The Earth With A City In Her Hair

"Everybody plays the fool"

2011-04-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

As the song says. "No exceptions to the rule".

And there's the old saying, "even Homer nods".

But I was very surprised in a library some years ago to see that the editors of Pegasus Descending: A Book of the Best Bad Verse had thought to include in that anthology Emily Dickinson's Poem #566-"A Dying Tiger--moaned for Drink--", which I find to be very powerful, and believe to be oft-acclaimed.

It's of course because of line five--"His Mighty Balls--in death were thick--". Anyone familiar with Dickinson's diction knows she is referring to "EYEballs", but yes, the line is rather funny, if one wants to make an issue of it.

If one bad line is sufficient to whisk an excellent poem away into the bad, bad, bad category, I wonder if William Blake's pithy wise notebook poem "Never pain to tell thy Love" will ever be fated for inclusion in such a collection:

Never pain to tell thy Love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently invisibly

I told my love I told my love
I told her all my heart
Trembling cold in ghastly fears
Ah she doth depart

Soon as she was gone from me
A traveler came by
Silently invisibly
O was no deny

We know very well what he means by it, but the last line is excruciatingly clumsy, is it not? The excuse for W.B.'s line might be: it's not something published, it's just something in a notebook. The excuse for E.D.'s, of course, is that she likely wasn't aware of such slang as "balls" meaning testicles. Or that you should leave your dirty mind out of it as you read what she wrote about her Tyger's eyes extinguished.
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NOTE: Pegasus Descending was edited by the odd triumvarate of James Camp, X.J. Kennedy, and Keith Waldrop. I don't know who Camp is, but Kennedy and Waldrop are very different figures.

Trees, Leaders, Labors: a beginning on Larry Eigner's Collected Poems

2010-08-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: THIS POST WAS FINALLY COMPLETED ON SUNDAY AUGUST 22ND AT 4:50 PM, BUT IS DATED AUGUST 16TH BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN I BEGAN "PUBLISHING" SOME OF THE DEVELOPING TEXT, TO WORK ON MY RE-CREATION OF EIGNER'S INDENTATIONS. I APOLOGIZE TO ANYONE WHO HAS RECEIVED AUTOMATIC NEWS OF SUPPOSEDLY NEW BLOG ACTION, NOT OCCURRING UNTIL TODAY :) )

On Friday August the 6th I picked up the four volume Larry Eigner Collected Poems [edited by Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier; and if ever there were a labor of love!...--kudos to them] from the Buffalo Manhattan Avenue post office, and carried the fairly heavy carton the almost exactly one mile [Yahoo Local says 1.08 miles] back to my apartment--but no problem, believe me, if it had actually been a strain, I would have called a taxi.

In the subsequent almost-two weeks, perhaps I haven't strained myself enough exploring these stunning volumes, but I'd like to examine now a little of what I've seen in them:

As ever with Eigner, I encountered his brilliant--but not fancy; simple--ways of conceiving common natural phenomena like trees and birds, etc.: a challenge to all poets and other writers as regards whether we could create similar imaginations, quite apart from the question of whether we are(whether Eigner was?) adept at indentifying specific tree or bird species.

Eigner's June 20, 1966 poem [Volume II, p. 726], reads:

that bird got
  deep in the hedge

      a tree is an island

       rain
          passes

        cloud  fades off

Here trees (and hedges) are seen as islands of rest and refuge for birds.

When we get to the "rain" of lines four and five, there is a mild suddenness as we learn why the birds Eigner has been looking at were seeking refuge.

A reader's led to think: it's likely a day of shifting, highly localized raining, so the rain "passes" as regards space as well as time. And so the rain can be thought of as something like the birds.

When, finally, we focus on a cloud shifting out of sight, Eigner interestingly fuses our imagination of this cloud's lateral movement with a sense of other ways the cloud might have disappeared, since the cloud "fades off", suggesting 'fading out' or 'fading away'.

There's this, from April 12, 1966 [Volume II, p. 710]:

the way a bird flies
from the 3rd brick step to
  the tree  towards the sky

the burden of twigs

One is first surprised to read of diminutive "twigs" as a burden; but then you think of the tree trunk 'carrying' the rest of the tree--of each large branch 'burdened' by its tributaries--and you think, well yes, the numerous twigs add up.

So this one is fairly simply a contrast of the tree's rootedness and weights, and the lightness of the bird--plus at least two other things to think about. The reader might feel the need to decide: do I think of the bird's flight up to the tree as a motion "towards the sky"; or would I reserve that phrase for when the bird leaves the tree and actually begins directing its flight towards the upper atmosphere? And there is certainly an enigma as to how the thought of "the way [this bird flies in the path that I describe in the 2nd and 3rd line]..." is to be completed.

Encountering these, and other, new-to-me and familiar, poems celebrating trees in these Collected volumes, I had a sudden thought about one of the long-tantalizing mysterious moments in Eigner's poem prompted by the assassination of Martin Luther King.

That poem is dated April 2-5, 1968 [and therein hangs a nagging perplexity about the poem's genesis, for that dating would indicate, as Steven Fama points out in his enthusiastic and industrious March 28, 2010 post ((somehow,after proofreading myself over and over I haven't been able to link specifically to that post)) about Eigner poems inspired by news events, that the poem was begun before the assassination--Doctor King was shot and killed on April the 4th; while there's nothing necessarily odd about that, since Eigner might very understandably have been inspired to begin writing an MLK-centered poem simply by virtue of this leader's visit to Memphis in solidarity with striking African American trash collectors, what's weird is that in his 1977 interview with Stony Hills magazine, reprinted in areas lights heights, the invaluable 1989 collection of Eigner prose texts edited by Benjamin Friedlander, Eigner says "James Earl Ray sure hit me, that is King did, and in the few days after he was killed--April 2-5 '68 {emphasis added}--there was a 50-line piece which just came off, no work to speak of involved, just King, and the Memphis garbage workers and all..." (areas lights heights, p. 148). I would imagine that Eigner remembered vividly, and correctly, the nature of the poem's impetus, and was simply, and consistently, mistaken as to the dating, but who can tell.]

The first seven lines of the poem are as follows:

The world that was, the glass

                            King King King King

     of fashion burst in your eyes

                                     sanitation
                                     men

             all the green
            over the arm

The flash of understanding I've spoken of was in reference to lines six and seven: I thought of how garbage cans left at curbsides are frequently enough placed under trees, so that the brief moment of the collector's reaching for and raising these containers involves a pleasant canopy--suggesting a perhaps idyllic aspect to this quintessential 'it's not a nice task, but somebody has to do it--please let it not be me' sort of labor.

I'd like to offer some further conjectures on these seven lines--some of which have also occurred to me during my recent reading of the poem in the Collected [Volume III, pps. 832-833], some of which I've arrived at over the years.

I'd like to suggest that the world "glass" in the first line refers to the lens through which Americans used to look at Race--at what racial inequalities were or were not totally incompatible with the nation's proclaimed ideals, and at what indignities non-White people were or were not willing to put up with. Thus the interrupting, and shoved-to-the-side, second line's repetition of the word "King" may refer not only to the man who had done so much to change things, but also to the succession of authority figures--presidents, Cabinet members, governors of states, etc.--who continued, with whatever variations and reforms, the old oppressive patterns, like a dynasty of kings committed to common principles.

(As soon as I think of, or propose out loud, this double-meaning of the syllable "King", I feel a little frightened of this perhaps silly-sounding interpretation: I'm very pleased to notice Eigner meditating about kingship--he alludes to the Romanovs, Caeser, and [presumably British] Kings Charles and John--in what is evidently the last poem he composed before the M.L.K. elegy [the late March '68 poem that's found at the bottom of Volume III, p. 833]).

