Technicians of the Sacred: Ethnopoetics and the New Indigenous Poetries (A Talk & Reading in Melbourne)

August 11, 2017, 1:48 pm

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Technicians of the Sacred: Ethnopoetics and the New Indigenous Poetries from Arts Unimelb on Vimeo.

Coinciding with the publication of an expanded 50th anniversary edition of his anthology Technicians of the Sacred, poet, translator and anthologist Jerome Rothenberg will explore the early history of ethnopoetics.

Drawing from the new introduction to the book, he will begin the talk discussing the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of ethnopoetics as a collaborative work of poets and scholars to which he was a close witness and active participant. He will then propose a link to the survival and revival of many indigenous languages and poetries in the early 21st century, with a sense that change rather than stasis has been at the heart of these poetries as well as of our own.

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Jess’s O! : An Unknown Masterwork (by Jack Foley)

August 18, 2017, 5:53 am

≫ Next: Peter Valente: Fragmentary Improvisations of Yearning: küçük İskender’s souljam

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Even is come; and from the dark park, hark.

            —O! 

            What do W. C. Fields, the Mona Lisa, an upside down Tarot card, and the capitalized phrase, “GOOD NIGHT, PAPA” have in common? Not much, except that they all grace the cover of an almost unknown masterwork by the San Francisco artist, Jess. 

            O!, a pamphlet of Jess’s poetry and collages—his preferred word is “paste-up”—was published by Jerome Rothenberg’s Hawk’s Well Press in 1960. It sold for $.50. The book must have seemed fresh, even amazing at the time. Fifty-seven years later, out of print and impossible to find except in Rare Book Rooms, it is still fresh and amazing. 

            The upside-down Tarot card is “The Hanged Man,” but, upside down, the figure looks like a dancer. W. C. Fields is saying, “FANCY—IMAGINATION!” It’s a joke: fancy that, imagination! But it’s also a play on Coleridge’s categories of mentation, Fancy and Imagination. A sharp-pointed piece of metal seems to be penetrating W. C. Fields’ ear. Fields’ face is stuck onto the Mona Lisa’s, so we don’t see her at all: we see his head (with straw hat) above Mona Lisa’s bosom. The resulting figure is androgynous—part male, part female—but it is created in an extremely playful way: Jess does nothing at all to disguise the fact that he is deliberately manipulating these images. At the top of the page is a statement attributed to Montaigne—a kind of credo for the entire book: “I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.” 

            Quotation, disruption, imaginative play, and a sentimental if ironic evocation of childhood are all elements of O!, as is a subtle, persistent homoerotic content. The book has a “Pre-Face” by Robert Duncan, who calls O! “art that is that very genuine phony fifty dollar bill—but it’s a three dollar bill.” (“Queer as a three dollar bill” was still current in 1960 America.) 

            Duncan goes on to comment that in this book, “which is in every detail derivative,” “something funny”— “amusing,” but also “odd,” “queer”— “is going on.” In O!’s “multiphasic” context—in which anything may be anything else—W. C. Fields, “stuck on” the Mona Lisa, may well be the phony fifty/three-dollar “Bill” (as the comedian was known to friends), a figure for the artist himself. Across the page from Duncan’s comment is a diagram of a lunar eclipse, in which the word “moon” becomes “moo”—the sound of the cow jumping over it—and “earth” drops its first and last letters to become “art.” “Jess,” writes Duncan, “has swallowed Dada”—cf. “PAPA”—“whole.” 

            In Secret Exhibition, a book dealing with West Coast Beat art, Rebecca Solnit has a chapter on Jess as a “painter among poets.” Jess cites “Max Ernst, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi, and San Francisco’s rococo Playland-at-the-Beach (particularly the funhouse) as important influences,” Solnit  writes. “The impurity and the levity [of his work] were an outrage...in a way that is hard to imagine in the laissez-faire art world of the present...[I]f the work of Jess, [Wallace] Berman, [Bruce] Conner, and [Edward] Kienholz is considered as part of the canon of American art, it becomes clear that surrealism, with its insurrectionary wit and adoration of the absurd,...became a potent way to address the incongruous realm of American experience.” One thinks as well of Chester Hines, whose novels often have surrealist elements: indeed, for Hines a “racist” society is an “absurd”—and so a “surreal”—society. 

            The underground world in which these artists functioned, Solnit goes on, “has remained a kind of public secret—some of Jack Kerouac’s novels take place on its periphery, and its literary aspect has been touched upon in books about the Beat Generation—but the importance of the artists in this time and place is still a well-kept secret.” “Barely acknowledged at the time [Beat] poetry was acclaimed,” Beat art “is some of the most lasting and influential to have been made during those years.” 

            O! contains many fragments of verse as part of its texture. Often they appear in something  like comic strip balloons, so that figures in the paste-ups appear to be speaking them. But this book is particularly significant because it is one of the few presentations of Jess’s own poetry, which is little known. (When I mentioned Jess’s poetry to poet Thom Gunn, a close friend of Duncan’s and Jess’s, he said immediately, “Jess doesn’t write poetry.”) The influences here are primarily Lewis Carroll and James Joyce—particularly the Joyce of Finnegans Wake. Jess’s first poem was written in response to the Wake, of which he owns a signed edition. Here is a sample: 

                                                PTARRYDACTYL   I

                                                            I’d need

                                                a linnet on a spinet to be infinite

                                                            (Indeed

                                                a spider as a glider’d not be wider).

                                                            But the butterfly

                                                            ought to utter why

                                                new roses don’t suppose us worth the gnosis. 

            The poems are presented in white boxes, in which we can consider them  separately from their surroundings—images, fragments of quotations, etc. Yet the surroundings constantly impinge upon the poems. “Ptarrydactyl I” is presented sideways on a page which includes, among other things, “Ptarrydactyl II,” bits and pieces of sheet music, diagrams probably lifted from the pages of Scientific American (Jess began his working life as a chemist), a Cupid perched on a child’s shoulder (the Cupid appears to be driving a nail into the child’s head, just as the child is driving a nail into a top hat), the word “VOLTAIR,” and the punning phrase “SCENE IN TEXAS.” 

            Images and phrases also extend across both sides of the book’s pages. We find unattached hands, animals (a zebra, a gnu, a tiny fox slinking away and saying, “O it is monstrous! monstrous!”), a man’s profile (the ear is on one page, the eye, nose and mouth on the other), smaller versions of the Cupid on the boy’s shoulder, and a trolley car with the word “VACUUM” on its side. The more you look, the more you see. The poems in the boxes thus seem to be emerging out of a teeming world which is at once orderly (we see reflections, parallels, verbal and visual puns) and vastly chaotic—a parallel universe which contains everything present in our own, but changed, distorted: reminiscent but wildly different. 

            Duncan rightly calls O!“a masterly hodgepodge.” Its prose and poetry, its fragments, its marvelous, resonant images create a picture of mind or self as an infinitely shapely chaos, charged at all points with what the artist will call later, quoting Shakespeare’s Troilus, “changeful potency.” In the book’s persistently free environs, boundaries are at once asserted and demolished; childhood merges into deep history; realism turns to magic—to say nothing of kitsch. Indeed, though Jess never considered himself to be part of the Beat movement, “Beat” is present here too, and it is present precisely as it is in Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues—as the ecstatic manifestation of the simultaneously infinite and finite character of the mind: 

                                                What are they? A child’s simple prattle,

                                                       A breath on the Infinite ear 

                                                          

                                                                        *

                                                Beats may be produced by singing

                                                            flames. 

            Ludwig Wittgenstein answered the famous opening sentence of his Tractatus, “The world is all that is the case,” with a sentence in Philosophical Investigations (I:95): “Thoughtcan be of what is not the case.” Jess’s book is a boisterous ride through a mind blissfully open to its endlessly unraveling uncertainties, through what is precisely “not the case.” It is utterly of its time and utterly beyond it. I first came upon it almost by accident in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, where you can still find it. You can also find it, reproduced—one might say reconstructed—in Michael Duncan’s Jess: O! Tricky Cad & Other Jessoterica (siglio: 2012). Jess’s “heart irregularly igneous” is present throughout: 

                                                So patter me with formulae

                                                with syllables-a-mercy,

                                                and tell me that the poem you see

                                                is better late than early,

                                                and draw me that the scene you hear

                                                overestimates the nucleus;

                                                the particles will pester Guenevere

                                                in my heart irregularly igneous.

 POST SCRIPT: NOTES ON THE RHYMING OF A COLLAGE ARTIST 

“My dear Degas, poems are not made with ideas but with words.”

            —Stéphane Mallarmé 

 PTARRYDACTYL   I

I’d need

a linnet on a spinet to be infinite

            (Indeed

a spider as a glider’d not be wider).

            But the butterfly

            ought to utter why

new roses don’t suppose us worth the gnosis.

                        —Jess

At the very center of Jess’s poetry is rhyme. In the recent resurgence of formal poetry, one often finds poets used to free verse attempting to force their “ideas” into the prison of rhyme: “Rhyme,” one of them remarked to the formalist X.J. Kennedy, “won’t let me say what I want to say.” “Yes!” Kennedy answered. In Jess’s work, as in Kennedy’s, rhyme is not an imprisoning element but a liberating one. Jess does not begin with “ideas”; he begins with words—rhyming words. “Meaning” is not something that exists previous to the rhymes; on the contrary, “meaning” is what rhyme can discover. 

What then is rhyme? The sudden conjunction, through sound, of words that are in themselves entirely disparate.

What is collage? The sudden conjunction, through juxtaposition, of images that are in themselves quite disparate: “As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table” (Lautréamont).

The internet has this to say about Lautréamont’s famous sentence:

 “This metaphor captures one of the most important principles of surrealist aesthetic: the enforced juxtaposition of two completely alien realities that challenges an observer’s preconditioned perception of reality. German surrealist Max Ernst would also refer to Lautréamont’s sewing machine and umbrella to define the structure of the surrealist painting as ‘a linking of two realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them, in a setting that by all appearances does not fit them.’”  

(https://sites.dartmouth.edu/library/2014/08/01/surrealists-inspired-by-lautreamont-2/) 

“A linking of two realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them.” Isn’t that precisely what rhyme does? 

And doesn’t chance—“le Hasard” in Mallarmé’s famous phrase—haunt both procedures?

Jess’s work is a discovery of rhyme as collage.

Peter Valente: Fragmentary Improvisations of Yearning: küçük İskender’s souljam

August 25, 2017, 5:40 am

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[introduction.  About a year ago I began discussions with Murat Nemet-Nejat on the subject of contemporary Turkish poetry. From these discussions was born a series of notes, experimental essays, and brief commentaries. The following text is based on a reading of küçük İskender’s souljam, in Murat’s translation, included in Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry published by Talisman House in 2004. k. İskender (1964 - ) belongs to the group of Turkish poets, that if alive in their fifties, would also include Lale Müldür, Ahmet Güntan, Seyhan Erözçelik, Sami Baydar, and Haydar Ergülen; this poetry is a reaction to the changes in Istanbul’s population and the city’s central political and cultural position in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union. Istanbul had become a “nexus of movement, a sprawling, global metropolis;” it was no longer a city of one million people, of secrets and mysterious depths. In souljam, İskender tears apart the official facade of Turkish culture with “a big bang from the center of the soul.” His language includes references to pop culture, the sciences, and crime reports; but there are also lyrical outbursts and archaic language. This complex hybrid reflected the new Istanbul of exponential growth and development.İskender created souljam from the contents of twenty notebooks, journals he kept from February 19, 1984 to December 26, 1993. The poem reverses the order of the notebooks; the lowest numbered fragment corresponds to the latest notebook. This is   İskender’s attempt “to suppress the chronological confusion, to push it to the very beginning, to a faetal sensibility.”

