comics) But our perception or response to anything is a response to system or organization or pattern.
O'Hara's presentation of fact & knowledge may seem more accessible than Pound's, precisely because he doesn't have Pound's Olympian-didactic angle of approach. But this doesn't make his poetry less of a "system of knowledge" : it's just less overt. Proust has a system : but his work may be the most successful modernist evocation of "being" of all. These aesthetic systems are just different from discursive or philosophical or scientific systems : their consistency is one of style, leading to wholeness or complexity of presentation.
The crack-up & revolutions & wars of the turn of the 20th century brought an end to many a narrative form. This break-up provided an opportunity for poets: modernist & postmodernist technique provided a lever for poetry to challenge the hegemony of prose fiction. & who emerged as the avatar of poetic knowledge? The uber-systematizer : Dante. Dante's "scaffolding" lies behind Pound's grab-bag and behind Eliot's Christian poetics (the poetics of religious transcendence providing another convenient lever of cultural authority against the fiction writers). Both Joyce & Pound balanced Homer against Dante, recapitulating the conceptual movement of the Renaissance in general : all this recapitulation a sign of the end of the age which began with the Renaissance.
With this sketch of literary history, look again at Hess's concluding sentence. Postmodernism is often juxtaposed with modernism as anti-system against system. Both make claims to represent the future (the avant-garde) - the whole spectrum, from Eliot to Dada. But maybe the real issue is, what follows from the scaffoldings erected in the early 20th-century in response to the opportunity offered by chaos (the end of 19th-century/Renaissance/Enlightenment narrative certainties)? because the scaffoldings were only the overt systems. Joyce himself showed this with Finnegans Wake - here he out-systemed his own systems, & showed that chaos & system were the same thing.
The power of aesthetic effect of any particular work of art is limited & variable - that is, it depends on the power of apprehension by the audience, as well as on the author's own discernment & ability to build complexity into those same limitations (the "implicate universe" of David Bohm). Thus it may take decades, or centuries even, for the implications of an aesthetic system to work their effects, their magic. (As an example, Mandelstam emphasized the future-oriented quality of Dante's poem.) These centuries may develop new constellations of perception & value, so that, for example, O'Hara's cute notion of "Personism" may not be so simple after all : it may be appreciated as an element of an aesthetic system, a worldview, a metaform.
The New doesn't go away : only time-bound versions of the new, scaffoldings & fashionable systematizations, get old. The perpetual death of the "avant-garde" is simply the continual obsolescence of literary fashions which were flimsy surface phenomena to begin with. There is no simple dichotomy of knowledge & being : only genuine, original aesthetic systems (of perception, of expression) vs. hack work & rhetorical sleights-of-hand.
Perhaps the "new" system of critical valuation to be applied to the "post-avant" generation will depend from somewhere between Bakhtin & Mandelstam. It will apprehend the dialogic appropriation of prior poetries, the overlay of thought, feeling, and expression borrowed from previous poets, for the aesthetic necessities of a new person & a new time. It will respond to the individuality of this new voice, rather than hurry to place it within some group regime or political stance. It will measure the range, originality, pitch, loudness, & specific gravity of the individual voice on its own terms, before applying simplistic comparisons.
"O'Hara's poems always seemed very contemplative to me even though they were
full of what you might call 'action'. It strikes me how (taboo word acoming)
accessible they are despite their range of cultural knowledge/materials. Pound
reassured the reader that they needn't know Greek or Italian to understand his
poetry as he himself believed he didn't need to know Chinese to understand its
ideograms. But since he positions himself as a bestower of culture -- culture as a
repository of knowledge that can just be passed around like a hot potato, like
money really -- one must know it.
In O'Hara expressiveness and contemplativeness are not mutually exclusive.
Thinking is not equated with knowing. You do not need to have heard which
symphony he's talking about to "get it." Poets of knowledge, Eliot and Pound, and
poets of being, O'Hara or Oppen or Reznikoff or Celan. I believe the language
poets, to make a sweeping generalization, never knew which kind they wanted to
become. To be systematizers or anti-systematizers -- the dilemma is at the core
of the question of the avant-garde."
Let's take this dichotomy between knowledge/being, system/anti-system, & think about it for a minute. A poem is basically a set of gestures, speech acts, words, united in some kind of aesthetic system (or form of beauty). Because the system is not always obvious to us doesn't mean it isn't there. (sounds like a quote from Zap Comics) But our perception or response to anything is a response to system or organization or pattern.
