Whitmen

Hello Whitmanians (and anti-Whitmanians?)  let's see how far Walt's influence extends. Maybe we'll find surprising connections along the way. We know that Emerson greeted him as he would the sun. Ginsberg gave him a (bit?) role in one of our poems for the week. He's even said to be Bram Stoker's model for Count Dracula.

There must be many others. Gerard Manley Hopkins, for one: "I always knew in my heart Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any man's living. As he is a very great scoundrel, this is not a pleasant confession."

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Hope you'll add to this collection, and maybe re-read some WW lines along the way.

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Thanks very much. Read this before but had long forgotten about it, which is good because it seems so fresh now after rounds of ModPo. Entranced with "pig-headed father" for some reason, having in it the image of a son leaving farm roots to make a name for himself ("carving") in the city. That done, he's making "commerce"—something which promises reunion but maintains distance.

The "pig-headed" part recalls lines from Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"—

It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;  
I am he who knew what it was to be evil;  
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,  
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,  
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,  
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant;  
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,

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Here's a bit more of the letters themselves. Apparently there's been some poetry and fiction using this material.

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Hi, and thanks for this question. I've done some reading (but it seems "some reading" won't ever be enough to cover even an aspect of a poet like Pound), and so far, I believe that the "condensed" parts of Pound's writing, his involvement with imagism (as opposed to later vorticism, his epic poetry, the Cantos) was influenced by Asian forms. For example, much has been said about the haiku-like quality (as well as wild innovation) of poems such as his "In a Station of the Metro". I haven't read him acknowledging ED.

For now, I'm following some dates. Imagism was being created at around 1911-1912. Pound would produce essays regarding its principles 1913. The anthology Des Imagistes (perhaps the more proper coming out of Imagism as a collective / collected effort) would see light as a standalone by 1914.

What was the ED available at this time? ED's first collection would have been available since 1890, 20 years prior to Pound's essays on imagism. However, let's note that the only ED available back then were heavily edited: "The two editors made changes to the poems, regularizing punctuation, adding occasional titles, and sometimes altering words to improve rhyme or sense." It seems ED would only truly "dazzle"— assuming the form we see her poems now, her fascicles treated as final intent rather than drafts—in the 1955 collection.

1955 would see Pound detained in a psychiatric hospital after charges of treason during the war, some 17 years remaining in his life. ED was available to him, but if he owed her anything he was not as loud about it as he was with the Whitman "parentage".

Will be scouring the annotations to the Pisan Cantos next week and will be sure to return here if I find any ED-EP connection.

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I don't feel the antagonism myself. But I think it's possible to encounter these two and see them warring inside you. I think it's in the way a reader or writer absorbs the two. You could devote yourself fully to one, perhaps becoming critical of other paths (ex: Whitman's too wild or Dickinson's too solipsistic, etc) or you could nurture both in your use of literature, which is in keeping also with some things we found in both (Whitman's open to contradicting himself, Dickinson's keen on swerving from the groove).

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Yes "apparition" is such a tricky part of this. I'm sure others would argue how essential it is to the lines, but it also pushed me to think about the imagist call for the "exact word" especially if the phenomenon is itself inexact, too fleeting that it seems an "exact word" would somehow violate it. The haiku seems to me not only a form but also a state of mind. Do you think Pound's lines amounted to a failed attempt at a (new?) haiku?

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Eel soup! Found Dharker's tantalizing poem, and it engages (interrogates?) this age old quest for Flaubert's le mot juste.

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Agreed. It moves along with the moment, all that anxiety, perhaps alarm, maybe also a sense of promise, and she's shuffling with words, finding one that fits, one that will ultimately decide her next course of action: flee or fight or receive.

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(Digression, sorry, but I love how cutting it as a usual haiku makes "petals" sound like a verb.)

