Basil Bunting

My copy of Basil Bunting’s Collected Poems found its way into my attention span recently. I have the Moyer Bell edition, © 1985. I presume later editions have been released.

Bunting represents one more hole in my reading—or more accurately, my grasp—to go along with the likes of John Wieners, Joanne Kyger, and more. I mean that I have given these writers a bum shift, insofar as I came to them late and/or read them poorly. It happens, whether I lacked access to their work or simply lacked receptivity. I mean, I have tried to ease the error of my ways. One can only read so much.

With Bunting, Pound’s august authority put him on the map for me. I mean august seriously, at least within the range of Pound’s poetic antenna. For all his disagreeable parts, he did know, and support, poetry.

So I knew Bunting as a poet to reckon with. I found, however, that I stumbled on his locution. His English, from those islands over there, comports strangely to this child of normal television. He drops verbs and shifts word order some. He alludes thickly. These fail as excuses, I only effort to make clear the pebbles I tripped on.

On the plus side, he plays a sternly joyful music. He can make a better case that April’s the cruelest month than Eliot. This aspect of nature poet resounds with him, in a way that I would liken to John Clare. Both carry a down to earth sense and sensitivity to nature. They strip the metaphors away and look directly. Thoreau, when he’s journaling, does the same thing. It is a temperate sort of honesty, one willing to hold back the gush. I’m sure Bunting was a frolicsome weirdo, but he kept his measure, never strayed from the beat.

This video of him reading carries the oracular thunder of Pound himself, and the look in Bunting’s eye can only be called bardic. I feel very open to this writing now.

Mark Twain’s Autobiographical Program (The Inception of Post-Maudlinism)

Mark’s Twain’s effort to produce an autobiography brings a number of ideas to mind for me.  He provides a hint of post-modern potential. By post-modern, I think I mean post-maudlin. And that means (or perhaps just suggests) something at least straying from the sentimental.

In Boswell’s Life of Johnson (can we say that the diary of Samuel Pepys is the life of his johnson? Okay, moving on), we repeatedly hear Johnson speak of the fine sentiments of certain great works (Oliver Goldsmith et al.), as if enunciation of a good program were the heart of literature. No slander on the author of “The Deserted Village, 20 pages of observation and social concern. The fine sentiments and instigation,—viz., for further instance, Shelley’s rollicking “The Mask of Anarachy”—can certainly be the field of poetry.  It just cannot describe the whole of poetry’s possibilities. We have found, have we not, that dickheads and ding dongs produce fine literature too. I mean, allow that our modernist anti-Semites did, despite their scuzz, create nerve endings of interest. Artists are like people, and they vary and disappoint at times.

And so I have taken a round trip to my point, if indeed it is sharp enough to be so called. Twain’s autobiography, the so far  of which can be found here (2 more volumes await the light of day), illustrates post-maudlin attitude, I think.

For some 40 years, Mark Twain laboured with the idea of autobiography. He clearly envisioned a work putting “it all” in, like he was channeling John Ashbery. He aimed  for “complete honesty”, like the woebegone incorporated of the so called Confessionals. His seriousness in this exercise shows in his willingness to wait a century before full publication of whatever he produced. Libel laws might be an influence, of course, but still.

He enjoyed enough clarity to forswear chronology.  He wanted to retail memories and episodes strictly as they came to him, disorderly and important. Isn’t that the practice of many of our post-modern stepping stones?

Twain’s accumulation of autobiography slogged thru assorted ideas of attack. The newfangled typewriter tempted him, not so much for composition as for the logistical labour relief. Dictation became a tool, because he wanted that flighty garrulity of memory and occasion. He even utilized Thomas Edison’s invention, declaiming his stories to a phonograph. Not a great success, but look how open he was to the new.

His project endured numerous false starts. Call what we receive via the Mark Twain Project a false finish, since (like Charles Olson’s 3rd volume of Maximus), the author did not live to see the final version. Not, really, to say what I am reading now accepts the mantle of finality. It consists of what a bunch of editorial myrmidons collated into a functional army for the relief of I dunno what poor franchise.

The big ass post-modern markers like The Cantos, Maximus, and name your poison, shine with inclusion. Not a new idea. Virginia Woolf wrote about moments and moments and moments, gravely endured and noted. Henry James pushed plot aside to envelope the words between the actions. And so on. Proust, we know, had a life to live as he relived the life. Melville interlarded Moby Dick, and the rest of his oeuvre, with telltale importations from his curiosity. My list of examples stands far from complete. Hello, Montaigne, DonQuixote, Tristram Shandy,  and so on.

What Twain wrote does not read strange, if maybe neatniks may squawk about structure.  He recounts, for instance, how he garnered the rights to Ulysses Grant’s memoir, Grant dying as he wrote. Twain writes of being skinned by an inventor of a typography machine.  I actually have not gotten to the part officially designated the autobiography: I still reside in the introductory front matter. I see not the shape but the functional approach. I like it. I will keep reading.

Poetry, you see, clambers towards some opening. What, we wonder as we read, could be within that opening?

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Beth’s mother, colluding with Beth, gave me volume 1 of Autobiography of Mark Twain. Two more volumes await publication. The Mark Twain Project prepared the book. And I’m like, wow!

The Mark Twain Project, if you don’t follow the link, dedicates itself to producing scholarly work on Twain’s apparently abundant oeuvre, and to put most if not all of it online. This scholarly dedication fascinates me.

I like Twain, tho I cannot declare to be well-read in his work. Huckleberry Finn certainly rates as a classic, Tom Sawyer’s ok, Life on the Mississippi has some beautiful passages. And of course as a humourist/satirst ,Twain’s stature stands high. This book & project excites me because of its attempt to embrace the totality of scholarship.

The thing is, every writer/artist could be so embraced, so we can see juvenilia, sketches, marginalia, alternate and early versions. So we can learn the context of the artist. These things catch my interest. Practically speaking, one cannot delve so deeply into too many artists unless you are, professionally speaking, a scholar. I do not become a scholar by reading this book, but I get a taste of the enterprise.

I should mention that this book weighs in at a hefty 700+ pages of small print. Those pages break down interestingly. The introduction and such front matter entail the first 200 pages. Explanatory notes begin on page 469. Appendices, chronology, index, and sources flesh out the back matter. Two hundred pages of actual autobiography, the rest is meta to the meta meta degree.

Even tho the cadre of editors seek to produce something authoritative, it is an editorial work (editoreality, if you will). They construct an idea of what Twain wanted from whatever evidence before them. The author is just one voice in this.

The business end of this reveals itself. Someone controls the project (necessarily, of course). Or several someones. So the work must bend to not just scholarly necessity, but to, oh, the editor’s career and interest. Furthermore, family or whoever was entrusted with the ‘ownership’ of the work will have goals outside whatever pure vision we want to imagine.

I used to love the diligence and clarification that George Butterick put into Charles Olson’s work. I now realize, and accept, that he did it his way. Olson left a mess, and Butterick interpreted it. It is collaboration where we cannot easily, if at all, define who did what. So it goes. I still respect the work that Butterick did, but recognize that he shaped the mass of papers that he worked with.

I do not expect to blast thru this autobiography, but I shall enjoy my reading. And plus also: Twain is after all officially hilarious.

Vanna White, Briefly

According to Wikipedia, Vanna White’s 54th birthday occurs next Friday. That would make her 108 in tv hostess years. She played Venus, Goddess of Love, in a tv movie in 1988. That is all.

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Super Bowl? Naw, we watched Plan 9. I am not anti-sport. I find the SB oppressive, however, and am against the tawdry idea of looking forward to commercials. That’s playing into their hands far too easily.