My interpretation suggests to me a 2nd meaning of the words "sanitation/men": the authority figures--the "king[s]"--can be seen as people who often made efforts to reduce the worst of the stink of America's undone business.

I think the King poem as a whole is more focused on its central theme than Steven Fama has suggested. I'll perhaps type out the whole thing at some point, and give my interpretation. When and if I do that, I'll stop evading line three.

corollaries from heck

2010-08-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

"Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you" wrote William Blake in the Proverbs of Hell section of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. These days, very many people, some of whom are not necessarily all that base, will avoid the person who has that readiness.

Ian Keenan once told me that I was a "classic New Yorker" because often I don't shrink from saying exactly what I think. A lot of good that did me in 80s/90s/00s Manhattan and Queens!

a season-word saves me

2010-08-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

A season-word saves me--that is, I hope, from the not-particularly-vibrant nature of the first-draft [it turns out] haiku I posted a few days ago, about a haiku-book stuck in an un-opening desk drawer. I was at a birthday party yesterday, and started to speak of the stuck drawer because I wanted to speak of the trapped book, and probably about trying to write about it...Somebody in the room informed me that in summer the lid of a drawer can swell, so one option I have is to wait for the change of seasons. I appreciated the scientific enlightenment, and the conversation swerved so I never completed the rest of the little story.

So on the way home I was thinking, yes it's certainly good practice for a haiku to have a season-word, and in fact, I had already been lamenting not having such a word in this, probably my first attempt ever to write one, so how the lines might read [after exploring several different possibilities], could be:

Hopeless tugs on handle,
Summer's swelling, Beary's sparkle
Caught in unbudging drawer!

So now my First Haiku's not so bad, I believe [and please don't tell me, a haiku has to be exactly 5-7-5, that's ignorant]. I don't know if these three lines have any place within the community of poems I've published, or would like to see published--or for that matter, what the title, if any, could possibly be.

This morning's dilemma...

2010-07-31T13:12:00.001-07:00

Hopeless tugs on handle,
Roberta Beary's sparkle
Caught in unbudging drawer!

House Organ, Di Prima, Buffalo

2010-07-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago, the wonderful Number 71 Summer 2010 issue of House Organ arrived at my doorstep in Buffalo New York, where I've been living for about a year, doing a lot of interesting things, though not, as you can see, up to now, blogging. [I took a look at this tall thin stapled publication just now to see what the postmark date was, but it is not readable--anyway, how excellent!, alongside of it is a striking Richard Wright 61 cent stamp.]

Kenneth Warren, who has kept this exemplary mag going dependably--4 times a year through thick and thin!--for a very long time [now how many 'unofficial' literary magazines can say that!], has recently also moved to the Buffalo area, to rural Youngstown--having retired from his library duties in Lakewood, Ohio--so it's great to speak with him at events sometimes [we had known each other at SUNY/Buffalo in the 70s]--and we will have to have dinner sometime on Niagara Falls Blvd., as he has suggested.

There's much I'd like to speak of in Number 71, but to make sure I indeed post today, let me limit myself to Diane Di Prima's 4-line poem "Madhyamaka".

That alone is a wonderful thing about House Organ, that one can find in various issues, new work by Diane D. P., that legendary but rather neglected first generation member of the Beats. Readers can be excused for having the impression that she is no longer publishing; and in terms of releasing books, she does appear to have taken a vow of long mid-career abstention, akin to that of Robert Duncan.

It's important to note, however, which I myself didn't know or remember until doing some research today, that the 1998 edition of Di Prima's mythic/feminist epic Loba contains 16 sections, as compared to the 1978 Loba's 8 sections. [I definitely will have take a look at the 1998 expansion at the SUNY/Buffalo Special Collections: Poetry Room, scandalously the only library site in Buffalo where one can find any edition of Loba, and not a place from which any book can, like they say, circulate.]*

I must not forget to mention this: that Di Prima certainly has not been abstemious as regards offering her insights and perspectives on the Buffalo Poetics List in recent years. It has been a delight to read her comments there; one of the few delights the List has provided in these years.

OK, on to the Di Prima poem from the new House Organ:

Madhyamaka

so engrossed in the refutation
of the Imputed Self
I forget to turn on

the Giants game

The poem is enjoyable after the few second it takes to read it, but it's rich in implication. It's pared down writing, elegant in its vocabulary, and witty. It is very much at rest, but it provokes important questions.

Di Prima speaks of involving herself, as part of her practice of Madhyamaka, a Buddhist Mahayana tradition, in the intricacies of the argument against the Self, widely "imputed" to be the basis of any human's consciousness. She wants to cut this Self down to size, temporarily suspend it, show it to be an illusion, or whatever precisely she seeks to advocate and argue (I can't claim to know much of anything about Madhyamaka, or any, Buddhism).

I do know that when Di Prima invokes "the Giants game" droll and important matters are opened up. Perhaps, we think, it could simply be a matter of that there's a time for Religious Devotion, and a time for Entertainment. Or, more conceptually, and somewhat condescendingly, that there's a time for extinguishing the ego, and a time for enjoying the skills and antics of talented athletes who, in the nature of things, surely are mostly great egotists. Or can it be that one's meditational work on the Self, which shows one that one is "really only very small", as per the Hinduism of George Harrison's "Within You, and Without You", also provoke feelings sometimes of LARGENESS in one's newly organized consciousness, so that viewing "the Giants" will be quite appropriate after one's meditation?

I want to note finally that since the poem considers questions of the Self's largeness and smallness, the word "engrossed" quite wittily chimes in with this theme. (I imagine that Diane D. P. stumbled upon this very appropriate word choice via the Unconscious, as someone whose life is immersed in words is so often liable to do, and then later understood what she had done).

"Gross" is Middle English for large [derived from Old French gros and then Late Latin grossus, meaning thick.] There's an economic meaning for "engross", which I had never known about before, which refers to acquiring most or all of a commodity (monopolizing). To be "engrossed" by something is to be occupied exclusively, absorbed.

______________________________
*So the latest poetry we have in book form from Di Prima is the 2001 Pieces of a Song: Selected Peoms [is there anything added beyond the 1990 version?]; the 1991 Seminary Poems [I just learned about this today}; and the 1998 additions to Loba. In prose there is the 2001 Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years.

Blaser, Buffalo, circa '76: a memory

2009-07-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

I think it was in 1976 when the State University of New York at Buffalo Student Association Poetry Committee (isn't it great that there was such an entity--I imagine that there isn't one now)--invited Robin Blaser (May 1925-May 2009) to be part of its reading series and he graciously accepted. I don't think that any of the other people we invited from outside the University were from such a distance as Vancouver, British Columbia--the other Student Association poetry reader from that year that I remember was Armand Schwerner, from New York City. (I don't think I was an official member of the Poetry Committee but I attended some of the meetings and otherwise heard about developments through my committee-person friends).

All of us on or close to the Committee were absolutely horrified when the student-artist who had been tapped to create a poster unveiled his or her creation: the visual art component was fine, but the print read "ROBIN BLAZER: THE BEST-KNOWN UNKNOWN POET". The Poetry Committee member(s) who spoke to the artist had indeed used the offending phrase at one point, attemping to deliniate RB's status in the Poetry World. It certainly wasn't desired though that such a phrase appear on the actual poster--nor that Blaser's name by mis-spelled. I told my best friend on the Committee that "The Best-Known Unknown Poet" formula sounded like Madison Avenue; she said what do you mean Madison Avenue, it was like Chippewa Street (at that time the Buffalo street most associated with hookers).

We were braced for trouble, but, surprise, surprise, the first words out of Blaser's mouth when he reached the microphone were "I liked that poster!" Or at least he liked the "best known unknown" characterization. He said he could do without the mistaken "z" since that evoked a long history of unfortunate Germanic/French entanglements...And then, what can I say, the absolute enchantment of a Robin Blaser poetry reading.