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"I think there was a better poem to be written." You may be right. It seems to me that if EP was to make a choice between poem+prose and poem-as-is, he'd take the longer version. He'll discard imagism for vorticism, his hokku yileding to (or absorbed into) the Cantos.

Anyway, it's important to add that even the root of the haiku tradition includes a haiku-prose variety called the haibun by Matsuo Bashō.

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Apparition becomes a sort of fleeting appearance if we remove the supernatural. Should we remove though?

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Joy. I'm taking that for you the poem was breathing fresh air into the transit scene?

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How two lines could overflow as sound, image, meaning.

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I'll direct you to a list like this if I see one. Or please, if you make one, tell me and I'll subscribe immediately. I'm afraid I'm only familiar with the Dickinsonians in the syllabus: Armantrout, Niedecker, Corman. I'm sure others will come up for me if I "read outwards" but it seems that when I'm dealing with Dickinson and her heirs, my tendency is to look deeply into their work rather than pick up on things and links that throw me off the groove (very un-ED of me, now that I think of it).

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His soil rich under both Pound's Cantos and Neruda's Canto General.

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From this Twain letter: "You shall see marvels upon marvels added to these whose nativity you have witnessed; & conspicuous above them you shall see their formidable Result — Man at almost his full stature at last! — & still growing, visibly growing while you look." 

How very difficult it is for me (and it seems, for Ginsberg) to share this optimism. Still, how very infectious and "true" the way they sound it.

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Seems "father and son" had different Americas. I wonder about the relation though: could Ginsberg's America be the betrayal of its predecessor's hopes? or, could Whitman's America be the cause of the next America's despair? Did Ginsberg omit this discussion? Did he submerge it in the river Lethe?

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He's projecting his loneliness then, seeing a national malaise?

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Following you above, I think Ginsberg's conjuring WW as Dante did Virgil, making a guide out of his idol but at the same time making sure that the idol's less capable than he is (Virgil could not go beyond to Paradise because his limits lay in reason, neither baptized nor equipped to receive grace, whereas WW was out of touch, maybe out of kilter in a newer, less invigorated America).

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And how very different the ground of Ginsberg and that of Whitman. Ginsberg's shoes on a tiled floor, the produce and the cattle etc sorted or packed for easy, thoughtless consumption. Thanks.

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What do you think Ginsberg was trying to achieve by asking a forgetful (though not forgotten) graybeard?

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Not overboard, no! I think this is all about that brand of bizarre. That's as direct a link as a poet would claim of another. And it's in keeping with the conceit of "Song of Myself": what I assume, you shall assume. And here's Ginsberg assuming Whitman, soul and all.

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Would Whitman have loved such a boom as you described? I imagine Sandburg at home with with smoke and steel. But I wonder about Whitman, the limits of his inclusiveness, his idea of democracy.

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Ginsberg apparently carries a less affirmative view of the banks compared to Whitman. Where WW found life, industry, and democracy, Ginsberg saw death, alienation, and democracy. The death too of WW, therefore: as man and a savage set of poetics.

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"in the parking lot, waiting for you." That's a killer, and there were about two couplets there, one I loved:

              self. That common moment, unguarded,  
              skin to skin, why didn’t it make us change?  

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Same goes for me. Thanks for the Reines. Clicked your links and, yes! You're right. If there's only a way to subscribe to your exclamation points, I'd click that as well.

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Another acknowledged Whitmanian is Muriel Rukeyser. Fond of how she takes poetry to dark places. This leads to a sample

       :  Take my hand.          Fist my mind in your hand.          What are you now?

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Just discovered she's in ModPoPlus! Have also (just) begun compiling my postModPo destinations. ModPoPlus, the teaching forum, Rukeyser, and Reines are all in the bag.

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Happy when this happens to me. It means I'm still alive and connected, and that I (yet) have freedom to change my mind, legroom for exploration.

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From Mark Strand:

“Through you I shall be born again; myself again and again; myself without others; myself with a tomb; myself beyond death. I imagine you taking my name; I imagine you saying 'myself myself' again and again. And suddenly there will be no blue sky or sun or shape of anything without that simple utterance.”