O'Hara's presentation of fact & knowledge may seem more accessible than Pound's, precisely because he doesn't have Pound's Olympian-didactic angle of approach. But this doesn't make his poetry less of a "system of knowledge" : it's just less overt. Proust has a system : but his work may be the most successful modernist evocation of "being" of all. These aesthetic systems are just different from discursive or philosophical or scientific systems : their consistency is one of style, leading to wholeness or complexity of presentation.
The crack-up & revolutions & wars of the turn of the 20th century brought an end to many a narrative form. This break-up provided an opportunity for poets: modernist & postmodernist technique provided a lever for poetry to challenge the hegemony of prose fiction. & who emerged as the avatar of poetic knowledge? The uber-systematizer : Dante. Dante's "scaffolding" lies behind Pound's grab-bag and behind Eliot's Christian poetics (the poetics of religious transcendence providing another convenient lever of cultural authority against the fiction writers). Both Joyce & Pound balanced Homer against Dante, recapitulating the conceptual movement of the Renaissance in general : all this recapitulation a sign of the end of the age which began with the Renaissance.
With this sketch of literary history, look again at Hess's concluding sentence. Postmodernism is often juxtaposed with modernism as anti-system against system. Both make claims to represent the future (the avant-garde) - the whole spectrum, from Eliot to Dada. But maybe the real issue is, what follows from the scaffoldings erected in the early 20th-century in response to the opportunity offered by chaos (the end of 19th-century/Renaissance/Enlightenment narrative certainties)? because the scaffoldings were only the overt systems. Joyce himself showed this with Finnegans Wake - here he out-systemed his own systems, & showed that chaos & system were the same thing.
The power of aesthetic effect of any particular work of art is limited & variable - that is, it depends on the power of apprehension by the audience, as well as on the author's own discernment & ability to build complexity into those same limitations (the "implicate universe" of David Bohm). Thus it may take decades, or centuries even, for the implications of an aesthetic system to work their effects, their magic. (As an example, Mandelstam emphasized the future-oriented quality of Dante's poem.) These centuries may develop new constellations of perception & value, so that, for example, O'Hara's cute notion of "Personism" may not be so simple after all : it may be appreciated as an element of an aesthetic system, a worldview, a metaform.
The New doesn't go away : only time-bound versions of the new, scaffoldings & fashionable systematizations, get old. The perpetual death of the "avant-garde" is simply the continual obsolescence of literary fashions which were flimsy surface phenomena to begin with. There is no simple dichotomy of knowledge & being : only genuine, original aesthetic systems (of perception, of expression) vs. hack work & rhetorical sleights-of-hand.
Perhaps the "new" system of critical valuation to be applied to the "post-avant" generation will depend from somewhere between Bakhtin & Mandelstam. It will apprehend the dialogic appropriation of prior poetries, the overlay of thought, feeling, and expression borrowed from previous poets, for the aesthetic necessities of a new person & a new time. It will respond to the individuality of this new voice, rather than hurry to place it within some group regime or political stance. It will measure the range, originality, pitch, loudness, & specific gravity of the individual voice on its own terms, before applying simplistic comparisons.
3.07.2003
Henry's Two-Step Program for Escaping the Cardboard Box of Poepastry Clubhouse:
1. Literary Absolute
2. Metaform
Henry's Explanation of Two-Step Program:
I've been reading Donna Tartt's novel The Little Friend. She worked on it ten years & created a world.
I wrote about "metaform" on this blog around 1/23-1/24 or so. Instead of talking to each other so much like a pack of barhound weasels, why not think about the aspects of world & society, the different languages or discourses, which a poet is able to reflect intelligently & curiously in their work? What real or imagined wholenesses of a world are they able to bring to bear & bring to music? That, along with perfect pitch, seems like a useful measure of value, if you have to even think about it. As far as the valueless - making lists of what you don't like - how anal can you get?
This is a little lecture to the younger set. After this I'm not talking to you. I'm interested in the unknown reader, not you louts. Behold Donna Tartt, & be afraid. She might turn her cool & creepy & cultured & satirical measuring rod on you someday.
1. Literary Absolute
2. Metaform
Henry's Explanation of Two-Step Program:
I've been reading Donna Tartt's novel The Little Friend. She worked on it ten years & created a world.
I wrote about "metaform" on this blog around 1/23-1/24 or so. Instead of talking to each other so much like a pack of barhound weasels, why not think about the aspects of world & society, the different languages or discourses, which a poet is able to reflect intelligently & curiously in their work? What real or imagined wholenesses of a world are they able to bring to bear & bring to music? That, along with perfect pitch, seems like a useful measure of value, if you have to even think about it. As far as the valueless - making lists of what you don't like - how anal can you get?