In my text, I allude to İskender’s radical view of Sufism. In Sufism, the ego must break down in order for the soul to begin its ascent toward God. According to İskender the physical body breaks down in a kind of orgasmic rapture, but the ego does not die. It becomes divine. I also refer to the Sufi concept of the arc of descent and ascent, which is the movement from the multiplicity of phenomena to the unity of God and the reverse. This movement is not sequential but continuous, two aspects of the same divine essence. In souljam this multiplicity is expressed in the form of fragments, imploding, exploding and transforming themselves in relation to another, yearning for unity with God through the body. My “essay” is an improvisation on the text, a record of my encounter with the fragmentary and volatile quality of souljam, rather than a conventional essay. The quotes from souljam are in italics. (P.V.)]

wounded electricity   complements the body    NOT Whitman’s Body-Electric but the fragmented body (Artaud’s “body without organs”)and there is also perhaps the suggestion of electroshock, the shockwaves of an explosive subjectivity.  chimeras  ghost whispering. Artaud’s vile spirits that inhabit the body as it exits the womb  boy pulled into the four winds   a cock in his mouth  Body raped, abused, the brutality of life  BUT  (the poet) the bandit grows The poet will learn to curse, blaspheme (the dream in which I saw my grandma / burn her koran, I interpret it as/ my sexual freedom), tear the sentences apart with his teeth, he is an enraged animal, sexually charged (I carry a zoo in me)1) virus: valid declared – validates the main stream the criterion of language, all that is correct, the domination of truth, everything used to suppress the mind. What is valid is accepted, what is not is thrown into the garbage dump. And there are these geriatric gas positions itself in a suitable lung these stations in society areold, withered, of no use any longer. İskender rejects “the tradition” the suitable lung  the right word; it is an attack on the sterility of language that maintains the tradition, this consensus in the aesthetic field and the owner of the building owns the words (Spicer’s “there are bosses in poetry”.) 2) the mystery: the weeping. mother earth, mother Istanbul, infected, shoots up and metal is happy  industry, politics, institutionalism, the whole industrial revolution is shit and bomb happy (infiltration of communication by mechanical  insulation) and condom is an insult  tries to restrict pleasure to hold the sperm hostage and then night begins    the rhesus monkey having turned human on an impulse (here is his origin story; and the brain’s awesome harmony is a giant tumor/ of knee jerk reactions a primal fire that is cross-examined by a bureaucracy, (Burroughs’ “thought police”) but instead, violence, at bottom / is a crack of yearning. But the great white crosses and joins the captains log   the threat, the abyss represented by Melville’s great white is domesticated, becomes part of language, conscripted for its use, becomes a tv commercial, part of the main stream, so the seagull panics does not want its sound reduced to a grammatical rule, eats up the weak worm of ionized penance here is an attack on Christian guilt, no need to confess anything. reconnection prowls around defensive techniques   contra slow time (the organization of the journal entries defies a logical order, defies linear time. The “speed” of the poem is 100 miles/hr in a 20 mile zone) your face the desert shower of necessary love (In the phrase, “desert shower” contraries fuse, the dry desert gushes water) subject to rough trade (both rough trade agreements and rough sex), to deposits of excess dnas / long held in the mirage air. even the air is fake and the Dynamic Authentication System retrieves information about user’s hardware and software for authentication purposes. And your love is being recorded. Fatal/Foetal (the ultimate fatality is “death” (fast forward) but foetal suggests birth/origin, a reversal. Oblivion in both directions the path of my angels will track / through the blind / alley So we have here the continuum (“no tangible instant”). No difference between future or past. The poem races forward as fast as it races backward and at the same time, a railroad of soundAnd ‘and’ your suggests any possible union is cut off, fragmented like the sentence, like the lines of these pseudo poems, a fragmented body yearning for unity. crowds are inclinations of the like here is main stream, the tv sensibility, stream lined behaviors, the mob rules. my bequeathal / to the future as a strain of light a viral strain of light. İskender is a scientist in god forsaken solitude in the genesis of light / awaiting the lure of transparent insanity he is anteing up my concentration. İskender’s ego is in overdrive, he will beat God at his own game by determining the hour of his death rather than leaving it to accident or natural causes (my suicide is provided for)      my mind / sores (soars) on  a skin / white as cream// by cock’s / havoc / violated / in a hammock// Dream / and mid scream / and mid scream  His bruise from being violated sexually is sublimated and becomes his means of flight (Murat Nemet-Nejat writes, “that violence (in spirituality and love) is the heart of Sufi sensibility and violence is sublimated as a cosmic principle.) This sore is also the viral strain of light. in solitude, me, full of hard ons ons onshere he arrives at the continuum through a physical sensation, in solitude. Here is an Artaudian resonance: that someone’s trying to kill me / is inlaying my mind, as if we’d / swapped secrets / making a night of it many, many nights / of drowse and bruise (again the sore and the dream, rough sex and sleep) how many whispered words mopped up by my fingers wandering on your lips, words I couldn’t catch words are cut off, inarticulate. The attempt to feel the other falls short. The subjectivity in İskender is extreme, contact with the world and the other is rejected. But this explosive subjectivity will be at the center of a radical Sufi practice where İskender yearns for the infinite contours of his consciousness.       a kid defines night / as an etude of comprehending life / with his tiny cock, // like color blindness in smell blindness / experiencing carnation as a rose, / and me, experiencing carnation in a rose. The young boy’s experience of his own sexuality allows him to see day and night as one. Rather than the blind leading the blind with “accurate” and “valid” interpretations (translations) of, say the word, ‘carnation,’ which is interpreted as a rose, İskender purposely misreads the meaning of the word, (me, experiencing carnation ina rose.) and perhaps recalls that the meaning of the word ‘carnation,’ is derived from a misreading of the Arabic “Karnful” i.e. “clove as pink clove.” This is an act of creative translation and an attempt to go past the official meanings of words and perceptions that sustain the status quo (i a bit too out of line) But there is this sadness above me, / when will it stop brooding? the serenity and inner peace of not learning / one single prayer which I can recite by heart / dying God is out of the picture. İskender will control when he dies. His process is one of unlearning all the knowledge handed down to him and he will search out a love considered, reprehensible by the planet earth by scanning the irradiation of my puckered fire and reading the shredded documents / of a long forgotten cult (this is his  “Shamanistic, intuitive synthesis”) And furthermore he writes, useless! / god is useless. / i’m god. This heresy is also part of İskender’s Godless Sufism. It is the love, of a not yet visible asia, is / the barely sensible skin of plants. His love of what is not visible is like the barely sensible skin of plants.The invisible is felt. Here once again is the fascinating quality of these poems where a spiritual perception is arrived at by the physical. İskender’s identity is the befouling of what is / knowable, and the downward velocity / of becoming young” he is atavistic, regressive, descending into the core of the earth, and back towards the origin, where he is young again; he has achieved a childlike innocence that is Blakean. (in our room of toys, / dreams are shaking off / anxiously their dust). İskender writes that linear logic is the use of perception’s least / common denominator. When he writes, the vitality of / science and discovery illuminated / in pure orgasm / only he seems very close to the Rimbaud of the Illuminations. He wants to negate the deviation / inherent in the deficiencies and deflations of choosing among / food or loversthe limitation of choice; he rejects convention, says “no both.” He speaks of the pure orgasm that is the extreme pleasure point (spiritual) of his radical subjectivity. The instability of knowledge and knowing: the difference between knowing that what is merely visible is woven / into what is longed for, and spelling out / that what is merely accepted is in conflict with what is rumored / about. over extending, / over exploring of myself. away from faith but very near / dissolution, a sentence, whose subject / is neurosis, whose sentence is dying, whose teleology, / mist Here is the Godless form of Sufism, the rejection of faith. but very near dissolution: Here is İskender’s radical subjectivity in which the breakdown occurs, a destruction not of the ego but of the world in seeking a primal unity. The structure of the sentence is breaking apart. Attempts to explain phenomena fail because they are as vague and inconsequential as the mist. Then there is the reality sandwich or Burroughs’ naked lunch on the end of a spoon, reality check: charred bodies in between the sheets, in a grimy all night hotel, inhaling the smoke from a crack joint (ecstatic drug use, expansion of consciousness, his blur of moans) i’m it: the ego does not break down. He is the world. But İskenderwrites my soul the bribe given my body This reminds me of Artaud, the soul as something immaterial that invades the body, and constantly instills in it a sense of lack. The body against its will becomes indebted to the soul. And it is this very immaterial quality, this “misty” quality that makes it so hard to attack directly and requires nothing less than the destruction of the World. Life is another form of immaterial invasion that does not care for humans and continues on irrespective of human achievement (this is Bronk’s territory). But İskender writes life probed me. my heart lets go. “gotch ya!” my heart won’t notice. He will ignore Life. Here is İskender’s radical subjectivity again. He rejects any talk of Being and the World. Rather, deathis the ultimate mother fucker i cherish vamping poems. Nothing is original, there are no masterpieces; the ultimate and only challenge for the poet is Death. İskender wouldn’t have it any other way.  the divine body like a broken sculpture and violence is the foreign tongue of the body:this also reminds me of Artaud. İskender is doing violence to his text, rearranging the initial order of his journals, breaking syntax, creating an undercurrent of destruction, the fragmented body/text is a roar, an almost hysterical rejection of everything that constitutes society, and his is a radical ego whose fragmentary improvisations of yearning are his ladder up down the arc.There is also the radical melancholy of Sufism: spring wrote me no letters of utopias, winter did.İskender is against nature, growth, the lure of Spring, and instead finds his own subjective vision of utopia in the cold, winter season, the season of snows, of death: death is the ultimate mother fucker. But his “suicide” is provided for. He is without a womb,self-generated, ego driven, a “body without organs”. The body is not his own. It’s for rent. You don’t sell your body, only rent it. And at what the price? And since a body/ without a soul / is called a corpse, no difference between entering any old whore house & fuck someone there & fucking any old corpse…obsessions of necrophilia both.” But then he writes, “except for my own life, except for my own life.” i.e. the ego still lives triumphs over death.

Jerome Rothenberg on “The Symposium of the Whole”

August 29, 2017, 6:39 am

≫ Next: Gerry Loose: From “The Great Book of the Woods” (with a note on its sources)

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[The following is a blog post I wrote for the University of California Press to celebrate the expanded fiftieth anniversary edition of Technicians of the Sacred, with an emphasis on its renewed relevance against the upsurge today of still potent nationalisms & racisms, directed most often against the diversity of mind & spirit of which the earlier Technicians was so clearly a part. (J.R,)]
 

Fifty years ago, when I was assembling and then publishing the first edition of Technicians of the Sacred, my concentration was on the poetry foremost, the sense that came to me as a poet that the roots and resources of poetry were far more complex and widespread than how we commonly thought of them. In my search, informed by the ways in which poets of my own generation and those immediately before had expanded the idea of what we could both hear and create as poetry, I discovered by looking “everywhere” (but especially in places neglected by others) a richness of poetic means and methods that both extended and confirmed the sense of what we were doing in our own place and time. What I stressed far less, though I thought it was apparent to all, was that behind the poetry as such was a diversity of autonomous peoples and deep cultures beyond anything we had previously imagined and cherished. And with that came not only new possibilities for our work as poets and artists, but the possibility of opening up the full dimension of what it meant to be totally and meaningfully human.                           

Today that total humanity – that “symposium of the whole,” as our fellow poet Robert Duncan named it – has again come to be challenged. I take this as the context in which this revised and expanded edition of Technicians of the Sacred is now appearing. As Anne Waldman expresses it for me, “More radically timely than ever in a tormented era of xenophobia, racism, post-truth, and psychic crisis when words are abased, perhaps it will be transmission such as this that reinvigorates imagination and highlights our generative cultural inter-dependence.” In my own words I see the new Techniciansboth as a testament to the survival and revival of many indigenous and threatened poetries and languages and as an instrument against new acts of genocide and ethnic and religious cleansing abroad and an upsurge closer to home of still potent nationalisms & racisms, directed most often against the diversity of mind and spirit of which the earlier Techni­cians was so clearly a part.

That I continue to assert a central place for poetry as an instrument of change and difference is also to be noted.

Gerry Loose: From “The Great Book of the Woods” (with a note on its sources)

September 1, 2017, 6:05 am

≫ Next: Peter Minter: “Everything is Speaking,” a new poem with author’s note & biography

≪ Previous: Jerome Rothenberg on “The Symposium of the Whole”

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the primer

let profit be gno

let bora be strength

let the duality of the conjugal be ter

let rfoph be veneration

let piety be brops

rihph be cheerfulness

let gal be a kingdom

let religion be fkal

let clitps be nobility

let dignity be mymos

let fann be recognition

let honour be ulio

let gabpal be compliance

blaqth be sunlight

rain be merc

let pal be day & night

let peace be gatrb

biun be water & fire

let longevity be spax

 **

the present time is put for all times

a deed wonderful unlawful

he confounded them

he confused them

when one would say to another

fetch me a stone

it was a stick he’d bring

 **

on that account

the select language

the additional language

the language parted related 

in the Great Book of Woods

 **

what is the language parted

in the Great Book of the Woods?

this: óig & máir

this: náir & náir mas

other is amuis & gairg

& grin

what is the verb?

it is this: shining 

coming & showing  

there is science in place

it comes out of the letters

into words

 **

fall, shine, show, come

out of that primary nature into words

out of these letters into words

they speak the thing

the foundation of the voice

the ways of the voices

the letter is a road

a voice path

they make the voice in place

 **

the wood vowels

that nourish while in mind

that sing at giving

that sue for reward

that judge greatness or smallness

that sit after payment

the material for words

is cut out of them

the sides of oaks

 **

half the voice is thrown out

the stammering voice

the half voice place

the half voice way

not because they would be

speechless altogether

the mutes

before them & after them

before them & after them

 **

he the man

she the woman

it the heaven

speech-way

along the way

along the path

which is trodden

let it come

let it go

he is the heavens

she is the stone

it is the head

her nose or her eye

his tooth or his mouth

words of a language

we do not know

we do not think sweet

we do not use them

she is the steed

a bark of butter

a sieve of corn

 **

what is comparison of sense without sound?

what is comparison of sound without sense?

comparison of sense and sound together

that is the proper comparison

there is good and nothing to surpass

its measure to suit the ear

its adjustment to breathing

a wood of science

a mark of aspiration

letter to letter

 **

the space of time

between 

two syllables

is its meaning

is a letter a species?

in the wood of the forest

is a letter a genus?