Who deserves his place in this thread too if we believe Gregerson calling him one of Whitman's “most astute heirs and readers.” Farewell, Mark Strand. 

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Notes on Rae Armantrout’s “The Way”

Card in pew pocket
announces,
“I am here.”

I made only one statement
because of a bad winter.

Grease is the word; grease
is the way

I am feeling.
Real life emergencies or

flubbing behind the scenes.

As a child,
I was abandoned

in a story
made of trees.

Here’s the small
gasp

of this clearing
come “upon” “again”

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A— don't think so. fact is, my reading's prospered now that you brought it up

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D— I made only one statement / because of a bad winter. I remember a point being made before that this statement might be a financial statement of sorts. Bad winter suggests an extremity. One statement could also be refer back to "I'm here" or to this poem which, although perhaps one statement (The Way), is clearly composed of several utterances, places, periods of time, and frames of reference.

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D— A "bank statement," maybe? But maybe the statement here is the aforementioned "I am here." This person has nothing to offer but herself, the winter having perhaps taken everything else away.

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D —I like how you phrased this question. Most readings usually automatically assume that a trail of pebbles ought to lead somewhere, that a thread decides the value of a maze. What if there's a trail but no destiny? A possibility, since the trail alluded to is composed of bread crumbs, the way therefore described (and created) by something both impermanent and important.

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D— Putting it that way, it seems to me now that the vision of "The Way" parallels Paris Spleen.

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D— These notes are precious! Thanks for relaying, sharing. I like your personal touch, your reflection on the process, how even the act of bringing it to us here could be riddled by mis- or missed readings, additions, over-reading. (Considering now if losing the way is, itself, the way.)

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A— "gasp" truly

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D—
ascending the stories
a tree at a time
clearing the
throat for your gasp

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A— happened to me. sounded beautiful and very true to the reader's (and her father's) life, so I said that I want my poem to mean what she meant, and that I'm grateful she had it mean that way

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A— take every poet's explanation of her poem as a performance, an annotative performance. give it some privilege, but not sole authority (even other readings by the self-same poet can be seen as another performance, like being in the theater for the same play but on another night). other readers could "perform" it, in fact every reading, even interior, undisclosed readings are already performances of the poem in the mind, an inescapable process of co-creation. like this one in particular's likable because armantrout explains her poem with little apparent restraint, supplying the sources, offering some interpretation, but never closing the circle. not every poet is capable of that. in her discussion of "I am here," it seems to me that she's also a meticulously selective reader of texts around her. wonder if this process somehow contributes to her generosity

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D— Life is what happens when you are busy making other fun. Go all out!

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D—
or as in Bergv
all, half-Way's
all the Way yo
u'll ever need

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D— Reading "VIA" and "The Way" through you as quests of sorts. And that greasy inferno sounds like a wonderfully slippery slope, not sure if Virgil's got enough virtue to drag Dante away from that eternal spectacle.

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D— Bergvall made a sort of Limbo with "VIA," keeping Dante from fully entering Inferno (but also from fulfilling his maybe self-ordained destiny) through the loop of (the conceit of?) his own translated words. Burn!

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D— Could this also apply to this story made of trees? I hope you see it as a good thing, this openness of the poem.

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A— false perhaps in that sense as you described, but also as a trail that disrupts the "flow" of language or reasoning

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A— we can only wish. as do the kids. but perhaps there's only (greasy) adolescence

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D— That threw me off. How it's framed here, it appears so. Story made of trees, the pulp of trees as paper, or through the hidden word "leaves" or out of identification with Hansel and Gretel. But the aspiration or destination that the story carries (or with which it resonates, that the story also is, how can that be worldly? At most it's (infected with) a hope to be something other than the world. So we go at it again and again, as mantras and chants (maybe Wiccan spells) promise to carry us elsewhere or inward.

