the last of the Nedges

Another of Mike's cover designs - done with Elmer's Glue on black canvasboard

My brother Mike did this cover, which I thought was pretty good. (Mike was at one time guitarist with "famous" Mpls punk band Rendered Useless)

Nedge #3 cover. Old railroad bridge over Mississippi at St. Anthony Falls, with train going over it. Picture was taken for my grandfather's (the g'pa mentioned in poem posted today, his b-day) engineering firm, which had a hand (I believe) in putting up those Pillsbury grain elevators in the background.

Elena Shvarts' memoir, Vidimaia Starona Zhizni, is made up of little 1-2 page sections. According to my Slavicist pal Tom Epstein, there's a section toward the middle about me. I'm a little nervous about reading it (I identify with those graphomaniac failed playwrights whose scripts her mother used to find hilarious) so I'm starting the book at the beginning, in Russian, which with me is pretty slow going.

The book was published in Petersburg a few years ago. It's a nice little red paperback. It took me a while to find a copy, through a Russ bkstore in Boston (Petropol).

Tom says Elena has also written a short story in which there's a character who resembles me named "Henry Silver". Then there's the poem about the seagulls meeting over the Atlantic, which I posted here in translation many moons ago.

So it's been a bit of a Russ-American literary game, when you think of all the versified epistles (epiphanies) I've sent her way.

Something dated from July.

         1

  
         The secret of the Upper Midwest   under
 the cold winter snow   and by the lakes of summer
 is a cozy   gemutlichkeit   familial   merciful
 and so I remember your red nose,

  
         Grandfather   today   on Epiphany (your
 birthday)   how you leaned over the Christmas
 fireplace   stiffly (past 70 years)   to stir the sparks
 of last year’s evergreen   as the colored rays

  
         of the little lights   played   in your snowy hair
 and as the ghost of Mary Negus   dressed
 bright as a cardinal   drops deeper reds
 (Ethiopian   rubies and   sealed carnelians)

  
         across the snow   and as   the laughter of Florence
 Ainsworth   penetrates   like Minnehaha
 or mouth of Nile   through the endless   ach-ach
 peace pipesmoke   of Edward S.   (a censer-

  
         rifle)   and as the children gather by your feet
 they are ghostly now   as these ghosts gathering
 in my lines   when the front rolls in   like a wraith
 from the southwest   spreading a wide fan

  
         of shadows and rain   over the prairie
 maybe you’d be by the upstairs   window,
 looking out   through the big black bars
 of the oak tree   toward the gash   of the river

  
         moving there, hidden   between the steep slopes
 and Dad will get up   and put down the paper
 (ROOSEVELT SPEAKS TONIGHT)   where piano
 music   curls on the bench   and as rain   pulses

  
         down   and the storm finally breaks   maybe
 you’ll see the strange   incandescence   the
 last light   burning through beneath
 the storm and   your face like a



 
         smaller star,   leaning there
 against the   clear pane –

    
                      *

  
         Gemutlichkeit or no   it’s the story of a star
 I’m just a poor   wayfaring stranger
 and   the people don’t dream; they work
 a long, long way   from my home

  
         active, energetic, prosperous, practical
 the happy result is manifest all around in
 the substantial outside aspect of things,
 and the suggestions of wholesome life

  
         (but Marion City is an exception.
 Marion City has gone backward in
 a most unaccountable way.  Doubtless
 Marion City was too near to Quincy.)

  
         like Henry Clay Dean   if the ground had been
 sodded with greenbacks   scarecrow Dean
 in foxy shoes, down at the heels, socks of odd
 colors, relics of antiquity   a world too short

  
         small, stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung on the
 corner of the bump of   a just audible ripple
 of merriment (forearm unprotected) which swept
 the sea of faces like   the wash of a wave

  
         and now the stranger stepped back one pace
 nobody listening, everybody laughing and
 whispering   (along here, somewhere
 on a black night   ran some exceedingly

  
         narrow and intricate island chutes
 by aid of the electric light.  Behind was
 solid blackness – a crackless bank of
 it   ahead   a narrow elbow of water, curving

          
         between dense walls of foliage   and here
 every individual leaf and every individual ripple
 stood out   flooded with a glare as of noonday)
 passed Prairie du Chien   after some hours

  
         progress   through varied and beautiful scenery
 reached La Crosse.  We noticed that above Dubuque
 the water of the Mississippi was olive-green
 rich and beautiful and semitransparent,

  
         with the sun on it.  And I remember Muscatine
 they use the broad smooth river as a canvas
 and painted on it every imaginable dream   it is
 the true Sunset Land   so good a right to the name.

