Sunday, July 4, 2010

James Longenbach

James Longenbach
Warren Wilson MFA program
Swannanoa, NC
07/03/10

begins by reading Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”
then the first 85 lines of Pisan Canto #74 (the first)

Pound is about excess
  • dismisses generalities without particulars
  • writes from the wind’s view in periplum (as seen from a boat)
  • paradise exists in fragments
  • anti-hierarchical world view
  • meticulously rendered particulars 

#74 is 842 lines long
#75 is 9 lines followed by monophonic bird song

Pound’s discomfort with parameters of lyric
his anxiety of imagination to own it all, to refuse the values order enforces

poems want to exceed the restraints without which they could not exist

the Pisan Cantos’s excess is driven by Pound’s wish not to die (in a cage)

what matters most in the Pisan Cantos is tone

the reader looks for patterns amidst the cacophony Pound creates
is gratified when the poem repeats itself, when tone repeats itself
  • elegaic
  • colloquial
  • haranguing
  • reverent

a structural pattern that repeats

the poem is organized by the interweaving of the tones
by its unrelenting particularity & disjunctions

a mind desperate to compose itself out of nothing
the illusion of human interiority

the poem idealizes the “stagger” of the poem
the metaphor: the knowledge that he will be silenced, yet he must be heard

Keats’s “this living hand”: the wish to exceed the boundaries of human

Pound’s irremedially roiling texture gives way here & there to pure lyricism

Pound found “pull down” from Speare’s Pocket Book of Verse
the book found in the “jo-house” (latrine)
a volume issued to every American soldier in WWII

green casque = nature
lyric song becomes a swollen magpie

the Pisan Cantos more rigorous in procedures than in meaning or conclusions

Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is also a reprieve from finitude & death
the nightingale eludes & embodies at the same time
the language so tonally rich overwhelms equivocation
lyric vs sense
inadequacy of its own conclusions
any answer is incapable of solving or being enough for the equivocation

Keats: “poetry should surprise by a fine (limited) excess (limited-less)

words on the page are the linguistic medium
to exceed is to cease to exist, to meticulously make

Dickinson: “enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs    only pathetic counterfeits”

poems are not content with their own finitude
they ask us to change

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Richard Sieburth

For a fine write-up on the Pisan Cantos, click on Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to read Richard Sieburth's introduction.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

LXXXIV

8th October:
                        If all the grief and tears

                                                            he is dead
all worth, all good

                                                            he is dead

“an’ doan you think he chop an’ change all the time
stubborn az a mule, sah, stubborn as a MULE,
got th’ eastern idea about money”
                                                Thus Senator

“am sure I don’t know what a man like you
            would find to do here”
                                                said Senator

Thus the solons, in Washington,
on the executive, and on the country, a.d. 1939

ye spotted lambe
                        that is both blacke and white
is yeven to us for the eyes’ delight

and now Richardson, Roy Richardson,
                        says he is different
will I mention his name?

and Demattia is checking out.
                        White, Fazzio, Bedell, blessed
Sarnone, two Washingtons (dark) J and M
            Bassier, Starcher, H. Crowder and
no soldier he although his name is Slaughter

this day October the whateverth

                                    bonds and their
                                                            interest
apparently as a basis of issue
and Mr Sinc Lewis has not
                        and Bartók has left us

We will be about as popular as Mr John Adams
and less widely perused
and the he leopard lay on his back playing with straw
in sheer boredom
                        (Memoirs of the Roman zoo)
                                                            in sheer boredom
Incense to Apollo
                                    Carrara
                                                snow on the marble
snow-white
                        against stone-white
on the mountain
and as who passed the gorges between sheer cliffs
as it might be by,

                        where one walks into Spain

                                                                        music
            as it might be at the Peach-blossom Fountain
where are smooth lawns with the clear stream
between them, silver, dividing,

                                    destroyed the whole town
for hiding a woman, fearful Aphrodite

                                    the desert rat said
“when we came out we had
                        80 thousand dollars’ worth”
                                                (“of experience”)
that was from mining
            having spent their capital on equipment
but not cal’lated the time for return
and my old great aunt did likewise
with that too large hotel
but at least she saw damn all Europe
            and rode on that mule in Tangiers
                        and in general had a run for her money