So Plan 9, which I’ve seen a number of times. I used to own it, but I guess it went out on permanent loan. Every time I watch it I feel compelled to defend it against the charge of worst movie ever. The worst movie ever cannot be this entertaining and this fascinating.

I will not say that Ed Wood was especially sound technically, but neither did he have money to throw at his problems. James Cameron had the GNP of I don’t know which country to throw at Avatar and came up with a derivative pile of hokum saved—barely—by the tra la of 3-D. He took the path of least resistance. You watch Plan 9 for the first time, you don’t know where it’s going, but it is always portentous.

The movie begins ominously with the prophetic flakiness of Criswell. His professional snake oil took some interesting turns I hear but I haven’t bothered to study his place in loony history. Suffice to say that once he starts talking, I am hooked. What the hell is he talking about?

Okay, he does explain that the story concerns—cue the music—GRAVEROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE. I do not how I would have reacted if this movie crawled onto the tv screen when I was a kid. I would not have regarded the movie ironically, that’s for sure.

The prose style of the voiceover explaining the plot bears a dreamlike disjointedness, plus flowery language. We see poor Bela Lugosi taking his job seriously. He was always a stage actor, never fit his acting to the little camera. He displays what his character is supposed to be feeling. This produces an odd dissonance in the movie. He creates a booming vortex of concern that the movie never intends to enter. And then his character dies. So does he, it turns out.

Next comes the encounter by our hero (of sorts), the pilot of an airliner, with a UFO. Then we meet the aliens themselves, as they go over the next few plot points. We have clearly landed in something primordially baffling. The three aliens enjoy a superb incongruity together. The leader of the aliens—called the Ruler at one point—is this tired looking guy who can no doubt boast that he never took an acting lesson. His flourish and demeanour reminds me of Truman Capote, perhaps with the addition of ‘ludes. At one point, and I am not sure why, he rolls his eyes. NOT because of disdain for the act in which he’s engaged, but for some subtler manifestation that I cannot identify. It is a rewarding moment in the movie.

The other two are shipmates on the UFO. They are, we learn, hard at work putting Plan 9 into motion. The Ruler had to check a piece of paper to see the exact nature of Plan 9. Oh yes, bringing the dead of earth to life so that they can, um, convince earthlings to, um… you know. Apparently Plans 1-8 lacked the scope and power to accomplish what Plan 9 could. The final aim, then, of Plan 9 may be too subtle for my earthling mind, but at least I understand that the aliens want to raise the dead. That, my friends, is some scary plan.

The two aliens are male and female, at least they look so. The male, whose name I think is Eros (God help us!), possesses the poise and firmness of a gameshow host. The female is a sort of Vanna White (you young uns check Wikipedia, I’m sure Vanna’s out to pasture by now, replaced by some willowy freshet of femininity). I do not remember the female alien’s name but at least she gets a speaking part, subservient tho she be. The two assure the Ruler that they will continue with Plan 9.

I guess I missed explaining the part where the two gravediggers for Bela’s grave were killed by a stoned looking woman in black with claw like nails and an extremely scant waist. We are not witness to how she manages to slaughter the two victims, nor given a clue why they could not outrun this stutter stepping lady in the too tight dress (a stoned Morticia).

Investigating this heinous crime is Inspector Clay, a large cup of police work. He too falls prey to the lady in black. And I haven’t even mentioned the pilot at home with his lovely wife, steaming that he is enjoined against telling anyone about the airliner’s encounter with the unknown. Holy Gosh!

I fear I give too much plot away. Let me just explain that the hotsy totsy woman in black is the wife of Bela Lugosi, brought to life by the fell aliens. Maybe you were expecting someone in a flower print dress and sensible shoes. She and Inspector Clay are now minions of Plan 9. Oh yes, we see Clay emerging from his freshly dug grave, a vision that will return to me every time I pass a graveyard at midnight, with an owl hooting chillingly nearby.

I have not even mentioned the lineup of cops, who are sort of comic relief, whether they know it or not. The lieutenant, fairly level headed, looks like Howard Hughes. Thru out the movie he uses his pistol to scratch his head or gesture. Whoa, hey, watch it!

Okay so Lugosi dies during the 7 or so hours of filming, but his character is still needed. Yes, Ed Wood’s chiropractor fills in. It has already been established that the old man wears a cape. The chiropractor, a head taller than Lugosi, keeps the cape pulled over his face. This is called making do. I do not hold it against Wood: art as creative problem solving. I know that there was a Spanish movie in which two actresses with little physically in common are randomly exchanged in scenes. Tres avant garde.

The old man (of the Undead) attempts to kidnap the pilot’s wife, but fails. Inspector Clay of the Undead does not. The cops and the pilot stumble onto the spaceship and confront the aliens. This allows Eros to explain what the hell. It seems that these advanced aliens harbour a righteous concern that humanity will discover the mega ultimate power of I forget the six syllables worth of awesome power that the alien said. Igniting this bomb, which we are in the process of discovering, in an evolution of self-destruction, would result in the sun igniting. Something about the sun’s light sort of catching fire and, like flames to gasoline, the destructive power would follow the light all the way to the sun. Oppenheimer had a similar vision, as it happens, before the atom bomb was detonated.

So we learn that the movie carries a nuclear warning. Some ill-advised words by Eros concerning the stupidity of earthlings riles the pilot, who launches a haymaker at Eros, and the two set to. The alien looks like no match for the beefy pilot but they battle evenly for a while, breaking a lot of what looks like expensive alien electronics. A fire starts, the cops and the pilot’s wife skedaddle, and the female alien frets about the fire as she attempts to launch the saucer. In the end, a good old fashioned right hook, American style, deposits the alien guy to the mat, and the pilot hustles away. Meanwhile the female, in a tizzy, gets the saucer into the air. Alas, it explodes. Criswell intones some prophetic sounds and the movie ends.

Yes, you can see strings attached to saucers, yes the the crypt that implausibly holds 5 or more people looks like the box for a washing machine, yes when someone brushes against a gravestone, it flops around like cardboard. This sort of thing is normal on the stage. Those are not real cops, real flying saucers, real rayguns in the movie, btw. The imagination gets to do a little work, you know.

In sum, no point in the movie drags. The exposition occurs briskly and unobtrusively. Wood sincerely wanted to entertain you. He held to some disjointed metronome broke freely from the familiar. Any declarations of intent that one might discover in the movie seems incomplete. This is art, my friends. Surprise is not here manufactured, it is inherent. Wood did not allow overthinking to cloud over the energy of his making. This is art, my friends.

Broken Car, The Vikings, and an Art Gallery (One Post, 3 Topics)

I used to ramble, mentally peregrinate, on this blog, but I think readers want more topic in their blogs, so I have taken to being more topic orientated. So three things in mind now, and I will muster a course thru them…

First, or, to give it an 11 on style, firstly, our car got slammed by a truck. Beth parked in front of the UPS store. While Beth prepared her package, the proprietor said, That truck just hit that car. And Beth thought, Oh no! And so this adventure: a tanker at the gas station next door was being guided by two guys from the station. Only, they weren’t doing the job. The truckdriver backed into our car not once but twice, to the vast enjoyment of the supposed guides. The car sustained a fender dent. On later inspection, it looked like the wheel had been pushed to a cant. On the way to our mechanic we heard an inscrutable and unusual high pitched whistle or whine. Which made us think something really uh oh. On the lift, nothing looked obviously bad, and of course the mechanic didn’t hear any whine when he took it for a drive. It is probably out of alignment, and that will be on the list when the insurance claim is made. What a wearisome and tense morning that was.