  
         Go upstream   deeper into the green caverns
 as in all these Upper-River towns   the majestic
 bluffs   this region is new   blanketed with
 Indian tales and traditions   Draco

  
         and Romeo and Juliet of   White Bear Lake
 and the bear caught her   she and the blanket
 you get yourself all worked up about the
 blanket   snowed under   like a star in a Kali-

  
         black stoneboat   pivoting   he began life poor
 and without education   on the curbstone
 with his book   unconscious of the tramp of
 passing crowds   to let a dray pass

  
         unobstructed   there are many soothsayers
 in Scythia   but the class of effeminate persons
 called “Enarees”   use a different method
 take a piece of the inner bark of the lime-tree

  
         which they say was taught them by Aphrodite
 and cut it into three pieces   which they keep
 twisting and untwisting round their fingers
 as they prophesy when the king of Scythia

          
         falls sick   Lincoln had known only this quiet house
 he was six when his sister Irma flew in the door
 with the white man she announced   she was
 going to marry   “Later on”   Sioux

  
         Lincoln bolts   swoops   slams   out of the house.
 Until the unholy train comes tearing along
 ripping the sacred solitude to rags
 the locomotive is in sight from the deck

  
         of the steamboat   his clothes differed in no respect
 from a “wharf-rat’s”   except they were raggeder
 they retreated to other city haunts in shame
 since it was launched in Minneapolis on May 29, 1935

  
         Lester and Vera approached the train unnoticed
 they boarded the broken steps of the sleeper car
 the errant lights of the yard bosses sprayed the
 side (their rusted hulk star-manger   Hiawatha)


      
                                           1.6.99

Hail to Thee, John Berryman!

St. Petersburg was modelled on Amsterdam (after a trip there by the young Czar Peter, incognito). E. Shvarts writes quite a bit about Venice & other diked locations. (thinking of the strange juxtaposition of the floodish poem just posted, & the tsunami.)

winter daydreams. VBA. this is from section of Grassblade Light titled "Letters to Elena".

24


 
Elena, in the pool of Solominka,
flickering upon that ceiling
where a ludicrous king
drifts in his cockleshell – hélas...

 
the water flows across the crown
of wooden beams and out
the window – a geyser, spouting
Noah’s antediluvian naiads (unknown

 
to man).  There to rejoin the river
(Neva land), and cycle back
past dike and sea-wrack
to the sea again... forever.

 
Some nomadic spiral of the ether,
compassing diurnal clockworks –
some field’s associated particles or
bedsprings of the universe (her

 
conch, loveseat or shofar, where
virtual affinities materialize –
supposedly).  But we will lionize
this plenum here below – sere

 
sheaf of arrowheads all-knotted –
strung together – admirable
petroglyph!  Your humble
servant, swept, translated

 
into history’s dustbin (a vacuum
cleaner?) and groaning in the cedar
dentist’s chair, calls out – Look there!
Look there! – as a canvas of the pneuma

 
– Gurdjieff?  Gesundtheit! – suddenly
unveiled itself – a sophic salience
sailed – into stony permanence!
and penetrating the meadowy

 
hypercubes where time does not run
its keel pealed like the bell of an onion’s
dominion, everywhere – someone’s
St. Michelson-Morley balsamic beam icon –

 
light wood, afloat – Chris Craft –
I saw the arc of its shadow overhead
and Frank will check too – he said
– renamed and thinly disguised – after

 
the ether returned as ore through the void
and (tweaked with energy) grew wildly
excited in a tableau of zeros – spiralling,
transmitted, pervading, perfuming the giddy

 
Hendrik B.G. Casimir plates so close together
that Umar Mohideen, Anushree Roy were
able, Madam, at last - I’m adamant – you’re
even – or... Odd Nerdrum we – eventually – are!