                                    “perhaps more than was in it”

            Under white clouds sky of Pisa
out of all this beauty something must come,

O moon my pin-up,
                                    chronometer

                        these three men full of humaneness (manhood)
                                                or humanity

and as to gradations
who went out of industrials into Government
            when the slump was in the offing
as against whom, prepense, got OUT

in 1938
so as not to be nourished by blood-bath?

when you come to the top of the stairs
                                                            usage   gradations
These are distinctions in clarity

intelligence            these are distinctions

John Adams, the Brothers Adams
                        there is our norm of spirit

our            balance

                        whereto we may pay our
                                                                        homage
                                    Saith Micah:
                                                            Each in the name of . . .
So that looking at the sputtering tank of nicotine and
                        stale whiskey
                                                (on its way out)
Kumrad Bear remarked:
                                    I will believe the American.
                                                                        Berlin 1945
the last appearance of Winston P.M. in that connection
                        and then I asked the sister
of the little swine shepherdess:
and these Americans?
                        do they behave well?
and she: hardly.
                        Hardly, hardly.
and I: worse than Germans?
                        and she: the same, thru the barbed wire
                                                you can, said Stef (Lincoln Steffens)
do nothing with revolutionaries
            until they are at the end of their tether

If the hoar frost grip thy tent
Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

LXXXIII

water
WATER and Peace

                                    stemmed all from Neptune
                        hence the

                                                            bas reliefs
Sd Mr Yeats (W. B.) “Nothing affects these people
                                    Except our conversation”
for light
                        is an attribute of fire    and,
wrote the priest in his edition of Scotus:
Cheerfulness    the virtue cheerfulness

the queen stitched King Carolus’ shirts or whatever

                                                greek tags in his excellent verses
                        in fact an excellent poet, Paris
                                    always Pari’
                                                            (Charles the Bald)

                        and you might find a bit of enamel
                        a bit of true blue enamel
                                    on a metal pyx or whatever
            all, that is, light is, or whatever

so they dug up his bones
                        (Simon)

                                    Paradise is not artificial
and Uncle William dawdling around Notre Dame
in search of whatever
                                                paused to admire the symbol
with Notre Dame standing inside it

mermaids, that carving,

            in the drenched tent there is quiet
                                                sered eyes are at rest

            the rain beat as with colour of feldspar
            blue as the flying fish

peace, water                                                WATER
                        the sage
delighteth in water
            the humane man has amity with the hills

as the grass grows by the weirs
                                    thought Uncle William    grieving
as the grass on the roof of St What’s his name
            near “Dog and Cat”
                        is to be your love
it would be about a-level the windows
                        the grass would, or I dare say above that
                        when they bless the wax for the horserace

Formerly

                                    with Maria’s face there in the fresco
                        painted two centuries sooner,
                        at least that
before she wore it

in that family group of about 1820
            not wholly Hardy’s material

                                    or everything flows

as he was standing below the altars
                        of the spirits of rain
            “When every hollow is full
                        it moves forward”
            to the phantom mountain above the cloud
But in the caged panther’s eyes:

                                    “Nothing. Nothing that you can do . . .”

green pool, under green of the jungle,
caged: “Nothing, nothing that you can do.”

Tree nymph, your eyes are like clouds

Nor can who has passed a month in the death cells
            believe in capital punishment
No man who has passed a month in the death cells
            believes in cages for beasts

Tree nymph, your eyes are like the clouds
            When some of the rain has fallen
            and half remains yet to fall

The roots go down to the river’s edge
            and the hidden city moves upward
                        white ivory under the bark

With clouds

                        when the blackberry ripens
and now the new moon

one must count by the dawn star
            Tree Nymph, thy peace is like water
There is September sun on the pools

More things diaphanous
                        the Sun’s daughters lift the mist from the young willows
there is no base seen

                        but the brightness of water            water
the poplar tips float in brightness
only the stockade posts stand

