February 2005
VOL XIII Issue 2, Number 142
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
European Editor: Moshe Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Pedro Sena; Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Heather Ferguson;
Oswald LeWinter
ISSN 1480-6401
INTRODUCTION
OSWALD LE WINTER
THE SWINBURNE LECTURE, University of Fribourg, 1964
THE PEACEFUL USES OF POETRY
CONTENTS
Rebecca Lu Kiernan
Hard Labor
Clifford K. Watkins, Jr.
Lab Rat
Morning's Waking
Hollow-Sun Reflections
Blue-Eyed Jesus
Faces In A Puddle
Heaven Is Scenery
Nancy Ellis Taylor
Lives Like Weeds and Feral Cats
waiting moment
Lunch Hour: Gulf Fritillary
One Night: Desert with Neon
Midnight Court
Leopold McGinnis
Optimist
The Golden Years
A secret message
Durlabh Singh
GROW FINGERS
REMEMBER
duane locke
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #101
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #102
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #103
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #105
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #104
Michael Estabrook
crashing blood-splattering collision
pale ghost
Patti: Purgatory Terrace Three: Anger
Art is Chaos
Lamont Palmer
Landing on the Disco Channel
Losing Yourself
Belinda
POST SCRIPTUM
Averil Bones
SCISSORS FOR STITCHES
OSWALD LE WINTER
THE SWINBURNE LECTURE, University of Fribourg, 1964
THE PEACEFUL USES OF POETRY by Oswald LeWinter,
Columbia University
1. Introduction
In the Sewanee Review (Spring 1952), Leslie Fiedler published an insightful
and unusually reasonable essay, "Archetype and Signature" which was intended
to be the New Criticism's Little Big Horn while at the same time providing
the followers of Kenneth Burke and Maud Bodkin with a frontier-style
iconoclasm which would arouse an interest in their theories even in the
editors of The New York Review of Books. Fiedler asserted in more
psychologically sophisticated (Jungian) terms what Renee Wellek had argued
three years earlier, that "there is use in biographical study" if we are
careful to make certain distinctions. While Wellek failed to specify these
distinctions, with one exception, his insistence on keeping an "empirical
person" separate from that which a recurrent style will delineate (Theory
of Literature, p.79), Fiedler theorizes at least one principal distinction
that consists chiefly in seeing words not merely in their pristine semantic
nature, as Yvor Winters kept insisting, but as postlapsarian symbols
of an "inexhaustible totality" (No! In Thunder, p.321).
Where Fiedler indicts the elitist establishment of the new criticism for
its reduction of poems to semantic puzzles, Wellek diminishes the usefulness
of his various tools by his exasperating catholicity. But while I would no
more attempt to deny the value of Fiedler's essay as a confutatio of what
had become tyrannical on top of being largely erroneous, I do take issue
with those graduate schools more interested in the theory of literature
than in literature itself, where Wellek and Warren or Elder Olsen are the
canon. I am concerned that we should realize and continue to remember that
there is much more to poetry than Wellek, Fiedler, Olson, the adherents of
the Accademia Croce, and critics in general are likely to uncover.
And while critical theories are valuable within limits, they lose their
value when they cease to be descriptive and become codified into a system of
restraints. For then, as with any establishment that orbits around vested
interests, its chief task becomes one of protecting and perpetuating those
interests. At such a time, criticism has ceased to take its cue from
literature and has become what Edwin Muir calls "an instrument of power"
[that] determines standards, and dictates to the critic and to the poet"
(The Estate of Poetry, p.76).
It is perfectly true, that the best poets will generally resist tyrannies,
unless they happen to conform to their own inner promptings, as is the case
with Alexander Pope. The best poets will even ignore their own restrictive
demands on others, as Plato and T.S. Eliot do, when they sit down to write
poetry. But for every poet who escapes to tell us what he wishes or must,
there are many more who never find their way out of the labyrinth and who
succumb to the arch lure of dictatorial criticism with its promise of a
minor perfection. And those readers who remain equally trapped in a critical
codex because it appears to give them an accepted vocabulary to replace
the necessity of developing their own unique response to the poems
they encounter, are in still greater trouble. For them, such criticism
narrows the landscape of poetry to a few permissible paths, as much
criticism produced in recent years tends to do, by replacing the
immediate growth of pleasure in a poem by a method of talking about it.
In other words, such critical establishments seek to produce professionals
in their own image out of readers whose value for a poet resides chiefly
in their amateur standing. But please do not misunderstand me. I am not
denigrating the value of criticism per se. I am simply suggesting that
the sort of criticism that interposes itself between the poet or poem,
and the reader, may do so not from any desire to be of use to him or to
serve poetry, but rather from motives of solipsistic self-aggrandizement
and the quest for power (academic standing, grants, control of prizes and
status in the literary establishment).
The sort of criticism I have come to praise is contemporary in the original
sense of that term, namely, that it tries to describe for the reader what
the poetry of his time is doing, not what it ought to do and in that effort
it cannot help but be of great value in opening for any reader the widest
possible door into a poem. But such criticism generally contains a caveat
of some kind to the effect that it should not be used to replace the results
of the reader's own complete contact with poetry (cf. Muir, Jarrell,
Blackmur, and Ignatow ). Such criticism has become more and more rare.
It would be convenient if one could suppose that restrictive criticism is
a relatively recent development, as Edwin Muir seems to suggest. Yet one
can hardly ignore the fact that from earliest times there have been at
least two kinds of critics. The first, like Plato, is motivated by his
desire to promote or preserve a particular culture and his critical theory
is the pugnacious expression of a unique paideia as expressed in its
literature which, as the result of its conservative intention, becomes
prescriptive. The second type of critic, of whom Aristotle may be considered
the primogenitor, seeks first of all to describe what already exists. In
other words, he recognizes the precedence of literature. Only after this
initial task has been accomplished, despite appearing as simultaneous with
the first task, will such a critic seek to clarify the entire range of
terms even to the point of declaiming a theoretical framework. But the
instances where such a framework cripple the poet's efforts or the reader's
response are rare.
One could trace criticism through its long history and assign specific names
to each of the two types I have described, but I think it is already obvious
from the thrust of my argument thus far that while I consider Plato a great
poet, his criticism is less valuable and far less heuristic than Aristotle's,
whose criticism generally serves poetry and does not try to supercede
it. But lest it seem I am about to join the neo-Aristotelian ranks of Elder
Olson and the Chicago School, let me state at once that these critics offer
no more worthwhile paradigm for the practice of criticism and the writing
of poetry to me than most contemporary "schools". I am unwilling to replace
the notion of poems as verbal constructs with that of poems as amalgams of
public myths and private symbols, or for that matter, as a series of moral
cognates that tend to approximate some ideal as Yvor Winters insists.
Neither can I agree with Olson ("An Outline of Poetic Theory" in Critics
and Criticism, p. 20) that "a lyric does not have a plot" or that character
is preceded in importance by a Thomistic anangke. But before I amplify a
number of these reservations as a prelude to my extended discussion of a
type of poetic activity, I would like to complete a brief survey of the
historical divagations of criticism in order to suggest that what
is an ancillary problem in the Poetics, becomes by some process not totally
appreciated, the root problem of the greater part of later criticism and
accounts for much of its combative tone.
