brief fall scene

Leaf=mouse
shuffling
scat ter ing
in the breeze
in the night
in the trick'd eye

one poem on William

WCW
describes the maiden
recurring in conjunct with
the white unicorn

his heart
pounding
into the couch

while Dr. Freud takes notes
& nods his head

a matrix poem

0's and 1's cascade
& recede out
with-out
slipping (away)

oblique, embedded inside fluid &
strings, strung to play,
puppeting upon & deep to the
vibrating
inner bubble film
--vast memory bank
a growing amoeba against
undefined unnumbered blanks
outside the system--

and Neo eyes
with new eyes
lion 1's
fold electron tails
and copy themselves
through buzzing 0's

looping light through hoops

3 rings--no,
rings coat & heat
the whole inner lining

multiply! multiply!
without pause
they mesh
the great net

cirque du matrix

Visual food for thought

Giorgio de Chirico: The Poet and His Muse , c. 1925.

I have declared this an afternoon for William Carlos Williams

I will enjoy my vacation in Paterson for a while.

Not to say that I don't get distracted by other things, though. Earlier, for example, I reread one of the Upanishads (a philosophical Hindu text). To me, that is far more pleasant and sane religious material than popular (hopefully not) 'religious' men on the radio who say that Jesus hates government run medicine and insurance programs. There is no evidence that any such being with any such hatreds is out there anywhere. It doesn't matter how many communities out there believe that... after all there were many white people in the south not so long ago that firmly believed that slavery was right and proper... or that women should stay at home at graciously submit to their husbands (as Hitler and Mussolini believed). Popular belief does not make things true and intelligent human beings have the right to stop consuming these poisons for the sake of their own well being. I trust the Williams, at least, would not have been the sort of doctor that says something like 'Boy, I'm glad I have more tax cut money to spend on my gun collection, big boats, and top-of-the-line home entertainment systems than on those damned poor kids who think they should have better health care.' His opinions are a little dated here and there, but he has a sense of humanity and unwillingness to support business and religious thuggishness.

For that matter I should go back and reread Spinoza (the brightest star of his age) and some others I think of now. I think of Ibsen and more associations.

I really enjoyed Williams essay, though I found it a little vague at times.

His poetry is wonderful, though I need to settle down into it. I will do that now again.

Sources

Everything influences what I write and the number of influences is too vast to put down. I've always pursued many different experiences and exposed myself to many different ideas. It is not enough simply to like and name those I (and say a small group near me) like, rather I've sought out voices and experiences outside of that. For example, in terms of live music concerts I've been at (and enjoyed--I'll not include those I didn't enjoy): The Ring of the Niebelungen by Richard Wagner, Ani Difranco, Joan Baez, Jethro Tull, Rage against the Machine, Tegan & Sara, Nine Inch Nails, Philip Glass, Placido Domingo, renaissance music ensembles, Smashing Pumpkins, local jazz musicians, jam bands at Terrapin Station, a Bob Marley tribute band, various techno/trance mixers, Wah! (hindu/kirtan), Vietnamese Buddhist monks chanting, individual musicians playing for pocket change in New York City's subways, and so on. As far as poetry goes, there is as wide a range.
Although I could potentially write in many different styles, I feel drawn toward certain things over others. For example, I feel nothing but admiration for Beethoven, love modern dance, and love somewhat chaotic urban streets. On the other hand, I feel indifferent to modernist architecture, computer hardware, well-mowed lawns, and television shows I watched as a child. I connect with the literal and symbolic richness in the natural world: sun, moon, ocean, ancient forests, eagles, caves, and so on. I love animals more by far than cars. I have always liked fantasy more than the world of law/cops/burglars/all those yawns (of course I've watched some of that in the past, but now...). I like when a work of art builds together archaic and contemporary--I imagine now a performance of a dance by the Mark Morris company called Dido and Aeneus...
I don't interpret the world with television or clique chatter as my measuring sticks. Thus I do not say something brainless like people in Meridian are great people to raise kids around, to live around, while those people in LA county, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Jose, etc. are evil or scary. That is an absolutely loathsome opinion and I suspect people get that from watching too much television (where they become frightened of people whose culture they don't get and the world seems a dangerous place) and spending all their time with people like themselves.
At this point, I am still experimenting with my work. Perhaps I will always enjoy experimenting with different stuff. Who knows? One poem I've played with in my mind recently is called the Second Coming of the Chicken Messiah. On the other hand I imagine a poem of crumbled leaves in the gutter and bikes tires treading them. Also...

wonderful Keats' quote

I love the quote from John K at the start of His Toy, His Dream, His Rest by John B: "My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk." Some may not like the associations inside this, but I view "monk", for example, in a multitude of independent meanings. There is no grand inquisitor, no masculine hierarchy, etc. living in the meaning-realm I have in mind.

Mixing poetry ingredients in my brain

I am getting the hang of Berryman, and appreciate his peculiar wordings more and more. I don't know if I can toss of any insight into them which is especially profound at this time though. So be it.

I've recently ventured into other new (to me) poets since our last class. I've read some of Celan and found him powerful. I sampled sections of Spell by Beachy-Quick and pondered them, though not as much as Berryman of course, lighting up at times to them. Besides these two, I've greatly enjoyed Galway Kinnell, or at least his longer poem The River, which runs Southern life in the early sixties under the lens of underworld/inferno/dream vision.

While reading these, I've sometimes scribed a couple words or three which I think resemble the styles here and think of ways to spin these out to longer bits... but so far, I have just the short segments sitting on paper like an unassembled earthworm unable to glide.

I remember the fountain behind the Eyrie in Albertsons Park--which I spent some time in this weekend. Somehow, that held my attention, with the sky, and with the people near me whose voices were almost buried under that downpour (not literally). Somehow that will fit in my writing on the road ahead.

There is always so much more. Life experienced outside (beyond the skin interacting with within) and inside (internal states independent of sense experience), in past/present/conceived futures, life observed in others... It seems almost absurd to select and write on these fragments out of the whole. And when there is so much to draw on, to write, it is (paradoxically) often hard to set down anything. Yet I will--or people will puzzle at my poems of blank pages!