tea with the winter guest

They were cooking & pickling ripe regrets
in good mason jar tradition
when they heard a massive fist
gently pleasantly knocking upon their door.

Now is the season when yetis
visit apartments:
premature Santas
from the far north.
The north star an icicle
upon the foggy TV image rubbing window.

Stan Gertrude glanced at his big dog
pawing & stamping lids on glass
paws and towels dextrous as
violet steam flickered in her eyes.
She gazed back at his tensed hand
trembling unlocking opening the knob the door.

The ivory hair rubbed all corners of their doorway.
A massive head peered down with an inflated laurel
intertube atop the cocked ears black in the cold
as if to mock them both
in their sheetrock cave
of oven fires and lampshade shadows.

Behind immense bulk of fur claw and muscle saw Stan
a small flock of young chickens
bulging dilated eyes back his way
as they raced on stubbly feet around the corner
out of sight with a feather left floating.
An exclamation point in the frosty air.

Floppy ears up
in alarm the dog
unlids a jar of tea leaves
cryptically labeled.
Hefting her tail.
She upends it into a boiling pot
upon the red coil
into roiling regrets there.

The yeti wrinkles his nose
and slows
his massive paw with which
he was about to pat
Stan's bald head.

Pulls in the claws
stoops quite low
and squeezes
squeezes
in
rubbing the intertube above
and knuckles against walls.

The furred giant
busts the bed flat
as he sits down
there
and mumbles
looping arms and legs
smaller
like a collapsing 8.

When the boiling mass
fluid & leaves
consumate permeate complete
and cool
dog pours
three cups:
one for a subdued yeti
one for a speechless Stan
one for herself.

They and the night pass
sipping
slipping out
of furred and unfurred hides
onto rays of the polar light.

i am i

i am i because my little blog knows me.
i am not i because my little dog knows me.
i have no dog and having no dog is not interesting.
i am i because my little blog knows me.

is Stein's mind interesting.
good question.
Though sometimes not a heavy Stein but now
she is a Stein around the neck
after repeating and reading repeating.
an empty mind with empty frames the game.
i'll go read Steven later rather than her.

stein and all

It has been hard to motivate myself to write on Stein. Not that I dislike her, but it is not always easy to snap out cool analyses and stamp them with distancing wit. And why would I be so eager for such an accomplishment anyway. To write like that seems hardly original or uniquely individual to me. But sometimes to write just for practice or doodle and not for newly born crystalline objectivities (and what reason would there be for one to need to feel obligated to write in that sense anyway) makes it easier to get going.

Sometimes Stein sounds better as music. In fact, I did listen to some of two operas with music by Virgil Thompson and texts by Gertrude Stein called Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All (given Stein I'm not sure of the caps on these titles). Although they felt a little dated which is to be expected the language was fresh and interesting but not always with a clear sense of my knowing why she picked those words or that phrasing other than an interesting feel and tone. So I don't know why she places particular words together but the sounding of the words and the paragraphs is something very fun at times but also very tiring at times.

Also I read part of and very much liked The World is Round. I read that with a lighter grip than Geographical History as I do not need to know it for class. And so with no sense of obligation to understand but to enjoy the play in the lay of words I sailed away through it not minding about the human mind.

lesspagelesspoem

Well! I've lost my main pageless poem (perhaps because it wasn't on a page). I will have to spring into action for my backup one. Perhaps I hold the words before my other self in some alternate universe now, you never know. But as Nietzsche said, "Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger." Death by papercuts to the ego and all that.

refractions for the day

While I appreciate the challenge of slogging my way through Alma, picking together the pieces of what Notley presents, I sometimes sigh and wish for (and more than wish for, I go to) more clear and direct texts.

I saw an acquaintance this weekend wearing a t-shirt with picture of John Stuart Mill (wrote Utilitarianism, On Liberty, etc) and a quote by that fine old limey upon it. Anyway, clarity like that and not onslaughts of surreal owls (which I like but not in massive flocks) is nice.

No adoration for the Fatherland and Party leaders who say "let them not die in vain" and all that today or any other day--personal creativity and not mass rallies with cookies handed out for comfort after beatings. They had their rites today, fine, may they then not also have old delusions today. There were those in Falstaff's day who believed they deserved and would soon get victory and Victory and did not (maybe it was their selfish genes in them misleading). Anyway...

Of rites, I've taken part in some of the rites (reading, imagining with Alma) and spent time lying spent in the endslope of the Gully. Like the emaciated young man within I'm hungry now and pull myself out of this socket
and go eat,
something far from
either owl food or ghost food.

Sight

A couple days ago, I broke my glasses at the place where the metal arm on the frame joins the frame surrounding the lens. Because of this, and because I've not been able to fix them or replace them yet, I wear either a very loose pair of glasses (only one arm on the right ear) or wear an old pair with deep scratches in one lense. Since this older pair is sturdier and will not fall off, I usually wear them outside my apartment, though it gives me a bit of a headache looking through them. Needless to say, I've not been happy with this.