This is a little lecture to the younger set. After this I'm not talking to you. I'm interested in the unknown reader, not you louts. Behold Donna Tartt, & be afraid. She might turn her cool & creepy & cultured & satirical measuring rod on you someday.
from toward the conclusion of Forth of July (imagine some spacings between some phrases, which I can't manage in this system):
11
It's a narrow ford across the Jordan
a small cupola of water-light
and all our knowledge but a pond
a snoring frogpond madjayanine
when I go kigamanin I will give you
gocu surely gabizikamun what
you will wear widjiwiyun my courting
child if you go with me (the intervals
were sung glissando the metric is slow
and not rigidly maintained all the
Chippewa love songs somewhat rubato)
your little cuppa midway drum-waltz
to the clouds your mighty copper penny
is bronze s.o.s. unfolding as the bent
pole-stirrer of the clay my wee tugboat
alight musters that Julian draconian
taconite turning to caritas seed-jewel
before our eyes and if the bluish cloud
palm-shade Elijah's ravine-dulcimer
or Ezekiel's exact X-catenary wheels
are reels ambitious mother
then lucky Sophie dance!
And do a handstand
now with theremin
and soda (Scotch)
through golden Appalachia
flying the sunny disarray
(a coupla stingy wasps
are fighting bumblebees) (the bee
already master) where the yawning
oreship spreads dove-wings (yon Noah-
Jonah-craft) pshmwly (buzzing in Siberia)
2.8.2000
11
It's a narrow ford across the Jordan
a small cupola of water-light
and all our knowledge but a pond
a snoring frogpond madjayanine
when I go kigamanin I will give you
gocu surely gabizikamun what
you will wear widjiwiyun my courting
child if you go with me (the intervals
were sung glissando the metric is slow
and not rigidly maintained all the
Chippewa love songs somewhat rubato)
your little cuppa midway drum-waltz
to the clouds your mighty copper penny
is bronze s.o.s. unfolding as the bent
pole-stirrer of the clay my wee tugboat
alight musters that Julian draconian
taconite turning to caritas seed-jewel
before our eyes and if the bluish cloud
palm-shade Elijah's ravine-dulcimer
or Ezekiel's exact X-catenary wheels
are reels ambitious mother
then lucky Sophie dance!
And do a handstand
now with theremin
and soda (Scotch)
through golden Appalachia
flying the sunny disarray
(a coupla stingy wasps
are fighting bumblebees) (the bee
already master) where the yawning
oreship spreads dove-wings (yon Noah-
Jonah-craft) pshmwly (buzzing in Siberia)
2.8.2000
3.06.2003
more prehistoric Henry (mid-1970s):
LAND OF LINCOLN
It is enough to be with them,
the children like shy seedlings,
and the newspaper shedding its phrases
to the sleepy music in the squares.
It is enough to step out,
wind dusting ashes from the sill,
workmen hauling everything away,
furniture, knicknacks, loveletters
written in robin's egg, and spidery
aquamarine. A parade, they said,
is a mild form of chaos,
and so we marched, eyes closed,
to the somnolent trumpets and drums -
around the familiar four corners,
the sad mothers fainting, and dizzy
children, dazzled by flags and ice cream.
The mayor spoke under the statue
erected over the slain brigade. A breeze
touched every bowed head, leading us
to the flag-draped coffin of our lord.
Impossible to step away from summer -
the raft the river carries under us,
and the canoe of the silent ferryman,
lifting his hand for a copper penny.
LAND OF LINCOLN
It is enough to be with them,
the children like shy seedlings,
and the newspaper shedding its phrases
to the sleepy music in the squares.
It is enough to step out,
wind dusting ashes from the sill,
workmen hauling everything away,
furniture, knicknacks, loveletters
written in robin's egg, and spidery
aquamarine. A parade, they said,
is a mild form of chaos,
and so we marched, eyes closed,
to the somnolent trumpets and drums -
around the familiar four corners,
the sad mothers fainting, and dizzy
children, dazzled by flags and ice cream.
The mayor spoke under the statue
erected over the slain brigade. A breeze
touched every bowed head, leading us
to the flag-draped coffin of our lord.
Impossible to step away from summer -
the raft the river carries under us,
and the canoe of the silent ferryman,
lifting his hand for a copper penny.