After the calming effects of a Costco run we went to an art opening at a gallery we get mailings from. It’s a suburban gallery, in Acton (where Creeley grew up). Not edgy in any way, yet art is so beguiling that pleasures abound even from the merely technically competent. To me, poetry is a total drag unless done well. There are no guilty pleasures in poetry.

The gallery used to be in a strip mall done the road. Now it sits in an old house across from another strip mall. The town of Acton decided to become the capital of strip malls, all along the main road thru town. The house is a rambling farmhouse, much renovated. It’s a nice setting for art but may be a millstone round the neck of the owner. It must’ve cost a peach and a pear to buy then renovate, and this was done just as we swung into the downturn. Anyway.

A lot of work has local appeal, using, particularly, the charms of Concord as subject. Those charms include river scenes, Great Meadows, Walden, and grand houses of Colonial and Victorian vintage. Landscapes from elsewhere also abound. For the most part, well done. These images sanctify something that we recognize as impossible, yet remain earnest claims. Sunsets, autumnal visions, marsh quietude. I love it. Sometimes, the painters amp the colour, and you see the trick they play. For some reason, titles to the work seem largely to lack vigour, especially attempts at whimsy.

A couple of exquisite watercolours were technically exacting, to the degree that you look and look at the subject, as subject. This is when blatancy is withheld, and colours are musical notes, not promulgations.

I thought a lot of work owed Cezanne something. The sense of planes and colour fields brought forward. This is an autistic sort of vision, positively so.

A large painting of a cottage struck me. Beth recognized the cottage from Bramhall family pictures, the cottages on Corn Hill in Truro, Cape Cod. My family used to rent one of those cottages when I was young. Corn Hill is a 100 foot bluff maybe 40 yards from the sea. The family rode out a hurricane there when I was a toddler. Images bring drafts of memory.

Some abstract prints were really nifty, but that aint what sells. A ridiculously large painting of a concert cello player, dark and Degasesque. Even in a grand scale room, it would be oppressive. $18,000 worth of oppressive. On the other hand, some of the spritely whimsy to be seen was as good as Christmas cards. Now be honest.

After all that, what else but the movie The Vikings. I loved this movie when I was young. Broad vistas of fjords and castles. It really looks good.

My first encounter with the movie I did not remark upon the cast, it was the action and landscape that caught me. Later viewings, the Hollywoodiness comes thru. Yes, that’s Ernest Borgnine, McHale, as the Viking king. No missing Kirk Douglas. Both account themselves credibly. Douglas is so bluff yet tightly wired. And being a Viking, likewise Ernie, he’s all lusty and loud. Great fun.

Tony Curtis with his New Yorkish accent kinda sticks out. You know box office appeal made his selection. The same for ingenue Janet Leigh.

The story: in a raid, McHale kills the English king and rapes the queen. That’s assuming there really was an England of any clearcut political verity. Well anyway, the king’s cousin usurps the throne. He’s the epitome of all the King Johns in all versions of Robin Hood, and he has the sniveling goatee to prove it.

Okay, the queen gives birth, and this would be the rightful heir. Bairn is spirited away before the king can prevent. Years later, it’s Curtis. He’s a slave. An English lord recognizes him as the queen’s son. At the same time, Curtis and Douglas develop a rivalry. Then add the beautiful Leigh. Who will she choose? Well the English king is supposed to marry Leigh, so Curtis and Douglas effect a Viking raid on the castle. When the English are mopped up, D & C must throw down the gloves and finish things. At the last moment D hesitates, realizing that C is his brother. C finishes him. Time for a Viking funeral.

The battle scenes lack the zest you might see now, and those axes and swords never drip with blood. There are a lot of scenes of villagers running. To welcome returning Vikings, to flee attacking Vikings. It produces a comic effect. I cannot vouch for historical accuracy here.

Catullus, Translated by Ryan Gallagher

The full title of this is: The Complete Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, published by Bootstrap Press (2008). Bootstrap’s website is currently under construction. I choose not to bury the lead: this is a worthy translation of a fascinating poet.

Ryan Gallagher is one of the founder’s of the press, which is located in Lowell. Chugging away in Lowell. I was given this book a couple years ago, and wrote about it here at Tributary. This book deserves greater notice.

Catullus wrote with such vigour that his writing retains great energy despite the centuries passed. What if Ted Berrigan were born in 84 BCE…? Or Wieners…?

I had a translation years ago that I found dreadful because of the translator’s attempt to sound contemporary. Alas, it merely sounded anachronistic. The slang, which, like with Villon, is part of the richness of the writing, was not that of the translator’s day (the 60s, I think), but more like the 20s and 30s. Anachronistic anachronisms, a layered misplay. Needless to say, I discarded the book and forgot the translator’s name.

The mistake is not in trying to capture the vitality of Catullus’ language, but that the translator used essentially another foreign language to bring Catullus to modern readers. It didn’t work. Perhaps for no reason, I am reminded of a book reviewed by Poe. The book was written in English but the footnotes (by the author) were unaccountably in French. It is a curious extra effort, and it seems like that translator likewise sweated more than necessary.

That identifies the charm of Gallagher’s versions. He doesn’t seem to be sweating it. He’s a poet, schooled at Naropa. He brings to mind Brian in Life of Brian, versus the centurion. The centurion (as you will recall) catches Brian writing inflammatory graffiti. The stern representative of Rome chastises Brian for poor declensions, forget Brian’s anti-imperialist message. One would think that Pound’s admonishments a century ago would have cleared things up in the world of translation, but too many ‘scholarly’ translations redeem themselves like a stick in the mud. They fail to transmit the energy.

The poems are coarse and lively and not fit for work. They are really fun to read. They breathe quite well in English. Gallagher clearly enjoys Catullus, didn’t just grab the first Latin poet handy.

I wish the Latin originals were set facing the translation just to see better what Gallagher translated from. One always wants to piece what one can from the original.

Gallagher devotes 40 pages to essays written on various aspects of Catullus. His review of previous translations—he does not seem to include the clunky one I first met Catullus with—not only gives a good sense of the field, but also clarifies Gallagher’s own attitude towards the poet and towards translation. This is a particularly fresh and useful document.

I wonder if this work did not spring from some college project, a masters thesis or such. Gallagher is curiously modest with this work. His name remains small on the cover and the title page. Not that he is meek, but he seems like an island of one against the continent of entrenched scholarship. He’s not satisfying some university press here, nor acting out of publish or die. His glowingest words go to the translation by the Zukofskys, which, tho well scholarshipped, as I understand, is certainly a wild experiment,.

You know the wisecrack: if you can’t play, coach. No less true, it seems: if you can’t write, translate. Gallagher cracks that one. This book is pissa, verging on wicked pissa.

Musing: Writing, Jason Bourne, and Stuff

Over the past while I have been more formal in my blog posting. What’s a blog posting? the children ask. Blogs are places where writing can go. A posting is just an attempt to make use of the Internet. Okay.

I turned to formality, as well as formality and I can suit each other, with the intention of upping the ante for the format. I do not begrudge my own loose wheels—blogs of yesteryear—and was entertained by the loose wheels of others, but since we have Facebook and Twitter to collect our junky side, I might as well just use the blog space to stretch my writing muscles. It is just a website.

So anyway, my review yesterday of Silk Egg by Eileen Tabios reveals something I might as well admit: It’s all about me. In the reviews that I have done, which have appeared either here or at Galatea Resurrects, I find myself declaring my own sense of poetry and the making. I think I have been kind enough not to play the Boolean card, this versus that, especially not undermining the reviewed work so that I could overmine my own. But the reviewed fairly can wonder of whom and what I write. The connections are mine, certainly.