And now the ants seem to stagger
                                    as the dawn sun has trapped their shadows,
this breath wholly covers the mountains
                        it shines and divides
it nourishes by its rectitude
does no injury
overstanding the earth it fills the nine fields
                                                to heaven

Boon companion to equity
            it joins with the process
                        lacking it, there is inanition

When the equities are gathered together
as birds alighting
it springeth up vital

If deeds be not ensheaved and garnered in the heart
there is inanition

            (have I perchance a debt to a man)

that he eat of the barley corn
and move with the seed’s breath

the sun as a golden eye
                        between dark cloud and the mountain

“Don’t fight” said Jane
                        meaning, as before stated, don’t work so hard
don’t
                        not
                        help
                        grow

Old John raced at seventy after his glories
                        and came in long last
and the family eyes stayed the same Adriatic
                        for three generations

and was, I suppose, last month

Will I ever see Venice again?
            or the lights

or the two towers where are the cypress no more
                        or the boats moored off

or the north quai

                                                                        OF TEARS            WEEPING

            and Brother Wasp is building a very neat house
            of four rooms, one shaped like a squat indian bottle
            The wasp, the wasp, mud, swallow system
so that dreaming

                                    cat that with a well timed leap
            could turn the level-shaped door handle
It comes over me that Mr. Walls must be a ten-strike
with the young women
and in the warmth after chill sunrise
an infant, green as new grass
has stuck its head or tip
out of Mrs. Wasp’s bottle

mint springs up again
                        in spite of Jones’ rodents
as had the clover by the gorilla cage
            with a four-leaf

When the mind swings by a grass-blade
            an ant’s forefoot shall save you
the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower

            The infant has descended,
            from mud on the tent roof to Earth,
like to like colour he goes amid grass-blades
            greeting them that dwell under EARTH            EARTH
THOSE OF EARTH;            to carry our news
                        THOSE OF EARTH            to them that dwell under the earth,
begotten of air, that shall sing in the bower
            of Persephone,                                    Persephone
and have speech with Tiresias, of Thebes

                        Christ the King, God the Sun

in about 1/2 a day she has made her adobe
(the wasp) the tiny mud-flask

            and that day I wrote no further

There is fatigue deep as the grave.

                        grows in flat land out of mist
            sun rises lop-sided over the mountain
                        so that I recalled the noise in the chimney
as it were the wind in the chimney
                        but was in reality Uncle William
downstairs composing
that had made a great Peeeeacock
            in the proide ov his oiye
            had made a great peeeeeeecock in the . . .
made a great peacock
                        in the proide of his oyyee

proide ov his oy-ee
as indeed he had, and perdurable

a great peacock more enduring than bronze
            or as in the advice to the young man to
breed and get married (or not)
                                    as you choose to regard it

at Stone Cottage in Sussex by the waste moor
(or whatever) and the holly bush
            who would not eat ham for dinner
because peasants eat ham for dinner
            despite the excellent quality
and the pleasure of having it hot

well those days are gone forever
                        and the traveling rug with the coon-skin tabs
and his hearing nearly all Wordsworth
                        for the sake of his conscience but
preferring
                        Witches

did we ever get to the end of Doughty:
                        The Dawn in Britain?
                                                            perhaps not
            Summons withdrawn, sir.)
(bein’ aliens in prohibited area)
clouds lift their small mountains
                        before the elder hills

A fat moon rises lop-sided over the mountain
The eyes, this time my world,
            But pass and look from mine
                        between my lids
                                    sea, sky, and pool
                                    alternate
                                    pool, sky, sea,

morning moon against sunrise
like a bit of the best antient greek coinage

                        and

The women
say to me
you are old,

And that a twentieth-century Madonna

cd/ be as a fifteenth-century Madonna
This I learned in the Tyrol
                        and as perfect
where they paint the houses outside with figures
and the deep inner courts run back triple

            “That’s called Walter Square”
            heard in Bozen (Bolzano)
and in my mother’s time it was respectable,
it was social, apparently,
                                                to sit in the Senate gallery
or even in that of the House
            to hear the fire-works of the senators
(and possibly representatives)
as was still done in Westminster in my time
and a very poor show from the once I saw it)

but if Senator

                        cd/ speak
and have his tropes stay in the memory 40 years, 60 years?
in short / the descent
has not been of advantage either
            to the Senate or to “society”
                                                or to the people
            The States have passed thru a
                                    dam’d supercilious era
Down, Derry-down /
                        Oh let an old man rest.