 
Odd Nerdrum – out of nothing – we!
Tableau – or tapestry!
And Steve K.
Lamoureux in Seattle – he

 
can prove it with his spinning plates!
And he will do that – as the triporia
separates all vibrations from the area,
and the keg or vessel percolates

 
across the semispheres and we cry
Noev Kovcheg Zaveta... or
Ave Venez Konch-Gato... and
as the lioness and the other beasts fly

 
faster than the human eye can see –
quicker than a quark – and we
fly with them – you and me (one
ultraviolet canoe makes three)–

 
and under the dark gilt of the giddy vault
you will not hear the sobbing of the seraphim
only the oratorio     Jerusalem, Jerusalem
as   the miniature ark lifts off   to float

 
suspended   in air
out of deep granaries
lifted   to play   sing
as children   everywhere

 
once nested in this knot of fire
never to be removed   nor remove
as from the pinnacle   a dove
comes spiralling   down,  here

 
hear   share   sheer   shores
wash   whoosh   whirrs
YHWHrrrrrshshsh...
she   flies...

 
out of my hands
the shadow of your flight
into the blue   becoming   night
and   beckoning toward...



           
                2.4.99

 
25
 
       ...Accolade thou dost bestow
       Of anonymity time cannot raise:
       Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

 
Paradise.  Orthogonal.  Yours, mine.
Orthodox, unorthodox – handmade
of the Lord, 90 degrees in the shade, and
all... a fingerpaint orthographer’s design.

 
Alpha and Omega, some anomaly or
salience – hidden well, buried in the rocks
of rough Armenia (where upside-down sticks
inside-out as well) until light pours

 
through carven crevice there... your
ear sees something whirling down:
anonymous, silly, like a clown
in love, a cartoon speech balloon - your

 
ecce homo, coming home.  Pre-branch,
pre-wind pre-word pre-sound pre-budding
preface of an angel’s deer-eyed brooding
dive... before a great pre-smiling avalanche

 
engulfs the playground once again, again again:
a dome of laughter in the air joins you
as tears dissolve into the ocean.  Go,
little bird... fly.

 
    *     *     *
    *     *     *
    *     *     *
    *     *     *

 
Paradise is a bird sanctuary now.
The path shines through the cedars.
He said – the Kingdom of God is yours.
The Rabbi – smiling, with the garden hoe.
                                      
                                  2.5.99

As I am reading in her memoir, E. Shvarts grew up around actors & the stage. Her mother was a script-reader & etc. for a major Petersburg theater.

"Ghenrik Gouldski" & "Yelena Karonska" star in : The L(love? language?)-Shaped Room !!!

(...all part of my devious master plan, haha! to re-infect American poetry with plot, theme & character! Elder Olson vs. Chas. Olson! haha! Chicago vs. the Coasts! Heehee! Venus Beats All!!

- the Most Evil Professor HP Ghould)

Chagall, "The Poet". Remember seeing this in Minneapolis Art Institute. Wrote a poem about it once back in 70s on a manual typewriter. Haven't been able to find the poem for a long vremya.

p.s. 5.22.07 : still haven't located that early poem. I wanted to send it to the Art Institute to see if they could use it for a poster. This may be a task for future scholars : find Henry's lost poem about Chagall's "The Poet"!

that grey photo of grey syistra-golub Shvarts reminded me of Leslie Caron. I fell for her when I was about 10, watching "The L-Shaped Room" with my babysitter.

Is US poetry an L-shaped room?????? Open that window...

Another Russkiephile has been sighted entering Blogosphere, chelovekii. Szdrastvuitie, dobry outra, ochin priatne, blog-obirratorrrr! Vaiditie, pozhaliste, to the Shum Vremeni... (Interesting comments at that link (Languor Management, June '04) - 'shum vremeni" in relation to "time-crystallization" or the architectonics of memory. In relation to what I wrote in the archive (at the Octopus "essays" link). Languor Management - even more russophiliac than HG Poetics.

the young Elena Shvarts.

Am reading Petersburg poet Elena Shvarts' memoir, Vidimaia Starona Zhizni. In Russian! Horosho-whoopee!

Interesne link to some of her poems here.

I may go back to using a manual typewriter, too.

My daughter Phoebe flew to Bangladesh over the weekend, as part of a school volunteer program. She's getting pretty good at beginner's Bangla.

I've been wondering whether to continue with this blog. It's going into Year 3. My off-the-cuff cracker-barrelling & reminiscing, in the interstices of the workday, takes on its own quasi-life. But I'm having a lot of trouble with actual writing, & have been for a few years. & am not in a very receptive mood as regards Poetry World. So not sure what of positive value this here blog represents.

No need to send cheer-up messages or exhortations, dear palzee-walzees (Brookly-Bangla word for "friends")! I have to think it over.

Happy New Year!

I'm using a grayish blue pencil which I picked up here at work. It reads, in silver lettering, Venus Beats All No. 2. Hesitate to sharpen all that away.