3.05.2003
So, in honor of this cardinal day, 3/5 Akhmatova, here is the conclusion to July (3rd volume of Forth of July) (some of the spacings between words do not show in this format):
24
Outside it was now broad daylight; the sun stood some distance up in the sky, looking down on a desolate earth. It was going to be cold today, Per Hansa noticed; clouds of frosty mist like huge writhing serpents curled over the surface of the purplish-yellow plain. The sunbeams plunging into them kindled a weird light. He tingled with cold. . .
. . . How remarkable - the child had been born with the helmet on!. . .He quickened his pace; in a moment he was running
- O.E. Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth
A breezy Sunday in March clouds
crossing the sunlight and in the clay
birdhouse my mother made (knocked
down when its iron wires went slack)
we found a grass birdnest (we can fix
the wire put the birdhouse back up
in the pussy willow it will keep
for another winter extra nef
for another chickadee) Mardi Gras
is coming then comes Lent
Sam Patch in scrambled quilt
crazy Pawtucket from Cumberland
goes into river leaping drifting far and
circling home again so long, Patch
and Julius big Roman E fading chap
a few notes only left left only a ray
of dark matter from the marina or
quintessence of Wimpzilla Pinochet
pinned up with mule's ears by Tin Pan
Blind Tom ineffable inexplicable fingers
of grace out of servitude a fleece
of sound from beneath bronze shield
J's seedy C from Caesar's ceded
sea so see-saw Mediterranean 4-leafy
whorled and loftward bound for the E
in Philadelphy out of Penn's woods
in love with a certain pithy sound
smoked from a tripod's Apollonian thief
of yellow sweetings fading downstream
Lenten crossroad of ash forehead
singing singing brow-bow a drifter-
figurehead mirror-matter's mystery
this waltz become a rivereeee
fox trot of bumblebeeee
my clovery prayer รจ mobile
crost eft so ftgleeee
and figuratively gone home again
to the little greenhouse at the corner
of 6th and Rooster 132 reconnoitered
an encounter once an image now
no more quoth he but limping
convalescent like the missing
leg upon the earth
my sweet shadow
of summer shade
of luminous ruth
comes faithfully to that tomb
where Lazarus lies with Hope
and cannot live without you and the E
in a dark nest of iron ages tighter
curls a little spiral wrought
of steel-eyed thief
a little spring
a tiny e
yet
b
z
coming
milky from
hive of Zebedee
a q-querned stone from Quito
drawn into straight queue for you
emancipation equality euphoria
come phosphorescent nocturnal
urned forever for eternity
Andean-wound pain-cup become just
Jubilee at last limping staggering
like a wounded jaguar from a winter well
and now in union convalescent
spring of healing hurts the earth
in unison lifts out of deep iron there
these bells droning slow equivalence
surfacing from the depths
bronze dragonship a shield
become light-well delicious
gold poncho sped round
a 1-3-2 we danced easy
we danced easy at the end
around the chestnut tree ding
dong fet fecit finixt see?
a little grass birdnest hidden
in coracle-circle hidden in
green-leafed oak den
come forth then (Edith)
(E) come forth (J-lee)
I dove dove after you
come forth love-neft
Love joyfully come fly. . .
3.5.2000
[p.s. there are 4 large sections at the conclusion of July. Each one is keyed to the letter standing for one of four musical notes sounded by Russian bells. The tone here is "E".]
24
Outside it was now broad daylight; the sun stood some distance up in the sky, looking down on a desolate earth. It was going to be cold today, Per Hansa noticed; clouds of frosty mist like huge writhing serpents curled over the surface of the purplish-yellow plain. The sunbeams plunging into them kindled a weird light. He tingled with cold. . .