Various people I knew, including of course the Poetry Committe people, and the professor I most venerated, John Clarke, hung out with Blaser at a bar that evening. My God!--I have no idea why I wasn't there; some frigging test I had to study for? (Btw, I don't think Robert Creeley was present at the reading or at the bar, I think he was out of town at the time). Later, of course, I heard a little bit about what was discussed that night, which I learned included the question of why the Working Class wasn't more interested in listening to Beethoven.

My Best Friend from the Poetry Committee said she enjoyed sharing stories with Robin that night about Disappointing Men. And wow, the next day she arrived at the scheduled final meeting without the check she was supposed to hand him. He was gracious about even that; other arrangements were made.

new york city sighting

2009-06-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

The other day I was strolling leisurely down Fifth Avenue after seeing the Francis Bacon show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I came upon the vivid sight of the carriage horses lined up on 59th Street (Central Park South) eating their oats. Each oat-pail had ten or twenty pigeons clustered around it. I directed my attention to one of the pails and saw that the horse would bury its head in it and munch for a while, but then would slowly raise its head until it reached its straight-ahead position, which it would maintain for a fairly long time, teeth still deliberatively chewing. Soon after the horse's head would begin rising, the pigeons would quickly fly in, sans objection from gracious horse. The horse would start to lower its head again; the pigeons of course quickly vacated the pail.

I watched this pattern three or four times, then walked forward to set my eyes upon another oat-pail, to see if the situation would be different. Well, yes. This horse would hardly ever raise its head from the pail; when it did it was for a very brief moment, just in order to spit out some of what was in its mouth--and this periodic ejection was what the pigeons gathered around that pail had to look forward to: the flock would race over to swallow up the grains of food newly scattered upon the ground. So this too seemed a rather cheerful sight, especially since when the horse would spit I could somehow see only food-grains flying, and not any saliva.

poem for the new year

2008-10-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

This being the Jewish High Holiday season--Rosh Hashanah, the New Year (literally "Head of the Year") having been last week, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, beginning this very evening, I thought it would be nice to post my most Biblical poem, written in 1984, and later published in John (Jack) Clarke's poetry journal intent., which was fitting, because it is also the most Clarkean poem I ever wrote.

Beginning with yesterday's first imagining of this post, I wanted some sort of title such as the one I have finally chosen, "poem for the new year". When I finally laid my hands on a copy of the poem (I couldn't find one in my apartment, nor my copy of the appropriate issue of intent., so I had to go to my Safe Deposit Box at the Dime Savings Bank for the copies secured there), it was a charming surprise to be reminded by the date at the bottom of the poem that it was written very close to the start of a New Year as in January.

I am probably not telling the reader anything that she or he does not already know, but allow me to point out that "minyan" refers to the quorom of ten men that traditionally is needed to conduct a Jewish prayer service, and here connects with the Biblical narrative of Abraham pleading with The Lord to save the two condemned cities if there are ten worthy people there. "Intellectual tears" evokes Blake's lines from "The Grey Monk": "For a Tear is an intellectual thing,/And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King".

Lot's Wife Turns to the Lot of the City

Murderous fire and sulfer from the skies
not deflected by the force of enough
satisfactory citizens forming a minyan
as minimum constellation to
serve as shield of wonderful light for
the city's living flesh against
the knuckles of judging flame
the lucky woman couldn't take in her
stride, so halted,
turned to witness, with body and heart
bleeding as instantly she
solidified to
bitter intellectual tears standing
firm as eternal
saving saline
mercy of all
health and preservation.

2 January 1984

the copier's at the zoo, the check is written

2008-10-01T10:42:00.000-07:00

"i'll meet you at the zoo & we'll xerox" is a line that has long intrigued me from Bernadette Mayer's 2005 book, Scarlet Tanager. It's from "Stanzas In Meditation", a thirteen line poem that appropriates--or better said, activates--certain elements from Part I, Stanza I of Gertrude Stein's book-length poem of that name.

There seems to me something somehow very right about the image of xeroxing at the zoo; I like to visualize someone going into a special room at a zoo containing a public xerox machine and making all the copies s/he needs. The image is mysteriously pleasing; and likely popped into Mayer's mind because of the animal species name at the end of the word "xerox". One could leave it at that.

But I'd like to suggest that the image also points to the way that a zoo must reproduce as best as possible the physical environment each of its animals would be inhabiting in the Wild. That, I think, is the secret of why the image has always "worked" for me.

And when I look at the poem as a whole I think truly there is further support for my reading of the image. But we won't get into that now; to look at the poem properly I'd have to examine it in the light of the Stein poem, & I'll save that for later.

But I'll note that I have written the check to help Ms. Mayer and Mr. Good attain assurance that as the weather grows colder they will have (see the previous post) the domestic heat environment needed by human beings, and that very truthfully, it's in the mail.

Summer's Almost Gone, Winter's Coming On; Mayer and Good Ask Help with Heat

2008-09-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

In the October/November (St. Mark's Church In-The-Bowery) Poetry Project Newsletter, which came to my mailbox today, there is the following notice:

ASSISTANCE NEEDED

Bernadette Mayer and Philip Good need to raise money to pay for heating fuel. Already three months behind in monthly payments. People can send money to Giorno Poetry Systems (222 Bowery, 3rd Fl., New York, NY, 10012, United States); write "Bernadette Mayer Fund" in the memo.

______________________

I heartily recommend that people reading this here do send along a check.

I am going to send a check for $50. (I will report, dear reader, when I actually
have sent it).

I frankly was not very conscious of Mayer's work until the cerebral aneurysm she suffered in 1994. The outpouring of love for Bernadette as person and writer that then ensued motivated me to study her work and I was not disappointed with what I found.

But of this I am ashamed: I kept telling myself that I would contribute to the fund for Mayer's medical expenses that was set up at that time, and never did I do so.

(However in mitigation I can state that I did participate in the first Workshop that Bernadette taught at St. Mark's after her medical emergency and so at least the fee I paid for the Workshop was of some monetary help to her).

They Say This Makes a Life

2008-09-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

Arbeit und Liebe--
Toil and Trouble.

A few weeks after the Shakespeare dream, I had the Chaucer dream

2008-07-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

I'm among several people standing in the aisle of an Amtrak train-car. It isn't clear why we are standing up; we don't seem to be waiting to use the bathroom, and there are plenty of empty seats. In fact, I do have a seat to return to, which I imagine is true also for the three or four other standees.

As I stand there on the train, my thoughts are about how I would love to immerse myself in the study of British Literature of the Middle Ages. I murmur the word "daughter" as I am pretty sure it would be pronounced in Middle English--with the "gh" forming a "ch" shound like Yiddish chutzpah or Scottish loch. A woman standing near me comprehends my quiet utterance perfectly--she says to me, "you like Chaucer, don't you?" I say, yes I do.

She is wearing a very cheery blouse, with a white background and large patches of bright color. We talk in the aisle for a while, then I follow her to her seat. I don't necessarily sit down next to her, probably I sit in the row of seats behind her. As we are getting seated, I notice that she is wearing a wedding ring, and I'm dissapointed, as I had so much wanted to ask this balanced, erudite, delightful woman on a date. (I noticed also that she wore another ring on the middle finger of her opposite hand).

As we speak further, I learn that she is an expert on male sexuality and the misadventures thereof. This becomes another reason I would like to have her as a friend--at some point she could provide much-needed guidance/information in regard to such matters.

note: some time after dreaming the dream I realized that "daughter" as I pronounced it on the train--dauCH-ter--suggests also "doctor". (& btw, when I consulted a Middle English glossary I noted that the M.E. word was not "daughter" but "doghter").