 **

according to sound

which goes

which comes

the fragment

of cut off air

diminution of time

the tongue of silence

double sounds

knowledge of thing perishes

unless the name is known

power & want of power

full power & half power

written & not counted

stone turning music

they step

 **

poison of a serpent

they blow the fire

meal of corn

heaven round earth

the staves of words

interloping syllables

plain of deer

copses of wood

duck along a pool

swift and dense flax seed

 *****

ear-lobe compression

family-like-every-second-one-of them

all-the-mistakes-which-we-have-committed

 *****

a thing is not an origin for itself

syllables

choral song silent in its law

the music that is

small music that is humming

loud music trumpeting

its mournful cry

thunder or a tree

when it is a whistle

shriller harder

greater music when a harp

silent its music

when sweetest it is silent

 **

the limbs of science are named

not mixed speech

it praises from the front

it is sent 

it is hastened

staves of words

a staff out of a word

staves in reasonable speech

in the mouths 

halting from word to word

 **

the interloping syllable

its flinging of a man

if a man suffer on land

the man allows suffering on him

he goes afterwards

to bathe himself in the water

he lets himself down the bank

into the water

tot says the wave under him

the sound which waves make

the heavy voice the man utters

dropping himself on the water

 **

the name has happened

to the sound

the haft of speech

from which no speech grows 

but speech of death

the spear point

what is haft 

which is after blade

the after blade 

which is haft

and the haft

which is before blade

haft is the spear

haft itself will come

after blade

everything final

haft which is after blade

the haft is the haft 

which is before blade

 **

it is the head

it is artificial to say it

while it is on the man

it is natural to say it

after striking the head off him

 **

the couple of the gore

redness and crimson

leg and foot 

the couple of supporting

eyelashes & eyebrow

root & breadth

skin & sinew

activity & surface

one for warding upon

one for good warding

cap on knee

lips in strength & loudness

flesh & blood

which is in the flesh

top bone & jaw bones

knuckles & hair

a man’s limbs

are made of science

 **

on, under, through, in

past the heavens

its interloping syllable

heaven about earth

cloud & bow of heaven

for every sort of speech

that is produced 

on human lips

[note (by Gerry Loose)The Primer is loosely drawn from the Auraicept na n-Eces, a 7th century CE Old Irish tract known as the Scholars’ Primer or Handbook of the Learned.
 
It deals with Irish grammar and vernacular, claimed within that book to be descended from speech before the Tower of Babel and more comprehensive than Hebrew, Latin or Greek. The earliest written version we have is from the 12th century CE, with many additions to the early text.

It also contains the texts of the ogham tracts from the Book of Ballymote, the Yellow Book of Lecan and the text of the Trefhocul from the Book of Leinster. Ogham was a system of more-or-less secret writing developed by poets and used, among other ways, on monolithic stone inscriptions, somewhat runic in appearance.

Its thrust is a comparison between grammar and the natural world, including human endeavour, which is at the heart of ogham inscriptions. 

My versions are taken in this instance only from that part of the book preceding the ogham tracts, which have been the subjects of my interest and peripatetic study for more than forty years.

It forms the preface to my continuing work on ogham: The Great Book of the Woods. “Ogham is climbed as a tree is climbed.” (Damian McManus)]

Peter Minter: “Everything is Speaking,” a new poem with author’s note & biography

September 8, 2017, 5:09 am

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I go to sleep near the infants

breathing bodies, a small herd of nature

in layers of animation, the unknown

unfolding identical powers

delivered through a gateway of hearts

at body temperature. In a nest

of sleeping birds, you’re the bird

you’re the baby, I can hear you dreaming

fall forward into glistening swollen eyes

musty orange leaves, soft wet

twigs, the wings and shells of insects

fragments of bone in capillaries of moss

humus tangled into nets emerging

from the curve in the waterway

of night, wet roots and branches

pebbles in the pit of the tree’s black torso

more moss in leaf litter

emerging from bark, a currawong’s

yellow eye a single grain of gold

stars in the dark forest

a whisper escaloping space

with the radiance of the world

like a meteor blazing over the crest

silhouette trees eating fire as it falls

from the sky, consuming darkness

in a well of the absolute cold

I can smell in a long, drawn-in breath

smelling earth rock, a planet

of mammalian fur

                          a wind stirs

comes up full of energy

like a cold fire started in the centre of the planet

I see a star blank in and out

as a branch swings too-and-fro

and then gone again, the cosmos

blinded by low cloud, black squall & spume

thrown up into moonlight, rain

chaos spent, all the stars

blown into the bush

I see them flicker in the black leaves

and wet grasses. I get up

and watch rain thrash

under full moon light

a flower growing stronger in my memory

the closer death comes

to the window

                       as a young

man I stood in a colour field

the sky liberated

an avalanche of sweet pollen

in the wind, light pink apple

& plum flowers, chords

of sweat hanging in the air

gold spider webs and hot leaves

shimmering in the breeze

white clover and dandelion heads

riding a deep green pool

an aurora of tributaries in the blood

all over branch tips

to grow a rich mantle of breathing

walking, speaking, hearing

in a tunnel of wind

falling from the sun

                             even in sleep

beneath a dome of small white

moonlit clouds

the history of the human

dilates in a dream of darkness

a swan presented on a lake

of blue paper, figures of speech

curled up asleep on the hillside

under murmurous starlings

coveys of quails, the eggs of doves

pockets of eggs nesting

in the roots of tall yellow grasses

thick undergrowth & vapour

a woollen cortex

living in roots by the well

shining nerves in webs

strung out through the morning

gas

       emerging from the shadow

of sleep, the children stir

as a black cockatoo glides creaking overhead

the bright yellow sun on the cheek

the sun, the sun in the tail

high over trees beating silently

feathers escaloping wind

then I hear another, then another

more black cockatoos

I stand by the window, count fourteen

emerging from the night’s limpid air

the sun on their cheeks

in their tails, their creaking cry

sending stories out into the world

listening for a sign

that they have been heard

by the world, and so the kids

begin to squawk like the black cockatoos

their voices’ buoyancy

tender weights to swim

through the hardwoods, the ear

storing weight, the iris

storing colour, skin like a mirror

underwater, under air, a line of bubbles

along the spine in a line of teeth

the tongue planting letters

of blood every vertebrae

in a forest of sweet reversal

as leaves rise up in the larynx

to choke epistemology

like a solstice, just like words and sounds

are very condensed stories

every word here is a cosmos, the kids

running round like black cockatoos

in their pajamas

                        later

that day I turned the corner

of the house, light coiled suddenly

in gold steps drawn from the sun

through alder and hackberry branches

tree ferns and grass, stripes of lava

spread over the grass

and in the corner of the garden, at an edge

of the shade, a swirling cloud

of butterflies, fourteen black butterflies

just like the morning’s heralds

burst around the lawn

doodling black and orange and white

lines in the light against dark glossy

ferns in shadow. I stood and watched

their frail, articulate wings

daylight tensing up and down

with every emphasis. Each act of will

is responsible to life

and movement, the patterning

of air, light, sound, time

filaments of the cosmos made sentient

in a swirling body of butterflies

a tattoo of black wing ink

blooming through the air in the movement

of many wings, their filigree of depth

and duration said over and over

leaping from the skin

of all my ancestors

and everything they have said to me

                                                     as I

listened to the speaking form

of turning wings

I heard their voices too.

One big butterfly flew right out

took a couple of languid turns

around my head & blew away

as quick as the shadow of a black cockatoo

flying high into early evening,

calling we are still here

we are still here, we are still here.

[author’s note. “Everything is Speaking” was composed in mid-2016, as a companion piece, or perhaps more as a conversation, with Warren Cariou’s essay “Life-Telling:Indigenous Oral Autobiography and the Performance of Relation.” Together with Nēpia Mahuika’s “Telling ‘Us’ in the ‘Days Destined to You’”, our conversation was published in the summer 2016 issue of Biography, “Indigenous Conversations about Biography”, guest edited by Alice Te Punga Somerville, Daniel Heath Justice, Noelani Arista. Director of theCentre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba, where he also holds a Canada Research Chair, Warren is active as a critic of Indigenous literatures and oral traditions, and has also produced works of film, photography, memoir, fiction, and poetry that focus on Indigenous experiences in Canada. Like me, Warren shares Aboriginal Métis and European heritage. His essay focuses on the work of Lakota/Kiowa Apache storyteller Dovie Thomason, maintaining that Indigenous forms of life-telling are central, vital and living modes of contemporary Indigenous expression. Written in Gundangara and Dharug country, “Everything is Speaking” reaches across the Pacific to Turtle Island, contributing to an Indigenous ontopoiesis in which filial, environmental and spiritual being are present, vocal and alive.]

Peter Minter is an Australian poet, poetry editor and writer on poetry and poetics. His books include the award-winning Empty Texas and blue grass, and his poetry has been widely published and translated internationally, most recently in his book In the Serious Light of Nothing (Chinese University Press Hong Kong, 2013). He was a founding editor of Cordite poetry magazine, co-edited the pioneering anthologies Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets and the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, and has been the poetry editor for leading Australian journals Meanjinand Overland. He shares Aboriginal, Scottish and English ancestry, and teaches Indigenous Studies, Australian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Sydney.

READINGS & LAUNCHES IN NEW YORK & PHILADELPHIA

September 10, 2017, 5:53 pm

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In line with the publication of the expanded 50^th anniversary edition of Technicians of the Sacred, as well as the revised edition of 15 Flower World Variations (1984), I’m calling the following events to the attention of any in the vicinity of New York and/or Philadelphia who are interested & inclined to attend.  With many thanks too to those who will be joining me as guest readers & celebrators.

September 28, 6:00 p.m.: Celebration & reading for Technicians of the Sacred, Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.  With guest readers Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Rochelle Owens, George Economou, Laynie Brown, Michelle Taransky, Ahmad Almallah, Julia Bloch, and Ariel Resnikoff.

October 1, 7:00 p.m.: Launch & reading for Flower World Variations, Howl Happening Gallery, 6 East 1st Street, NYC.  With an added reading by Cecilia Vicuña from her unpublished translation into Spanish.

           

October 3, 2017, 7:00 p.m.: Celebration & reading for Technicians of the Sacred, Poets House, New York.  With guest readers Anne Waldman, Cecilia Vicuña, Bob Holman, Papa Susso, George Quasha, Ariel Resnikoff, and Stuart Cooke.

Rochelle Owens: From “Solarpoetics” (continued) 12-15

September 15, 2017, 6:12 am

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[Writes Owens of her new masterwork: “[In the order of the letters of the alphabet I am making use in these poems of a system of mental relations which by the act of writing becomes the poem, a cosmic meditation.”]

Vulnerable Flesh Eater

12

And of the volume of bread

eighty percent is empty space

*

The letter L  a right angle

walk down a street

step by step blood pushes

to the surface     

 

On your tongue  a metallic taste

Flour and water

yellow  sulfurous  a plume

of smoke  I strolled in wind  cold

and heat 

Drifting geometries 

Between victim and executioner 

T H E   R U I N S C A P E

the eyes move constantly while

reading body of data

 

13

Networks of neurons organize themselves 

chemical  molecular

*

The letter M vibrates in

the earth hums the rhythm 

of  spontaneous

change

Animal hole  spiritual soul 

Slapping flying insects

Insects far and near

spiritual hole 

animal soul

  

A secret tribal language

Work is a binding obligation  focus

on a common scene  a plume

of smoke  bread baking

butchery

14

Microbes in a petri dish

a method of colonizing and dispersing

*

The letter N  remembers 

once upon a time 

on the sea bed  strange

scars

A black line zigzags

Zones of inclusion  exclusion

the reading brain  eyes

moving constantly

pinpoint

A selected shape

A circle  a hole  a fat fold

of the abdomen  a breast vein

as thick as a finger 

A loaf of bread

15

All the letters are in nature 

the forms that our cortex chooses

*

The letter O is a hole

that engulfs  consumes  gut 

head and tail  one

animal

The pit of mayhem

Out of the digital age

a set of skills in sequential order

body of data  data

the body

Rhythmic the flow of hormonal forces

Edible the heart  tongue

and  liver  sings the poet maudite

salt  for the stew  salt

for the bread

[Earlier sections of Solarpoetics appear hereand hereon Poems and Poetics.]

---

Jerome Rothenberg: “A Book of Dreams,” a pastiche for Robert Kelly’s 82nd birthday

September 22, 2017, 2:02 am

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1/

The way her knee swells

& she feels it

swelling & it turns into

a babe’s head.

No one has a countenance

more rich

& no one has a mouth

that opens wider,

lets a sound like

dreaming come into

the room in which

they wait.

2/

In the night

men go fishing for stars,

not a god but a babe

wields the trident.

Cables lie covered with

smut.  Light erupts

on a screen.  What you see

is your face    & the face

that you see, old

& blind,

is a face from

your dreams.

3/

Better for the mind

to empty out

in dreams,

the way a body

falls, thrown

from a passing train,

forsaken.

They hold a plate

between them, on its rim

a graven message:

God Is Pain.

4/

The air has grown destructive,

finds a way

to bind you,

dark & swollen,

an old angel with

flayed wings

The searchers in the night

drift past you.

You will walk among them,

will give them solace,

only in your dreams.

5/

The room in which the man

is sleeping

splinters     halfway

through his dream

he feels a flow

of images escaping

from his eyes

imploding coating

bed & floor

with colors like a show

of lights

in space, a spectrum

half unseen,

unsought.

6/

Gardens blossom where a hand

digs deep     the rows

of laborers,

small men forgotten

like the names of towns,

bend with the wind.

Bright words like bella

grace their dreams,

their days degraded by

inane lavoro.

Theirs are forbidden thoughts.

7/

Hand in hand

the dead walk in a line,

hoping against hope,

like children.

It is enough.  It

is enough.

It doesn’t last.

The false commanders

lead the charge.

The story, started

in a dream,

is winding down.