. . . How remarkable - the child had been born with the helmet on!. . .He quickened his pace; in a moment he was running
- O.E. Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth
A breezy Sunday in March clouds
crossing the sunlight and in the clay
birdhouse my mother made (knocked
down when its iron wires went slack)
we found a grass birdnest (we can fix
the wire put the birdhouse back up
in the pussy willow it will keep
for another winter extra nef
for another chickadee) Mardi Gras
is coming then comes Lent
Sam Patch in scrambled quilt
crazy Pawtucket from Cumberland
goes into river leaping drifting far and
circling home again so long, Patch
and Julius big Roman E fading chap
a few notes only left left only a ray
of dark matter from the marina or
quintessence of Wimpzilla Pinochet
pinned up with mule's ears by Tin Pan
Blind Tom ineffable inexplicable fingers
of grace out of servitude a fleece
of sound from beneath bronze shield
J's seedy C from Caesar's ceded
sea so see-saw Mediterranean 4-leafy
whorled and loftward bound for the E
in Philadelphy out of Penn's woods
in love with a certain pithy sound
smoked from a tripod's Apollonian thief
of yellow sweetings fading downstream
Lenten crossroad of ash forehead
singing singing brow-bow a drifter-
figurehead mirror-matter's mystery
this waltz become a rivereeee
fox trot of bumblebeeee
my clovery prayer รจ mobile
crost eft so ftgleeee
and figuratively gone home again
to the little greenhouse at the corner
of 6th and Rooster 132 reconnoitered
an encounter once an image now
no more quoth he but limping
convalescent like the missing
leg upon the earth
my sweet shadow
of summer shade
of luminous ruth
comes faithfully to that tomb
where Lazarus lies with Hope
and cannot live without you and the E
in a dark nest of iron ages tighter
curls a little spiral wrought
of steel-eyed thief
a little spring
a tiny e
yet
b
z
coming
milky from
hive of Zebedee
a q-querned stone from Quito
drawn into straight queue for you
emancipation equality euphoria
come phosphorescent nocturnal
urned forever for eternity
Andean-wound pain-cup become just
Jubilee at last limping staggering
like a wounded jaguar from a winter well
and now in union convalescent
spring of healing hurts the earth
in unison lifts out of deep iron there
these bells droning slow equivalence
surfacing from the depths
bronze dragonship a shield
become light-well delicious
gold poncho sped round
a 1-3-2 we danced easy
we danced easy at the end
around the chestnut tree ding
dong fet fecit finixt see?
a little grass birdnest hidden
in coracle-circle hidden in
green-leafed oak den
come forth then (Edith)
(E) come forth (J-lee)
I dove dove after you
come forth love-neft
Love joyfully come fly. . .
3.5.2000
[p.s. there are 4 large sections at the conclusion of July. Each one is keyed to the letter standing for one of four musical notes sounded by Russian bells. The tone here is "E".]
More foreshadowings from pre-Cambrian Henry era (circa 1971):
BEEP BEEP THE BABY'S UP
you can do anything you want.
the baby here is trying to decide
about growing up human: he's rubbing
his double chin, he's a serious kid.
a cap pistol is sitting on a desk
in the bedroom upstairs with the yellow
walls. according to the kid here,
it's supposedly waiting
for the little green men.
the sky gets closer
as it gets more blue,
and you can recall
the 4th of July
all the heat
and all those little flags
BEEP BEEP THE BABY'S UP
you can do anything you want.
the baby here is trying to decide
about growing up human: he's rubbing
his double chin, he's a serious kid.
a cap pistol is sitting on a desk
in the bedroom upstairs with the yellow
walls. according to the kid here,
it's supposedly waiting
for the little green men.
the sky gets closer
as it gets more blue,
and you can recall
the 4th of July
all the heat
and all those little flags
dear reader,
you will be thrilled to know that you are the 7.54 millionth visitor to this site. all previous visitors have signed the Rhodian Manifesto and will receive a Special Rhodian Membership Card which can be attached to earlobe or keychain. There will be a Rhodian Member's Pow-Wow on the Isle of Rhodes at 3:15 pm tomorrow. Try to make it, please. We'd love to meet you.
[for the record: 7.54 millionth is a rough but likely guesstimate, since Rhodians reject on principle the use of website visitor censi.]
you will be thrilled to know that you are the 7.54 millionth visitor to this site. all previous visitors have signed the Rhodian Manifesto and will receive a Special Rhodian Membership Card which can be attached to earlobe or keychain. There will be a Rhodian Member's Pow-Wow on the Isle of Rhodes at 3:15 pm tomorrow. Try to make it, please. We'd love to meet you.
[for the record: 7.54 millionth is a rough but likely guesstimate, since Rhodians reject on principle the use of website visitor censi.]
It's a rainy Wednesday in March, and I'm doing boring blogging talk about. March 5th marches forth. On this date both Stalin and Anna Akhmatova died. Unacknowledged Tatar queen of Russia.
& to continue the boring vain of talk about, here's a silly old manifesto:
THE RHODIAN MANIFESTO
'I wonder why in Rhodes they tie up their cats with string. I saw one attached to a front door-knob this morning.'
- Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus
*
WHO ARE THE RHODIANS?
The Rhodians are an association of poets who do not live on the Island of Rhodes, but might like to. (The Island of Rhodes is not to be confused with Rhode Island, a small state in the USA.)