2. The Changing Fortunes of the Poetics
I have stated above that one of the critical functions Aristotle performs,
and one which is by no means his most important, and here I disagree
vehemently with Elder Olson, is that of clarifying the critical
vocabulary of his time. No less a critic and highly respected scholar of
classical Greek, Professor Alfred Gudeman would agree with my judgment
(cf. Aristotle, "The Poetics", especially the brilliant commentary.)
The special form this task takes, of distinguishing between the various
kinds of poetry, is motivated by more than an analytical passion or by the
desire to build a system. Aristotle's elevation of tragedy (dramatic poetry)
at a time when that genre is already moribund has enough of a defensive
tone of the sort we find in so much subsequent criticism, that we are
forced to concede that he is in actuality reacting to the acknowledged
supremacy of history on the one hand, and the ascendancy paradoxically,
of philosophy, on the other. For nothing seems clearer to me than that
at the very time Aristotle is asserting the primacy of tragedy that genre
is making its last debased appearance in the final dramatic poetry of
classic Greek civilization, Plato's magnificent trilogy, The Apology of
Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo.
This secondary, and combative task, that occupies him in the Poetics,
places Aristotle in the position of being the initial defender of poetry
in the western literary tradition. And if Leslie Fiedler's aforementioned
theory of the 'archetype' is descriptively accurate as well as being
intriguing, we can use it here to bite its own hand, in a manner of
speaking, in order to suggest that the archetype of criticism may be
considered to be the ritual cleansing of poetry (the primal logos) of
impurities that had begun to corrupt it from within. But that is a matter
for a different study. What concerns me here is to show that the defense
of poetry (tragedy) the Stagirite undertakes, while still in its primitive
form, becomes the root problem for all of his epigoni, and one of such
proportions that we see, for example, Scaliger (1540-1609) defending
poetry from the rising influence of the lazzi when he distinguishes between
the language of the didactic epic and the vernacular, Sidney defending
poetry against the rise of materialism, Milton attempting to hold religion
at bay, Lessing (1729-1781) snatching poetry from beneath the sword held
over it by the recent great ages of the plastic and visual arts, Shelley
marshalling arguments against the threat from science, and Croce (1866-1952)
attempting to rescue lyric poetry from its domination by personality, which
ultimately leads to singe-factor reductive analysis of all the diverse
phenomena that make up a poem. I believe itis at the same time necessary
for critics to recognize and admit that it is difficult-and finally utterly
dehumanizing- to avoid the vagueness of psychological terminology when
speaking of the text/context relationship. Critics who have warned against
the intentional fallacy have too often been taken to mean that any
exploration of the mental life of the author's is irrelevant to
understanding the text. The intentional fallacy, to be precise, emphasizes
the absurdity of psychologism, not of psychology, the absurdity of the
Romantic notion that the creative process is a simple movement from
inside the brain and heart to outside on paper, of a flow from intention
to achievement. If, however, psychological processes are understood as
the mental work of sorting out and arbitrating between socially
created alternatives, ideal or actual, then one may, as a critic, set
aside the strict opposition between social and cultural work existing
in the public world, and psychology, existing apart from the world in a
wholly private place. Just as the context of the literary work of art
should not be described as 'outside' the text, so also should it not be
described as 'inside' the author.
It must be obvious by now that I have included in my brief catalogue above
critics who belong to each of the categories I established earlier. My
motive has not been to offer what may appear to be a reductio ad absurdum
but to suggest a common element among critics otherwise widely divergent
in their aims. For it can be said as well of criticism, as it has been
said of poetry, that in a special sense poetry is sui generis the source
of any specific poem since art does not imitate life as is widely claimed
but imitates in its formal and metaphysical aspects, art. Insofar as this
type of assertion is accurate, such theories as the mimetic, the archetypal,
the structural, or the moral cognate theory of language (this last, only
in the event that a prior concession is made that the denotative elements
of a word constitute a moral history) are all equally but only partially
true. But this root problem of criticism, which reappears in successive
stages between the lines of each new ukase results most often in the pose
of assertion and adjudication that tends to restrict the permissible
limits of poetry to quite narrow boundaries, to restrict, as well, under
the guise of sharpening its focus, the terminology with which criticism
is allowed to operate, and finally, tends to smuggle into the critical
lexicon the special and only rarely useful language of a currently honored
and much envied academic discipline. Of all the examples that come to
mind we need only consider the discipline most prevalent among academic
critics in the second half of the 20th century, psychology, under whose
aegis critics began to speak of the id, ego, superego and other similar
parts of a poem frequently forgetting that at best such terminology is
metaphorical and like any metaphor lacks intrinsic value unless we know at
some point the other half of its equation, and that at its worst such
terminology is misleading jargon.
I fear that I have raised more problems than I may be able to solve here.
But perhaps that is well and good. It is not my purpose here to operate
as a professional critic but rather as a poet concerned with developing
a base for the remarks that follow. I wish merely to clear the ground
before my own feet before moving into the landscape of poetry in search
of the fourteenth blackbird, and what I have said thus far should be
summarized as the offer of a number of propositions before, like some
unlucky poet, a group of critics discovers what I'm up to while I am
still unaware of its implications to some extent and proceeds to fit me
for a marble system in whose exit-less walls I will see only my own
reflection until I can no longer find my essentially poetic defects of
being human and erring.
The propositions, then, are these. Without poetry there can be no criticism
of poetry. Criticism cannot create poems. Poetry is written to delight and
to astound. Astonishment is epistemological in nature; it is a way of
knowing how to know (cf. Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponti). Astonishment
engages us on many levels. Analysis engages us primarily on one level and
finally acts to estrange man from the deepest elements of his nature and
perpetuates the Cartesian duality that poetry seeks, through its action,
to heal. I could go on this way but I feel that I have made this
most serious point with enough precision to move forward. Which brings me
to my introductory discussion of Leslie Fiedler's injunction that we
should recover for criticism the apparatus of biographical study.
Although he offers that point as a principal tool for fiction, his critical
scope and vision are broad enough to make it applicable for poetry as well.
3. Approaches to the Heart of the Matter
Before we can adequately deal with the special techniques Fiedler commends
to us, it may be well to ascertain if there is another relationship between
poetry and biography than the one of decoder, which he suggests. And since
the best place to start is always at the beginning, let us consider Plato.
We are all well aware that Plato's banishment of the dramatic poets from
The Republic has its origins in his enumeration of the three voices of
poetry. In drama, he asserts, the poet speaks in a voice not his
own, in the epic he speaks both in another's voice as well as his own,
while in the lyric he speaks exclusively in his own voice. These
distinctions are crucial to Plato in asserting that the lyric is the
prototype of sincerity and allows him therefore to accept the lyric poet
into the social organum and permits him to remain in the republic. He
also alludes in his discussion of the lyric to the lyric poet's
special value for his utopian society. As Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494),
one of the most influential renaissance Neo-Platonist, insists (cf.