8/

French dolls like ghosts

step forth at midday.

Everyone is sportif

geared for speed

never to turn a shoulder,

to name a game for love.

Their aim is circular,

it follows where you lead them,

down a secret path,

into a basement

shadowed by

your childhood dream,

a lurking hole,

then up the backstairs

lost to sleep.

9/

In the dark dance,

sightless,

they are tearing at a bone,

their jaws like bears’

jaws     cavernous

their fingers dripping

porridge, clawing

at each other’s nipples,

keepers of a dream.

The blind man sees

no flame or smoke

but knows it all

by tasting.

10/

The cavern of the universe

widens each morning.

My head fills up with dew,

the father writes,

having no home but where

his shadow leads him.

In greasy shirtsleeves, heavy

lids, blotched faces,

the men pursue

a trail of tears,

unbuttoned    captive

to a dream,

a starless galaxy,

the deeper sky

a field of images

measureless & mindless,

absent their god.

11/

The man with a hole

in his eye

sees anew.  A sphinx

fingers a sphincter,

she extrudes

false colors.  The night

once was pink,

it is now

black & white.

Nerval in a corner

spitting his death out,

a substance

first dreamed,

then stuck under

his tongue.

The war goes on forever.

12/

“Release me.”

“Feed me.”

Whose design this is

they do not know,

but cling to cyberspace

as if it held

a clue    the outline

of a village

filled with snow

or circumstance.

The wise man runs from it,

like poetry

or dreams.

13/

Love, like intelligence,

opens a door,

to let us in

still blind

& searching,

taking as a sign

the names of God

engraved in

amethyst    a counterfeit

infinity,

not letting time

pretend to halt

the darker flux,

impediment to where

we set our sights.

Here is a place to hang

a flag, and there a hat

to pull a flag from.

All your little men

are watching,

waking from a dream.

There is no predicting

summer

but it always comes.

14/

Those who are masters

needn’t talk,

but signal with a secret

nod or wink,

concealed assassins

brought into the mix.

Involuntary tears,

a dream of executions,                      (C. Baudelaire)

smoke

rises between our teeth.

The ones who loved us

die     not one by one

but now en masse,

the presence of the dead

in every corner.

15/

Inside the house,

its walls down,

ground into a dust

that only the dream

sustains, those

who were once alive

do not arise,

but one by one

by snakes                                           (T.L. Beddoes)

their limbs are swallowed.

Almost enough

to make you

suffocate, to lodge

like mercury

under your tongue.

16/

Our dreams were of suns,

of vermilion dragons

spangled with gold

from Sumeria,

pronouncements & omens

concealed, to take death

as a tribute,

a slave plunged

in water

& drowning,

becoming a wife

to their god,

a scorpion,

then a chimera.

CODA TO A BOOK OF DREAMS

          O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself 
       a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

No world more clear

than what we see

in dreams

nor more amazing,

numbers bursting into

stars    & stars

enriching what we learn

when dreaming.

It is no more than this,

to sleep & be

the master of the universe,

not to be bound to earth

but gathering a trillion

other worlds,

to count myself

a little king

stepping aside for time.

Nothing is measured

that the mind can fathom

waking.  In the way

her body beckons

when you turn to touch her

coming from a black hole

deep in space

& time.  We learn to count

the deeper images

& those still deeper,

gods & angels

dancing on a pin. *                   * a chip

Before the dream

turns bad

in which a pin* holds             * a chip

all we know

& all we fear

I stretch out flat

to the Horizon.

I arch above you

like a lid.

I vanish & return.

My name is Death.

The word extermination

resonates    nothing

escapes.  The world

itself ends in a time

beyond all time

where time ends

leaving a residue behind

of mindless space

& still more mindless

images    the nightmares

that the mind conceals.*       * reveals

To run from time

isn’t a choice,

the stars we see

are overwhelming

& block the view

or bring up images

of light & dark,

a flickering

across the map

of time,

the flow of sand

in dreams.

24.ix.17

[16 excerpts from A Book of Concealments plus a coda newly written]

 

Anne Tardos “Beginningless,” a new poem from The Camel’s Pedestal

September 28, 2017, 7:15 pm

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Lifeisarawevent

Igiveyouroses    Yougivemeroses

AsIspeakandasyoulisten

Ifeelthetractionofmywordsinthe terrainofyourmind

Wespeakofthegreatemptinesswhichisultimatelyemptyofitself
(Itis notrealityeither)

WediscussthelimitsofthoughtTheparadoxofexpressibility

Thefamiliar

thehabitual

weappropriate

OurmentalattitudesthencrystallizeintoinstinctsDetachedobservationofbrilliantforcefields

Luminousdisplacements

Therideofalifetime

   Thebuzzofelectricity

      Thecomfortofoblivion

         Staringattheocean

            Inhalingheadyseavapors

                Thefullnessoftime

Anincreasingsenseofurgency

Inexplicableinlightofaconsciousattemptatslowingdown
Asifdecelerationitselfsuggestedfriction

WhoamIandwhatdoImeanbywhoamI?


Hume Human

Creativepowerof themindamountsto nomore thanthefacultyof

compounding

transposing

augmenting

ordiminishing

thematerialsaffordedusbythesensesandexperience

Themuddyparticularsofexperiencecontinuallygiveusnewmaterialtodigestassimilaterejectorrearrangeindifferentdegrees

Likeseaweed,weundulate

Wediscusszero,afinitemomentfixedwithinourinfinity

Wesayourinfinityaswewouldsayoursolarsystemorourgalaxy
Wesensethateachinstantcoverstheentireworld

Weknowthatlifedoesn’thappentousWehappentoit

Andwhatwemakeofallthisstuffisuptous

Ourinventionstendtobearbitrary

Muchisaboutrestraintandmindfulnesscourtesy

empathy

focus

Nottogivein—nottosuccumbNottowallownottoslouchNottoslipnottofall

Ihavenothingbettertodothantobeherenow.

Delicategenepool

  Glitterkindness

   UnexpectedchemistryThoughtexists

    Rigidnecessity

Isurgeforward,feelinganelasticexhilaration.

Thisisthecurrentsituationasitstands:

EveryoneI’veeverbeenIamnow
Allkindsofinspirationsandilluminations,

Pointsofclarityandraysofgrace

Idon’tknowabetterpointtostartfrom.

note.  Anne Tardos’sThe Camel’s Pedestal: Poems 2009-2017 was published earlier this year by BlazeVOX Books.  Of these poems & of what Gary Snyder has called:the “real work of modern man: to uncover the inner structure & actual boundaries of the mind,” John Olson writes: “ There is a splendid lucidity to Tardos’s writing, a jesting, inquisitive spirit nimbly examining the relationship between language and reality in inventive articulations that jingle with wit and perceptivity. Lines like ‘I am lost in a desert of my own making’ and ‘Do words work as wood works’ juggle phenomenology, advancing what Tardos observes as ‘the true state of things expressed in phenomena but inexpressible in language.’ Contradiction, paradox, incongruity; it’s all here, the entire caravan of linguistic apparatus crossing the dunes of this enigma, this desolation of self-awareness, this epistemology of dromedaries on the very edge of things. This collection is well-crafted, precise, imaginative, clear. I feel a great intelligence moving among these words. It’s exhilarating. This is the kind of work that inspires me.”

Karl Young: Toward an Ideal Anthology, Part One

October 12, 2017, 4:49 pm

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reprinted here, in memoriam

[Karl Young’s relation to independent & alternative publishing began in 1966 with his first publications produced on mimeo machines and with letter presses. In 1970 he presented new & experimental work under the imprint of Membrane Press, working both as a professional printer & the creator of a range of innovative, nearly sculptural books of his own.  His editioned books were produced on an offset press as part of a series of cottage industries he worked with until the late 1980s in Milwaukee. In 1990, without access to a press of his own, he continued doing a few titles by other means, & made his first forays onto the internet using FTP & other now arcane & limited methods available at the time. When web publication became affordable in 1994, he started using it. His web anthology Light & Dust is the online successor to Membrane and as such has brought a still wider & more international range of work into general circulation.  What follows here is the first part of a discussion by Young of anthologies in general & web anthologies in particular done in 2002, half way between the time he began the online anthology & the present.  The entire piece can be accessed at http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/young/ide-anth.htm, by a pathway that can lead the reader to other useful & often hard to obtain works, generously & conscientiously delivered.  The second part of this insightful work will appear subsequently on Poems and Poetics. (J.R.)]  

Etymologically, the word "anthology" means a bundle of flowers. During the late medieval period, monks made collections of favorite texts for their own use or for members of their orders. Private collections offer satisfactions, as you can see among people who collect stamps or coins or, well, you name it and you can find somebody who collects whatever you've named. Anthropologists speak of "hunter-gatherer" societies, and it's easy enough to see hunting and gathering as among the most basic human characteristics and impulses. When keeping private collections does no harm, it's not something to dismiss or look down upon. However, most people who make personal collections want to share them. Last Christmas I received a CD and an audio tape of seasonal music from friends who initially put them together for their own use, then made additional copies as gifts. That I received two such collections from people who didn't know each other, suggests how many people turn such collections into presents. No matter how dogmatic anthologies can get, the sense of gift is usually there somewhere.

The sense of a gift seems an admirable editorial concept, and one that should not get lost no matter how anthologies change through time. Gifts often include hopes. Of course, gifts can act simply as bribes or as a means of coercing, conning, or appeasing people. Yet the hopes in gifts can even grow considerably from this simple form of transaction. A gift given in courtship, for instance, may include hopes for relatively quick and selfish gratification, but that doesn't necessarily exclude hopes for cooperation and shared happiness over extended periods of time.

Some of the most important anthologies published in recent centuries have acted as news vehicles. This is not out of keeping with the courtship theme: if you're in love, you want to tell the world. Aside from amorous enthusiasm, real news is hard to keep to yourself. If you've found something important, you'll probably want to tell people about it. Even as I write the beginning of this essay, there are a number of people I feel impatient to show it to.
News tends to stimulate a prescriptive impulse. Anthologies based in news may begin with the implication that this is something you gotta see to believe, but it will also tend to bring with it the implication that this is what people should read. Likewise, controversial news acts as a stimulant for debate and news of an atrocity asks people to seek a remedy. Remedial anthologies can act as advocates for groups of people or types of work that have previously been disenfranchised or excluded. Just as easily, they can move in such a way as to negate what some would see as news. Easily identifiable examples of these directions can be found in collections of work by minorities and of work meant to reestablish traditional forms and values.

The interrelation of inclusion and exclusion forms one of the basic dynamics of the process of anthology formation. In a simple collection of flowers, gatherers select the plants that they think look or smell best or carry the right kind of symbolism. The gatherers may find plants that might or might not be appropriate, and spend considerable time deciding on which to keep and which to exclude. This tension can become a dynamic force in the reading of anthologies as well as in their assembly. Readers who seek what may have been left out become ideal readers and extenders of the news in anthologies. As anthologies and the environment in which they function become more complex, exclusion becomes more important and can take on a negative role. This can grow from the problems any editor finds in work that may or may not fit the anthology's purposes. At times, some anthologists work primarily from the need to exclude what they dislike rather than what they wish to keep. Anthologies can thus become tools for something like excommunication just as easily as they can act as vehicles for enfranchisement. 

Combining most of these elements, polemical anthologies can act as much as stimulants for new work as surveys of what has been done. Manifestos became something of an art form in themselves in the 20th Century. Perhaps the most enduring manifestos may not be those limited to a single rhetorical voice, but those which appeared as choruses in the form of anthologies. 

No matter how complex the impulse to anthologize becomes, it almost invariably includes these elements, and to the editors, they become a means of trying to make the environment in which they operate better than it was before.

*

I saw my initial efforts at electronic publishing in a limited and tentative context. The first works I put on-line were Anarchist classics and a few poems, in the days when ftp, gopher, and bbs were the main means of electronic distribution. When the World Wide Web opened up to general use, it became clear to me that this would be as good an environment as I could find for creating an anthology of the poetry of the later decades of the 20th Century. Following nearly all the lines of collection mentioned above, I set about trying to represent as close to all the genres and tendencies of poetry produced during the era in what gets called "experimental" or "Avant Garde" modes. 

Several factors came from characteristics of the web itself. First, its nature made it open-ended in ways that print anthologies are not. The ink never dries on the web. The most immediately gratifying aspect of this comes to a print publisher from the fact that it allows you to correct typos. I'm not sure how much people not involved in print publishing understand how much misery these little fleas or heartaches or pestilences can inflict on a printer-publisher, or how they add up over the years. I didn't know it when I started on the web, but in the electronic environment typos became less of a problem: readers take them more or less for granted, and since they can always be corrected they weigh less heavily on the publisher's psyche. Thus the web provides liberation from an unwanted kind of permanence in two ways at once.

Lack of fixity fans out from there. Authors can revise and add to work that they publish on-line. Unlike a print anthology, the editor doesn't have to allot a certain amount of space to each contributor or each work. In some instances, charges for disk space can become expensive, but at least in its potential, web space is virtually unlimited. Going by author, if the work of X seems to require several hundred pages to make its point, the editor can include that much. You don't have to assign each contributor a limited number of pages, or use volume as a qualitative signifier in which the more prestigious authors get more than those assigned a lower status. Volume as an indicator of status disappears along with the worries about how to apportion limited space. 