THE RHODIAN CREDO
Of Minimalism. The Rhodians accept a simple definition of poetry, ie.:
Poetry = rhythmic/measured language. The features often attributed to poetry, such as imagination, intellect, emotion, pathos, unity of affect, knowledge, communication, dream, and so forth, are understood to be features of consciousness and language in general. Poetry bears the imprint of both consciousness and language, but its distinguishing trait is rhythm, pattern, measure. The Rhodian approach precludes tendentious, apologetic or polemical appropriations of features of general consciousness into specialized definitions of what poetry should or should not be. Rhodians believe that the compositional attributes of poems are all free additions to the simple nature of poetry so defined.
Of Continuity. The Rhodians believe that poetry as an art form is distinguished by its continuity. "Poetry is avant-garde because it doesn't change much." Rhodians declare that each poet and each group of poet-friends is responsible for, and eligible to inherit, the bequest of past poetry in its entirety. Poetry as simply defined passes through the hands of its makers to its audience of hearers and other makers; it is molded by their personalities and the experience of their time on earth. It is a human art form, perhaps shared to some extent with other creatures.
Of Purpose. The Rhodians maintain that there is no particular "correct" way to make poetry. But this does not preclude the Rhodians from choosing certain principles and orientations. One such principle is that poetry-making involves a limited, but sufficient - and self-sufficient - autonomy. If the process is not valuable for its own sake it is not worth doing at all, since it makes no claim to be valuable for any other reason. (Here the Rhodians follow the orientation of fellow Rhodian, and former Cranston native, Ted Berrigan.) Another such principle is that poetic autonomy is linked with a realist approach. Rhodians reject sceptical trends which question our ability to posit the existence of a real world outside our verbal formulations (even though Rhodians would like to reside on an island). Rhodians assert their ability to make true statements about the real world, and assent to the influence of that capability on their poetry. In fact Rhodians believe that the human impulse to respond to reality, in all its consciousness and specificity, is something of an artistic opportunity for which they can be grateful. Finally, the Rhodians reject theories of poetics which devalue the communicative function, reifying denatured words upon the page. For the Rhodians, language is essentially communicative - the propositional, interrogatory, evaluative, expressive making of signs. Within the continuum of such gestures, words play a combinatory and supportive role. So, while recognizing the special quality of language in art and poetry - the "focus on message" or reflexive aspect described by Jakobson - Rhodians acknowledge the fundamental semaphoric aspect of the medium.
& to continue the boring vain of talk about, here's a silly old manifesto:
THE RHODIAN MANIFESTO
'I wonder why in Rhodes they tie up their cats with string. I saw one attached to a front door-knob this morning.'
- Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus
*
WHO ARE THE RHODIANS?
The Rhodians are an association of poets who do not live on the Island of Rhodes, but might like to. (The Island of Rhodes is not to be confused with Rhode Island, a small state in the USA.)
THE RHODIAN CREDO
Of Minimalism. The Rhodians accept a simple definition of poetry, ie.:
Poetry = rhythmic/measured language. The features often attributed to poetry, such as imagination, intellect, emotion, pathos, unity of affect, knowledge, communication, dream, and so forth, are understood to be features of consciousness and language in general. Poetry bears the imprint of both consciousness and language, but its distinguishing trait is rhythm, pattern, measure. The Rhodian approach precludes tendentious, apologetic or polemical appropriations of features of general consciousness into specialized definitions of what poetry should or should not be. Rhodians believe that the compositional attributes of poems are all free additions to the simple nature of poetry so defined.
Of Continuity. The Rhodians believe that poetry as an art form is distinguished by its continuity. "Poetry is avant-garde because it doesn't change much." Rhodians declare that each poet and each group of poet-friends is responsible for, and eligible to inherit, the bequest of past poetry in its entirety. Poetry as simply defined passes through the hands of its makers to its audience of hearers and other makers; it is molded by their personalities and the experience of their time on earth. It is a human art form, perhaps shared to some extent with other creatures.