Commentationes, ca. 1482), it is axiomatic that the lyric poet speaking
in his own voice will be able to speak only his own mind. Thus, the lyric
poet, by being what students are fond of labeling 'himself' will very
likely develop through the readers' responses to that proclaimed self
a similar activity in them, or to put it more succinctly, the lyric poet
in imitating that which he has a right to imitate, himself, that which
he has experienced through living, not merely through histories or
through myths, is able to perform the paideutic function which Plato places
at the center of his concerns as being vital to the survival of his
community. This adumbration of Plato's thoughts on the lyric by Pico is
quite useful and remains unchallenged by philosophers generally. Not
even Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Pico's teacher and president of the
Platonic Academy took issue with this interpretation, which leads us
ineluctably to the point where we can posit that a special relationship
may exist between the lyric and biography.
In a letter written by one of Napoleon's generals, Armand de Caulaincourt
(1773-1827), to another, General de Marbot in 1826 concerning Caulaincourt's
recently published memoirs, he asserts "biography is history reduced to
the personal level", (cf. Saint-Beuve).Aristotle, in the Poetics (51a36)
states the poet and the historian "differ in that the historian writes of
what has happened and the poet of what might happen" and that history
deals "with each thing for itself" and is uninterested in the universal
or typical significance of events. But Aristotle's assertions are not
dicta and leave room for us to consider the possibility that poetry may
also deal with history on a personal level, or to put it more directly,
a poet may be primarily interested in dealing with the events occurring
in his own life for their sake. And that he may embody in his poetry the
depository , retriever and interpreter of those events, his own mind,
because it is the one most interesting to him (in the sense of widely
available). That this is, in fact the distinguishing feature of
most of the poetry written since Wordsworth's time certainly, has not
escaped critical notice. John Crowe Ransom calls our attention to it when
he writes: "An art never possesses the 'sincerity' that consists
in speaking one's mind, that is, in expressing one's first impression
before it has time to grow cold. This sincerity is spontaneity, the most
characteristic quality of modern poetry." "A Poem Nearly Anonymous"
(emphasis mine, OleW) As in much of Ransom's criticism, there is a jewel
buried here. 'Spontaneity' turns our attention not merely toward the
subject of modern poetry but also to its appearance. It is the form that
sincerity assumes. And we have now arrived at the stage in our discussion
where it becomes necessary to resolve the formal differences between petite
history (biography) and poetry, particularly since the former has
traditionally been thought of as belonging to the opportunities of prose.
But Ransom's key word helps us further by having still another use. It
points us at the place where the reaction of its audience to modern
poetry is found.
'Form in literature', one of our most interesting critics, Kenneth Burke
tells us 'is an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has
form insofar as one part of it leads us to anticipate another part, to
be gratified by the sequence' (Counter-Statement, 1931). I believe we
may safely say now that since the time of the Romantic poets the
audience, to which the poet also belongs in a general as well as in a
special sense, has found nothing so interesting as personality, or to
put it yet another way, as the presence in poetry of the spontaneously
acting human agent. Spontaneous because his story (plot) is unique and
does not conform to any preexisting 'archetypal' pattern. When, in the
essay cited at the beginning, Fiedler writes: "A final way back into the
world of Archetypes, available even in our atomized culture, is an
extension of the way instinctively sought by the Romantics, down through
the personality of the poet, past his particular foibles and eccentricities,
to his unconscious core, where he becomes one with us all in the presence
of our ancient Gods." (p. 327) He is both right and wrong; wrong where
begins to prescribe rather than merely outline what exists, and wrong
where he follows the path of much criticism since Aristotle and insists
on moving beyond the concrete (foibles and eccentricities) to the universal,
which he calls 'subconscious core'. But Fiedler's is not an uncommon
position although, like the critics he argues against, his criteria lead
us ultimately to reduce a poem to a series of statements about its
significance rather than its effect. Furthermore, were we to employ
the Jungian rather than the Crocean method of interpreting a poem, we
should still not have come to terms with the haecceitic quality of most
modern poetry.
Another frequent Myth-Critic, Northrop Frye, is somewhat more indirect
than his colleagues. He first summarizes the well-known position of
Aristotle on the relationship of history to poetry. The historian, Frye
goes on to assert, takes as the 'external model of his pattern of words'
actual occurrence and he is therefore 'judged by the adequacy with which
his words reproduce that model.' The poet, on the other hand, 'makes no
specific statements of fact, and hence is not judged by the truth or
falsehood of what he says. The poet has no external model for his
imitation.' From that point he goes on to assert: "The poet finds
increasingly that he can deal with history only to the extent that
history supplies him with, or affords a pretext for, the comic,tragic,
romantic, or ironic myths he actually uses." (Fables of Identity, 1963,
p. 53, pp. 11-13, p.53). Myth is used here by Frye to describe typical
actions, or plots, that take conventional forms.
4. The Heart of the Matter
The special characteristic of literary theorizing lies in its contagious
nature. I could,were I to succumb, name at least half a dozen contemporary
masters whose poetry I would find it difficult to approach, place in
the canon, and understand well using Frye's theory. It should also be
noted that Frye's summary of the Aristotelian position on history is,
whether intended or not, equally applicable to biography. In biography,
we are concerned with the fidelity with which the verbal pattern adheres
to the precedent event that is both its origin and model. If the language
fails to reproduce a sufficient number of the elements that constitute
an event as it occurs, we classify that work as fiction rather than as
biography. But before shunting an author's work from one genre to another,
from biography to fiction, we must allow for the uniqueness of what we
call the historical imagination, the memory that, in any writer's case,
whether he is writing prose or poetry is immaterial, will select
from its matrix which the experience has become with the passage of time,
those details to which his emotions have remained attached. More often
than not in contemporary poetry, these details will be concrete
and unique, rather than typical. And although we may not have, in the past,
judged poetry by its fidelity to 'facts' in addition to the other criteria,
we may find it both necessary and convenient to do so now, especially
once we are willing to concede that the biographical impulse and the poetic
have merged in our time as fully as the dramatic and the poetic re-merged
in the Elizabethan era. But before I continue, I would, at this point,
like to substitute lyric for poetic since I am engaged in connecting
poetry and biography, and attempting to do so at the particular
juncture traditionally occupied by the lyric.
One of the threads that is noticeable in the fabric of much modern talk
about poetry by poets rather than by critics has been stitched into place
in Ezra Pound's famous statement that poetry ought "to be at least as
well written as prose." Whatever its possible source, we should notice
its kinship with Wordsworth's directive in the "Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads" that: "a large portion of the language of every good poem
can in no respect differ from that of good prose." We will go further.
It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, no can be, any essential
difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.
(italics are mine, O.LeW.) That both are speaking about for as well as about
substance (is there really a useful distinction possible between them
unless we are dealing with conventional or typical modes?) is less
immediately apparent in the case of Wordsworth than in the case of
Pound. Yet once we recall the context in which this statement is made,
and particularly that section which ends by Wordsworth defining the poet
"as a man speaking to men" we may begin to see that there is some justice
in thinking of personal experience, or biography to give it its proper
name as a genre, as the foundation and form of the lyric impulse in the
poetry of our time. And it is on these grounds that Elder Olson's notion
concerning the absence of plot in the lyric ceases to have any relevance.