On the web, which acts as a world wide distribution system in a literal sense, there's no reason why you can't present work in multiple languages, and you can add translations as you go along, not requiring them to be on-hand by a specific deadline. If the presence of work on the Web finds translators among readers, as it has done a number of times at Light and Dust, so much the better. Like most editors, I know more about what's going on in my own part of the world than anywhere else. But the global environment of the Web allows considerable outreach beyond that. The tendency toward expanded areas of possibility became apparent in anthologies before the Web appeared, but the Web allows considerably more room for exchange. Contributions from France and Hungary, Paraguay and Eritrya don't simply make up addenda or footnotes to my anthology, but take positions as important as anything else at the site. My offering hardly represents everything that's going on in the world, but it moves more fully toward an international scope than any print anthology I know.

Criticism and commentary play an essential role in the poetry of the era: given the diversity of work and the originality of much of what interests me, it seems unlikely that all new work can be accessible to a wide range of readers without commentary. Manifestos and theoretical papers have assumed crucial positions in the 20th Century, some acting as impetus for the creation of new work as well as commentary on it. During recent years, writing of this sort has found its way more prominently into print anthologies. At Light and Dust, I favored criticism and commentary done by practicing artists, though I didn't disqualify the work of scholars and critics who do not produce works of art. This, too, is something that doesn't need to be complete by a given deadline; it's something I could add as I went along. And, again, the space for it is potentially unlimited, not something that requires a trade-off between poetry and commentary.

Perhaps the most important internal feature of a web anthology's lack of fixity is that no one is permanently and categorically excluded. This is not the case with print anthologies. Once the ink dries, whomever is excluded is cast permanently out of that particular garden. The sense of exclusion in print anthologies can create problems ranging from a poet's sense of lost opportunity to ferocious squabbling, back biting and other forms of infighting, the flattering of editors, and the generation of deep-seated and long lasting grudges. An anthology's finality can also generate lack of credibility on the part of readers. In the web environment, much of this simply disappears. If Dick and Jane aren't part of the anthology today, they may be tomorrow; the need for competition eases, and with a bit of luck, this may even lead to a greater sense of cooperation rather than one-up- manship. 

This expands further in the context of the Web as a whole. Dick and Jane may very well be people who'd have to undergo something like a Damascus Road conversion to appear at my site, and probably would have to do so at about the time hell freezes over, but my site isn't the only one on the web. If you don't find them at my site, you can probably find them somewhere else using the same means you used to access Light and Dust. If links don't take you where you want to go, search engines, for all their weaknesses, may help. If Dick and Jane can't find anyone to publish them on-line, nothing's stopping them from setting up a Web site of their own. If they've been so far unrecognized, an environment like that of the Web will certainly get them at least some attention, and they may be able to build on that. However dogmatic any site may become, if it's on the web it still potentially connects to all other sites. You don't have to buy more books or check out other libraries: if you can get to Light and Dust, you can get to any other public site on the Web. 

My approach to poetry is eclectic, anti-hieratic, pluralistic, and decentralized. Despite the use of the Web by totalitarian factions in attempts to establish dominance, the Web has a tendency to resist this kind of treatment. It may not always succeed, but it still provides the means for subversion of any group claiming hegemony or seeking to form an instant or pre-stacked canon. My site goes against the hegemonic grain to the extent that some people have given it such nick names as "the Resistance" and "Sweden, 1941." That's congenial to me and my way of looking at things, but it doesn't come from a desire on my part to overthrow orthodoxies in order to establish a new one in their place. I see domineering cults as toxic to the general scene, and equally harmful to individuals within the various citadels themselves. 

The rejection of clique putsches doesn't equal a dismissal of all those inside the various armed fortresses, and members of many of these cabals appear at Light and Dust. When presented without the imperial trappings, armies of Mooneyesque cheerleaders and draconian enforcers, the work of these people can take on a greater life on its own terms.
With this anti-dogmatic precondition in mind, I have been able to put forward work that has been ignored, marginalized, or abused. Perhaps the most dramatic examples come from projects to put works on-line that have been censored or otherwise kept out of print by force. But other work that has suffered benign neglect seems just as important. There may be a paradox or a bit of serendipity in this. I seem to be temperamentally oriented toward certain types of rebellion, confrontation, and, as some would see it, plain crankiness or contrariety.

 In a different milieu, this might leave me in the position of backing those who had failed by any standards, including my own. In the dispensation of the last century, however, much of the best work I know has been bashed or ignored. This makes it easy to simultaneously publish some of the best work around and some of the most abused or neglected. As important as this advocacy may be for me, it's by no means my only motivation nor does it reflect the whole show. I have been able to put up work by prominent and successful poets along with those who have been marginalized.

Mark Weiss: A Suite of Dances III: Travelers Tales

October 19, 2017, 9:14 pm

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Cows in the mire above slate water.

White, dappled

to the brown drop-off, sea,

clouds beyond,

and a burnish of sunlight

barely makes it.

And here’s a bay cuts in below stubble

on a ground of snow.

A town surrounding the walls of a roofless church.

Sun inscribes black lines in last year’s traces.

Inland the forestry has carpeted hills. Beyond,

rounded masses climb towards the Cairngorms.

Now the snow a barest flocking.

Brown, green, tawny, greener,

sodden with melt.

So many pearls in the furrows.

Needs of the present

intrusive as always.

Redhead, red with cold

in this heated carriage.

What he left us was the man he was.

Fried friable

roasted.

Snow-dusted, reddened by sunset.

The wondrous machine begins to slip.

The goose that laid the ham and eggs.

Saved from the diadem by a gem-like flame, he stutters,

and the priest

will speak for him. Moshe

mashiach, mark

it well. So   given me

to save the people,

reduced to catalogue and warning,

as a world is raveled and rewoven.

Glipspring of the street-bound ballerina                    

alert as a doe at wood’s edge.

She had stood by the mirror half-asleep

and painted herself

into pure surprise.

There are always predators.

A curve leads to another.

Perpetuum mobile.

Suddenly a catalogue of noses.

The vocabulary of pleasure is fairly small.

The sense that system depends.

System as a decision of what to ignore, hence

easily ousted, as if,

as she said,

a deck of cards. “Just say it,

and it’s gone.”

Squeeze it hard enough

it could be anything.

A MIRACLE

Identified with fire,

as his ancestors came from the house of bread.

Pan

born in the manger. “One in the oven,”

they must have snickered,

another girl gone bad, slipped

it to her when she wasn’t watching.

Grit grip garroted

grit grop besotted

grit grape and rotted

knotted pitted throttled bottled

into the jar the oil the

essence. Or an arrow, from the burning bush,

smoke speaking, the smote rock leaking.

Wonders of mind subjected to artifice.

Her face in repose betrayed the sadness

she was unaware of, or just

her face in repose. Ask

her, if she could tell you.

Intimations of a complex process.

Cowboy boots in a no-horse town.

The music of a gorgon walking through flies.

Because each stone must have its master.

These weighty things in hand

as intimate proof of gravity,

a solace in the general downfall. “This,” it says,

“is your future. Find a way.”

The constant dance of hands.

And the wind calls me:

“Aftershock.”

“Aftershock.”

The child at rest

sings “nipple nipple”

over and over.

“Que caliente,”

he sings,

despite the cold.

Now blond on the hillside.

Last year she planted daffodils.

We never tire of the brain’s unraveling,

the god that fashioned

so quick to be gone.

Grow salt.

Amused by the dialect of the downtrodden.

“Aint they got rhythm.”

What-everyone-knows now lost

for want of telling.

One attempts to assemble the random scatter on the floor and fails

for lack of data, assuming an inherent order to be ex

cavated, the holes

dug, pulled out the sense of.

Let’s look to the easy comforts.

TUCSON

Let there be balm in Gilead. “Ouch!

Ouch!” Girls losing it in the cactus patch.

FLAGSTAFF

Front Street fronts and could run

forever. Forever

ends at a mountain or water where Front Street

ends. In the order of things.

Bank Street is a filthy alley,

its grime the sign of fires

when heat meant coal. Barrels

spill slops behind the restaurants.

Bank Street is behind

Front Street, and almost forgotten.

East to west the sky defines it.

Front Street is a row of buildings facing the tracks and cattle yards,

a great horizon to the south and the piss

of panicked cattle--something’s changed,

they moan,

and not for the better.

Here is there is everywhere.

Trained to chirp like birds.

“The milk of chickens will do you in.”

Flirting with a particular chaos.

Imagine a life or the planet’s life as the skin on a pan of milk.

We forget in the good times the anxiety of animals.

It’s the time-scale that’s changed,

and the skill at distancing.

A history of moving from here to there as if crossing a final river.

For a thousand years there will be none.

The time too limited to find new things to say.

This time the end of one’s time

may be the flood.

Glitter of sand as the wave withdraws,

half-circles, and salt become foam quivers,

sheds fingers in the breeze.

So, to survive the revelation of artifice.

[note. Regarding Mark Weiss’s remarkable skills & insights, Ron Silliman wrote of an earlier volume: “This is a barefoot poetry, almost in the very oldest Asian sense of that phrase, a poetry of voice & body that recognizes that even body-language has accents, which surely it does. The eye is keen, the humor self-deprecating. Mark Weiss has reached that point on life’s mesa where forgiveness (to oneself as well as others) may well be the most important of gestures. A book to make you glad to be in the world.”And Weiss himselfof the present venture:"I’ve joked before that my work isn’t so much composition by field as composition of field. A Suite of Dances might be composition by notebook. It’s an extension of the way I’ve worked for the past 25 years. Probably I’ve been reacting to an anxiety felt by translators, historians, and archaeologists in the absence of context. This is close to context in the absence of event. Though I hope that there’s something like an architecture, perhaps musical, holding it together. The title suggests, for me, at least, the baroque, when suites of dances were a major form, and my understanding of baroque art in all media as an attempt to experience the heterogeniety of event not as chaos but as something like a grand, encompassing chord. The selection above is part 3 of 28 named parts, filling 200 pages."]

Karl Young: Toward an Ideal Anthology (Reflections on the Light and Dust Web Anthology), Part Two

October 26, 2017, 5:01 pm

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[Part One of Karl Young’s insightful essay on anthologies and his own work in particular appeared earlier on Poems and Poetics.  The entire piece can be accessed at http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/young/ide-anth.htm, by a pathway that can lead the reader to other useful & often hard to obtain works, generously & conscientiously delivered. (J.R.)]

When I first started the Light and Dust anthology site, I had a definite sense of the kind of work I wanted to include. Although there are plenty of rip-off sites on the web, I've sought permission from all living and most deceased writers or their publishers or their estates. I have fudged a bit on a couple author photos when I could not locate the photographers. On several occasions I have put up work by writers whom I could not locate, asking them to get in touch with me, with the understanding that I would take the work down if they so desired. Web publishers who go beyond this, into the grab-what-you-can approach, do not foster a cooperative environment, act as a severe violation of authors' rights, and dirty the scene. To me, those of us who have started early should set precedents for responsibility in the new medium. I have been able to include about 70% of the poets who most interested me by seeking permission from authors, their estates, or their publishers. I don't know if I could have done better if I had compiled a print anthology. As to plain volume of work, I have been able to publish more than I could imagine including in print in my wildest dreams. With an idea of what I wanted in the anthology, the selection process didn't involve much exclusion, but rather concentrated on obtaining permissions and working out technical problems. I have not sought submissions, have not encouraged them, and have only used two pieces that came "over the transom." The fact that I don't look for or pay much attention to unsolicited work doesn't mean that I have simply stuck to a program or filled in pre-determined slots. Much of the work in the anthology came from the editorial colleagues who have worked with me, and I discovered plenty of new work during the time I put the anthology together. 

Although I edited Light and Dust with clear goals in mind, I see editing from a single point of view as, of necessity, limited - certainly too limited for an environment as complex as the milieu in which we find ourselves. As a partial means of getting around my limitations, the Light and Dust complex includes dozens of co-editors in its specialized sections, and I have at times asked third parties to make selections of work by individuals in single entries. This approach doesn't originate in the Web environment. I began moving in this direction in 1970 with several Peoples Publishing programs. Shortly after that, as Associate Editor of Margins magazine, I moved as far in this direction as I could with a series of symposiums I sponsored, each with a different editor, and each including multiple views of the subject. Distinct advantages to this approach come from properties of the Web. I can put work up in "sequesters" on-line, not linking them to any menu, but giving those involved the specific URL so that we could work together on whatever project we had in progress before it went public. Of course, after entries link to menus, the web still leaves plenty of room for revision and augmentation. I would not want to make an anthology such as this without considerable input from people whose expertise is greater than mine or whose opinions differ from my own. The degree of input varied considerably from one project to another, often depending on how much specific editors wanted to do themselves. In some instances, sections were edited as a collaborative project; in others, I stayed out of the editorial process entirely. 

Making available work that is otherwise difficult to obtain has been important to me, and in the presentation of complete books on the web I have concentrated on two types: books that are now out of print, and books which have existed in manuscript but have not been previously published. With a number of the poets whose work appears at the site, I have reproduced their early books complete, and included significant examples of work done throughout their lives, providing in- depth presentation of their development through their entire opus. Differing publication strategies show work in different dimensions: one writer's work may appear in large volume, another's may appear in the context of related efforts, other's appear as brief suggestions. Each approach implies that all work presented in one manner could also be seen from a different angle: the work of any poet at the site could potentially be considered in depth, or as a sketch, or as part of a regional or genre frame of reference. 