When I first began reading poetry, I did so out of duty. I held strong resistance towards the poetry that I had met, the received wisdom of generations of bored English teachers. All poetry was magically mysterious to me in a disagreeable way. Mallarme or Norman Mailer (the poet) caused me equal consternation, in that I could not fathom the function or interest in poetry.

After much study involving the nature of my own resistance and a sense of possibility in my own work, I developed enough critical acumen to give me what I need. When I resist, I know I have to look at that. So my reviews are naught but peeks thru portals, that sort of thing.

Regarding Jason Bourne, watched his Ultimatum last night. I saw an earlier one, tho I cannot tell you which. Beth has read the books, which probably make more sense. Movie making often focuses on its strength, the blur of action. How plot and character might go together sometimes gets left behind.

Ultimatum seems like the same thing as the previous one I saw. Bourne races around, chasing and chased, and engages in blurry hand-to-hand. In the 1st Tim Burton Batman, Joker speaks of fighting mano against mano. But anyway.

Matt Damon’s efficiency in all things spy is fun to watch. He always has the drop on his enemy. The fight scenes explode in quick cut agitation. Apparently the camera operator gets a few licks in too. Bones should be breaking and arteries bursting but until Damon’s opponent wears down, it’s WWE. Damon ends up with a cut over his eye and a sore pinkie.

Previously, he had a woman with him, much different in the book. She’s outside the spy network, till she meets Bourne. She dies, perhaps in an episode that I missed. A woman briefly appears in this one, inside the network. She helps him a bit, tho not much in one of the fisticuffs. She doesn’t look like the one who died but seemed to be a ghost thereof. She is swept out of he story after much rooftop running by Bourne to save her. At the end, it looks like Bourne has been killed, tho at least the devious CIA black ops have been revelated. We see the second woman hearing the news, and smirking at the idea of Bourne dying. And then we discover that Jason has not drownded in the river after a 10-story fall. So maybe Bourne’s More Than Ultimatum awaits. It’s a fun action movie, relentless. Beth says the books are great.

And just to note, I’ve been reading William Manchester’s book about the Krupp family, the arms dealers. It is a lengthy and detailed book. For at least four generations, the company was run by one man each generation. The eldest heir got full control of the company. Brother, it’s a family of single-minded monomaniacs.

Alfred took the faltering steel company into the arms industry. This brought him in contact with Kaiser Wilhelm I. He wrote reams of letters, about steel, about weapons, about the business, and about nothing else.

Fritz was a better business person, and Krupp grew and grew. A scandal in Capri came to light, wild times with young men. I’m amazed that his monomania allowed him the time off. This was an Oscar Wildean situation. Fritz’s estranged wife went to the Kaiser, to get him to stop this embarrassment. The Kaiser threatened to lock her up in an asylum, because the arms supplier was that important. The scandal grew and Fritz killed himself. Like I say, I am amazed that a Krupp found time to do anything but study steel and build armament.

Fritz’s heirs were daughters, which would not do, so the eldest was married to Gustav von something, and thru legerdemain by Kaiser II, he legally inherited the business. And did so just like the previous two. Arms for both sides of WWI.

The company survived the interbellum period by utilizing its astonishing assets. Gustav attached to the Nazi movement. Once Germany began occupying countries, Gustav would race in and take over businesses. The story of Robert Rothschild shook me. Legalities, at this early stage of the war, were being observed, sort of. Rothschild tried to get his company into non-Jewish hands, but that legal trick was swept aside. He lost the company, but Gustav kept them pressing. Robert was chased down, and placed on a train to Auschwitz.

Gustav’s son Alfried became second in command as his father reached dotage. Slave labour, child labour, and Alfried as aristocratic as can be. It is an amazing story that is difficult to entail. It’s history, it’s a story, but it is too much.

Silk Egg by Eileen Tabios

available at Shearman Books

Context as framework has received attention lo these many post-modern years. I submit that we have found holes in objectivity. Call objectivity an admirable quality, but do not expect to see much of it.

Silk Egg by Eileen Tabios immerses in subjective context. Subtitled Collected Novels, the book supplies a stuttering array of contexts. Basically, the book is all contexts, and little plot. On to something here.

I shall now jabber away about other authors (while remaining within my context, I hope). This is where Eileen will be muttering, Back to me! Back to me! Sorry Eileen, but I think supplying a context (given that it is my subjective one) may prove helpful in speaking of Silk Egg.

I start with Henry James. His novels curiously please me, even tho the balance between action and rumination leans heavily towards the talky side. Yes, he chaws more than he bites off. How he envelopes his stiff, proper characters with subjective musings, however, generates a caroming interest for me. The thingness of his words becomes so central to the experience of his art that one accepts the long wind, even relishes it.

Henry James shares rare loquacious presence in his work. James comes to mind as I read Silk Egg, tho Silk Egg has none of his loquacity. Silk Egg offers contexts for some story or stories that Eileen does not fully deliver. Turn of the Screw, James’ premium page turner, balances on context. The there story pressures the idea of reliability. It does so with shaky context, who to trust? So there you are, a context for the context of Silk Egg.

Charles Baudelaire’s Poèmes en Prose, aka Paris Spleen comes to me, as well. Some of his curtales are hilarious, sardonic observations, others are captive, word-involved shiny things. Brevity, or perhaps the implications of brevity, seems key. Likewise in Eileen’s novels.

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein also jumps to mind as I read. Her descriptive dalliances offset the need to make linear sense. She can go all around the subject because she does not know it as a subject. She understands words as singularities as well as union workers. The jostle of episodes in Silk Egg lurch around the unfinalized ‘story’ of Silk Egg.

Eileen herself claims some debt to Borges on the back cover of the book. Here, friends, I step back: I have not read Borges. Antecedents, real or imagined, aren’t the point anyway. I intend my references to help describe the matter here.

Now let me piece this all together.

Silk Egg involves 100 plus pages in which 12 novels—she calls them that, so that’s what they are— are unrolled, chapter by chapter. Each chapter owns a page and consists of no more than, I’m guessing, seven sentences.

Those chapters are poetic in formulation. Cheat or trick, Eileen inscribed my copy with the words “…the prose poem masquerading as ‘novel’, mischievously”. It could be novel masquerading as “prose poem”, I daresay.

In the stories, an omni-narrator conveys the details that want a context. The lazy reader will infer biographical connection. Some is actual, from what I know of the public Eileen Tabios. I think Silk Egg offers a different expanse than just the facts, ma’am. The story here is more human than novels like to allow. Most novels monger malarkey, tho at times the entertainment is worth it. The malarkey generates from pieces fitting neatly, conclusions coming right at the end, and other unlikely happenstances.

I do not know Eileen’s method of production but it does not seem to be cut up. Reckon Ashbery’s fun with the form: he shook the bejesus out of the ordinary. And remember from Three Poems, how Ashbery contemplates whether to leave everything in or take it out? Eileen has made some choices here.

In Silk Egg, the thing not there delivers the firm yet encouraging blow to the solar plexus. I mean that more in the sense of collecting your attention than tussling with Bob Fitzsimmons (wikipediate the name: he was a boxer of yore). The details that Eileen does present furnish thingness, and I mean thingness in just that complex wallop that Heidegger saucily served us. Leave it to a philosopher to make a mess out of words.

And leave it to a poet to trust partial notes, glimmers, and glimpses. Negative Capability. Context is what we know right now, via physics, via Buddha, via Jung, via our subjective cases. Poetry is the engine that directs us thru these partial causalities, fever, and fret. It is the poets who freed the novel, returned it to the Imagination. I am glad to see Eileen Tabios in that space, reckoning the possibilities of our words.