Nothing could be simpler tan to realize that a poet speaking in his
own voice (the lyric), and telling us of his own experience (biography)
is bound to present the reader with a plot. Hence, the possibility arises
that the lyric may no longer be what it was for Pound and the Imagists,
what he called phanapoeia, but that it may have almost totally left the
world of theoria, where images are the embodiments of a Platonic ideal, to
take up residence in the world of praxis, the world of actions initiated
by men within an allotted measure of time.
At this point we may also consider the images in the poetry I am describing
as intended to produce in the reader a kinema of feelings rather than a
vision of the "meandering absolute." Such poetry is related to Pound's
ideal for both prose and phanapoeia in its "drive toward utter precision
of word" as a corrective to the kind of poetic activity that sees its
mission chiefly as that of embodying the fabulous in a manner much more
abstract than even that in which Ben Jonson thought of it when he stated:
"..the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical
work, or poem."
Such poetry, which sees itself as the fulfillment of Pound's dicta by its
propagation of the abstract, Minimalist poets come to mind, is merely a
reductive version of Imagism, a more maximally muscular diction than we
found in the Georgians.
Thus, when we speak today of the concreteness of poetry we ought not to
mean merely the "tangible thing" of the past in which the poem's
significance was located by both poet and reader but the unique,
the personal, the symbolic, or private, which replaces the bankrupt
conventions of the tangible and becomes the means whereby the reader
recognizes not himself primarily, but the poet, as well as the means
whereby the reader does not carry his feeling deeper into himself in
order to specify them but is able to generalize and externalize these
feelings and attach them, thereby to the condition poetique and take
pleasure in their Dasein. For we have made too much of the universality
of art in our time and given too little attention to its segmentative
nature.
I had not intended to use this essay to proselytize, but as long as I
have begun let me at least add that a time when life for the mass of
people has become pulverizingly assimilative it should be the task of
poetry as much as of any art to recover for man a sense of his
dissimilarity and uniqueness not only from nature and its creatures but
also from his fellow man, and to give him the courage to endure insecurity.
This is precisely what autobiography or lyric is capable of achieving.
For in the modern lyric, when the poet offers us a glimpse of the events
of which he has been both inventor and participant (often as victim)
without adornment he is not only permitting us to touch a man, in
Whitman's sense, he is also forcing us to exercise our private haecceitas
to do so. And when Whitman writes:
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and simple
sights after their sorts,
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listen'd long and long.
He is not merely exploiting his personality as so many critics of his
work insist. He is, and this is considerably more important, and should
be noted as a correction of Whitman criticism, fulfilling his own
program as he articulated it in the "Preface to the 1855 Edition of Leaves
of Grass" where he asserts that "as soon as histories are properly told
there is no more need of romances." That the "great poets are also
to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of
perfect personal candor." He is writing in the lyric mode. And what is
of the greatest importance, by doing so he earns the right to reenter
the Republic.
If we wish to speak of form in such poetry, it will not help us a great
deal to consider verbal structures, or structural myths, particularly
if our discussion leads the reader to conclude that structure and the
technical elements by which it is made apparent are the most important
part of the poem. We must go back to our previously articulated concept
of plot, as the actions of a unique individual, that is, plot as
personality. We can observe the process I am describing in Coleridge's
definition of organic form, which he says is: innate; [and] shapes as it
develops itself from within, and the fullness of its development is one
and the same with the perfection of its outward form. [And whose] exterior
is physiognomy of the being within, its true image reflected and thrown
out from the concave mirror.
Which is like Emerson's, when he states: For it is not metre, but a
metre-making argument that makes a poem-a thought so passionate and
alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture
of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought
and form are equal in the order of time, but in the order
of genesis the thought is prior to the form.
And both are not merely closer to the spirit of modern poetry than the
pure Aristotelian dicta or any of its later resurrections, but that both
are speaking of personality as form; Coleridge, when he mentions
"being", and Emerson when he names it "spirit." The three terms, despite
their distance from one another in time, connote one and the same thing,
uniqueness, newness, Ransom's "spontaneity", Fiedler's "signature",
Karl Shapiro's "reality" stripped of its veils,and my own term, "lyric."
5. Conclusion
I must admit that it appears as though I have been trying to convert the
reader to a new orthodoxy sustained by a critical theory I have developed
in this essay. But the fact of the matter is that I have had a specific
kind of poetry in mind from the very outset. These poems have not merely
preceded the ideas I develop in the paper, which I consider perhaps the
latest example in the long and distinguished line of defenses of poetry,
they have in a very real sense suggested them. And though there is a
considerable number of poets to choose from, poets of varying degrees
of excellence and distinction, I shall choose from the work of the poet
who seems to me to be the very best of them, and by that I mean, the most
astonishing, individual,and precise. The poems I have in mind are those
fifteen poems that comprise the fourth section of Robert Lowell's fourth
volume, "Life Studies." Although they are not equally successful in
my opinion, one could select at random and be assured of coming up with
an excellent example of the kind of poem about which I have been speaking.
By Lowell's own admission, he wished "in 'Life Studies' to see how
much of my personal story and memories I could get into poetry." And in
the judgment of one critic, himself a distinguished poet, Lowell seems
to have succeeded splendidly. Let us hear Richard Wilbur himself:
"Skunk Hour" is another sort of dramatic poem altogether. It is one of a
series, largely reminiscent, in which the poet sheds all his personae
( including the prophetic) and speaks of and for himself.
"Of and for himself." What a telling statement, brief and insightful, and
a recapitulation of my more cumbrous argument in the preceding pages.
Taken as a whole, Wilbur appears to be saying in much less space what I
have taken so long for here. If I read him correctly, "reminiscent"
points toward experience, and I doubt that Richard Wilbur would protest
greatly my substitution of 'lyric' for his 'dramatic.' In any case, I
would concede the point and compromise upon 'dramatic lyric.'
If, at this juncture, my terminology seems to have become somewhat
blurred, or at the very least suggestive of a lack of clear distinctions,
that is precisely my intention. For among other more obvious objectives,
I have also been devoting considerable thought to conjecturing about the
significance of the trend in modern poetry that I have been describing;
a position I wish to occupy. The critic, Stanley Burnshaw has suggested
that the future may witness a merging of genres, at least that the old
and clear distinctions will no longer apply and the kind of poetic
activity I have been describing here may in fact represent the proof
for his claims. Certainly the contemporary taste for a prosaic poetry is
more than a new phase of the ancient quarrel between the language of the
priest and that of the thief. The very requisite of precision changes the
traditional field of combat completely. And if we ultimately desire to
hear the voice of the thief, it is only because in the final analysis
all priests are alike and subsumed within an abstraction of one sort
or another, whereas each thief is unique. And Burnshaws thesis could
find no better proof than James Joyce's two epics (the term hardly
suffices). Since what transpires in the poetry of Stephen Dedalus
is more than just a little analogous to what takes in the poems of
Robert Lowell, whom Joyce and Chekhov (they resemble each other in more
ways than one) seem to have taught. The poem, "My Last Afternoon With
Uncle Devereux Winslow" shows us how similar the operations of lyric
and reverie (to give stream of consciousness its proper rhetorical name)
actually are. In both, although their intentions may differ, the order of
memory operates as a formal device. But where reverie seeks to recover
the sunken and communal, lyric exposes the personal and ontological.