Poor Betsy R. & John H., they've gotten fewer votes than the King

2008-07-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

There was a Fun Item on Daily Kos yesterday, July 4th, wherein "kossacks" were polled regarding "who would you rather have an ale with", the choices being Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Betsy Ross, George Washington, Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, Abigail Adams, John Hancock, and King George III. (To find this poll you'll have to go to the bottom of the Kos permalink page I've linked).

Benjamin Franklin was the clear winner. Some people in the comments section said that they'd like to observe how such a physically ungainly man was so attractive to the Ladies.

My choice, though it was not provided as an option, would be to have an ale with Abigail and John Adams together. I would love to catch a glimpse of what all reports say was an exquisite and powerful companionship.

And the next time-travel project after that: a beer with Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle.

Hamlet dream, a few months ago

2008-05-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

I happen to encounter some people who are cast members anticipating the first performance, in a day or two, of a production of Hamlet, and I remember, before they speak to me, that I had committed myself to playing the title character! I haven't attended any of the rehearsals, nor memorized or even studied the part, yet they need me to fulfill my committment.

Then it is evening, and I am purposefully walking around the basement level of a B&N bookstore. I find some inexpensive versions of individual Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet, amongst a collection of paperback books locked inside a glass case. I would have to call a clerk over to unlock the case so I could have the book, and either I don't want to do this because I feel too shy about it, or I have some other reason for deciding against purchasing the paperback. I go the bookshelves at the far end of the store, and I quickly find a complete edition of Shakespeare's works, totally free for the handling, though of course it is a much more expensive volume than those Shakespeare books that were within the glass case. I'm very seriously thinking of buying this book, but then I start pondering whether this is the best edition of the Complete Works. I try to remember what I know about the various editions.

Apparently I do not purchase the play in any form whatever.

The next day I arrive at the playhouse to take part in the performance. The audience has not arrived yet, but the actors are getting into position to start the play. Or perhaps this is because it is a last rehearsal. I walk on stage and ask the people near me where I am supposed to stand. I am led to the back of the stage, and then far to the left, near the shore of a lake. It seems like I am actually outdoors rather than amongst painted scenery, or at least that the distance I have traversed is much too large to be congruent with an indoor stage (and surely I have walked so far left that the audience will not be able to see me).

slow boat coming

2008-03-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've always found the third verse of Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" from Blonde on Blonde (1966) to be absolutely hilarious:

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line.
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine.
An' I said, "Oh, I didn't know that,
But then again, there's only one I've met
An' he just smoked my eyelids
An' punched my cigarette."

Not only is this extremely funny, but there's a fascinating utopian gesture here, I think, despite the fact that one does not necessarily expect to find anything utopian amidst the chilly landscape of B.o.B.

"Drinking up" someone's "blood like wine" is a sadly familiar human activity. And I don't think, sadly, I have to explain the idea at all, but just to be clear, let me define it as finding delectation (on the verge of, or crossing over into, inebriation) in the depletion of the vitality of someone one is exploiting, cheating, or just bullying. But however common this sort of enjoyment is, the "Mobile" lines suggest that it is ridiculous. Sipping and savoring human blood is portrayed as a strange mix-up, just like smoking an eyelid or punching a cigarette would be.

So Cruelty is viewed here as simply strange. That doesn't mean, of course, that many people will come to look at it that way. But I think that there's a suggestion lurking in this slapstick Dylan passage that--hey! this idea/feeling about the ridiculous nature of sadism isn't so hard to grasp. So that's why I say "utopian"...because to think of more and more people coming to such a perspective is to think, isn't it, of a future as amazingly bright, in its own way, as anything suggested by "When the Ship Comes In" from The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964). And it appears to be a pleasantly robust utopia, where people still, on occasion, slug each other in the face, and where they may choose to partake of cigarettes and other unhealthy substances.

And yes, I know, I know--having set down these words, Bobby D.'s own legendary bouts of cruelty are a subject that I should discuss at some point.

"These are the days": a first note on Larry Eigner

2007-11-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

Recently taking an intensive look at the excellent 1997 memorial issue of the online journal Passages celebrating the life and work of Larry Eigner (for some reason I've not been able to create a link to this, so if you are interested please search for "Eigner Passages 5" or "EPC Authors Eigner"), I found myself delighted by Kit Robinson's beautiful formulations defining the characteristic movement of Eigner's poetry. Take for instance the following two sentences from Robinson's essay:

"In Eigner, the desire to know anchors itself in the discrete particular, recording sense data in an empiricism derived from Williams, Pound, and Olson, then stretches itself by a series of shifts of attention, to create an arching figure for knowledge. The shapes those figures take are products of an insistent, restless movement on the one hand, and on the other a refusal to compromise the harvest of the moment by surbordinating it to any totalizing statement."

However, I also found myself wishing very much that Robinson would, at least parenthetically, note that there are other types of fine poems by Eigner than those involved with momentary particulars. A short amazing Eigner poem called "Whoppers  Whoppers  Whoppers!" that I take to be one of pure statement was ringing in my ears.

One of the virtues of David Baptiste Chirot's essay--ambitious in scope and relatively lengthy--in the Passages issue is that he indeed presents other sorts of Eigner poems than those that are most typical. Chirot finds it crucial to discuss an Eigner poem--"Whitman's Cry at Starvation in a Land of Plenty"--that speaks of Civil War prison camps, and of the persistent importance of the factors of "consumption and conservation and population" in human affairs. Chirot also presents a short Eigner poem called "a  d o t" that is a brief characterization of Space and Time.

Let's look at the poem I said was "ringing in my ears":

Whoppers    Whoppers    Whoppers!

          memory fails

              these are the days

This is a deft characterization--skewering--of the nature of Nostalgia. One convinces oneself of massive lies--whoppers--concerning the Past that make it seem so much more lustrous than the Present: as stated in the common phrase that Eigner alludes to, those were the days that were truly worth living. The phrase "memory fails" usually refers to forgetting some fact about the past, or something one learned in the past--say someone's face or name--but here it is transported towards meaning that memory is failing to properly evaluate what the past was actually like in comparison to the present.

"Whoppers" is the second poem in Eigner's 1983 volume Waters / Places / A Time. It's interesting to turn back to the first poem from that book:

              co-op

                  wind

                    ows a

                      door

At first glance, this may seem like one of Eigner's most modest exercises in the registration of momentary perceptions--using "modest" not to refer to the attractive verbal restraint found everywhere in this poet's work, but as a mild pejorative. Eigner has apparently arrived in his electric wheelchair ¹ at a building housing a cooperative venture, most likely a food co-op, and finds something attractive about the building's windows and its door. The split-up of the word "window(s)" into "wind//ows" suggests the word's derivation from an Old Norse word meaning "eye to see the wind".

OK. So now we can turn the page?

However, if we hear the syllable "ows" also as a pun summoning the word "owes", this poem resolves into, or has one of its aspects as, a statement: The conception that there is a fresh wind within the co-op--that is, an ethos of indeed cooperative working and living; and that the co-op members, possessing this spirit, and having their special views, their windows into the outside world, owe it to the world to try to find a pathway, a door, into an era in which such values are more widely prevalent.

¹ Regarding Eigner's mobility, see the third paragraph of Robert Grenier's essay in the Passages issue. And see all the issue's prose essays--those by Dorothy Jesse Beagle, Charles Bernstein, and Ben Friedlander, in addition to those previously mentioned by Robinson and Chirot; and certainly as well the letters by Eigner himself, for valuable perspectives on this extraordinary man's life (1927-1996) and work. I haven't yet read the Passages poems dedicated to Eigner--and what am I waiting for?