I have made a map here, for you, Gentle Reader. Eileen shares insights from the Penetralium of mystery, which is cool. The details seem highly personal from the Author’s side. With Silk Egg, you the Reader invade the notion of context, not the life of the Author.

Hay(na)ku for Haiti

Eileen Tabios sent me a packet of little books called Hay(na)ku for Haiti. She offered them as payment for contributing to Galatea Resurrects. I already feel more than recompensed by the review copies (which you can get yourself, if you are willing to provide engagement. Check out the website.). But I’ll take them.

Hay(na)ku for Haiti is, if you bothered not to follow the wonderful link that I provided at no little effort, a charitable project: proceeds go to Haitian relief efforts. So you have that reason to pay attention. Literary interest also exists. Upon that shall I write a few words.

Sheets of pink 8x11 paper form the books (I have 16 of them). Folded, the sheet becomes a book with 6 internal pages, roughly 3 1/2x2. Book art! This is a diy project. Such are always to be supported. You can do it, too! If you have access to Microsoft Publisher, you can print a text in the appropriate format so that it all works out in nice book form. If you haven’t such access, wing it. Don’t wait for the gatekeeper’s approval.

Anyway, if you would please just follow the link above (don’t be a dick!), you will see the list of authors. Some I have met before, some are new to me. They took a challenge.

Each writer fit their effort into three constraints.

1. The hay(na)ku format. You probably already know, but if not, this format simply consists of 3-line stanzas. First line, one word; second line, 2 words; third line, 3 words. Oh look, I used the semi colon!
2. Page count. The first page provides a note about the project, so five pages remain for the text. Four stanzas fit a page, so 20 stanzas at most marks the limit for text.
3. Relevance to the situation in Haiti. The project compels one to relate the work to that human crisis, because it would be tacky not to.

That last point presents the real fandango. The mastering idea, I think, consists in engaging that human situation in Haiti. Engagement is the province of poetry. Anyone and everyone understands that the destruction from the earthquake is bad, and that something must be done. We don’t need poetry to say that: we have prose in orderly logic to commit that testament. No, the poetry to be written in this earnest position is much more personal than that. It is also more far-reaching.

In these books, we have numerous approaches to the very problem, the one problem. How do we find language for the things we see, hear, feel, touch, and smell? Poets twirl around the problem continually. Just randomly picking one book: Nicole Mauro personifies the quake (Mrs Quake). Eileen finds a poetics. I will quote in full. Nota bene: Imagine one stanza per pink page. Also imagine that stupidhead Live Writer didn’t put extra space between lines.

On a Pyre: An Ars Poetica

Flame

eating my

body hotter than

 

fire

for the

poetry in burning

 

books

ravage more

than a drought-stricken

 

forest’s

revenge for

the creation of

 

paper

so flimsy

against non-metaphysical needs--

 

I love the dash at the end, which I choose to believe nods towards my friend Emily Dickinson. Such is one approach. Tom Beckett’s pared repetition is another. And so on, the spectrum of 16 (so far) little books. Many things to think of here. You can buy the books individually, but I think you want to maintain the sense of that spectrum. Plus the tactile handful: reminds me of Grenier’s Sentences.

 

More Past is Proloque

I don’t mean to dwell in the past, but certain timely landmarks occur, or recur, and…

I remembered last night that 10 years before, we were at Boston Children’s Hospital waiting for Erin to have surgery. At some point after he was settled, a nurse informed us that only one parent could remain in the room. I was shuffled to the game room, where a sofa sufficed. The hospital’s heating system blew steam all night long, which sounded like rain in a tropical forest. It was in fact snowy outside. Sleeping thru that, and the day’s events, was hallucinogenic.

Around 4 or 5 am, I was roused because Erin was off to surgery. However long that took, he emerged in cranky confusion from the anesthetic. I recall sitting in Erin’s dark room after, with the tv going, alternately watching Hilary Duff and other Disney Channel hijinx (living to tell the tale), and dozing while he slept.

That night Beth and I watched the fireworks of First Night over Boston Harbour from the hospital window (sorry for the string of prepositional phrases). I was again kicked out, only this time my sleeping arrangement was already in use. I tried dozing in chairs in the hallway, and the floor. Finally, I found an unused gurney. Luckily I was not whisked away.

Erin was given morphine intravenously. At one point he had us laughing as he discovered how to cross his eyes. At another he startled us by declaring, This morphine’s fun. Time to remove the tube.

There was a lot of downtime during our stay. Hospitals = downtime. I periodically ran up and down the ten stories of stairs for exercise. Woo hoo. The lobby held one of those perpetual motion machines with balls timelessly moving along tracks and thru tubes. I added to Days Poem every day. I read Princess Casamassima (say, does that name mean Big House?).

The worst day was when Erin was supposed to go home. An ambulance awaited but the surgeon took a last look at the pins holding Erin’s femur together and decided one was infected. Soupy was the scientific term that he used (aptly). Surgery was called for, and two more pins replaced the infected one. It was a devastating rebuff at the time.

That surgery left Erin with a a hole the width of a quarter in his thigh, right down to the bone. It was initially packed with gauze. One day a doctor on rounds came to examine the wound. Before removing the gauze the said that it might feel a little odd. He pulled seemingly yards of gauze from the wound, all the while Erin screamed in pain. Beth and I had to hold him as he screamed.

That was the second time we had to hold him while he screamed. The first time was when he was transported from Emerson Hospital. Erin’s leg had to be stabilized. The EMTs said it would hurt. Erin said, promise to stop if it hurts too bad, and the EMT said, I cannot promise that. Of course he could not.

These events are unique in the sense that they happened in such a way, in such an order, etc, but life proffers such unities to all. By unities I mean points of integration with others. We become one as we tell our stories. I guess I will resist positing further import than that. It is enough.

Charles Olson at 100

It behooves me to note the 100th anniversary of Charles Olson’s birth today. He has meant much to me as a writer.

I cannot easily say what my debt to Olson consists of. I think thru him I came to understand how our knowledge inhabits our language.

He insisted in his poetry on embracing aspects of the world that poetry had not largely been allowed to embrace. Science, history, philosophy, politics, and philology were intrinsic in his work. I will not declare his primacy in doing this, only that I gained the insight thru his work.

Whereas I was resistant when confronted by the work of other modern and post-modern writers (I dislike those terms, and only use them to mark the generalities of which I speak), Olson’s held an invitation for me. For differing reasons, Stein and Pound were hard nuts for me to crack. Olson baffled me, but I somehow felt comfortable within that confusion. Possibly his localness helped, not that Gloucester is is really my local.

A further plus, Olson left a paper trail that, for me, provided a curriculum. I sought out the writers that he studied. I also found it compelling to follow the work of those who were within his sphere of influence. I am sure that the influence on me shows in my turning from the idea of poems as inviolate pretty things. Instead, I see poems as evidence of active engagement in the human enterprise.

I’ve always been iffy about the term poet. It conjures dilettantism. Olson was a poet of active interest in the world. Writing, to be a fair tool, must partake of such interest.  All writing, I mean: the letters and notes, the advertisements, the reports, the everything we place into written language. I believe I learned that lesson, or was encouraged in that idea, by Charles Olson.

I confound Olson somewhat with my father. They were born 3 months apart (I look with amaze at the centenary to come in March). They were both scions of Massachusetts (Cambridge for my father, not Worcester). I managed to break the fascinated hold of Olson, and look critically. Not to eschew, but to make use of what I learned. Just as I was able to get closer to my father (the engineer!), in his later years. That simultaneous act of drawing to and pulling away by which we learn and grow.

So this note, written sans eloquence, is offered in testament of what I have gained.

Christmas 2010, and Memories

To quote the Beach Boys, “Christmas comes this time each year”. Which I myself have observed, as well. We celebrate the time in our own way.