Here the poet speaks in his own voice and details the action (or
plot) of his own past experience:
One afternoon in 1922,
I sat on the stone porch, looking through
Screens as black-grained as drifting coal.
Tockytock, tockytock
Clumped our Alpine, Edwardian cuckoo clock,
Slung with strangled, wooden game.
Our farmer was cementing a root house under the hill.
One of my hands was cool on a pile
Of black earth, the other warm
On a pile of lime.
We notice immediately that the poet has an external model for his
imitation, experience, his own life, that he is not speaking in any
voice but his, not as the child, but as the adult seeing the afternoon of
his unique childhood. The particulars are concrete and do not ascend to
any ideal. The separate statements are connected by self, not by logic,
sonority, meter, or any other structural or formal principle we have
encountered in the poetry of the past. The passage I have quoted is one
of many that do what it does, and in the same manner. Leslie Fiedler
may wish to call this "signature" and I would hardly object with what
may actually be an apt rubric. It is only when he insists in his Jungian
fervor, and in the face of such contradictory evidence as I have outlined
above, that the signature is inseparable from the archetype that I
must disagree. I am not interested in what ought to be. I have a given
body of poetry before me. If I am to do it justice as a reader, I must
attempt to find a way of understanding what it does, while at the same
time, find the terms to describe that activity.
Even Professor Renee Wellek admits that a "work of art contains elements
which can sure be identified as biographical." But he adds "these elements
will be so rearranged and transformed in a work that they lose all their
specifically personal meaning and become simply concrete human material".
I do not agree that they lose all personal meaning. But, in any case, that
is a minor point. Of greater significance is the fact that both Fiedler
and Wellek are dealing with extension, the writing of poetry. I am, on
the other hand, more concerned with its less bellicose uses as a
means, not of discovering some poet's foibles but as a description of
the method some of our modern poets use, regardless of whether
consciously or not, to deal with their experiences. As a gratuitous
answer to Professor Wellek, let me conclude by saying that we, as readers
and critics, need not be moved by Robert Lowell's personality, but we
cannot help but be deeply moved by the personality operating in Lowell's
poem. All the more so since we recognize in its random movements (plot)
the essential character of his own life which may be quite different from
ours. But his willingness to engage in what Emerson calls "confession"
for his own sake as well as for ours, teaches us a vital way of
recognizing the particulars of our own existence. What cave-dweller
could ask for more?
Rebecca Lu Kiernan
Hard Labor
~~~~~~~~~~
I would crawl over uncharted shipwrecks,
Frozen tundra, rip rides,
To touch you in the dance
Of bent cobalt willows
Tremulous in the grey December rain.
I would walk the fractures
Of thinly frozen lakes
To taste you
In the cotton candy pink light
Of the year's final sunset.
I would knock over your black licorice candles
To untie your hands
Beneath your trap door,
The door no one else can see,
Your camouflage being so professional,
Your strategy so well rehearsed,
Bearskin rug strewn haphazardly,
Love seat in bomber jacket leather
Catty-cornered to the plaid fainting couch,
Basket bouquet of amaryllis and stargazer lilies
As if your life were lived there
In natural light through French lace curtains,
Screen door open to the orchestra of
Tremulous wind chimes,
A gray dog's jubilant bark
When his whole world approaches
The stone lion guarded cobblestone walk.
Who else could see you
Shivering in icy silence,
Wringing your clitoris-twirling hands,
Juggling your one-night stands?
Thumbing through your little black book
Of women whose slight-of-hands
Swept through you ghostlike
And never touched your face
Or brought your morning coffee,
Or handed you your heart
And put it back in place
When you kept it in a sterile jar
Along with sea shells ambivalently plucked
From unremarkable days,
Bar napkin notes in lipstick.
I would cup my hands
Around your immoveable stones,
Barbed-wire fences,
Labyrinths of fire,
To satisfy your most fragile need,
Broken childhood wish,
Your darkest desire.
Worshipping you would be
Back-breaking work,
Sifting through charred sands
Of your black volcano beaches
For some artifact
Of inextinguishable love.
Clifford K. Watkins, Jr.
Lab Rat
~~~~~~~
surrounded by a tunnel of hands
how much sorrow can you stand
who'll remember me
a sample in a tube of infinity
maybe we're god's plan
the lab rat is man
watch him rise
beneath a collage of eyes
we're all paranoid
time flies and devours space
are we a void
stray shavings of the erased
remnants of a lost race
the products of our own buffoonery
is there a better place
who knows
am I rambling
of course it shows
the devil made me do it
I'm descending below
we're the dregs
a mouth full of excrement
heathens vomiting into a revival tent
we can dry up and blow away in the wind
some won't even be memories in the end
Morning's Waking
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
at morning's waking
sidewalks moved toward the sky
another prophecy in the making
restless limbs wouldn't sleep or die
the nightmare soared
each vision had a profit professing savior
and a world for the taking
Hollow-Sun Reflections
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
follow me into a forest of deception to escape direction
and we can make tears for eternity that descend to muddle reflections
nothing is near except the swaying trees stretching the truth
inside we foster a cavern of lies in absence of proof
bloodshot and weather beaten we return
in effigy we burn
simmering beneath our great god of fire
throwing ourselves onto a funeral pyre
souls hurled like rice
the brainwashed line the horizon to be sacrificed
a decapitated head for each steeple
the cloth is doubly divine
but still human
and no less evil
open doors to confront faceless people
such meager creatures
so tired and feeble
If it's nothing more than a promise of bliss
we could do better to slash our wrists
violent echoes of scream
we linger inside our fiery-electric dreams
embracing shrunken morrow faces
unlocked doors
and dark places
we desire
and need
happy hearts flutter as insanity feeds
Blue-Eyed Jesus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
recreating ourselves along the way
discarding recollections
souls strewed in disarray
any reason not to cast this life away
what's more trivial than today
only tomorrow
or maybe a realm in absence of sorrow
minds bedazzled
ideas swirl crimson-hued
another blue-eyed jesus to the rescue
the products of our own buffoonery
we've got no clue
in the lean hour
shadows recede as skies darken
memories empty into scatter gardens
unable to feel of flesh
unable to come
to exist forevermore in absence of the sun
a mansion in the sky
no reason to unravel
no more wondering why
no more drugs to keep me high
I'd probably just sit around and sigh
when you contemplate the ideal
this life's not so bad
and much more real
it's okay to be a little mad
encompassed in brains
we're electric energy surging insane
walking a tightrope between pleasure and pain
the ordinary and deranged
one in the same
Faces In A Puddle
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
are we faces in a puddle distorted by gentle rain
what becomes of knowledge encompassed in brains
gathered for a lifetime
If only we could harness minds
unravel and rewind
maybe we hold the keys to the universe
to live afraid and unblind
ever walked in an unconscious mind
there's nothing to find
no bliss
only an underlying chasm of madness
we're all evil
twisted
and insane
little marbles rolling in an open-fire brain