Of Purpose. The Rhodians maintain that there is no particular "correct" way to make poetry. But this does not preclude the Rhodians from choosing certain principles and orientations. One such principle is that poetry-making involves a limited, but sufficient - and self-sufficient - autonomy. If the process is not valuable for its own sake it is not worth doing at all, since it makes no claim to be valuable for any other reason. (Here the Rhodians follow the orientation of fellow Rhodian, and former Cranston native, Ted Berrigan.) Another such principle is that poetic autonomy is linked with a realist approach. Rhodians reject sceptical trends which question our ability to posit the existence of a real world outside our verbal formulations (even though Rhodians would like to reside on an island). Rhodians assert their ability to make true statements about the real world, and assent to the influence of that capability on their poetry. In fact Rhodians believe that the human impulse to respond to reality, in all its consciousness and specificity, is something of an artistic opportunity for which they can be grateful. Finally, the Rhodians reject theories of poetics which devalue the communicative function, reifying denatured words upon the page. For the Rhodians, language is essentially communicative - the propositional, interrogatory, evaluative, expressive making of signs. Within the continuum of such gestures, words play a combinatory and supportive role. So, while recognizing the special quality of language in art and poetry - the "focus on message" or reflexive aspect described by Jakobson - Rhodians acknowledge the fundamental semaphoric aspect of the medium.
But that's not all I meant by the literary absolute. Sorry folks, being incoherent this morning. "Literary absolute" was a phrase I used in some poetry list conversation - what the truly obsessed & dedicated poet or writer aims for. Left out of the circus antics. Or perhaps infiltrating & overwhelming the circus with a tremendous talent.
The debate over "Creep" poets continues. David Hess makes some interesting comments today (3/5), connecting the whole thing with decadent aesthetics, and pointing out some distinctions between communities, economies, markets, and artists.
What I mean by the "literary absolute" refers to the autonomous quality of imaginative & artistic activity, the very thing that makes it possible for artists to be anti-social members of a community. I'm not saying art is only or totally autonomous; it's just one of its real & contradictory aspects.
Funny how several bloggers orbiting around this discussion are in the process of reflecting on artistic community, or a particular community. But every one comes to such a discussion with a different set of values & priorities & goals. Isn't the safest (not necessarily the best) approach to idealize the perennial activity of poetry-making and art-making in general, rather than try to define (& authorize & polemicize) specific political opinions or lifestyles or artistic styles? Even if theories & schools arise in dialectical opposition to one another, don't they appeal to a perennial unstated standard (even if they define that standard as the New or the Future)? Aren't we all cicadas in a squirrel-town? & isn't it best to factor in that universal aspect? or is that just taken for granted because it's a truism? Where is Socrates when I need him?
Lots of people hang out to yak in the bistros but there are only a few hard workers among them.
I guess I'm reiterating my earlier statements about the global tradition or universal-perennial poetic activity. & talking to myself again.
What I mean by the "literary absolute" refers to the autonomous quality of imaginative & artistic activity, the very thing that makes it possible for artists to be anti-social members of a community. I'm not saying art is only or totally autonomous; it's just one of its real & contradictory aspects.
Funny how several bloggers orbiting around this discussion are in the process of reflecting on artistic community, or a particular community. But every one comes to such a discussion with a different set of values & priorities & goals. Isn't the safest (not necessarily the best) approach to idealize the perennial activity of poetry-making and art-making in general, rather than try to define (& authorize & polemicize) specific political opinions or lifestyles or artistic styles? Even if theories & schools arise in dialectical opposition to one another, don't they appeal to a perennial unstated standard (even if they define that standard as the New or the Future)? Aren't we all cicadas in a squirrel-town? & isn't it best to factor in that universal aspect? or is that just taken for granted because it's a truism? Where is Socrates when I need him?
Lots of people hang out to yak in the bistros but there are only a few hard workers among them.
I guess I'm reiterating my earlier statements about the global tradition or universal-perennial poetic activity. & talking to myself again.
3.04.2003
A very early Henry poem, from my Shapiro-Padgett anthology/Apollinaire phase. Funny how the intimations become the obsessions of latter days.
...the letters add to the elegance of a structure, even if
their meaning is hidden from those not familiar with the language.
Here, they tell how a piece of the true Cross was obtained at
Constantinople in 1034 and enshrined in the Chapel, where
each night prayers were to be said until Christ came again.
About half of the Chapel has collapsed, the interior yawning
hollowly in the direction of the Soviet Union.
- Horizon Magazine (Winter 1971)
*
the well is always there
a decade of water
just a well
the soldiers pass by
and today the girls are among the clowns
each hiding an arm or wearing a red dance
standing around the well always there
...the letters add to the elegance of a structure, even if
their meaning is hidden from those not familiar with the language.
Here, they tell how a piece of the true Cross was obtained at
Constantinople in 1034 and enshrined in the Chapel, where
each night prayers were to be said until Christ came again.