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D—To end up in a place of worship after expecting a place of candy canes and chocolate sprinkles.

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D—
"as soon as" yes
but not one moment before

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A— WORD

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D— Thanks for this exhilarating view of your involvement. I am (for some reason) picturing you as that guy in the courtroom sketching the scene while the judge and the lawyers close read the evidence for the rest of us. Most interesting presence.

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On Dante's Inferno and Bergvall's "VIA"

Read or listen to Caroline Bergvall's "VIA (48 Dante Variations)"


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DE— But to be now the pop culture cultist (remember SpongeBob!), Bergvall reminds me of a scene in Nightmare on Elm St where the kids in the car wish to escape but find out through landmarks (statues, so forth, but in Bergvall, the words, the woods) that they're going on and on in circles. What's a lovely part of this scene is when a kid suggests that they refer to a road map. Clever kid, so one pulls out a road map and he/she unfolds it and it unfolds some more and there's no end to unfolding it, soon it swamps the passenger seat, threatening the driver's view. It's another Sisyphus thing, like Bergvall condemned the Dante persona to Hell even before he enters Limbo.

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DE— It could be cyclical too, perhaps? Like we find/create a groove (settling in with a person or an ideology or an aesthetic, finding yourself in religion, or in the faithful exercise of civic or filial duties) only to find yourself on the road again, the splinter of the brain tearing past the old comfort zone only to create new ones later.  In a larger view though, that's where you might find your "self" in VIA, in endless transition, staying and going, going to stay, staying to go, one liminal encounter after another, but always bound within the pages of your book. The more things change . . .

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DE— I remember your work on the timing thread, and I think this fits! Dante also tried to figure himself here as in the midpoint of his life-span and at the mid-point of the cosmic life-span (if I remember correctly, which I doubt, his journey was taken halfway between creation and apocalypse or something).

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AN— also: humans are always by definition works in progress. always crossing bridges, climbing up ladders, all fields attest to the human drive to escape its own bounds. whose grasp exceeds whose reach

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DE— I love this delicate fan notion of yours. What a lovely way of putting it but, yes, that's how it seems to me now, after you've said it this way. I thought at first that this image clashes with my own reading, one that hinges (perhaps loosely) around the idea of counsel in Dante. In this opening to the cantos, Dante had yet to find Virgil, his guide, and so it seems to me through Bergvall now how multiple and wasteful his steps are, how shadowy and treacherous (as translations so famously are) indeed these woods. Translations betray, we've so been often told, and translators make poor advisers, and it is of great significance to me that the main sin in Dante's Inferno is False Witness, the crime that makes a Satan of Lucifer, that feeds Brutus and Cassius and Judas (the most vile of counselors in his book) eternally into and out of the three mouths of this Satan

AN— this "fan" of translations could be damning us, if we read it now, again, through (whatever we believe of) dante

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AN— i believe so too. but i've been toying around with the idea that VIA could likewise be a display of the super-adequacy of language, how something so remote and distant can be brought at the threshold of our thoughts in so many ways, perhaps always missing dante's idea, but also never losing sight of its shadowy shape, across the seven centuries

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DE— I'm looking forward to the time comes when I can jog again, because I will seriously put Bergvall's audio on loop.

AN— bergvall's also among my great finds. i know most people want to see old favorites, but me, if they've got more armantrouts and perelmans, baums and bergvalls up their sleeves, I'd really really love to read them!

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AN— thank you for this thread, and for the many worthy, engaging readings already found here.

DE— My own pet intertext would be Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote," a fiction written in a shape of a review where the reviewer lists the accomplishments of this man of letters, Menard, up until he writes his opus, Don Quixote, which he doesn't translate but rewrites line per line by thoroughly immersing himself in the novel and in the life of Cervantes. There's an idea here which I will represent without the power of a Bergvall or Calvino or Borges: that sometimes, when we read, what we're doing is writing the novel or epic again in our mind. So that even something we're reading in the language of our birth is actually being translated by us right into our own psychologies, over our own situations, dreads and desires, which are almost never akin to the stirrings of the "originary" writer.