angels assemble above the smothered and strangled
descending from awkward angles
birds swarm above
the tree is swaying
feathers fall on those who are praying
mocking scriptures
and cursing the skies
we can't surrender to a jar of flies
Heaven Is Scenery
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
god is a word
heaven is scenery
life is a blur between lapses of memory
beautiful moments
and monumental misery
I can't remember me
I venture listlessly
no one really listens
souls are christened
reproduction is the mission
to further our genes
and expand our vision
coitus
an invitation to invention
holding your breath
the instant before ejaculation
a second before death
it's never quite real
I can't escape the surreal
muscles contract
and blood spills
only wanting to feel
Nancy Ellis Taylor
Lives Like Weeds and Feral Cats
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Faint primeval
galaxies form
in abandoned pools
of motor oil
We collect
valuable
plastics
Resins scraped
from wood char
heal the wounded
Wingless we
yet glide
across
the rebar riddled
fields where
mustard plants
return in bouquets
of tattling smiles
The keening
of the wind
through shattered
promontories
hurts
In the graveyard
of roses
we live
in follies
disguises
age ruins
before
the reign of ruins
Dandelions grow
thick and dangerous
among the scattered
hill of crushed glass
and empty hubcaps
Nothing is literally
as it seems
and raw sewage
feeds the streams
that run away
from the wreckage
The mottled cat
three legged
and one eyed
can still
find food
waiting moment
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
subtle softing sound
fog among the eucalyptus trees
weaving wet bank moss
and purpling jacaranda
the ground is hushed
and giving
alone to wander
with the gentle phantoms
morning drapes as silk
before the daylight
hardens all the dreamery
to one stark edge
we are the moment
moist and waiting
Lunch Hour: Gulf Fritillary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A sense of the aromatic
passion flowers hidden
we reminisce
Baja before
Oaxaca when
Los Angeles always
The flaming salvia
have succumbed
to slugs gray wet
insatiable insatiable
as a century of freeways
devouring the green
Leaving fame to small dogs
we chase butterfly wings
to find a gentle bower
but even their young are
spike haired and eating
them out of house
and home
One Night: Desert with Neon
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blackened chewing gum
on the pavement
is the map of this
pilgrim's progress
but I have never been
through Vegas when
it was hot enough to stick
hot enough you were
once by daylight framed
in plaster statuary and
slot machines
I dream in neon
all aquiver
in colors bent
by someone else's
touch
touch me you did
in water imitation aqua
skin adazzled with
liquids rare and sun startled
the sky is never black
it folds soft against
the aurora of the city
night is good
here or outside the limits
where the mesas rise
and sand grains
mock the stars' numbers
mock me you tried
we never saw the stars
ceilings sometimes
white with puttied angels
rhinestones are not wrong
my gathering of light
talismans of a creature
nocturnal and unbowed
leaving life brightening trails
leave me you could
and did toward sunshine
toward women aflutter
in salon golds and
thoughtless acquire
even the planes
are more beautiful
against the cold spike
of the moon
Midnight Court
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"We all have our tragedies. Now,
what do we build from the ruins?" -
a librarian in Los Angeles
Graveled gateways
mica flecked the granite
glitters with small smiles
a twinkling the moon
full is never grim
Collect the shell casings
puddled candle wax
the glass still bubbled
a shining the headlights
will never grow dim
Towers like the ragged
edge of abandoned coast
boiled tires burnt tar
conjure back the civil
the sirens a hymn
Aluminum what is left
twisted philosophers
stone for making wind
chimes little pretties
choices vary chances slim
Here in the rubble
of grey veined colonnades
cafe chairs and razor
wire lace the water
pools with stars
and petals of a momentary
lily wild and speckled
The midnight court
convenes
Leopold McGinnis
Optimist
~~~~~~~~
You jet-set go getter
Youve been around the world
And back again
Dipping your fingers
In the international
Platter du jour
With au jus
A la carte
Materialistic society
Chases you from airport
To airport as if you were
Carmen Santiego,
Running from the
Skeletons in your
Closet cum backpack
Skeletons called
Privileged upbringing
And western society
You cant get away
But you can keep running
Tokyo, Manila, Rome
Brisbane, Amsterdam, Shanghai
Youve seen the worst life has to offer
Brown skin with black soles
Beds made from cardboard
Makeshift toilets in flower pots
that divide four lane highways
Hanoi, New Delhi, Cork
Luxor, Kathmandu, the Hague
youve seen a three thousand dollar sweater
paid a dollar for an oil massage
haggled over carpets you couldnt possibly carry with you
and made friends with people who
couldnt possibly understand you.
Burning optimism at both ends
You propel yourself across bridges
Leaving the heat to burn the timbres
Gotta keep moving because
in those long breaks between destinations,
Receiving free socks in fuselage
Rattling in the cage of a jeepney
Sleeping on sailors cots
The haunting creeps in and tries to get you.
tries to pry apart
The crevices in your grey matter.
Hong Kong, Nairobi, Seoul
Bangkok, Athens, Oslo
Gotta keep moving.
Gotta keep moving because
if you touch down in enough airports
ride enough boats
see enough poverty
taste enough strange foods
somewhere youll find meaning,
right?
Somewhere,
between slurps of noodles in a soba shack
Between the meaty ends of a blood pudding
Youll taste your own blood
Find solutions to the doubts,
like beggars in Dakar,
that never leave your heels,
Right?
Right?
The Golden Years
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wonder why they call it
the
golden
years?
Is old age so gilded
that every waking moment is
like swimming through rays of sun
in pastel pants and plaid hats of golden thread
along shores sparkling with jeweled dew
blinding beaches of Yukon dust
endlessly caressing bullion boardwalks
where the sounds of gulls
are merely clarion calls
to your good fortune?
In retirement communities like Incan cities
amongst temples to package tours and lawn bowling
is every morsel of an English breakfast
like biting into sauted ingots
where coffee is discounted to 65 cents
and thats close enough
to being a sultan every day
before moving on to shopping malls
where boutiques like Manila Galleons
brimming with fortune and collector plates
land in your port every afternoon?
Chewing on digestive Pieces of Eight
over evening tea and biscuits
panhandling the radio dials for easy listening treasure
between pauses in royal flushes
does talk of good old days
make gold old days?
Where there's so much wealth
And so little time that
Its a rush to spend it all?
Is that why they call it
the
golden
years?
A secret message
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pidgeons flutter into the sky
Go back and forth
Back and forth
As if caught in a cyclone just above the telephone wires
As if caught in a cyclone in their minds
Or the mind of one with a conviction so strong that the others
are vacuumed into the inevitable vortex.
Its winter now and they should have flown south
Weeks ago, but here they are playing
Flutter, flutter, fluttering
Endlessly in a phantom racetrack
And I stand still to watch, mesmerized
watching, watching forever
the beats of a thousand breaststrokes
like brushstrokes in the air
They whirl over the canvas
Smattering their impressionist flaps
In a sour, cold sky
Painting something
meaning something
I can't...
discern
Durlabh Singh
GROW FINGERS
~~~~~~~~~~~~
And I grow fingers and thumbs to write more
The verses that do not follow straight lines
But zigzagging under the open skies
In chromed yellow sunlight
In canopy of the trees
Of the emerald green.