Beth, Erin,and I focus on a Christmas party. We had a party our second year together, and every year since except last year. Our digs were just too small to accommodate a party, tho we had small groups over.

Last Saturday, then, we had our Christmas party. Beth loves to plan and cook for these affairs. Excellent! Wonderful food, lots of sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, and desserts. Every party has had its drum session. My panoply of drums proves irresistible, and a lot of noise ensues. Children of all ages, when the drums appear.

Ramping to Christmas is our anniversary, on the winter solstice. This year our 10th. That there lunar eclipse occurred on the same day, but hampering clouds locally made it an event I could pass on.

Our first Christmas, 4 days after marriage, there was a partial solar eclipse. Our wedding, I should note, was a home affair. Beth decorated vividly, right up to the last minute, I did the meal (bread, soup, salad, cake). Prior to the ceremony with officiating Unitarian minister, we snuck over to Concord Bridge (Emerson’s rude bridge), and made our personal ceremony. It was a brisk day with snow in the air, but two pigeons joined us. They were in mating mood, with the male puffing out in display and the female performing a revolving dance. Affronts from my family spoiled the ‘real’ ceremony.

Just to add detail, 5 days after Christmas that year, Erin and I were chasing each other with snowballs. A crafty cutback on my part caught Erin off guard. Slipping on the ice as he tried to change direction, he landed hard on his knees. He howled, which I expected. He persisted to howl, which I did not expect.

A 911 call brought lots of help, and a ride to Emerson Hospital. A so-called butterfly break in Erin’s femur necessitated an ambulance trip to Children’s Hospital, Boston. Thru a snowstorm. Some 11 hours after getting injured, Erin had a bed. Around 4:00, last day of the millennium, Erin had 3 steel pins put into his thigh, to hold the bones together. The pins stuck out from the leg. We promised Erin that we would not leave him so we did not. One of the pin sites became infected, which extended his stay to 9days. I could go on.

Anyway, a last minute thing yesterday, we decided to go to the mall to get gifts to exchange. We don’t do gifts particularly. Leastwise, we do not enter the frenetic travail of shopping under the gun.

We stopped first at Barnes & Noble, which was busy. People near the door were ready to leap out and inform you about B&N’s e-reader. I am not against such a marvel, but until I can believe that the available selection will include poetry, and whatever esoterica of my interest, I will wait.

Beth and Erin both had targets at B&N. I just wandered. No, I did not look at the poetry selection, that’s a why bother proposition. Erin and Beth came up empty so we repaired to the mall across the street. Where things seemed listless.

People were buying, unlike recent years (eyeball proof), but not eagerly. This might partly owe to being the 24th. Eddie Bauer was strafed. A customer said to an employee, you mean there are no gloves at all? and the employee shook her head. Keeping inventory tight.

A slipper mongering kiosk, actually a cart, tempted Beth and her need for slippers. The fellow there was uninterested,offered no help.

Oh well.

Beth and I want a Buddha for a shrine we have. Now, where can you buy Buddha? An Asian import store had lots to offer. It was all gimcrack, alas. It didn’t feel good. Teavana, the tea merchant, had one that appealed, but it was too expensive. We decided to hit the food court. The Indian food offered there is as good as the locally available Indian fare. You have to go into Boston/Cambridge for better.

The food court was full, and ringingly noisy. I could watch the televisions placed everywhere, but not hear them. Music videos, with all the phony mannerisms that that implies.

Finally, a visit to Whole Foods, for turkey stuffing. There have been times when it was so busy there that they have people shepherding customers to open registers. AND offering coffee and chocolate truffles to ease the wait. Not so yesterday. Whole Foods had zero eggnog. Gonzo. We watched a young boy, abetted by his father, inoculated a brie sample with this year’s favourite flu. Sigh.

Beyond finally, a quick trip to Market Basket, in the hopes of nog. Market Basket is a low-priced local grocery chain. We do not buy either meat or produce there, it is all clearly low grade. The sparse egg nog selection included cinnamon, vanilla, and Special Holiday Release: sugar cookie. Vanilla was my choice of the three. It tastes like sugar.

We watched 2/3 of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Aragorn is still bitchin’. And so this holiday season, with my small family, and love.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Watched the movie the other night. The trailers were inviting, whenever I saw them (no explosions!). Enjoyed it.

I haven’t read the book but the movie supposedly is based on facts. The idea of the military attempting to find use for New Age psychic powers is both unbelievable and not so. The operation would necessarily be crazy ass. Thus the movie.

The plus of the movie, and a word to movie makers, is the cast. Do not use defined comedic actors in these roles, or certified character actors. Instead, lean towards the old pros and stature types. Let ‘em  rip it up. It is plain fun to watch Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, and Kevin Spacey act wiggy.

Ewan MacGregor is the straight man, the witness, but even he gets a few sly ones in. The other three, they firmly involve themselves in their characters, but you see a twinkle. A blurb on the dvd cover says that this resembles the Coen Brothers at their most outrageous. I would leave the prepositional phrase out, perhaps because no one is being stuffed into a leaf shredder. The movie is goofy, that’s good enough.

 

Bruce Springsteen Sincerely

I have heard Bruce Springsteen’s version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” a bunch of times lately, and am compelled to ruminate on that horrible rendition. I think I may have slipped a clue as to where my rumination might tend by the use of a certain adjective, but so it goes.

The song itself is one of those forgettable cutesy songs that no one can forget. You can deconstruct it into its component rules committees and such, but that’s like looking deeply into the Christmas phenomenon: no thanks. Or at least, take it as written.

Bruce interplays with his band, hahaha loudly: have they been good? Will Clarence get a new sax? Thud, if you ask me. But Showbiz Bruce pushes that for a bit. See, I saw Bruce at the Superbowl, when he was greasily super convincing about playing to the camera and performing all the necessities required by the Super Bowl Thing. It really dismayed me to see him phony up.

With the Christmas song, tho, we see that phonying up is part of the program. When he starts singing, he’s putting his whole Springsteenness into it. Yes, he has a tight band, yes Clarence can throw that same solo in per usual, and yes, Bruce can orchestrate the thing to death.

Robert Grenier hates words? I hate meaning. I hate the registry that enforces Bruce towards the payment system of audience interplay. Cute song of the Christmas season for the 4 hour Springsteen party. Bleah. Bruce means something, something meaningless.

Just last Sunday, at Best Buy, I witnessed some younger generation Vegas minion singing with a big band. That is, one of the super-sized screens of tele-vision showed him performing. Crafted mannerisms and slick foreplay intimating some grandeur that doesn’t exist, I recognize the same stuff in Springsteen. You had to get old, you bumbumhead.

Youngish writers at the Boston Poet Tea Party played to audience. They were the audience. Their sincerity was within a social context of agreeability. Like Bruce, they acted like land masses. Okay, but then poetry is dead within the context of agreeability. We do not agree with words, we watch them in their life. Those who press words, lose words. Bruce put that shouty voice to work singing the song he never thought about. All that sincerity turned only into noise. Bleah.

Post-Twyla by Jack Kimball

Last night—or yestreen, as the poets say—Beth and I left Erin to recover from his chem final (tonight it’s the charms of calc), to have dinner with Jack Kimball. In the course of said repast, Jack handed me a copy of Post-Twyla, version 2. Post-Twyla is the subject of today’s sermon.

I reviewed Twyla lo these four years ago, here. Jesse Crockett did likewise. Excellent setting of scene, I’m sure you’re thinking.

The point here, now, revolves around the effect of my opening Post-Twyla, version 2. Post-Twyla has now been reset. It is now available at Faux Press, so you can see for yourself (and should!). The phrase New and Improved comes to mind.