"Automobile comin' into style" (Dorn, myself, William Carlos Williams)

2007-10-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

When I had the classroom conversation about the Air Bag poem with Ed Dorn mentioned in my May 19 posting (about which I've been asked to expand, but I have some mental block about doing so--basically it's that I would feel compelled not just to report what I remembered of the exchange, but also to expatiate further on some very tricky issues), I felt compelled to disclose my own relation to cars and the preservation of Life and Limb: I don't drive. Dorn said something about that being a good decision for certain people to make.

After my second attempt at passing the Road Test (during a vacation from college), I told myself I would never take the Test again, as I might well be a menace on the roads if I ever managed to pass it. One thing that led me to this vow was experiencing the consternation of the man who sat beside me and administered the test. Well, what can I say?--being perceived, and perceiving myself, as "clumsy" and "lacking coordination" has always been an aspect of my life.

In practical terms, through rides from others, and Public Tranportation, I've gotten along fairly well without the License most citizens take for granted. I do feel I've lost something in terms of joy (and challenge). A friend tells me he felt a decline in vitality when certain circumstances caused him to decide to give up driving. When practicing for the driving test, while feeling very nervous amidst traffic lights and close traffic, I felt happy, and secure, speeding down Long Island's freeways.

In any case, I'm fascinated by the love of cars and driving to be found in William Carlos Williams' 1923 hybrid poetry/prose wonder-piece Spring And All. (I will designate each poem I cite both by the numbers that are used in the original text, and by the names Williams later devised for the publishing of the poems in other contexts).

In Poem VIII ("At the Faucet of June") we are told that the presence of this relatively new entity, the motor vehicle, is extremely welcome and legitimate:

And so it comes
to motor cars--
which is the son

leaving off the g
of sunlight and grass--

In the famous conclusion to Poem XVIII ("To Elsie") the apparent absence of anyone with the ability to act and react helpfully in a social landscape of nullity and distress is stated as:

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

There's much that I'd like to explore about Poem XI ("The Right of Way", also known as "The Auto Ride"), but in this post I'd like to focus on the first six lines--I include 4 additional lines in my quotation to give a taste of what "I saw" leads to:

In passing with my mind
on nothing in the world

but the right of way
I enjoy on the road by

virtue of the law--
I saw

an elderly man who
smiled and looked away

to the north past a house--
a woman in blue

Two puns show how much pleasure Williams is taking in The Right of Way: he "enjoys" it both in the sense of 'having the possession of it' and in the sense of 'being pleased by it'; and this is "by virtue" of the law both in the sense of 'by means of' and in the sense of 'by the goodness of'. He's enjoying the order created by the traffic laws because they allow him to look out at and experience the world without excessive worry about the surrounding traffic (unless he finds himself witnessing and adjusting to a sudden circumstance of danger.) I would think that also he's gleefully enjoying the privilege of having The Right of Way in his favor whereas other cars don't. For when the possession of the right is the one thing occupying his head ("passing with my mind/on nothing in the world//but..." it is already quite pleasant; that his mind becomes filled by somethings that he eyes see is additional pleasure. (I should probably add that I am reading the phrase "nothing in the world//but" as meaning simultaneously "nothing in the world, except (this thing called The Right of Way)" and "nothing in the world, but rather (this conceptual/legal no-thing, The Right of Way) )¹

When thinking of how the joy of sight meshes in these lines with the elation of having an advantage (The Right of Way), I was reminded of another Williams poem I vaguely remembered in which the pleasure of seeing is starkly opposed to the desire to gain and maintain power and privilege. After at least an hour of frustrated searching, I discovered that the poem I had remembered was to found in The Descent of Winter, that other WCW poetry/prose hybrid of the '20s (1928 to be exact). And I was delighted to note what I had not consciously remembered, that this short piece also was an automobile poem!:

11/28

I make really very little money.
What of it?
I prefer the grass with the rain on it
the short grass before my headlights
when I am turning the car--
a degenerate trait, no doubt.
It would ruin England.

That's rather self-explanatory, except that the concluding slur on Great Britain could surely provoke a long discussion, which I won't get into here. Returning to Spring and All, I'd like to note finally Poem XVII ("Shoot it Jimmy!"). It's a monologue by an enthusiastic jazz musician ("Our orchestra/is the cat's nuts--") and it doesn't ostensibly have anything to do with automobiles. And yet these lines, in which the speaker expresses disdain for composed music as against improvisation--

That sheet stuff
's a lot a cheese.

Man
gimme the key

and lemme loose

--makes me think, in the context of the car-happy world of Spring and All, not only of musical major and minor keys, but of a car key initating an exploratory, joyful windswept journey.

¹Note Williams' play with the word "nothing" in Poem VI ("To Have Done Nothing").

"What is not permitted is recognition": Dorn visits "Dog"

2007-05-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

"Walking The Dog". It must have been in 1979 or 1980 that Robert Creeley presided in Buffalo over a graduate seminar he idiosyncratically so titled, consisting predominantly of guest appearances by friends of his engaged in various fields of human endeavor. The visitors I remember as appearing are poets (my ordering is alphabetical) Edward Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Joanne Kyger, Denise Levertov and Margaret Randall; sculptors John Chamberlain and John Duff; a Scientist whose name and even particular field of activity I can't recall; film-maker Stan Brakhage; and the hard-to-classify, and surely immortal, team of Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins. Besides what occurred in the classroom, there were associated events, such as the screening of a curious and unsettling film about tattered realms of New York City made by Arakawa and Gins; and presentations of the wonderful 1960's National Educational Television interviews of Duncan, Levertov, and Olson, including not just what made it to TV screens but also outtakes.

This whole delightful panoply had been made possible by the resources that come with the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters, which had just recently been conferred on Robert C. I should note that the class was cross-listed with the Art Department (I'm pretty sure Fine Arts rather than Art History), and a prematurely gray-haired artist/professor whose name I don't recall was officially Team Teacher alongside Creeley; as I recall he was extemely shy and never said all that much--perhaps because few if any students of Art had elected to take the class.

As the day came for Dorn's visit, my friends and I feared that his words for us were going to be but pointless and preening. For we had all been shocked by the recent release of Hello, La Jolla , which seemed pulverized, crabbed, and dopey--an incredible and arrogant drop-off from what previously he had done. After reading La Jolla, someone I know suggested the creation of a formal Anti-Dorn Society.

We couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised. Dorn was one of the best & most focused of all the visitors. His sly discourse, and the subsequent q&a, was gripping--he had come carefully prepared with striking contentions.

He said he was very suspicious of the way Singleness was being promoted everywhere as a wonderfully liberated way of life. He said that this catered to the interest of all sorts of Enterprises, since you could sell a Single person anything.

He said that people say no sincerity is allowed in the Workplace--but actually there has to be a degree of sincerity, or everything would grind to a halt : that which is not permitted is recognition.

He said everyone looks down in the 1950's, but that actually there was a certain legitamacy to that decade's development.

He said that people then felt freer to move around the country--he said that people now feel stuck because of the demands of bureacracies like those that give out Unemployment Insurance.

He said you could have much more privacy then--you could blow into some town, and get a job somewhere, without revealing much of anything about your past.

He said that when someone tells you that a policy must be pursued because of the needs of the Future, you should not listen.

(Yes, Dear Reader, that last one is rather problematic).

He said that the rigorous writings of geographer Carl O. Sauer were a lot more legitimate than what passes today for Ecology.

He said he that liked to put some things in his poems that were slippery & perplexing: "it's a service that you do for the reader".

During the q&a that followed, some Traditionalist graduate students (not members of the class, and not people who often or ever came to others of these sessions--I should note that this seminar was held in a very large room within the English Department building & anyone at all who wished to partake was always welcome) asked questions probing the relation of Dorn's earliest poems to British pastoral and lyrical traditions, but E.D. brushed these questions off.