Deserts there are, heat exhausted creatures
Which demand to know the arrival of dawn
Within the hot sandy dunes loneliness resides
Seized in sounds of silences the wind sighing.
Winters I have seen, in interiors of people
Where motions are frozen in frigid bonds
And down pours from dark clouds echoes
The deaths of the moths on the frozen ponds.
Today I speak from depths of the being
From slits in roofs, from broken charades
From blood soaked minds under the bullets metallic
Or women singing their songs in mud soaked paddies.
Run with syrup on my parched lips
Or disappear in the immensity of the seas
Rain forested creatures wormed of nights
In wakeful of the myths for mutterings in dawn.
REMEMBER
~~~~~~~~
Remember
Poetry is the blood of your visions
It rips you apart against
The torrid consolidations of mundane
Strengths elongated in the retinues
Sparked for uncertain verses in trials.
It wants huge skies to fly
It wants ruined castles for your dreams
Vast open spaces for its habitations
Wilder faces and unknown stipends
And the spirit of beauty for
Its hearty congealments.
Open up the worlds for incantations
The barbarous that do not hold
Shipwrecks of your flesh
Sinking downwards
Pleads of the familiar
In an unfamiliar word
Silenced petals and anguished flowers.
It flies to faraway lands
It reaches molten cores of earth
It dances on raindrops of hope
It talks with dry ghosts
In the scorched summers
It accepts the cindered fragments
Forms frolicking in the liquid sea
Or shadows dipped in nothingness.
duane locke
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #101
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I, or i or whatever process this spatial displacement
Is
At the temporal moment, I
Forget Malebranche,
Do not speculate on the binary opposites, body/soul,
How they converse, or engage in fisticuffs,
Or hug with an extraordinary tightening of the arms
Resulting in indentations
In both flesh and spirit,
Or compromise their opposed points of views
And have their purity or impurity contaminated.
I=92ll dismiss from my consciousness the vestiges of the
Poltinian systematization of the Platonic tradition
And its promulgation by Augustine,
And do nothing for a short time but open the door.
Now, opening of the door, my gripping of a polished
Brass knob
And turning counterclockwise, to hear a bolt slip
Out of a metal surrounded hole,
If not preceded by post-Cartesian speculation,
Is somewhat amazing.
Actually, it is very amazing, even marvelous=20
In a surreal sense, or miraculous in a David Hume sense,
I always feel startled
When the door opens and unconceals the white doors
Of two elevators.
Now, I am not reading the man-made as Swedenborg read
Natura as
A hieroglyph,
Nor as a medieval correspondence, every created thing
Having the signature of the artist, God.
Sometimes, upon opening doors, although I do not believe
In the binary opposition of the natural/supernatural,
It is so amazing, like amazing grace, the opening of a door,
I feel
I am experiencing salvation( this is phenomenal, not physicality)
Also, when experiencing this natural-supernatural event
Of opening a door,
I believed as the fourth-century philosopher,
Dionysius the Areopagite believed
That the divine event
(appropriated in my personal hermetic, esoteric,
Solipsistic perception to be a natural-supernatural event),
That this quotidian occurrence
Transcends all our current knowledge
And human understanding,
That the event is incomprehensible.
Every time I open the door the event
Is never the same, the opening always astounds
With a different variety of wonder,
Thus I can say "There is no object called a door."
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #102
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eyes, blue or blind, stare
From a face
Into an empty space.
Is there in this empty place, something,
A force, that is no where,
Thus everywhere.
Our hourly thoughts wink
For an hour, more or less,
At walls enclosing emptiness, although a physicist
With better equipment that our eyes and their connections
Would
Tell us
The empty space is only a conclusion of an illusion
Of the limited
And the not very intelligent beings named homo sapiens.
Nature hates a void,
Empty space is filled.
Plotinus proposes that the divine transcends space and time,
Thus has
A non-spatial mode of being
That is present everywhere as a whole.
This non-spatial mode of being
In not tied down to any particular space,
But is present in its entirely everywhere.
I suppose this is why I sit on an oak stump
In the open air,
Watch across the street the yawns at a tea party.
Every woman wears a wide brimmed hat..
I look at he mowed lawn
That surrounds the party
Think how custom and law
Jags
Into regularity
The grass-wild eyebrows.
This empty space that surrounds
Does
Appear to me
To be filled
With the scared.
I hold up an empty tea cup
With empty space
To my lips,
And my lips feel the sacred.
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #103
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A narrative-chained, simulated native,
Brick-piled stumbled,
Falls,
Becomes mud-covered,
Arises,
Mud-clogged
To travel towards
Unanchored blurs.
His shoulder cloth touches
Emptiness, his skin ripples.
The flat, blank exit
Grows white roses.
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #105
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The roach and its magic recontexualized
The lived-by, but unread context, and now the page
Has the inebriated wrath
That saves
By negation of understanding.
Hammering a tin plate illuminates the white room,
And the crumbled terrycloth bathrobe
That came with warm Cuban bread,
Brightening the pink tight belts of two centuries ago,
And the preparation for divorce
At string quartet wedding on the lawn
Of manufacturer of fogs and fog horns.
The heel pulled from a tossed-away high-hell
Silver-blue slick surface shoe walks over the white rug
In the white room, the straps speckled with small bubbles
As the shoe crawled from bubble bath in the bathroom
Of apartment 1011 in an apartment house
Four miles down the four-laned highway.
Oil men walk their yachts pulling on leashes
Across lips boarded up in case of a hurricane
But sprawled and limp on switch blades made of plastic
Advertised as being Samurai swords as snow
Drifts from the stars tacked on the ceiling.
The blonde hair dropping down to the side
Of her chin is near-sighted and has lost its glasses.
AL FRESCO CAF POEMS #104
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An octogenarian painter ogled
An octagonal
Wine glass.
The unfamiliarity of the glass=92 shape brought
A recall
Of octosyllabic verse and liverwurst.
His occupation had been ocular,
He once painted on
An Odalisque
The sounds of an ocarina,
And when the painting was complete,
Her olive-toned skin
Became an edict.
Michael Estabrook
crashing blood-splattering collision
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So you think I wish to die
slowly on my soft warm deathbed,
meandering through my myriad
memories, reliving and repenting
those miserable moments in my
life, moments I would give
anything to take back, do over
again, times when I was
deceitful, cowardly, weak,
greedy, envious, frightened,
uncivilized, selfish, nasty,
dishonest, narrow-minded,
lustful, ungraceful, rude,
crude, insincere, impatient,
brutish, hypocritical, and
untrue. Not a chance, no thank
you, take me fast, please, dear
Lord, in one big smashing
crashing blood-splattering
collision with a bus, a loaded
dump truck or a lumbering train.
pale ghost
~~~~~~~~~~
One day before the movers in their
big orange moving van finished
clearing everything out my wife
said good-bye to the house she
was raised in. Her father was at his
new house already with his new
wife. It had been, after all,
an entire year since the first
one died. I watched my wife as
she walked slowly from room
to dusty room sobbing,
as the ghost of her mother
trailed along behind, her head,
pale as powder, bent down
in the deepest sorrow.