LXXXII

When with his hunting dog I see a cloud
            “Good morning, Sir” yells the black boy
                                                                        from the jo-cart

(Jeffers, Lovell and Harley
                        also Mr Walls who has lent me a razor
                        Persha, Nadasky and Harbell)

Swinburne my only miss
and I didn’t know he’d been to see Landor
                                                and they told me this that an’ tother

            But given what I know now I’d have
            got thru it somehow . . .

                                                            shade
                                                or a blackjack.
When the french fishermen hauled him out he
recited ’em
                        might have been Aeschylus

in the original

“like a dog . . . and a good job
                                    MY HUSBAND . . . HAND
                                                            by this right hand
                                                            dead by this hand

and “our brother Shelley

                                    manuscript with the
greek moulds in the margin

the “marble men” shall pass into nothingness,
Three birds on the wire

and as to who wd/ pay for the composition
if same were not used

            After all”

                                                “it is only the same old story

                                    Her Ladyship arose in the night
and moved all the furniture
                        (that is her Ladyship YX)
her Ladyship Z disliked dining alone and
            The proud shall not lie by the proud
                        amid dim green lighted with candles

                                    red head for a glory
Mr Masefield murmuring: Death
            and Old Neptune meaning something unseizable
            in a discussion of Flaubert

                                    the medium
baffling the society for metaphysical research
                        and the idea that CONversation . . . . .
                        should not utterly wither
even I can remember
            at 18 Woburn Buildings

                                                                        to Yeats,
“If you would read us one of your own choice
                        and
                                    perfect
                                                lyrics”
and more’s the pity that Dickens died twice
with the disappearance

            and for all that old Ford’s conversation was better,
consisting in objects not words,
                        despite William’s anecdotes, in that Fordie
            never dented an idea for a phrase’s sake

and had more humanity                        humaneness

            (Aphrodite            Aphrodite)

                                    in one bark convey’d
Be glad poor beaste, love follows after thee
Till the cricket hops
                                    but does not chirrp in the drill field
                        8th day of September
                           f    f
                                    d
                                                g
                                                  write the birds in their treble scale

                        there are no righteous wars in “The Spring and Au-
                                                                                                tumn”
that is, perfectly right on one side or the other
total right on either side of the battle line
                        and the news is a long time moving
            a long time in arriving
                                                thru the impenetrable
crystalline, indestructible
                        ignorance of locality
The news was quicker in Troy’s time
a match

                                                a glow worm on Lesbos,
            Till forty years since,

“Fvy! in Tdaenmarck efen dh’ beasantz gnow him,”
                        meaning Whitman, exotic, still suspect
            four miles from Camden
                        “O troubled reflection
                        “O Throat, O throbbing heart”
            How drawn, O EARTH EARTH,
                        what draws as thou drawest
                                    till one sink into thee by an arm’s width
            embracing thee. Drawest,
                                    truly thou drawest.
            Wisdom lies next thee,
                        simply, past metaphor.
Where I lie let the thyme rise
                                                and basil
                                    let the herbs rise in April abundant

wind: man to my house
lie into earth to the breast bone, to the left shoulder
                        Kipling suspected it
            to the height of ten inches or over
man, earth : two halves of the tally
but I will come out of this knowing no one
neither they me
                                                marriage of earth            she said my husband
                                                                                    EARTH-BORN, mystery
fluid OF EARTH o’erflowed me
            lay in the fluid OF EARTH;
                                                that lie
under the air’s solidity
            drunk with ICHOR of EARTH
                                    fluid OF EARTH, strong as the undertow
                        of the wave receding
but that a man should live in that further terror, and live
            the loneliness of death came upon me
                        (at 3 P. M., for an instant)                                    of tears
                                                                                    thereupon
three solemn half notes
                                    their white downy chests black-rimmed
on the middle wire
                                                periplum