Okt 4, 2019

Self-naming and the third line of Notley’s “Poem”

St. Mark’s Place caught at night in hot summer,
Lonely from the beginning of time until now.
Tompkins Square Park would be midnight green but only hot.
I look through the screens from my 3rd floor apartment
As if I could see something.
Or as if the bricks and concrete were enough themselves
To be seen and found beautiful.
And who will know the desolation of St. Mark’s Place
With Alice Notley’s name forgotten and
This night never having been?

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Poets.org

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Not as distant as Guadalajara nor as threatening as Vesuvius. Not noisy like the former nor certain like the latter.

As urgent as? As focused as? 

The Ghazal-type signature pines, and I return a moment to Corman. Differences truly between Corman and Notley, but I can’t place these as surely as I can a distinction between two of my children forced to a morning goodbye.

Okt 3, 2019

On “jobs” in an Eigner poem

Headlights
                      in the  sky

                tail spot
                         on a cloud

                   there are
                           invisible beams

     somebodies'  jobs

                steady   wherever

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Al Filreis shared this with his ModPo students. The caption read “Larry Eigner wrote this poem in late April 1972 in Swampscott, Mass.”

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No need of the sources to partake of the wonder. As in the myth of Lamed Wufniks, maybe apprehension of a whole endangers its multiplicity. What if the poem is neither “we only have this much”? Where getting (or even getting to) any more (from “somebodies” “wherever”) dims everything.