Writing often arises from a particular experience or thought or later reflection on one of these. Like my current glasses, observation of these experiences is usually imperfect. The brain fails to remember points in the picture. If I went on a walk, I can not remember every color of what I pass. If in conversation, I can not remember every word. So there are gaps to fill or assume.

As to the belief that if you pay attention you remember: do you remember everything from biology or geometric axioms or when the sunset was or what time x is...?

All things decay and misperception is common. I value Notley's demand for honesty, clarity in purpose, openness, and freshness in her essay Thinking and Poetry.

I sometimes want to label Alma or those in it by saying, she is such and such and she is such and such, and then I resist this and resist coming to a firm and singular conclusion. The doors are still open, even if knobs or hinges or whatever are broken at times.

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!

Berryman and I

Although the message and intent within each of the individual dream songs of John Berryman was often hard to unravel, the general intent seems clear--or at least one significant intent. That seems to me to be the need to make sense of the world, in part to keep the world at bay, to have something with which to endure the feeling of being crushed by the world.

Like Berryman, I endured significant depression, although I fared better in the end than Berryman (at least so far). I definitely trust counselors and non-toxic ways of dealing with depression more than Berryman. Or so it seems from what I know of him.

In any case, some of these were slow heavy reading. I had to read many of them aloud so as not to get lost in associative rumination that might recall darker days, so as to jar myself away from overthinking about what they say toward the resonance of the language, the beauty/ugliness of the images... For example, when I look at 46: "I am, outside. Incredible panic rules. People are blowing and beating each other without mercy ... the worse anyone feels, the worse treated he is..."

This really captures the lost, constricted, negative, pessimistic mind state I have known when depressed. Although Berryman does not necessarily identify himself with Henry, I know that he experienced something like what I mean.

Although Berryman may grant his Henry a hidden order or hidden coherence, the seeming lack of coherence in many places throughout the Dreamsongs definitely fits the incoherent thinking, negative regard, falling apart feel of serious depression.

I appreciate the humor of lines like from 49: "Old Pussy-cat if he won't eat, he don't feel good into his tum', old Pussy-cat." Here the choice of words creates the humor, but the underlying message is sad. Often clever humor is not potent enough to disperse the toxic mind.

Although the 77 Dream Songs of Berryman prove difficult and indigestible in more ways than one, I would find in fruitful to go back and rewrestle with them. Not the steady march of six lines per stanzas but the meanings and memories and the discord and disorder. All the same, I need some balm after reading, such as music or meditation...

working with my blog reflection below, a dog reflection below

dog magician

furred ball bounces up
wagging unflagging tail wand
over childhood friend

So far so good with the poem growing. I'm happy with the surprise and power in my 3rd poem. Of late, I've been wanting to write some more formal poems, even though the ones I select and shape for class are free form. I have some reasons for this. For example, I recently reread a number of Shakespeare's sonnets and also some of Rilke's fine sonnets from Sonnette an Orpheus. I would like to go and play more with these, maybe villanelles, sestinas, etc.

Also, I've felt distance between myself and my poems of these first few weeks. They don't so much wrangle with the particulars and problems of my daily tangible life. They are related, and sometimes very meaningful both emotionally and intellectually, but all the same more philosophical.

Perhaps for something different ahead, I will write something very contained and concrete--something like a sestina about a dog I knew or a haiku about the rain soaking my bike seat today.

Reflections on Maximus Poems

I have tried to approach Olson's sizable work generously and charitably. Some of his lines are wonderful such as these:

All night long

I was a Eumolpidae

as I slept

putting things together

which had not previously

fit

(Olson 327)

Unfortunately much of the work in IV, V, VI tires and I wish he had given many of his allusions and associations more substance, perhaps more eloquence. When he does provide a great deal of substance to his reference, such as in the section Maximus, From Dogtown-IV], much of his writing fails to inspire and seems less worthwhile, meaningful, or well scripted as, say, Hesiod's Theogony itself.

On the whole, his writing contains many interesting experiments and rich pockets of verse, but most of it gives me mild headaches if I run through it for long.

Can I learn about poetics and style from Olson? Certainly, but I still want to speed through most of the landscape of his opus.

foot/ball

i roll it around big toe anchor
dragging unocean floor.
i push it over
muscling the side.
i splay the five toe rays.
i pull it back
to an ever longed for
but never reached
shin above.
i bow toes and heel
making arch taut to spring.

i play games with it--
crawling beyond my
enormous rigid clothes--
soft limbed among soft limbed
budding flowers.

beginning in, wading in

Lukewarm waters so far
cut back the hairs from the bony feet,
so innocent.
Yet the source mountains are vast,
the farther skies curtained by clouds,
the ocean unseen,
yet sensed,
in my pulse.