The text has been re-envisioned. Boldface, greyface (i.e. grey scale font), and varied font sizes pepper the field of text where previously one absorbed visual ordinariness, fonts in passive condish. Anyone can screw around with fonts but I mean to say, when I opened the book, without even reading the words, I comprehended something great and changing. It’s a marvel.

I loved this text from first meeting, in manuscript. As I recount in my earlier review, Jack read much of the ms to Beth and me, and we heard a considerable portion at a public reading. It is a text of humour, speed, voices, changing, sadness, shifts, stark, and joy. It really is a masterpiece. You hear all that in a rollick that creates a will. This is poetry of the Dickensonian sort. I am not even bothering to look for the top of my head.

Jack  notes that Post-Twyla (the hyphen replaces the tilde of the previous version) began as a reaction to Flow Chart by John Ashbery, then it swerved to its own dalliance and condition. 164 pages and 250 sections of the human voice immersed in the words of day and night. Really beautiful.

The way the festival of fonts burrows into the already antic love that these words convey is something to experience. Writing this now is my first attempt to go beyond wow! Jack read some sections aloud, and so did Beth. Okay, I did too, but not as well as them. Everyone read what randomly appeared after a thrum of the pages. Jack said that is how one should read the text, but I already knew that.

Today’s poetry world seems to be stuffed with chapbook calling cards of grabbed together exercises. Post-Twyla stretches beyond that busy hopefulness of success and ambitionized paltry. He launches something that provides sliding context for our words, and how our words await us. This is, I repeat, a masterpiece. Discover this for yourself.

Reviews at Galatea Resurrects

Just to let you know that I have four reviews online at Galatea Resurrects. You should be attending to this site anyway, but my sterling appearance in this issue makes it that much more de riguer, don’t you know. Since it’s all about me, here are links to the specific reviews:

• Anne Gorrick
• Laura Carter
• Stephen Ellis
• Harold Abramowitz

Gorrick is also reviewed by Lynn Behrendts, and interviewed by Tom Beckett. Kudos to Eileen Tabios for instigating this project of engagement.

Granduncles of the Cattletrade by Jeff Harrison

Jeff Harrison has a work available on Scribd called Granduncles of the Cattletrade. I do not imagine that the title brings forth any immediate intimations for the reader. I find it a book of weird and wonder, to which I recommend your intellect, dear Reader.

Jeff and I have collaborated for 5 or 6 years on two email projects (we have never met in person). We have written a lengthy poem together. That project seems inert at this time, but I think neither of us declare it over. The other project has been a dual/duel interview between each other regarding poetry, writing, and whatever strikes our current concerns, Antic View. With some fits and starts, this project continues. I mention our collaborations just to remove any pretense of fair and balanced, a phrase that Fox News has turned into, you know, a curving denial of any such thing. No, I am eagerly pushing Jeff’s work forward.

I am happy to sell Jeff’s work, because it strikes me as original, guided by compelling, and wonderful. I have no answers to explain the strangeness of this work. It does not represent ‘typical Harrison’, at least insofar as it lacks the obvious narrative nexus that his work often shows. I will remark on some of the aspects that I see in this work, as preface for you, still dear Reader, to enter the stream and try to swim its amazing currents.

Jeff uses the listserv Wryting-L to present new work to a small, interested readership, as do I. This gives me no special expertise, but I have therefore seen an extent of what Jeff does.

One aspect to speak of in Jeff’s work is how he rings changes in texts. He forms a process and resiliently relies on and stands by it, to produce his texts. Here is the second section of this work:

orange by forage for spoon in moon has hands
clinquant for spoon in moon has hands by might
spoon in moon has hands by might for bands
moon has hands by might for bands in sight
hands by might for bands in sight has light
might for bands in sight has light by look
bands in sight has light by look for height
sight has light by look for height in book
light by look for height in book has hook
look for height in book has hook by miss
height in book has hook by miss for crook
book has hook by miss for crook in kiss
hook by miss for crook in kiss has hiss
miss for crook in kiss has hiss by way
crook in kiss has hiss by way for this
kiss has hiss by way for this in astray
hiss by way for this in astray has ray
way for this in astray has ray by cast
this in astray has ray by cast for dismay
astray has ray by cast for dismay in mast
ray by cast for dismay in mast has past
cast for dismay in mast has past by gold
dismay in mast has past by gold for last
mast has past by gold for last in told
past by gold for last in told has bold
gold for last in told has bold by snare
last in told has bold by snare for hold
told has bold by snare for hold in pair
bold by snare for hold in pair has glare
snare for hold in pair has glare by dresses
hold in pair has glare by dresses for fair
pair has glare by dresses for fair in tresses...

The repetitions seem to build from some plan, tho I cannot make out what that plan might have been. Of course this makes one think of the pressing repetitions of Gertrude Stein. The effect mesmerizes, if you stay with the text. I have assumed wrongly at times that Jeff has been working with a method such as Jackson Mac Low might use. Jeff does use such methods to produce his texts but, like Mac Low, not all the time.

I’m beginning to believe that the best way to explain Jeff’s text is to quote it entirely. That is, I leave the text to you to figure out. You should do that. Here is section 10, with the admonition that you should follow the link above and work out your own path thru the entire work.

pater castle etc Virginia crow etc pater
pater crow etc Virginia kine etc pater
pater kine etc Virginia minortaur etc pater
pater minertow'r etc Virginia verdict etc pater
pater verdict etc Virginia barnstar etc pater
pater barnstar etc Virginia rose etc pater
pater rose etc Virginia mouse etc pater
pater mouse etc Virginia pitter etc pater
pater pitter etc Virginia penalty etc pater
pater penalty etc Virginia jackal etc pater
pater jackal etc Virginia triangle etc pater
pater triangle etc Virginia mummified etc pater
pater mummified etc Virginia Bontecou etc pater
pater surprise etc Virginia missive etc pater
pater missive etc Virginia arsonist's etc pater
pater arsonist's etc Virginia outlives etc pater
pater outlives etc Virginia shipwrack etc pater
pater shipwrack etc Virginia portrait etc pater
pater portrait etc Virginia adamant etc pater
pater adamant etc Virginia suitors etc pater
pater suitors etc Virginia typhoid etc pater
pater typhoid etc Virginia basil etc pater
pater basil etc Virginia hippolyte etc pater
pater hippolyte etc Virginia 3412 etc pater
pater 3412 etc Virginia rest etc pater / pater...

Eh, minertow'r. Jeff exploits a pattern of syntax, so that the specific words in the variation almost do not matter. The mention of Virginia asserts something familiar for me in Jeff’s writing. Virginia, as person, as place, repeats often in Jeff’s work. Virginia is an imaginative construct, okay. It refers and alludes to something personal and not directly explained. That is, Jeff has his reasons for the usage of the term. The reader, lacking those reasons, understands the strategy differently. Certainly we know of such a place, and reckon of such a person’s name. That, according to Jeff’s poems, is enough. He answers not to specifics, but allows us, as readers, to take what we care to take. We have dictionaries to explain denotations, but we live by connotations.

Pater, of course, means father, but let us not forget Walter Pater. Jeff’s work often shows considerable charge from literature, including English literature, particularly including the poetry of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Pater’s literary purview, with hard, gem-like flame, could be father to the poems here. Could be, is all I say.

Section 13 consists of 20 lines, each with seven words. The seven words are but one word, repeated seven times. The poem then is the repetition of one word 140 times. The word is Virginia. Place that within the context of the other poems in this series.