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AN— in this school of poemfish, about to disperse

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AN— gosh, indeed! these are the kinds of threads I wish to read. bergvall's sense of being in the same place and being all over the place is brilliant. borges, who was mentioned above, would have enjoyed VIA immensely, and I would not be surprised if he'd go so far as to envy it

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AN— another thing i've thought to bring to this thread was something from kung fu tze: "“It's better to read one book a hundred times, than a hundred books one time." deftly rewritten by bruce lee: "I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once. but I fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times." fear bergvall, indeed!

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AN— haunting. yes, that fits. that's the word i'm looking for. that's how it has been for me listening to this, reading it, then reciting it myself

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DE— This pilgrim of a poem leads me back to Dante Alighieri's Comedy, to his desire there for guidance, not only from Virgil, but also from Marsyas and Apollo, from Beatrice herself. He was himself acting as a guide, showing his poetry as a reliable compass of the cosmos. Almost every other critter and demon and character likewise try to instruct Dante (often within the limitations of their damnation), for example his old mentor attends him, as does Ulysses. As it happens, some of these guides are proven false. Here comes Bergvall. She cuts Dante off at the first stanza. He can't get to any of the guides, his first step shown to be multiple, endless, like the line in Eleatic paradoxes where any given point cannot be defined and therefore cannot be traversed (and thus the idea that we are moving at all is an illusion, and in this first step, Dante has taken 700 years and still his foot has yet to fall). Maybe Bergvall undermines Dante by short-circuiting him, reciting him back to himself (an Echo upon a Narcissus), sealing him within his first stanza before he could summon any guide, before he could himself "counsel" any reader. In this sense perhaps, VIA is a critique of Dante and other poets or philosophers (or poetic systems) with such clear and solid ideas of how life must be led, how thought ought be formed and expressed.

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DE— Maybe among those cute guys is a Dante in search of Beatrice? Haha, and scholars, indeed should be able to laugh together. Dante generates lots of differences, heated arguments, scholastic cold shoulders, and it's amazing how Bergvall could put a word in without putting any of her own words in! Shared laughter, of the non-ridicule, non-sarcastic variety, should be very welcome.

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DE— I think VIA could handle both and many other readings, could be a critique when viewed from one aspect, homage in another, and definitely as metapoetry. The woods, yes, (like the story-trees of Armantrout's own VIA) a horrible or delightful place to get lost in, or find the self. Bergvall was remarkably silent here, and I think this silence enables us to look at VIA every which way. Even her arrangement was a surrender of her poetic ego: she alphabetized! Maybe she's counterpoising her circularity to Dante's quest, her surrender of ego to his embrace of ego. Maybe it's like Dickinson's Sicily poem. You may proceed up that mountain Dante, the first (half-)step is enough of a cosmos, "infinity in a grain of sand," says Blake, "eternity in an hour." VIA could be seen as condemning us readers and translators to hell (or "saying" it was Dante who condemned us there) of reading and re-reading without coming any closer to seeing the Beatific Face. Perhaps VIA also condemns poets (Dante and others like him) who dwell in their configurations exactly because these would not exist apart from their craft, or belief. Or maybe it's a tribute to Dante's 700 years, and at heart, VIA celebrates the inherent capacity of poets/ poetry to survive, to reproduce and remain.

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DE— Thank you. Despite the "darkling woods," and the "damning" repetition, I still would like to believe the celebratory aspect of this Bergvall piece. As has been mentioned before, the poet also "finds himself" in the process.