Patti: Purgatory Terrace Three: Anger
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1
Like a startled doe
in a clearing
she looks up
from the want ads,
her lips snarling,
"I hate this.
I! Hate! This!"
her eyes glaring straight
into me as if I've just told her
I'm leaving and taking
the money,
the dog,
and the children, too.
2
"And if it weren't for me
you'd be a damn drunk living
one of those lost lives
out on the street
someplace,
in the gutter!"
and she stomps
out of the room.
3
rolling her eyes to the ceiling
and barking at me
to pull my bootstraps tighter
and stop whining
like a damn baby all
the damn time about
the pain nagging ceaselessly
as Niagara Falls
at my lower back
4
The weather was so terrible
the cabby never showed up
at the airport
at midnight.
Even though I didn't want
to call her, I had no choice,
really. As I slid in
behind the wheel,
she said, "I can't believe
you made me come out
on a night like this."
5
shrugging when I recount
my dream about her
and Aunt Adele
waiting out in the car for me
to get their bags and drive
them to the airport, and how
I can't find the bags,
and I'm moving so slowly,
like I usually do,
like a damn turtle,
and she's waiting, tapping
her foot, and the time's going,
and she's waiting
and waiting and beginning
to get angry at me too,
for not moving fast enough
6
She's going through menopause
(we suspect)
and she's so sick of me
she can barely look at me.
I'm weak and selfish
and never there for her
and I don't understand her.
(How could I begin to understand her,
I'm a stupid man!)
And having sex with me,
while never much
of an eagerly anticipated
event for her even during our
younger years, is now quite simply
too unbearable
to even contemplate.
"I just don't see the point,"
she says.
Art is Chaos
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Something alluring about chaos after all it is one-half of the universal
battle order versus chaos enthalpy versus entropy & what I think, if I do
indeed think at all, is that art for most of us is organized chaos because
we can't do it any other way. However, true art (no time for definitions
now gotta run) is chaos simply chaos pure and simply chaos but as I say most
of us are too human for that and the other thing about it is that true art
is formed by people who would never be having a silly conversation such as
this they haven't the time nor the inclination to fidget over order versus
chaos (perhaps only us scientists have the mental energies for such
unfructifying speculations). Artists do what they do because it is what
they do, it is what they are, it is them. Period. Or something like that.
I guess you can tell I have no idea whatever of what I'm talking about. Let
me try it from another angle - Picasso or Dante or Shakespeare or
Michelangelo or Mozart or Brahms or Beethoven or Gauguin - even though their
art is intensely organized, the best of art that's ever been produced
(subjective view perhaps but not entirely), it is not organized because
these guys sat down and said - hey I need to be organizing this thing that's
rattling around so uncomfortably inside of me, no. No. I don't think so.
It is organized to us because it is organized for us by the true artists who
are after all translators or perhaps interpreters of something inside them
and outside them too which no one else, no ordinary person that is, can see
or hear or feel. It is organized because it needs to be in order for it to
be comprehensible to the "common man." Mozart's genius spilled out of him
truly like they make it do in the movies he did not struggle to find his
voice it is his voice simply because it is his voice and it spilled out of
him but the form it took is not the form it was inside of him it was
something else like the primordial soup at the beginning of biological
history (chaos at that point by the way made life, without chaos then &
constantly thereafter we would not be here today); like God (if one should
believe in such a pedestrian concept) appearing in human form so we can
recognize him (or Her). I like to think that he is really a She, certainly
much more enjoyable (for me at least) worshipping the Female whatever the
Female is I suppose. (I do know it, however, when I see it and hear it and
smell it.) Well, guess I'm done for now. You know I have an uncle, Uncle
John, (guess I'm not done for now) who was a drunk, a true alcoholic an
unfunny thing to be, rumor has it he was this way because he couldn't have
kids but anyway, he was a drunk. But his profession was as a welder, if
welder is a profession I don't know, and when he got older like 60 he got
Lou Gehrig's disease you know where your muscles get weaker and weaker and
you can't work anymore or play racquetball either and when that happened to
Uncle John and he stopped working he turned his aging and fading and
gin-sodden brain, what was left of it that is, to art (& Lord knows I'm
really using that word loosely). He began making these little welded
figurines of people doing this and that one playing the piano, another
fishing or swinging a golf club, and I was really insulted (& disgusted). I
mean now that he's done with his life's work of welding and he's bored well
it's time to make some art it's simple enough I have time on my hands
anybody can do it well fuck him fuck him fuck him hard up the ass with his
fucking welding rods.
Lamont Palmer
Landing on the Disco Channel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Again, I sat as sad zombies sit,
listening to moments personal auras can do
nothing about. I remember when my limbs
were not wooden branches. I remember when
I thought age was not an enemy.
Age was a comic whose jokes I did not get.
I remember my yearnings were silky and fine
to the touch, like a woman, glowing in youth.
I remember when disco was like blood.
This is a stage. I put out the trash at night,
getting rid of, at night, what is needless any hour.
The moon above me is drunk in its whiteness,
looking at me as if I might be there someday
hanging beside him, me, another heavenly body.
Nothing is as it was.
Damn it, can I not say this is a stern calm voice?
My tremulous voice is the tongue of the past
when I remember legs, arms, and futures, youthful with motion,
and when It comes back to me the days when disco was like blood.
Losing Yourself
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sky is gray as a gray diamond.
In the air rain is looming like a soldier
ready to swoop in. I think this rain will be
familiar with us, and cover us eagerly, like it should.
If I were in a purging mood
I'd release all that is unusual
all that isnt you on distinctly frivoulous days
and my house, my white house
which sits in this country town
would pay for itself and I'd be off the hook.
The sky is as gray as a gray jewel thats priceless
and no owner to peruse its surface--no watchers.
Yesterday I was ill, today I am a battery charged;
I feel, yes, feel I could benchpress a world--Jupiter maybe,
the planet that 1300 earths can fit in, but why would earth
desire to dwell there? Perhaps because we all want to be inside something,
inside something blue and alive--an ocean house,
where skies gray as gray diamonds would match wondrously.
Is this world, this tangible element, breathing in wine and song
apart of the world you can't see?
The words retain their vintage taste, their edgy way
of thwarting history,
and if losing yourself in the sunshine was easy,
the gray would be superflous.
Belinda
~~~~~~~
she has nothing but
her cats and god
in that apartment
so quiet in kentucky
i feel a sorrow heavy as
anvils in my veins
heavy as planets balanced
on my shoulders
god is good but is he enough
i wish there was more for her
not only the cats
god
and a deep kentucky silence
so deep
it could kill
or stealthily make
your life as brown grass.
Averil Bones
SCISSORS FOR STITCHES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You are endlessly at sea,
crowing from the shifty ground
you sing to me as sound.
I, dreamy fool, stitched myself
with honeyed mysteries to the
sneaking rat of your fate.
But now, friendless Daedalus,
out with the scissors.
Snip Snip!
The threads are weak.
I stewed them from the
bitter mud of your exes.
All poems copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2005 by
Klaus J. Gerken.
The official version of this magazine is available on Ygdrasil's
World-Wide Web site http://users.synapse.net/~kgerken. No other
version shall be deemed "authorized" unless downloaded from there.
Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.
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