About half of the Chapel has collapsed, the interior yawning
hollowly in the direction of the Soviet Union.
- Horizon Magazine (Winter 1971)
*
the well is always there
a decade of water
just a well
the soldiers pass by
and today the girls are among the clowns
each hiding an arm or wearing a red dance
standing around the well always there
Beware the circus barkers of poetics.
It's useful to the circus barkers to present poetry as a state of continual permanent upheaval revolution orgasm thrill ride. It's useful to import from philosophy notions which question the ontology of the individual, and broadcast them over the literary field, trumpeting collaboration, downplaying the distinctive. It's useful to bellow "We Are Family!" and blur aesthetic values.
Without a sense of the literary absolute, the game is not worth playing.
It's useful to the circus barkers to present poetry as a state of continual permanent upheaval revolution orgasm thrill ride. It's useful to import from philosophy notions which question the ontology of the individual, and broadcast them over the literary field, trumpeting collaboration, downplaying the distinctive. It's useful to bellow "We Are Family!" and blur aesthetic values.
Without a sense of the literary absolute, the game is not worth playing.
3.03.2003
found 2 more Shvarts translations (the first one seems like a commentary on my note this morning). (Russian-readers, forgive my errors please!)
from Zapadno-Vostochni Veter, p. 26-27
ALCHEMIST'S DAWN
With spiritual abstinence I guide my age,
with radiant intellect. But often I get drunk.
A bird suddenly rushes and falls,
a cold blue eye hangs over nothing.
I go through nigredo - my soul awakens:
again the bird sprouts wings on the wall,
her candescent flight flaring in the gloom.
She is within - where her light is hidden.
She fills my soul (a rounded retort)
with fiery matter - but she won't
give birth. Both angel and devil, she
herself was born to experience miracles.
1995
Blinded, these northern nights
look down into a courtyard well,
drag slowly from the depths
a pail. . . and chi vedra,
they carry it off to the heights:
Petersburg dust at the bottom,
three-day-old fish, books, mice,
an ancient janitor's axe.
They gaze at candles in people's
windows, hundreds of them:
luminous quiet multitudes
in the city left empty.
1996
[This image of the pail from the well recurs in other poems; makes me think of the Voronezh lyric of Mandelstam which begins "I was washing up in the courtyard"]
from Zapadno-Vostochni Veter, p. 26-27
ALCHEMIST'S DAWN
With spiritual abstinence I guide my age,
with radiant intellect. But often I get drunk.
A bird suddenly rushes and falls,
a cold blue eye hangs over nothing.
I go through nigredo - my soul awakens:
again the bird sprouts wings on the wall,
her candescent flight flaring in the gloom.
She is within - where her light is hidden.
She fills my soul (a rounded retort)
with fiery matter - but she won't
give birth. Both angel and devil, she
herself was born to experience miracles.
1995
Blinded, these northern nights
look down into a courtyard well,
drag slowly from the depths
a pail. . . and chi vedra,
they carry it off to the heights:
Petersburg dust at the bottom,
three-day-old fish, books, mice,
an ancient janitor's axe.
They gaze at candles in people's
windows, hundreds of them:
luminous quiet multitudes
in the city left empty.
1996
[This image of the pail from the well recurs in other poems; makes me think of the Voronezh lyric of Mandelstam which begins "I was washing up in the courtyard"]
Angels considered as projected images of the soul.
A little flighty firebird, elusive.
Your quiddity.
That we live in a Byzantine, wooden-icon reality?
Here's an untitled poem by Elena Shvarts, translated (probably mistakenly) by me :
Why, here in this dust,
don't I say "you" and "I"?
A bit of flint given life
gleams dimly out of death.
When light blazed near
I might have dared the sun,
crying - Burn me, dear!
You - my body! Here I am!
But I'm no windmill
and he's grinding me already -
my landlord, shrouded
beneath this decaying shell.
1996
[I remember her telling me in Hoboken once how interested she was in Baudelaire.]
A little flighty firebird, elusive.
Your quiddity.
That we live in a Byzantine, wooden-icon reality?
Here's an untitled poem by Elena Shvarts, translated (probably mistakenly) by me :
Why, here in this dust,
don't I say "you" and "I"?
A bit of flint given life
gleams dimly out of death.
When light blazed near
I might have dared the sun,
crying - Burn me, dear!
You - my body! Here I am!
But I'm no windmill
and he's grinding me already -
my landlord, shrouded
beneath this decaying shell.
1996
[I remember her telling me in Hoboken once how interested she was in Baudelaire.]
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