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AN— i did not know eliot had those lines, but yes they are very fitting for VIA. i like how this poem brings us to the multiple, protean quality of language

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DE— Yes. I believe that losing your bearings, while almost never a pleasant experience, can be counted on to expand our horizons—though your third sentence here is more eloquent on this point. I love this lesson on "re-viewing," revisiting, on dwelling again and again (via VIA). If this has taught me anything, it's how to enjoy getting lost in poetry, losing yourself in multiple possibilities, in a renewed sense of vastness.

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DE— Thank you. It was a perfect convergence of material and technique, in my view. That's possibly why this "darkling wood" has become so fertile for questions and ideas.

And by no man, these verses

                         cAnto

                              Pound

                                      archive hOme newsletters my

                         Up

                                        & amp; Ndash; login poetry

                 calleD

                 (versiOn

                              Flash

                             Free

"transparent"); so.addparam("aLlowscriptaccess",

                            "Ezra

                                 Sorry

               copyrigHt

I generated this mesostomatic by using an online program on Pound's Canto XLIX, or, more specifically, a particular webpage that displays the poem along with a bibliographical note on Ezra Pound.

What was my involvement? I inputted the choice of poem, which webpage to use. Aside from this seed text, I also thought of what spine to put in, and after many tries, I came upon a possible (perhaps petty) application of Shakespeare upon Ezra's name (A Pound of Flesh). The computer generated ten possibilities (and though I was aware that you could mix and match the generated lines to come up with permutations, I saw that one of the ten was the best for me and immediately extracted it).

I decided to cut the four parts ("A" "POUND" "OF" "FLESH") into couplets ("A" "PO" "UN" "DO" "FF" "LE" "SH"). While playing around with the program, I wanted to use Pound not only out of (an unrequited) love for his Pisan Cantos, but because Pound was himself a heavy "borrower," credited (Wikily) for opening up "American poetry to diverse influences, including the traditional poetries of China and Japan." I chose this particular canto because I read those "traditional poetries" in here, and also because it was one of the few cantos available online. (That's convenient! Convenient too that XLIX leads with a telling line "For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses" which echoes this project).

I picked this particular mesostomatic product from among the other results because of the "meta," almost every couplet reflecting (like seven lakes) the project of mesostics and mesostomatics. Let's look at this per line to see how that works out.

The article "A" became "cAnto" which was just fitting, almost a title, very much an assertion of the poem as an identity (as Pound's own cantos likewise asserted their structure against Dante's). "Pound" then becomes byline, but also the unit of measure, and most happily a verb acting upon "archive hOme newsletters my". And what pleasure too that this O homed in on "hOme," for this was where the action was (along with "archive" and "newsletters"), where I was doing my work, and it was also a driving question in deliberating Pound as a biography: which, in the end, was home to him? Italy or the States? Or must we resort to a formula, the true man "of letters" resides nowhere else, nowhere outside "his verses".

However: "my"? Strictly speaking, these words ("hOme," archive," and "newsletters"), do not belong to Pound (if any word could be said to "belong" to him), nor to myself, despite all my choosing. If anything, they belong to the website, to the usual language of links and headings. Thus, we've multiplied possibilities for appreciating these serendipitous intersections.

The next couplet furthers this insight. In my mind, "Up/ & amp;Ndash" follow "Pound" as verb, but this velocity could also be taken as reflective upon the reader, the computer, and the "writer".

Originally, I intended "calleD// (versiOn" as a couplet for symmetric and metapoetic reasons. However, the copy-paste process somehow wouldn't allow them to stick together no matter what program I used (Word, Notepad, Rich Text, this text field). I decided they're better off that way: separate. I charged it too to the roll of the dice, and even in this casting, I found myself lucky: for "calleD" thus abstracted from "versiOn" somehow gravitates toward "poetry," especially "login poetry" and has for me the sense of the word calling as an oracular or gospel notion (many are called, few are chosen) that resonate, again with the project. "Flash/ Free" that's how this whole thing feels, not only the luck of the draw, but also this writing about the luck of the draw (using the luck of the draw).