Except for the question I myself asked, I don't remember more about the q&a, except that, as in his lecture, Dorn's discourse was not at all shabby. My comment/question was about "An Opinion on a Matter of Public Safety", the anti-airbag poem from Hello, La Jolla. I had found this poem to be both anti-poetic and rather callous. In addressing Dorn, I hardly wanted to speak of what I took to be the poem's aesthetic thinness; but I did want to discuss the public issue in itself, and in so far as Dorn's position was possibly a quite unhealthy warping of the Olsonian/Black Mountain concern for Attentiveness.

I cannot say Dorn "converted" me, but in our back and forth I was very impressed by the seriousness with which he backed up and defined the poem's argument. Whatever one made of it, aesthetically or morally, there was clearly a lot of thought behind his "Opinion" (a full account of what I remember of this dialogue may or may not be posted at some later date).

8 lines, lots of dashes

2006-11-30T21:15:00.000-08:00

To get things started again, (again), I was thinking of posting one of my own poems, and for some reason or other I've decided on the Emily Dickinson imitation exercise I composed for Bernadette Mayer's Spring '97 St. Mark's Poetry Project workshop, and later published in the Ohio magazine that's printed much of my writing, Ken Warren's "House Organ" (the asterisks in the poem's title are intended simply as asterisks):

Euphony Variations *Orbiting Emily*

When Fiddles shoo 'way--their Spikes of--Pride--
Where--Bells let fly their Knots
Might Clocks--forego--the toxic--Traps
Hide nestled--in their Tocks?

Praise--best Trumpets abhor--the Armor's Gleam
Rapped Drums--rebut the--Fight
Shout Grace--when abject--Throats still weak
Can grasp--soft--pliant Bird Song's--Might.

15-18 April 1997

stolen wondership's rite

2006-10-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

To have suddenly seen the surprising procession arcing across the eastern half of Columbus Circle, my happy traipsing about must have deposited me very near the Circle on 59th Street (officially Central Park South, at this stretch). This was during one of those glowing 2 & 1/2 or 3 week vacations I was sometimes able to take from the civil service job I held for many years till recently. The people I saw were definitely a marching unit, and from my first view onward projected ceremoniousness. Were they wearing uniforms; were they beating drums? Unhappily, or maybe happily, I didn't take notes as it happened or shortly after. Eventually I was astonished to see people toward the rear of the march carrying intricate, extremely capacious silver containers--maybe it was only the handles of these prodigious objects that were very complex, but I think perhaps some of the huge silver bodies-proper were twisty also.

What was this, some Dream? Some Trip? Some Film that was surreal, or symbolic, or documented some little-known custom? I finally noticed that those at the rear emerged onto the street from a western outlet of Central Park. I travelled toward the front of the procession to learn there that those folks were moving west on 58th street, then turning south again on 8th Avenue, where they immediately came to rest at a site near that corner. When all 30 or so celebrants were gathered there, from my distance I couldn't see them doing anything more than standing there. It was only 3 or 4 minutes before they dispersed.

When I walked over to the building in front of which they had stood, I saw signage that indicated that this was a restaurant that had recently closed. I knew then that it was a funerary ritual that my eyes had lucked upon. A couple of weeks later I noted that a chain drug store was the site's new occupant, which wasn't surprising since drug branches and banks as well as upscale botiques are well-poised to pay the most extravagant rents to be desired. I've made some inquiry, but haven't found out, though I am hardly inclined to think of this as someone's wholly new brainstorm, from what traditions this lovely rite was created.

earth/city reborn in anger

2006-10-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Mayhew once stated on Bemsha Swing that he hadn't blogged for a few days because "nothing had made him angry enough". I was taken aback by that formulation, wondering why electronic journal-keeping had to be so much the agent of fury. I wondered for what percentage of bloggers this was indeed the case. I also realized of course that Jonathan was making a humorous remark that was not intended to be the whole of the truth.

But now I find myself shaken out of my blogging torpor of months by virtue of wanting to SCREAM in regard to today's news concerning the imminent closing of Manhattan's Coliseum Bookstore at the 42nd Street location, across from Bryant Park and the New York Public Library system's Main Research Library, at which it had been resurrected since June 2003 (this Independent Bookstore had been inactive for 18 months after its existence from 1974-2002 at 57th and Broadway near Columbus Circle).

I learned of this on Silliman's blog today, where there are links to articles from The New York Times and The New York Sun. As I stated in Silliman's comment box I want to make a public vow not to buy any book or CD or whatever from Barnes and Nobles for one full year. Presumably I will renew this vow the year after that, and the year after that.

I shouldn't even walk into those damn places, with their cooled-out dopey depressive corporate ambience, even though it's sometimes convenient to look up facts in the books on their shelves, and always amusing to discover the rather frequent category mistakes in the books' shelving. Did I say depressing: the worst thing is to see the people slumped in undignified positions, sitting down on the floor with their backs against the wall, sitting down with their backs tilting away from the wall and their legs stretched out, or slumped in various other ways, because they want to use one or more of b&n's books for a long time, they don't want to or cannot stand for that length of time, and the few chairs that have been provided by store management are occupied. Oy, what poor, sad refugees these slumped persons seem!

What I didn't even notice when I made my comment on Silliman's this morning was that the linked-to New York Times article says that the venerable Gotham Book Mart "for financial reasons faces eviction from its space at 16 East 46th Street". Them too, so soon after their move from their long-time location in the midst of the 47th Street diamond district?

"and an island feels no pain..."

2006-06-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

If you know anything about the man's work, one thing you know you'll find in abundance when you open the cover of a book of poetry by Ron Silliman is the exposure/analysis of social conditions and structures and mentalities--and gestures toward a different future--from a Socialist perspective he's been honing and re-calibrating for a very long time. (Sometimes this social criticism is subtly registered and sometimes it announces itself as with flashing lights).

At the top of page 5 of Toner (Potes & Poests Press, 1992), a section of Silliman's extensive project The Alphabet, we read the following:


Economists conduct thought experiment
for a society of two islands
containing one individual each.
        Man struggles
to move
        from wheelchair
to auto.

The "thought experiment" Silliman cites reminds us that Capitalist economists have often been enamored of the image of each person as a quite isolate being, each of whose daily exertions and activities are directed towards the comfort and abundance of Self and Immediate Family.

I believe it's common for critics to regard Robinson Crusoe (1719) as a herald of Capitalist consciousness.

The reader of the poem may well be nodding assent at this point to the implicit point that thinking like that of the Island/I-land economists should be questioned and dispelled so we could have a world of much greater mutuality.

But then the image of the disabled man navigating with difficulty through his enviroment reminds us that Getting Things Done By Ones-self is an essential part of any man's or woman's dignity.

The montage presented in these 7 lines, then, can serve to impress upon the reader that a truly good society would have to be permeated by Fraternity and Sorority and Cooperation; but also would have to allow and foster the Independence of its members.

Which probably sounds like a tedious editorial.

The stanza makes these concerns very exciting.

Bergman's whisper

2006-05-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

I saw Ingmar Bergman's masterful and wrenching film Cries and Whispers (1972) first in the mid-seventies during my college years at SUNY/Buffalo, and again in 1995 as part of the (NYC) Lincoln Center/Walter Reade Theater comprehensive Bergman restrospective. It's curious what I hold in memory. I have retained a rudimentary sense of the story, that a dying woman in a large house is tended to by her sisters--and that she does die. I recall, as perhaps everyone does who has seen the film, the shocking sequence wherein one of the sisters breaks a glass at the dinner table, takes a shard away with her, intimately mutiliates herself offscreen, and presents herself to her husband. But what is most probably unusual is that I retain the opening minutes of the film, an extended sequence of the ticking and the individual visual features and especially the swinging pendulums of the many old-style clocks that populate the house. And also the final, or is it close to final, image of the movie, three women on a long swing seat, something like a sofa, rocking forward and backward.