Of marginalized work in the 20th Century, the most thoroughly abused and potentially valuable has been visual poetry. Some would see this as a genre of its own. You can make a good case for that, and so some editors and practitioners should. I see it in a different context, or perhaps I should say a different set of contexts. Most art movements in the century - from the Futurisms to Language Poetry, Vorticism to the Beats, Dada to Fluxus - have first manifested themselves with a concomitant exploration of the graphic potentials of language. As they grew venal, this tendency was suppressed or relegated to a minor position or used as a form of coopting other movements. Concrete Poetry acted as a minor wing of Fluxus, and that is the type of visual poetry most familiar to the largest number of readers. But the tendency has never been captured or owned by any one movement; instead, it has run through virtually all others in one form or another. Most movements in their creative phase have sought to transcend boundaries of culture and language and to try to tap universal tonalities and promote unimpeded interchange; in this respect, the graphic nature of the work has acted as one of its primary ambassadors. Perhaps Lettrism has followed the most curious path: beginning largely in sound poetry, then branching off into a political movement, Situationism, and an aesthetic movement that focused more intently on interrelations of verbal and visual modes, it has in some ways reversed the tendencies of other movements. If Lettrism has become the most vital of the movements that have included the union of word and image, it still has never owned the tendency. The need for synthesis forms one of the grounding principals for movements in dynamic phases, and remains with those that keep their energy, while becoming suppressed in those that degenerate into fashionability or dogma. 

To me, the need to integrate reaches for the roots of written language and public performance. This impulse includes a searching of the origins of art in previous ages. It also reflects the growing globalism of culture in the 20th Century. The expansion and intersection of cultures suggests the parochial nature of the English language and the Roman alphabet. A global environment needs more than a single alphabet and a single language to promote understanding and cooperation between peoples. As useful and magnificent as the Roman alphabet can be, it still cannot keep up with the complexities of the world in which we now find ourselves. One of the alphabet's great strengths, and a reason for its dominance of western culture for more than two millennia, is its simplicity and its capacity to adjust to new situations. There's no need to belittle that. In the contemporary world, however, there's no reason why it can't be integrated with other modes, visual an auditory. The web environment allows multiple configurations of media to function together, with no necessity for competition between them. When the Web became widely accessible, it made possible the inexpensive reproduction of graphics, in monochrome and in color. I would not want to try to make an anthology of any 20th Century art form that did not include visual poetry. The web made such an anthology possible. In addition, the web seems to have run something like a parallel course with visual poetry. It, too, seeks means of universal communication and a reintegration of modes of expression, and its polymath procedures run through all it carries. If visual poetry does not break out of its bounds via literary means, it may do so through the web itself. In any case, visual poetry and the web seem ideally suited to each other, both reflecting a world aching to go beyond the confines of isolated media. A problem for me with the presentation of visual poetry has been the tendency to publish or show it in separate venues, as a genre of its own. As far as I'm concerned, separate is never equal, and my approach in publishing has been to put it forward on an absolutely equal footing with other modes. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. On the web, you can take both. 

In writing this essay, I've tried to avoid discussion of individual entities at Light and Dust, because once I start talking about any one of them it seems to pull the others along with it. I'll make an exception here with Kaldron On-Line. For nearly two decades, the print version of Kaldron had been the world's only pluralistic and reliable venue for publishing this kind of work outside the mail art network. It's important to note the emphases in this statement: other magazines such as the Japanese Shi Shi ran longer and maintained relative stability. However, it published little besides the work of members of the Shi Shi group. Other venues put forth good work covering a wide range, but only appeared briefly or at such erratic intervals that no one could rely on them. Although Kaldron has been largely forgotten or erased in the U.S. during the 1990s, it remained the essential magazine, the main vehicle for news, for people practicing visual poetries around the world, and it retains that position in the minds of many practitioners outside the U.S. today. In the early 1990s, editor Karl Kempton contemplated turning the print magazine's editorship over to Amy Fraceschini and me. That didn't materialize in print form, but I was able to move the magazine, with Karl still acting as an editor, onto the web as the first of the Light and Dust partner sites. Nearly all the visual poetry that came in through Light and Dust is accessible from Kaldron's home page, and all visual poetry published by Kaldron can be accessed from the general Light and Dust menu. Thus anyone who wants to locate visual poetry only can go to the Kaldron page, and those who want to see it more broadly contextualized can go to the general menu or the menus of some of the other partner pages.

When I first began electronic publishing, my efforts went solely toward making work conceived in other media available on the internet. And so my efforts continued for the most part. In this respect, Light and Dust acts primarily as a distribution system rather than an exploration of art designed for the electronic environment. That was a big enough job for me. As I assembled the site, however, many people began working with properties of the web as part of the process of making art. I have not been able to pursue this direction in poetry as far as I would like, but I have been able to include the work of the two early practitioners who have made the most of the medium, and this satisfies my goal of presenting a full spectrum of the kinds of poetry produced in the later 20th Century.

*

Okay, seven years later, with over 1,000 web pages placed on-line, what does this electronic cousin of the Watts Towers add up to? Well, I've fulfilled my basic goals in presenting a survey of late 20th Century poetry and its cognates. And I've been able to present it in an egalitarian and anti-sectarian manner. I've been able to publish work on the web that I could not have afforded to do in print - considerably more than I did in some twenty five years of producing books - and been able to reach a much wider audience than I could ever hope to in any of the media known to me before the advent of the web. I've been able to do this with no resources beyond those of an average North American university student in the 1990s. I've had no support from any funding or legitimizing institution, and no backing from any clique or movement. There may be a certain amount of vanity in my pointing this out. But one of my goals goes considerably beyond this. After getting a sense of the potentials of the web, I wanted to see how far I could go with next to nothing to work with. If I can create an anthology that covers this much ground, and averages 3,200 hits a day, anybody with a modest income and a bit of determination can do likewise. Whether they set up pages simply for themselves or go for something larger, we can create an anthology which goes beyond all our limitations, and which satisfies the needs of nearly all readers. 

As to the nature of the medium that carries the ideal anthology that I and other people have begun, there are all sorts of pundits ready to praise and condemn it, and legions of prophets eager to tell whoever listens where they think it's going and what it can achieve. Despite the claims made all around, this goes beyond anyone's understanding or clairvoyance. At present, for some the web lacks credibility, while others see print as superseded. I feel sure that both these positions can add up to nothing more than vaporware. Before the web became available, I used to contemplate the environments of other periods when media shifted. As things have worked out, I may have been on the "bleeding edge" of a revolutionary change in communication, or perhaps I've just been chasing flickering electrons that don't add up to much. On a personal level, the web has given me a chance to get something like a sense of what it might have been like to be a printer in the incunabula period. Despite the variations in local color, theirs was a world in which old certainties began to shake: enfranchisement and means of communication were undergoing rapid expansion, and choruses rose around the printers, proclaiming the value of their work in extending the word of God or condemning it as the work of the devil. The first printers had no way of knowing where their art would lead, but had their fingers on the pulse of radical change too large for anyone to comprehend. The web also seemed to have arrived at a time when one world order was passing, and what follows it has not taken on apparent form or direction. 

In another age of transition, St. Augustine of Hippo saw the Roman empire crumbling around him, and saw a greater Rome as an eternal thought in the mind of God. It's difficult to imagine anyone apotheosizing their city in such a manner today. But in secular terms, the web as an anthology has the potential to become universal and all-encompassing, something that goes beyond our individual limitations without sacrificing our individuality in the process. It seems foolish to claim eternal presence for anything we do: in all probability, the web will change beyond recognition in less than a decade, and I doubt that my site will last very long after I'm gone. But if electronic technology follows the trajectory it's taken so far, whatever comes next will have to build on what's there now. This may include loss of some of the freedom the web enjoys at present, but its capacity for outreach can only expand, and its participatory inclusiveness can only grow. The web cannot become a single thought; but it can become universal. Following what we now know of the brain's functions, its redundancies, backup systems, and interchanges can follow the intricate and dynamic patterns of contemplation rather than conclusion. It may continue as a form of exploration rather than certainty. Poetry may fare better in such an environment than it did in the 20th Century, though it may change beyond recognition in the process.

Article 0

November 2, 2017, 4:00 pm

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Jerome Rothenberg

AMERICA/2017

The President of Desolation

 1/

that farce

replaces tragedy

obscene

even to think it

& yet to come

into another age

& find it

proven true

this is the price of

growing old

the progress truly

of a state

of mind

America

the center

both

of mind

the gap

& mindless

space

2/

not farce but madness

from the start

the roots of tragedy

embedded

in the barely human

ready to bring us down

to which he leads us

in a dream

almost as deadly

as a tunnel

the mind winds through

seeing the sky ahead

but kept from it

by stumbling

tumbling where the face

of someone like

a swollen clown

steps forth

whose fat cheeks grow

enormous while his body

shrinks    until he stands

before us like a tiny

naked man who neither

thinks nor dreams

when in the morning sun

his face escapes him

in the empty mirror

he must ask the sky

to bring it back to him

hapless to find his way

the rage inside him

slides into his mouth

from which he vomits

words & empty sounds

his name the only

meme he knows

he is the cockeyed boss

the president of desolation

chin thrust forward

arms akimbo

legs astride

the world his crucible

a body without shape

that shrinks

& drives his mind out

through his eyes

whose teeth still clatter

syllables cut free

with this the world

will end & time

return to endless space

not to be counted

past what the fabled

start was

& the end to come

3/

while down to earth

a fool sits

on the throne

a king

by his own counting

wrapped in gold

the ground beneath him

also gold

the buckle on his belt

even the belt itself

the buttons on his shirt

all gold

gold is his heart

the rumble in his gut

gold’s essence

blowing golden farts

& on his golden briefs

a stain of gold

for which all women

flock to him

all men bow down

his ring is gold

& held against your cheek

leaves gold behind

not truly gold

but close enough

to make his suitors pause

his dross

turned golden

in their sight

how loyal

little men become

losing all thought

of sacrifice

& ardor

for the common good

4/

in acts of

cruelty

the past

comes back

to life

never more true

than when

he wages

war against

the sky

the door to heaven

opens   closes

at his touch

fat angels

crowd around him

some adhering

to his flesh

the burning babes

in fancy dreams of

god & power

with an eye

that turns

from those below

his notice

or regard

the world

his mirror

fragile hands

hiding his face

& eyes

too safely blind

he will not

see you now

or me

outside his dreams

he stalks

his shadow &

his only love

the voice returning

when he dies

5/

deeper down

the hole

he digs for us

by digging *                           * dealing

pit where pity

drops away

letting the dead

stay dead

or raising

images

too cruel

by far

the scorn

a frail man

spews

into the air

until the world

around him

bursts with voices

calling back

repeating

endlessly the words

he shows them

trolling

finding the hidden

hole his fingers

fat & swollen

open in his mouth

then raises
his frail arm
in feigned
salute

26.x.17

Toward a Poetry & Poetics of the Americas (6): Oswald de Andrade, “An Anthropophagite Manifesto,” May 1928

November 9, 2017, 2:35 pm

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Originally published in Revista de Antropofagia, n.1, year 1, May 1928, São Paulo.

Translation from Portuguese by Adriano Pedrosa and Veronica Cordeiro. 
             

 [editor’s note. With the present posting, I return with co-author/co-editor Heriberto Yépez to a long-deferred project of ours: to compose a truly transnational anthology/assemblage of American poetry, “from origins to present.”  For the two of us, one a poet from Mexico & the other from the United States, the idea of a still larger America, made up of many independent parts, has been a topic of continuing shared interest.  Since there is no other such gathering at the present time, we feel ourselves free to make a new beginning, an experiment through anthologizing, to explore what results might follow from a juxtaposition of poets and poetries covering all parts of the Americas and the range of languages within them: European languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, as well as a large number of Indigenous languages such as Mapuche, Quechua, Mayan, Mazatec, and Nahuatl.  In this the example of Oswald de Andrade’s great Manifesto Antropófago(cannibalist manifesto) looms large, postulating perhaps a poetry & art that devours & absorbs all previous & concurrent poetry & art.  And much beyond that.                                                                                        

     In that sense a touchstone for what we’re now attempting. (J.R.)]

Only anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.

The world's only law. The masked expression of all individualisms, of all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties. 

Tupi, or not tupi that is the question.¹
 
Against all catechisms. And against the mother of the Gracchi. 

The only things that interest me are those that are not mine. Law of man. Law of the anthropophagite. 

We are tired of all the suspicious catholic husbands put in drama. Freud put an end to the woman enigma and to other frights of printed psychology.

What hindered truth was clothing, the impermeable element between the interior world and the exterior world. The reaction against the dressed man. American movies will inform.

Sons of the sun, mother of the living. Found and loved ferociously, with all the hypocrisy of nostalgia, by the immigrants, by the slaves and by the touristes. In the country of the big snake. 

It was because we never had grammars, nor collections of old plants. And we never knew what was urban, suburban, boundary and continental. Lazy men on the world map of Brazil. A participating consciousness, a religious rhythm. 

Against all importers of canned consciousness. The palpable existence of life. And the pre-logical mentality for Mr. Levi Bruhl to study. 