I hear the spine word "FLESH" out of "Flash," which is a plus because this Shakespearean transgression is the "spinal" metaphor anyway: Pound's "Flesh" on the scales, along with ours, and the poetries involved, and chance itself.

More machinespeak in "transparent"); so.addparam("aLlowscriptaccess"," yes, but also the ideas of transparency (the poem/s, the lakes, this essay vis-a-vis Pound's obscurities and conceits), along with the parameters (of this project, of Pound's, Dante's as well, perhaps Shakespeare's) making clear through "aLlowscriptaccess" the dream and aleatory processes that inform all literature, and how some literature (such as this and Cage's, MacLow's) seek to emphasize how such unreadable things come into play in all human compositions.

"Ezra// Sorry/ copyrigHt" sealed the deal for me. When I saw the computer apologizing, I said hey, this is "my" poem! I hope you find it "yours" as well.

Ginsberg Thread

Read the poem, or listen to Allen Ginsberg read "In a Supermarket in California"

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AN—  thanks for finding that out

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AN—  yes, i think that does evoke the underworld. esp those aeneid and odyssey scenes where the heroes bribe the dead to come rise briefly from the mouth of hades by digging a pit under a tree and filling it with the blood and innards of slain animals

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AN—  seems that (to ginsberg) whitman had the better end of the deal, and the better generation. it seems a touch cruel of ginsberg (instead of slaying the father) to import whitman to his time/hell and let him take on a diminished role with diminished faculties while he (ginsberg) retains more of the acuity and less (if none!) of the lethe

DE—   An interesting take. Whitman teaches straying from him after all. Anyone who wishes to undertake that must somehow psychically and of course aesthetically "reduce" the father/forebear. Otherwise, no transcendence/straying shall occur. Ginsberg has to imagine his courage-teacher as in some way less capable of facing this present with its supermarkets and commercialism and dwindling (shelved) selves.

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DE—  I found Dante here as well. I'm interested in where Ginsberg (Dante) wants his Whitman (Virgil) to take him. Dream-like, hallucinatory, or in keeping with the underworldly Inferno, the supermarket almost immediately takes the form of antiquity's hell the moment Ginsberg thinks of the outside.

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DE— That kind of makes this more of a hell—the fact that the Virgil here is also lost, a Whitman forgotten (Lethe) and forgetful. Dante could always count on Virgil, guide, protector, and translator. Ginsberg wants this Whitman to become a true Virgil, but it seems he has been rendered sterile thus displaced in the supermarket.

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AN— in dante's comedy, the great poets and philosophers of antiquity can't pass beyond limbo to purgatory because of their paganism and their loyalty to reason. reason (and a secular ethics that come with it) somehow saves them from hell, but it also too limiting to allow them paradise (or the purgatory that leads to paradise). following this, these two are somehow saved (or cursed), having no destiny (which way is your beard pointing?) other than to know now, to perceive now, but to forget later (lethe). just a tentative take. i'll have to read those limbo passages at some point to be sure

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DE— You sound like a poet yourself. But it's true, when your insides are reeling and you're lost in a crowd or a place of routines, the place takes on the shades of inferno and the routines suggest the cyclic punishments of hell.

AN— yes, i like this intertext! making whitman a teiresias does produce sound associations. teiresias who was not always in full control of his senses, who was sometimes male, sometimes female! he is definitely (if sometimes only momentarily) a courage-teacher to heroes like ulysses. also aeneas, i think :)

DE— Me too. Yes, Aeneas was also directed to seek counsel and help from Tiresias. It was said "that Tiresias, of all mortals, was permitted to keep a clear head about mortal matters" here. I'd like to read more into that because Whitman as Tiresias does not seem to have a clear head at all. But his questions about the murder of prokchops and other things seem to come from a special, underworldly insight into human affairs.

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AN— clarification: ginsberg's insanity, right?

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AN— to charon? (not to whitman?) because of the tendency toward the Lethe?

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