Section 14 consists of mostly 4-digit numbers, with occasional 5 digit numbers. Seven sets per line, nine lines. Sets repeat. Look for pattern, is all I can suggest (syntax is pattern, is it not?). This brings to mind the counting that Ron Silliman works into his texts.

Section 25 favours punctuation such as dashes, the ‘@’sign, and such, along with some words and letter combinations of what I do not recognize as words. And so on. What does punctuation mean, anyway?

All in all, this is a ride over strange territory, with curious bumps. Granduncles presents a fascinating world to explore, beginning with a title that does not exactly produce an easy tale to relate. I think the reader of this work should allow questions to percolate, and let that be the poetic experience. Need I quote Keats on Negative capability? Keats’ lesson seems implicit in this work.

That may seem a lame way to end this brief look at one of Jeff Harrison’s works but I must close in saying that other works by Jeff look nothing like this one. He institutes experiments so that he may explore. I invite readers to join that exploration.

GARFUNKLE!

Rodney Koenicke takes notice of Dana Ward’s notice of a filmmaker’s notice of Art Garfunkle’s hands in his (Garfunkle’s) pocket, here. The deal is this: said filmmaker edited Simon & Garfunkle’s famous Central Park concert down to only showing Garfunkle with his (like I said, Garfunkle’s) hands in his pocket. What a deliciously odd idea! Ward’s reactions to this are bright and useful, as is, just generally speaking, Koenicke’s to whatever he (Kornicke) sets sights on. In case you did not know.

I am no S&G expert, but can say that Garfunkle’s hands in his (Garfunkle’s) pocket have struck me. He’ so weirdly disengaged, it seems to me. I would love to see this film, because as ‘wonderful’ as S&G might be, they always seemed tepid to me. This reminder of them led me perforce to Wikipedia, where I learned that S&G’s producer, on his own look out, added rock music tracks to “Sounds of Silence”. This shifted the song from ‘pure’ folk to that demon mixture: folk-rock. How tedious the folk version must have been, I can only imagine. And yet, there is a field there, sown and ready to harvest. Which is at least one point to glean from the film and reaction to it.

Thanksgiving with King Tut

We got tickets to see the King Tut exhibit in NYC. With blackout dates and other scheduling matters, Thanksgiving Day was when we could do it. Which sounded a little wait a sec, what with the parade and all, but we soldiered on.

We picked Erin up at UMass Lowell at 4:00 pm, which seems desperately late for setting out on the day before Thanksgiving, but Erin had a class he would not skip out on. Yes, Beth and I were saying, Are you sure you need to go to class? Cooler head prevailed.

Rt 495 was sluggish just about to the Mass Pike, and a call to 511 confirmed that we would probably never reach our destination. Visions of seeing the sun rise as we sit on the George Washington. It could happen!

In sooth, things mellowed out nicely, and we got to Brick (NJ) by 10:30, and that included a stop for dinner. We dined at the Vernon Diner in Vernon Ct, which we enjoyed the last time down to NJ. Liked it this time too, tho a slower experience. It seemed like Friday night.

The sports of tailgating and high-speed weaving were played frequently, worth marveling at. We didn’t get killed too bad. Such sport seemed unaccountable because tho many were on the road, flow remained good.

I guess I did not mench that we stayed with Beth’s mother and aunt. We left for the city around 10:30, I think, having first consulted the oracle of mass transit, the MTA site. Boston used to have an MTA, which I believe Charlie infamously got lost on, but now it is MBTA. Save that nugget for your next cocktail party.

Beth’s aunt did not accompany us but Beth’s mother did. We arrived at the Pt Pleasant train station with a whisker to spare, first paying the interesting machine for the right to park in the lot. We did not have time to get tickets at the station. The conductor was dismayed by this, for some reason. In confidence he told us to buy tickets at Long Branch, where we change trains.

It’s a fascinating ride, Fancyville next to economic despair. The marshland is beautiful, even given the magnitude of industrial abuse. I am reminded of Winter’s Tale  by Mark Helprin. The first time I read it, the evocation of the marshes in a bygone era that never quite existed really drew me in. The second time I read it, the fancifulness seemed forced and overly extravagant. Sigh.

Penn Station gave us a scare because the lines to get train tickets were endless. Yes, we should have gotten round trip but never mind that. The famous parade explained that gathering of irritable humanity. We had our own irritability trying to subway ourselves to Times Square. We did a few unsubstantive laps following assured directional signs. People gave us advice on the matter, which often proved fruitless. Until you get your city legs, you just have to accept being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. Left to my own resources, I would have walked the 10 blocks.

We found our haven easily enough, the Discovery Museum. We were led to believe that the holiday would be a quiet time there, but we shared the experience with numerous others. We bypassed the opportunity to have our pictures taken, then were held at the door for a few minutes. People are sent thru in workable groups.

Audio highlights were included in our package. That meant the sultry voice of Omar Sharif  explained this and that in our ear. I do not actually like saying King Tut, it sounds degraded, but Omar said it, so I guess it’s okay.

A few years ago we went to a Museum of Science show of Egyptian artifacts. That included large pieces. This one included mostly small pieces. Really exquisite stuff, not even considering how old it all was. I think for security reasons, the Star Gate was not exhibited, alas.

The heft of culture impresses one, seeing such an exhibit. Much is ‘understood’ about why this and that, but one still must make an effort to relate. The implacable strangeness hides the commonality implicit in these expressions. A few times I felt like I sullied the sacredness by being in the midst of all this displayed stuff. Partly I did, but then, not. The human answer is to look and wonder.

We returned to Penn Station after the exhibit. Ticket lines were no longer a concern. From here we looked for Tir na Og. Which being a nearby restaurant that we’d been to on a previous NYC visit. This took some hunting. We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner, accented by the couple nearby. Beth surmised that they were a dating service combo. The woman talked loudly about bats and tarantulas and the man looked glazed. Somebody may have wanted a refund.

On the train homeward, four young Japanese women made inquiry of the conductor. He told them that they had overshot their station, Secaucus. He carefully explained that they should get out at the next station, go to the other side of the tracks for inbound, and wait for the next train. As the train left the station we could see them still milling about in confusion.

Black Friday, that great and noble day, we mostly just rested. A large pile of leaves had gathered at the doorway. I used a borrowed blower to move them away. I mention this because gee, what a dumb tool that is. I realize that one needs some technique to use the thing, and I had never held one before. I felt like a rake would more than suffice, and more quietly. Just makes you wonder how much effort one needs to make for one’s convenience. I object to the suburban noise element that seems so necessary. Anyway, beyond that, I found a biography of Confederate general Jubal Early. Later, a walk on Lavallette beach.

The boardwalk there was not in summer prime, and I think summer prime is becoming an anachronism. The boardwalk probably heads for condominiumification. Still, a lot of arcades were open. Seedy, in my eyes, but families came for that sort of fun. No surf to speak of, tho the wind blew firmly and with hearty chill. A few fished near and on the jetty. The homes along the boardwalk are just plain weird. I mean, to be that close to strolling humanity, it would wear on me quickly. Looked like all of them were closed up for the winter.

We left for home betimes, more or less, Saturday morning. A riproarin’ wind felt wintry. Saw a car breezing along with a tree on the roof. The tree was securely tied but who knows if the needles would survive. A quick stop at Cheesequake for gas… except that none was available. Computer system down. The Grover Cleveland rest stop, it is. Okay, an Internet search reveals that Cheesequake comes from a Lenape word for upland.

The George Washington supplied only a modest wait, but always there is the reward of the view, from and of it. Even infamous Rt 84 near Hartford could slow us down only moderately. The Mass Pike stalled us the most, but we got off at 290, to pass thru Worcester. Where, by gum, a tussle of snowflakes occurred. Home to a slightly annoyed cat.