I am ashamed that I did not remember that the film has a "striking color palette made almost exclusively from shades of red, black and white", as Marco Lanzagorta reports in his essay on the film, which can be found at www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/03/25/cries_and_whispers. I wish I had remembered more of the story, as Lanzagorta refreshes my memory of it, including the fact that the dying woman (Agnes) is "young" and "virginal" ; that she is cared for by her "faithful and reliable" maid (Anna) as well as by two sisters (Maria and Karin); that both Maria and Karin have unhappy marriages (Karin breaks the glass); and that a Chaplain delivers an "unusual prayer" that "confesses his own lack of faith".

But the sound and sight of the ticking clocks was so vivid I could never forget them (I mean, of course, that I cannot forget being struck by the sequence, and I retain vague whisps of the ocular and aural experience). And I recall my elation at seeing the three women on the swing seat at the end (and something of what this looked like). For the women were in tune with each other, quietly joyful in the moment's association, and so their rocking is a vibrancy that acts against the losses Time brings, imaged in the film's first moments--the swinging of the pendulums.

I do not even remember if the three women at the end are the maid Anna and the two sisters, brought very close by their season of care-taking; or else all three sisters, including the now-dead Agnes, in a flashback relating a quietly perfect moment.

But I thought someone might like the main thing I noticed.

complicated smiles

2006-05-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

I'm unguarded and uninhibited in my response to works of arts--at a concert, or art museum, or literary reading, you might well see me beaming, smiling, tensing up. But on occasion you might see a look of delight on my face that would be somewhat deceiving. For sometimes I find myself smiling fairly broadly at a Work's inventiveness and vibrancy at the same time that I feel rather distanced (alienated) from that work--as I tell myself that I could, or that I would much rather, live without experiencing this artist's work (or a particular subset of the artist's work, this sort of thing) any time soon.

Last week I went to the "Klee & America" show (now closed) at the Neue Galerie in NYC, and was surprised not to be particularly enthused (I felt rather differently at the previous Klee exhibit I had gone to, I think in the 80s). Probably no one who observed me had an inkling of my dismay. For it would be noticed that my gaze was intent, that I was spending a fairly long time with each painting or drawing, and that I was trying not to skip very many of them (my slow progress through museums has become maybe too habitual). And that I was breaking out into smiles every once in while. I seemed interested enough that a woman, evidently an artist, alongside me looking at a drawing, exclaimed to me that she finally understood how he did it, got that ragged line in such works, something about sending his drawing through a press--she went on at some length about it.

But is enthusiasm for Klee forever lost to me? I can't even fathom what the problem is. Something about him being so so European? (The show was about American enthusiasm for Klee's art, but it was indicated that he had very little interest in us)--one sign is that he never visited).

Recent and no problem, just terrific: the David Smith sculpture show at the Guggenheim, Munch at MoMA, Agnes Martin paintings at a midtown gallery.

Creeley's "Token"

2006-05-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

Critic Leslie Fiedler, in one of his dispatches--"The New Mutants" I suppose--from the thick of the High 60s, mentioned how much his students loved Robert Creeley's "The Token" because it so succinctly reflected their doubts about the value of Language. The thrust of this poem seems very clear, just what Fiedler & his young friends said it was. But a mistake I once found myself making in remembering the poem--it's so short and catchy that many, many people must have memorized, or thought they memorized, each word, as also with Creeley's "I Know A Man"--helped me towards a sense of its complexity.

For I thought the poem said "what//can I say to/you but words, words", a simple sense that language is inadequate. Do you know how Creeley's poem actually reads? Best to quote the entire poem:

A Token

My lady
fair with
soft
arms, what

can I say to
you--words, words
as if all
worlds were there.

You see? The contemptuous repetition "words, words" can be considered an interruption of what has been said before at the same time as it is a continuation. "words, words" continues the sense of the speaker's doubt about what he can achieve with language in this situation--wanting to create a meaningful "token" of affection--as it makes it clearer that this problem arises not only from the possible verbal inadequacies of the speaker but also from something wrong with langauge itself. But it also may be considered an interruption of the rhetoric that comes before. For to state that there is absolutely nothing worthy one can say about the that which one finds gripping and mysterious might ironically also be a confusion provoked by words.

It's like this.

Everyone, I hope, will admit that there are indeed "worlds" of experience that can hardly be captured by words. But one might too easily slide from the sense that language is Limited to the proposition that it is Inadequate, useless for any statement about that which is most important to oneself.

The poem certainly exhibits the delights and powers of language. With three simple words--"My lady/fair"--we are plunged into an atmosphere of perhaps anachronistic "courtly" emotion. Then the word "arms" jars us, because we had been expecting something more traditionally praised, if one attribute of a Lady is to be saluted. We expect maybe some word like "eyes" or "smile" after "soft"--something that might be thought of as revealing the woman's Soul. Or elsewise maybe "breast" or "skin".

And the very contrast of "words" and "worlds" displays Language's considerable delight of sound interacting with sense.

So the poem considers the limits of Language AND its insistent pleasure. We can perhaps think of the "fair" lady the speaker addresses as someone who's "fair" to "all worlds" that exist--whether they be verbal or non-verbal. With her "soft/arms" we can think of her as having a will to embrace them all.

r.i.p. citizen Kerner!

2006-05-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

When I listen to classical music station WQXR ("The Radio Station of the New York Times"), here in New York City, my physical location, a certain pall is cast upon all of the station's musical proceedings by the fact that there are daily features such as "The Business Picture Today" & "Today's Advertising News With Stuart Elliott", and that the evening's advertisements too often run along the lines of "so just as Beethoven found superlative solutions to all his compositional problems, we at the Blah Blah Blah Corporation seek to discover innovative answers for every situation..."

On the other hand, there was a special excitement to reading the Village Voice classical music reviews of Leighton Kerner, who died on April 29 at age 79, because in the background of the experience of reading these intrinsically wonderful prose pieces there was the rumble of the trembling of social and political structures as recounted in the news and opinion sections of the Voice.

It was lovely how each week there was once a convocation of so many different
Arts in the pages of the Voice, and how the Rumble I have spoken of sparked the review section's vitality (of course many of the arts reviews, sometimes I thought for better, sometimes for worse, referred very directly to Important Social Questions, but that's not my focus here). But, alas, the Voice in recent years has abandoned its coverage of certain Arts it has decided are unprofitable for it to cover--and these abandonments include both the brave/upstart art of Avant Garde Film & Video, and the venerable/respectable art of Classical Music.

(For the purposes of brevity and sanity, I'm sticking to only one corner of the sad latter story of the Village Voice, and I won't get started on things like the shoving aside of Jules Fieffer--it's insane that his sweet magical cartoon satire should not be gracing the Voice to this day--and the cutting off of the monthly Literary Supplement. And FOR SURE I am not now going to get into parsing the Final Death Dance the paper at this moment seems trapped in with its ultra-coarse right- wing new owner).

I think I would simply like to tell of a resourceful prank enacted by the mensch Leighton Kerner after he was relegated by the Voice (in 2003, I think) to writing only Listings of classical music events, in the section with all the other Listings, but no more reviews. One week he listed a concert at which, among other pieces, Mozart's Symphony No. 48 (or was it No. 51?, something like that) would be performed. Of course, there was a letter to the editor (I was thinking of writing one myself, but never got around to it) asking what the hell THAT was about, since it's common knowledge that Mozart only wrote 41 symphonies. Kerner, granted his perogative to reply to printed letters, stated that in recent years there had been discoveries of certain previously-unknown early works of Mozart that could be classified as symphonic, so that some musicologists had established a new numbering system for the Mozart symphonies that was beginning to catch on. Be that as it may, it seemed like Kerner had found a wonderful witty way to get a little attention for himself and for Classical Music despite his new status as a lowly Lister.