We want the Carahiba revolution. Bigger than the French Revolution. The unification of all efficacious rebellions in the direction of man. Without us Europe would not even have its poor declaration of the rights of man. The golden age proclaimed by America. The golden age. And all the girls.²
 
Descent. The contact with Carahiban Brazil. Oú Villegaignon print terre. Montaigne. The natural man. Rousseau. From the French Revolution to Romanticism, to the Bolshevik Revolution, to the surrealist Revolution and Keyserling's technicized barbarian. We walk. 

We were never catechized. We live through a somnambular law. We made Christ be born in Bahia. Or in Belém do Pará.But we never admitted the birth of logic among us. Against Father Vieira. Author of our first loan, to gain his commission. The illiterate king had told him: put this in paper but don't be too wordy. The loan was made. Brazilian sugar was recorded. Vieira left the money in Portugal and brought us wordiness.

The spirit refuses to conceive the spirit without body. Anthropomorphism. The need for an anthropophagical vaccine. For the equilibrium against the religions of the meridian. And foreign inquisitions. 

We can only attend to the oracular world. 

We had justice codification of vengeance. And science codification of Magic.
Anthropophagy. The permanent transformation of Taboo into totem.

Against the reversible world and objectivized ideas. Cadaverized. The stop of thought which is dynamic. The individual victim of the system. The source of classical injustices. Of the romantic injustices. And the forgetting of interior conquests. 

Routes. Routes. Routes. Routes. Routes. Routes. Routes. 

The Carahiban instinct.

Life and death of hypotheses. From the equation I part of the Kosmos to the axiom Kosmos part of I. Subsistence. Knowledge. Anthropophagy. 

Against plant elites. In communication with the soil.

We were never catechized. What we really did was Carnival. The Indian dressed as a Senator of the Empire. Pretending to be Pitt. Or featuring in Alencar's operas full of good Portuguese feelings. 

We already had communism. We already had the surrealist language. The golden age.
Catiti Catiti
Imara Notiá
Notiá Imara
Ipejú. 

Magic and life. We had the relation and the distribution of physical goods, of moral goods, and the goods of dignity. And we knew how to transpose mystery and death with the aid of some grammatical forms. I asked a man what Law was. He replied it was the guarantee of the exercise of possibility. That man was called Galli Matias. I ate him.

Determinism is only absent where there is mystery. But what do we have to do with this?

Against the stories of man, which begin at Cape Finisterra. The undated world. Unsigned. Without Napoleon. Without Caesar.

The fixation of progress through catalogues and television sets. Only machinery. And the blood transfusors. 

Against the antagonical sublimations. Brought in caravels.

Against the truth of missionary peoples, defined by the sagacity of an anthropophagite, the Viscount of Cairu:-It is the often repeated lie.

But they who came were not crusaders. They were fugitives from a civilization that we are eating, because we are strong and vengeful as a Jabuti. 

If God is the consciousness of the Uncreated Universe, Guaraci is the mother of the living. Jaci is the mother of plants. 

We did not have speculation. But we had the power of guessing. We had Politics which is the science of distribution. And a planetary-social system.

The migrations. The escape from tedious states. Against urban sclerosis. Against Conservatories, and tedious speculation.

From William James to Voronoff. The transfiguration of Taboo in totem. Anthropophagy.

The pater families and the creation of the Moral of the Stork: Real ignorance of things + lack of imagination + sentiment of authority before the pro-curious (sic). 

It is necessary to depart from a profound atheism to arrive at the idea of God. But the Carahiba did not need. Because he had Guaraci.

The created objective reacts as the Fallen Angels. After Moses wanders. What have we got to do with this? 

Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had discovered happiness. 

Against the Indian with the torch. The Indian son of Mary, godson of Catherine de Médici and son-in-law of Don Antônio de Mariz.

Happiness is the proof of the pudding. 

In the matriarchy of Pindorama.

Against the Memory source of custom. Personal experience renewed.

We are concretists. Ideas take hold, react, burn people in public squares. Let us suppress ideas and other paralyses. Through the routes. To believe in signs, to believe in the instruments and the stars.

Against Goethe, the mother of the Gracchi, and the Court of Don João VI.

Happiness is the proof of the pudding.

The struggle between what one would call the Uncreated and the Creature illustrated by the permanent contradiction between man and his Taboo. The quotidian love and the capitalist modus vivendi. Anthropophagy. Absorption of the sacred enemy. To transform him into totem. The human adventure. The mundane finality. However, only the pure elites managed to realize carnal anthropophagy, which brings the highest sense of life, and avoids all the evils identified by Freud, catechist evils. What happens is not a sublimation of the sexual instinct. It is the thermometric scale of the anthropophagic instinct. From carnal, it becomes elective and creates friendship. Affectionate, love. Speculative, science. It deviates and transfers itself. We reach vilification. Low anthropophagy agglomerated in the sins of catechism-envy, usury, calumny, assassination. Plague of the so-called cultured and christianized peoples, it is against it that we are acting. Anthropophagi. 

Against Anchieta singing the eleven thousand virgins of the sky, in the land of Iracema- the patriarch João Ramalho founder of São Paulo.

Our independence has not yet been proclaimed. Typical phrase of Don João VI:-My son, put this crown on your head, before some adventurer does! We expelled the dynasty. It is necessary to expel the spirit of Bragança, the law and the snuff of Maria da Fonte.

Against social reality, dressed and oppressive, registered by Freud-reality without complexes, without madness, without prostitutions and without the prisons of the matriarchy of Pindorama. 
____________________

¹ Original in English. [T.N.] Tupi is also the name of a South American ethnic group & a large family of languages, Tupi-Guaraní.
² Girls: Original in English [T.N.].

---

Clayton Eshleman: From an Interview by Irakli Qolbaia, the first & last questions

November 16, 2017, 2:35 am

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[What follows are two sections from a longer interview conducted by the Georgian poet and translator Irakli Qolbaia, in which Eshleman takes on two key words in his work – “origin” and “penetralia” – and ties them to his own emergence and development as a poet and major searcher for the origins of poetry and the imagination.  The full interview was originally published in Jerrold Shiroma’s important on-line magazine Seedings (Duration Press) and can be found here and here on the internet. (J.R.)]

Irakli Qolbaia: Your poem, “Short Story,” begins with “Begin with this: the world has no origin”, and yet, there seems to be, in your poetry, a constant quest for origin – personal origins, origins of imagination / of poetry. There is even a Blakean “character”, Origin, in your early poem of the same title (referring to Cid Corman and his ‘origin’?). Could you talk about that sense of origin in your poetry, and more specifically, about your origins as a poet?

Clayton Eshleman: My relationship to origins has been multifaceted. I think my first

engagement was hearing at 16 years old on a 45 RPM record the bebop pianist Bud Powell play his improvisation on the standard tune “Tea for Two.” I listened to Powell’s version again and again trying to grasp the difference between the standard and what Powell was doing to and with it. Somehow an idea vaguely made its way through: you don’t have to play someone else’s melody--you can improvise (how?), make up your own melody line!  WOW--really? You mean I don’t have to repeat my parents? I don’t have to “play their melody” for the rest of my life? Later I realized that Powell had taken a trivial song and transformed it into an imaginative structure. While reading the Sunday newspaper comics on the living-room floor was probably my first encounter, as a boy, with imagination, Powell was my first experience, as an adolescent, with the force of artistic presence and certainly the key figure involved in my becoming a poet when I was 23 years old.

Soon after starting to try to write poetry at Indiana University in 1958 I found Cid Corman’s poetry journal called Originin the library. I began a correspondence with Cid and when I was living in Kyoto, Japan, in 1962, I went to the coffee shop where Cid, also living in Kyoto at the time, could be found every evening. For a couple of years I watched him edit Origin and learned a lot about translating poetry from him. Corman was the first American translator of the great German poet Paul Celan and, while in Kyoto, as my poetic apprenticeship project, I decided to translate Cesar Vallejo’s Poemas humanosinto English. 

During this period I worked on Vallejo most afternoons downtown in another Kyoto coffee shop called Yorunomado (the word means “night window” in English). In the only poem I completed to any real satisfaction while living in Japan, I envisioned myself as a kind of angel-less Jacob wrestling with a figure who possessed a language the meaning of which I was attempting to wrest away. I lose the struggle and find myself on a seppuku (or suicide) platform in medieval Japan, being commanded by Vallejo (now playing the role of an overlord) to disembowel myself. I do so, imaginatively-speaking, cutting the ties to my “given” life and releasing a daemon I named Yorunomado who until that point (my vision told me) had been chained to an altar in my solar plexus. Thus at this point the fruits of my struggle with Vallejo were not a successful literary translation but an imaginative advance in which a third figure emerged from my intercourse with the text. Thus death and regeneration = seppuku and the birth of Yorunomado, or a breakthrough into what might be called sacramental existence.

While Bud Powell and Yorunomado (via Vallejo) provided brief, if essential, adventures with origin, the crucial event after leaving Japan in 1964 was my 1974 discovery of Upper Paleolithic, or Cro-Magnon, cave art in southwestern France. My wife Caryl and I had, at the suggestion of a friend, rented an apartment in a farm house in the Dordogne countryside and after visiting some of these Ice Age caves I was completely caught up in the deep past. This grand transpersonal realm (without a remaining history or language) was about as far away from my background as could be, and I revisited and researched the painted caves throughout the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, becoming the first poet anywhere to do what the poet Charles Olson called “a saturation job” on the origins of art as we know it today. To follow poetry back to Cro-Magnon metaphors not only hits read bedrock--a genuine back wall--but gains a connection to the continuum during which imagination first flourished.  My growing awareness of the caves led to the recognition that, as an artist, I belong to a pretradition that includes the earliest nights and days of soul-making. Wesleyan University Press published my book, a study composed of both poetry and prose, Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld, in 2003.

. . . . . . .

IQ: We have touched upon the early stage (the apprenticeship/coming in terms with Indiana past) of your work, as well as what could be viewed as your maturity or gaining the fully formed singular voice as a poet (saturation job/involvement with the sacramental existence) that has culminated in Juniper Fuse (around two decades in making), which I would consider a work in many ways central not only in your body of work but, more generally, in the poetry of our time. There is yet another stage that you have been pursuing since and that you have elsewhere called “summational.” As a reader, I first sensed it intensely in a poem called “The Tjurunga”, where the lifelong work and involvement of the poet comes together as a constellation. From the few poems that have been available, your new book, Penetralia, struck me as central to this summational stage. Could you talk about this? Further, sensing that the word “penetralia”, as related to your work, could be important in many ways, could you explain what it means for you/in the context of the book?

CE: I often open my 1955 Webster’s New International Dictionaryand read a few pages at random. Doing so, one day a few years ago, I came across the word “penetralia” which was defined as: “The innermost or most private parts of thing or place, especially of a temple or palace.” A second definition followed: “Hidden things of secrets; privacy; sanctuary; as the sacred penetralia of the home.” Since I like words and phrases for book titles that to my knowledge have not been used by others as titles for poetry collections, I decided, then in my late 70s, that “penetralia” would be an appropriate and unique title for what might be my last collection of poetry, one that often ruminated on end matters, or summational engagements. There are, of course, a number of poems in this collection that do not directly do this, but the tone of the writing, along with the end shadowings, justify such a title.

You mention a poem, “The Tjurunga,” published in Anticline(Black Widow Press, 2010)

that I mentioned was one of the two “soulend” supports, along with the 1964 “Book of

Yorunomado,” holding the rest of my poetry in place. In this later poem I propose a kind of complex mobile (invoking the poet Robert Duncan’s re-reading of the mysterious Aranda ritual object) made up of the authors, mythological figures and acts, whose shifting combinations undermined and reoriented my life during my poetic apprenticeship in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 1960s. At a remove of some forty-five years I saw these forces as a kind of GPS (global positioning system) constantly “recalculating” as they closed and opened door after door. Thinking back to Vallejo pointing at my gut (in “The Book of Yorunomado”) and indicating that I was to commit seppuku I was struck by the following quotation from James Hillman’s Animal Presences: “The theological message of the Siva-Ganesha, father-son pattern can be summarized in this way: submit that you may be saved, be destroyed that you may be made whole. The sacrificial violence is not the tragic conclusion but the necessary beginning of a passage into a new order… the God who breaks you makes you; destruction and creativity ultimately spring from the same source.”

Toward a Poetry of the Americas (7): Francisca Juana, “Of the Remedy Which They Use for What They Call “Reconciliation’” (Aztec)

November 21, 2017, 8:20 pm

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[From Aztec Sorcerers in Seventeenth Century Mexico: The Treatise on Superstitions, assembled with commentaries, circa 1617, by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón.  English version edited by Michael D. Coe and Gordon Whittaker. Presented here as a further installment of a work in progress co-edited by myself and Heriberto Yépez. (J.R.)]

When the illness has been judged, the remedy remains to be dealt with. Although they use various methods for it, I am reducing them to one chapter, since they coincide in their purpose and manner, and almost all of that is reduced by means of words and spells. It is assumed that the water always enters as principal agent and sine qua non; they might join to this fire and perhaps tobacco or tobacco-with-lime.  They cast a spell on all of this, and always begin the invocation by speaking to the water and perhaps to the earth, because they attribute the main role in the child's birth to the water, by being the first thing that he touches (in their opinion) on being born, and to the earth, because on birth he falls upon it. The invocation and spell then begin, as follows:

Well now, please come forth,

My mother Jade-skirted One,

White Woman;

Dark Sign,

White Sign,

White Emotion,

Yellow Emotion.

For now I have come to set up here

The Yellow Priest,

The White Priest.