(I should note that contemporary classical music composer/reviewer Kyle Gann is still listed on the masthead of the Voice. For a while after Leighton Kerner's reviews ceased to be printed, Gann was allowed to continue writing reviews about his special interest, "downtown experimentalist" contemporary music. These reviews, however, have appeared less and less frequently, and after a while they were only wanted when there was some sort of "pop" angle to the experimentalist concert in question. But there haven't been ANY Gann reviews in about a year, I think).

army of one

2006-04-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

I hope I will eventually find in print (or someone could point me toward) definite proof that Lorine Niedecker had a strong interest in etymology. For I think it's a buried meaning based on word-history that would give the striking, perplexing--arresting, as it were--conclusion of the following lines a truly satisfying and powerful significance. (This is not a complete poem, but the final section of a three-part poem called "Depression years").

A working man appeared in the street
in soldiers suit, no work, no peace.
What'r you doing in that dress,
a policeman said, where's the fight?
And after they took him for a ride
in the ambulance, they made arrest
for failure to molest.

(Niedecker, Collected Works, p. 115

Now what is "failure to molest"???

Does it mean that the man who was detained, and interrogated, and put in an ambulance (for a test at a mental hospital, I suppose) kept his cool all the while, and the police used their power to arrest out of frustration that they could not bother ("molest")him? Maybe. But can we imagine this man, interrupted in his intense solo rally declaring "no peace", singularly calm in custody?

And anyway, maybe we should follow the lead of ordinary speech at this point, and assume that if we are told that our hero was arrested "for" something, the following word(s) should indicate what he himself has done or is accused of doing.

So could "failure to molest" mean that the disillusioned ex-soldier hadn't bothered the Officers quite enough? If only he had somehow managed to make a stronger impression on them, to further shake them up and further prick their consciences, this would have overruled their sense of a Breach Of The Peace, and they would have let him go.

So maybe this is the meaning. But the policemen had surely been very disturbed ("molested") by the man if they thought his clothing and words merited him a ride in an ambulance, so one might say that further "molestation" might not be the answer, that these cops needed to be touched and illuminated as well as shaken.

Now we come to my explication based on etymology.

The word "molest" comes from the Latin molestare, to irk, derived from molestus, irksome; cf moles, mass, burden, trouble.

If we indeed "cf" (consult, compare) molestus and moles, it would seem that the Latin idea of irksomeness is entwined with the idea of a mass that you have to lift or carry, or that presses upon you.

I presume that the Latin word moles did not have any glimmer of the modern social notion of The Masses. But Niedecker might have known of this etymology for "molest" and thought of how annoying/maddening/self-defeating it is when a person acts with all the reflexes of a conformist Mass.

So we can think of these lines as presenting a man who does not exhibit typical resignation. He doesn't make a typical protest gesture either; he thinks of something unusual, though, paradoxically, his protest involves donning the "dress" he wore when he was part of a compact mass machine--one of our nation's Armed Forces.

Niedecker's use of the word "dress" here, though it can be used for anything one places upon one body, is of course droll.

sundials & lilacs

2006-04-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned wanting to speak of Mayer's sundial epigram. It sounds very Classical as well as brain-teasing, does it not?:

i know a sundial has no moving parts
some lilacs don't bloom either

(Scarlet Tanager, p. 11)

One wonders, at first, how each and every sundial can be considered a failure like a lilac that does not bloom.

But then you can consider that the blooming of a lilac, or any other flower, is a dynamic action that is a fitting response to the Earth's revolution that brings a hemisphere thereof Spring when that hemisphere is closer to the energizing Sun and its (apparent) invigorating motion.

The thought of this epigram is that human time is most properly tracked by an instrument that in some way moves, because our world of time is based on the sweeping arc of the sun we experience.

If this is so, this poem complicates any sense we may have that it is always the latest inventions that alienate us most from the Cosmos.

The epigrams that ought to be The Talk of The Town

2006-04-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

The epigrams that ought to be The Talk of The Town are not those of provacateur Kent Johnson, but rather those of Bernadette Mayer.

It's wonderful the way she can combine forthrightness & mystery in these short pieces. Take the 2nd of her "wal-mart epigrams" as found on page 10 of Scarlet Tanager:

phil and i went to one of the marts
and bought a rug like we're supposed to
only thing is
it's purple, we're not married,
the rug is the wrong size
and my name is bernadette

It's charming how the phrase "only thing is" refers to a list of four things that are inappropriate, but which coalesce into a single feeling of un-ease. A single queasiness combining disturbance about characteristics of the rug, and about how buying what you're "supposed to" mixes with not doing what you're "supposed to" (getting married if you live together).

The great puzzle, of course, is the final line. Almost anyone might wonder how the statement about being named Bernadette fits here. Still it's a ringing conclusion, and one senses that there's something, or a lot, right about it.

Over a period of many months in which this epigram has been one of The Thousand Things on my mind, I've thought of various interpretations for this final line. The latest interpretation that has occured to me--involving the etymology of the names "Bernadette" and "Phil"--just popped into my head a few days ago. This interpretation (which will be #4 in the list that follows) is the most satisfying signifigance I've yet arrived at. Still I like to think of the epigram's mysterious conclusion in terms of all the meanings that have suggested themselves to me, excluding those that are really stupid.

OK--(hopefully non-stupid) interpretations of "and my name is bernadette":

(1) One could imagine a narrative in which the store has mangled the name "Bernadette" in their oral or written dealings with her concerning the rug, maybe calling her "Bernadine" or something.

(2) Mayer may be invoking the visionary nature of her namesake, the 19th Century French shepherd Bernadette who had visions of the Virgin Mary and is said to have discovered the fountain at Lourdes, and thereby proposing herself as above this rug-your-supposed-to-have crapola that she had a momentary weakness for at the Mart.

(3) There may be puns hidden in the name Bernadette at play. "Burn" signifying the fire of a soul that is, once again, "above" trifling with this lousy rug. And "debt": well that would be a tricky pun. One could read it like this: "I'm a person who knows what a true debt--to one's friends, lovers, influences, etc.--is, not someone who wants to go into debt to finance all the things a USAmerican is "supposed to have".

(4) Finally etymology: "Bernadette", like "Bernard", is derived from "bern" (bear) and "hard" (hardy, brave).

"Phil(l)ip", from "philo" (love) and "hippos" (horse), means "lover of horses", but when shortened to "Phil" you can focus only on the component of loving/liking, and leave out the horses.

Indeed in Issue #1 of the magazine apex of the M (Spring 1994), Mayer published an eight-page poem, "The Phil-Words", that is a gathering of Greek words for loving various things. Here are the first four lines of the main section of that poem:

philabros, loving delicacy or refinement
philagathos, loving goodness
philaglaos, loving splendor
philagretis, loving the chase, the huntress

(In this poem, most of the definitions of the "phil-words" being with the word "loving", but some begin with "fond of", such as "philochlainos, fond of a cloak").

In the "wal-mart epigram" Mayer may be proposing that "phil", as is his inherent in his name, too easily likes things, including the dreck that the Mart tries to convince everyone that they're "supposed" to have, whereas she, as is inherent in her name, is a fierce bear who knows what things have to be hated, even if she is momentarily talked into acquiring them.

Whew! I've said what I have to say about that epigram. I was going to tack on a short discussion about Mayer's quite different "sundial" epigram, but I think that this initial post has become long enough.

Let me just say that pages 2 to 24 of Mayer's Scarlet Tanager (2005), a New Directions book, consist of epigrams, and there are also a lot of them in Indigo Bunting (2004), a sort of companion volume from Zasterle Press--but I don't know if you can still get that one.