I, I have come,

I the Priest,

I the Lord of Enchantments.

Already I have fashioned you,

I have quickened you.

My mother Dewdrop-skirted One,

You who have made him,

You who have quickened him,                                                                                                          Even you are rising against him,                                                                                                             You are turning against him.                                                                                                            Dark Sign,                                                                                                                                                  In the greatness of the waters,

In the expanse of the waters,

I shall leave you.

I myself,

I am the Priest,

I am the Lord of Enchantments.

Please come forth,

My mother Jade-skirted One;

Please go,

Please go to look for,

Please go to see

The Priest Light,

There in the House of Light.

What deity,

What marvel

Is already covering him with siftings,

Is already covering him with dust?

Blue-green Sickness,

Dark Sickness:

Wherever you go,

Wherever you disappear,

You will cleanse,

You will improve

The Priest Light.

Please come forth,

Blue-green Sign,

Dark Sign;

Throughout the mountains,

Throughout the plains

You have been wandering.

Here I seek you,

Here I entreat you,

O Master of Signs.

Please come forth,

Nine Pounded,

Nine Struck;

May you not shame yourself.

Please come forth,

My mother Jade-skirted One;

1 Water;

2 Reed;

1 Rabbit,

2 Rabbit;

1 Deer,

2 Deer;

1 Flint,

2 Flint;

1 Lizard,

2 Lizard.

My mother Jade-skirted One,

What will you do?

Go and cleanse my vassal;

In some whirlpool,

In some circle of water,

In some flow of water,

Please put the Lord of Tlalocan.

I have come,

I the Page,

I the Crackler.

Do I think anything of it?

The stone is intoxicated,

The wood is intoxicated;

They walk here,

And you also,

And I also.

What deity,

What marvel

Now seeks to destroy

The infant of the gods

The child of the gods?

I have come to take up

The Blue-green Sign,

The White Sign.

Wherever has it gone?

Wherever has it gone to rest?

Wherever in the Nine Beyonds,

In the Nine Junctures.

Has it gone to rest?

I have come to take it up,

I have come to cry out to it:

You will make good,

You will make right

The heart,

The head!

After this charm and spell have been completed, they brag that they have discovered the tonal, and try to restore it to the child. They usually do this by taking the conjured water in the mouth and putting it on the crown of the child's head; or, having placed themselves face to face with the infant, they spray him with it, startling him with the shower. Others also put the water between his shoulder blades. With these vain ceremonies, they say that they have restored his tonal and, fate to him, and that he is already well. Next they prove it, some placing his face over a vessel of water in which they look at it, and say that the bright face, the maize kernels, and the hand measurement come out favorably-all being manifest frauds, but sufficient to dazzle such simple people, since they still have not taken notice that the outcome of such divinations is always at the volition of the one who makes them.

After judging the sickness and casting the preceding spell or one like it, others differ in the manner of the cure, which they make by censing. For this, they cast a spell, on the fire, on the smoke, and on the copal with which the censing is carried out, as follows:

Please come forth,

You the Old Man,

You the Old Woman.

Please go to soften

The jewel,

The plume.

What is happening?

Already it wants to shatter.                                                                                                                                                                                                           Please come forth,

White Woman;

Please soften

The jewel,

The plume.

Please come forth,

Blue-green Jaws of Sleep,

Dark Jaws of Sleep.

Francisca Juana, wife of Juan Bautista, of the settlement of Mescaltepec, used this among others.  After this spell has been said, they cense the child with the conjured copal and fire, upon which they assert that his tonal and genius have returned to him and that he is perfectly healthy.

After Nikolai Petrovich Burnashev: from The Olonkho (a Sakha [Yakut] epic) as an Addendum to Technicians of the Sacred

December 1, 2017, 6:30 am

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Translation by Justin E.H. Smith

[translator’s note. This is a translation of some of the early lines of the Olonkho, the Sakha (Yakut) national epos (on my longstanding interest in this, read more hereand here). I worked directly from the Sakha text, but also relied heavily on an earlier Russian version, which comes down to us from a Sakha elder by the name of Nikolai Petrovich Burnashev. His version was recorded by S. K. D'iakonovyi in 1941, and published under the title Кыыс Дэбилийэ in Novosibirsk in 1993.

  

My own version is so heavily reliant on Burnashev that it cannot be considered a translation from the Sakha, but rather a blend of features from both the Sakha and the Russian. I have however tried to respect the meter of the original text, even at points where the syntax and grammar proved too challenging for me to decipher unaided. For an online bilingual version, with side-by-side Sakha and Russian, go here.]

Under that primordial
shining and lucid sky,
where the two-legged, having
a mortal body and hollow bones,
knowing war and battle,
acquainted with strife and discord,
having a vulnerable brain
and a trembling soul,
must be fruitful —
with the cool windy western sky,
with the good generous eastern sky,
with the insatiable thirsty southern sky,
with the impetuous whirling northern sky,
with the shivering breadth of the sea,
with the heaving depth of the sea,
with the swelling abyss of the sea,
with the twirling axis of the sea,
with the unbounded reach of the sea,
with the revered aiy* who lie beyond,
with the radiant aiy who guard,
with abundant yellow nectar**,
with generous white nectar,
encircling us in the manifold of stars,
in the herds of countless stars,
in the traces of rare stars,
with the full moon accompanying it,
with the bright sun leading it,
with purifying roars of thunder,
with the smite of bolts of lightning,
with moistening cloud-bursts of rain,
with sultry hot breath,
with the drying out and again the replenishing of waters,
with the falling down and again the growing up of woods,
with inexhaustible generous gifts,
with origins from gently sloping mountains,
with gardens from earthen mountains,
with a hot and giving summer,
with the turning axis of the center,
with four converging sides,
with such high firmament,
what you tread on, will not give way,
what you rattle, will not lurch,
with such an unfathomable breadth,
what you press, will not bend,
eight-chambered, eight-sided,
with six circles,
with disquiet and worry,
in luxurious attire and ornament,
serenely peaceful,
always-existing Mother Earth,
shining like a silver buckle
on a horned hat with a feather.

*aiy (айыы) - benevolent nature divinities.

**'nectar' - илгэ, a divine drink, comparable to Greek ambrosia, which in this instance seems to be assimilated to milk, which in turn is conceived as the substance of the white bodies of the sky. 

Rochelle Owens: From “Solarpoetics,” (concluded) 16-26

December 7, 2017, 1:14 pm

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                                                        [The following is the conclusion of Rochelle Owens’ major new alphabetic work, earlier sections of which have appeared previously in Poems and Poetics.]

16

Reading a word does not depend on the number

of letters it contains

*

The letter P  periodic  orbital 

biological compulsion 

like taste and thirst

and in your

Mammalian brain 

Lovely the pastoral scene

a graphic design 

green the volcanic hills 

the story

Of the shepherdess

In elaborate lettering

heat  cold  wind  water

a flow of menstrual

blood

17

The stereotype of a lone researcher

in a secluded lab--a science fiction trope

 

*

The letter Q  a quartet

in three dimensional space

the butcher  baker  shepherdess 

a solitary workwoman 

Ravenous her lidless eye

Counting letters  spelling

m e l l i f e r o u s  the animal flesh 

the flow of hormonal

forces

Blood in  blood out

From A to Z  a set of skills 

body of data  data

of body  gut  head  tail 

o b l i t e r a t e d

                         18

An experiment designed to control the brain 

--movements of limbs with colored lights

*

                        The letter R  under a red

violet light  an unknown figure

crouches over the earth

Where the air smells of poisoned rain

An unknown figure digs rows

of small holes  the temperature

of human skin  folds

in the ground 

The root of love  

Blood in  blood out

folds in the ground from front

to back from back to

front

19

 Electrical pokes regulate balance  direction

 currents moving neuron to neuron

*

The letter S  serpentine

the organ of sight  a pair of spherical

bodies in an orbit of the skull 

the eyes 

Nomads  wanderers

 

Take one step after

the other  here where you walk 

bones push to the

surface

A snarl of fibrous hairs drifting

In circles  chasms and fissures

in the earth   holes  gaps in a sequence

of events  laid down and eroded

away

   

                         20

Begin with a few humble ingredients  rice flour 

fruit and flowers

*

The letter T  near a tank

with a spigot stands the baker

collecting words  batter 

crumbs

Black mold  burnt rolls

Dead white the bakers lips

on his tongue a metallic

taste  more water

in the loaf 

Less flour used 

The story of the baker

A set of skills in sequential order

from A to Z    O wicked

world

   

                         21

All words may be reproduced  stored in a retrieval system

or transmitted in any form or by any means

 

*

                        The letter U  numberless 

tree stumps mark a sequence

of events  rows of

holes

Absence of a picture

A story of the solitary

workwoman long ago  an hour ago

only a minute  strolling in

autumnal leaves

Drifting in circles

And in your mammalian brain 

lovely the pastoral scene 

grain  grape  bread 

wine

                         22

Colors  forms  movement  all together an astonishing

neurological image

*

The letter V  gouged

into a stone floor  blood pushing

to the surface  zones of

inclusion  exclusion

Here where archeologists

Observe dimensions  between

victim and executioner  a gap  a fissure 

a hole that engulfs and

consumes  

Here where historians

Pouring coffee  organize

body of data  data of body  piles

of charred human and animal 

bones

23

Evolution is smart  clean  clear and simple

hungry or thirsty  eat  or drink

*

The letter W  when your

eyes move  the reading brain   

the act of reading  how tightly

the letters hold you

Wind  heat  cold  drought

Hot  exuberant  the butcher’s

pleasure  cutting  deboning  grinding

salt for the stew  salt

for the bread

Sings the poet maudite

From point A to Z  a set of skills

in sequential order  blood

and mud  chemical

molecular 

24

With sophisticated equipment scientists scrutinize

minutiae  gathering information

*

The letter X 

marks an unknown figure

behind an electric

fence

Patterns of animus

A skeletal frame

crouches over the earth

fingers spreading apart across

t h e  r u i n s c a p e 

Hidden among geometric forms 

                         a single bloodstained feather 

long ago  an hour ago 

only a minute

25

The two cortex regions operate independently

of each other  independent yet intertwined

*

The letter Y  yellow 

sulfurous  a plume of smoke 

work is a binding

obligation 

Looking to earn extra cash

Take one step after

the other  under an occult sky 

the hand of the butcher

lops off

Diseased parts   

Slapping flying insects  insects

far and near  hair and nails in the feces 

vulnerable flesh-eater  spiritual

carnivore

26

Ever-pinging networks  twenty-six letters of the alphabet 

asterik to zero hour

*

The letter Z  a sound

of a buzz saw  strange scars

on the sea bed  patterns

of animus

Written words lit up 

Hidden zigzags 

burned  buried  premonitions 

take one step after

the other 

Out of the hole of Baudelaire

When I in my youth

strolled in a blue wool dress

I strolled in a circle

of blue                                                                

Jerome Rothenberg: A Round of Solipsisms

December 10, 2017, 11:00 am

≫ Next: David Baptiste Chirot: “Hidden in Plain Sight”: Found visual/sound poetries of feeling eyes & seeing hands

≪ Previous: Rochelle Owens: From “Solarpoetics,” (concluded) 16-26

$

0

0

for my 86th birthday

“He takes a book down from his shelf & scribbles across a page of text: I am the final one.  This means the world will end when he does.” (from A Paradise of Poets)

1/

the lie of consciousness

assails me    waking

in the early hours

shorn of dreams

the world reduced to what

cannot be told

& scarce remembered

I am walking

mean-legged

toward a patch of forest

then a tunnel

where a train runs

from my sight

heading for a depot

I will never reach 

2/

what is a dream

& where is it located?

when it ends

a blackness

fills the place called mind

unseen   unheard

there is no world then

& no mind to tell us

 

searching for a name

the word is solipsism

what the man

almost a corpse

knows, dying

that the world will end

when he does

3/

the real a lie

as well

(the man thinks)

struggling

to hold on

& falling back

he grabs for it

fearing as he does

its vanishing

the world without him

is no world

the stars no stars

the plot of land

under his foot

has no solidity

the water leaves

no water

& the air no air

when the imagination

fades    the fancy

takes its place

when all are gone

the mind shuts down

with scarce a trace

4/

for David Antin

you have died

& still

the world goes on

the strangeness

felt by us

without you

where I train

my thoughts

on all I know

& knowing

that for you

the world has fled

as it will flee

for me & all

the others

when the mind shuts

& the world

unthought

shuts with it

5/

the bloom of life

assaults me

when I fall

under its spell

happy to play

time’s fool

like other men

before me

wisdom is a lie

only the dead

can see through

& reject

the present

never there

the past

a trick of mind

how many worlds

we hold inside us

something to be shared

until it ends

6/

inside the only

world I know

the power rests

with me

the flow of light

opens in images

& ends

in darkness

I try to find you

& the others

hearing my name re-echo

in another tongue

no one can know

or wrest from me

something I carry

until the fire starts

its hidden name

apocalypse

intended for me

alone

7/

An Exhortation –

for the Survivors

“how can there be

a world

without you?”

lightly asked

& wanting

nothing less

the years once lived

stay in the mind

only in bits

predict an image

not yet real

the hope of juncture

a contingency

foretold & closed

shutting us off

but different

when we come together

in your eyes

distant like mine

& knowing

that the end will come

to me

to you

the greater world

gone in a wink

& done

absent all care

11.xii.17