TOM CLARK: They Walked All the Way / Joanne Kyger: September (My desire / that bade me speak in church) / First it was Chittagong then it was Cox's Bazar / John Ashbery 1927-2017: Qualm (Asleep in New Shrine of Patriotism)

Church at Dusk. Superior, Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 12 July 2017

‘Christmas-tree-shaped tents draped around spikes of rush’, Arbriachan, Highlands.: photo by Mark Cocker / The Guardian, 5 September 2017

Joanne Kyger: September

The grasses are light brown

and the ocean comes in

long shimmering lines

under the fleet from last night

which dozes now in the early morning

Here and there horses graze

on somebody’s acreage

Strangely, it was not my desire

that bade me speak in church to be released

but memory of the way it used to be in

careless and exotic play

when characters were promises

then recognitions. The world of transformation

is real and not real but trusting.

Enough of these lessons? I mean

didactic phrases to take you in and out of

love’s mysterious bonds?

Well I myself am not myself

and which power of survival I speak

for is not made of houses.

It is inner luxury, of golden figures

that breathe like mountains do

and whose skin is made dusky by stars.

Joanne Kyger (1934-2017): September, from About Now: Collected Poems, 2007

The owners of these webs hang upside-down beneath their ‘hammocks’.: photo by Mark Cocker / The Guardian, 5 September 2017

California oaks [Santa Barbara County]: photo by Andrew Murr, 4 September 2017

Joanne Kyger: Monday Before The Recall

                               Sun on the hand so deeply spotted
                           Yours for the duration, though

         Little allergy in the inhalation of the moment
         Liturgy of gold crown
                  or is it radio electronico

                     electric hedge trimmers
                       actually the acacia 
                           being clipped

                 In some kind of mantra of Glass 
               which surrounds and penetrates the air

Be deeply reverent as you move towards shore

It's getting pretty loud out here
  What happened between June and September this year
         was way too local to loaf
             just watched the deer change its spots
                and get older,  awww cute!
  Ate all the California poppies too

and if you want to go
                                  Go
                                                    Just Go

Joanne Kyger (1934-2017): Monday Before The Recall, 6 October 2003

Tom Clark / Joanne Kyger: photo via Jacket 2, 2017

from The Book of Love (for Joanne Kyger)

September night. Out of the dark trees jaguars glide to brush past her

nude skin, which emits a glow like the sky's. He approaches her chamber

bearing a fly-whisk and a box of betelnuts. There is a new

arrogance in the dip of her back and the proud curve of her buttocks.

Her over-all air of determined orientalism shows tigerish love while her smart sophistication
reveals the supreme importance attached in her lovemaking to neatness of toilet.

She is playing with him as with a yo-yo -- the boy, suspended from her finger,

jerks nervously up and down in unison with her thoughts.

The ardent character of her brooding is suggested by the brilliant

red of her dress. It is a little after dusk, the full moon rising over rocky cliffs.

A deer symbolising the absent lover advances through the trees.

TC: from The Book of Love (for Joanne Kyger), 1970, in John's Heart (1972)

Seduction [Tangier-Tetouan, Morocco]: photo by Alfredo Oliva Delgado, 28 April 2017

GPS data show #Harveyflood was so large it flexed Earth's crust, pushing #Houston down by ~2 cm! #EarthScience #HurricaneHarvey #txflood: image via Chris Milliner @Geo_GIF, 4 September 2017

Black smoke billows from a chimney on the roof of the #Russian consulate in #SF a day before the occupants must vacate.: image via Justin Sullivan @sullyfoto, 1 September 2017

MLK Ave., Memphis: photo by Andrew Murr, 4 September 2017

Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, March 2017

Trees on the Way to the Grand Canyon's North Rim | by GC_Dean

Trees on the way to the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Northern Arizona.: photo by Dean Terasaki, 12 July 2017

assholes of death universe unite to die and have fun like ritually (auto-da-féerie)

Man dies after running into #fire ceremony at #BurningMan: image via jimmy alto @jimmyalto, 3 September 2017

#BurningMan festival goer runs into flames of the burning effigy. Is incinerated in front of 70,000 horrified revelers.: image via Mike Sington @MikeSington, 3 September 2017

Most incredible week of my life. #Burningman #industweetrust.: image via Jade @missjadelily, 3 September 2017

Sunset Over the San Francisco Bay | by Thomas Hawk

Sunset over the San Francisco Bay: photo by Thomas Hawk, 29 September 2015

First it was Chittagong then it was Cox's Bazar

First it was Chittagong then it was Cox's Bazar.

You've been here for a while but you won't be here for long

Something in the blood, bloodier than blood

And the sometime famous distinguished Beatnik poet
At the reunion of rich survivors

Of anachronistic principle ("hybrid, fuel efficient")

Bemoans the glut of latterday contenders
For once commonly owned pleasures

"I've never seen traffic this bad heading for the coast"

The heavy cloud mass off to the north the holds all the water

Of Earth, rolls south

And to the east

Red stop lights blinking in the silken web of midge canopies

Something in the blood, bloodier than blood

And the once famous Beatnik poet remarks,

"I've never seen traffic this bad heading for the coast"

Picnic Table with Wildfire Smoke, Hat Point, Hell's Canyon, Oregon | by austin granger

Picnic Table with Wildfire Smoke, Hat Point, Hell's Canyon, Oregon: photo by Austin Granger, 30 August 2017

Paradise Valley Hotel and Korral Bar Triptych | by efo

Paradise Valley Hotel and Korral Bar Triptych. Paradise Valley, Nevada.: photo by efo, 31 August 2017

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, July 2017

2017-181. Berkeley, CA.: photo by biosfear, August 2017

Princess [Montreal]: photo by navejo, 28 August 2017

Untitled: photo by Matt Kay, 12 August 2017

Lick My Decals Off, Baby: Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, 1970, album cover: image via Captain Beefheart Radio Station

Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band)

The broom tongue on The Buggy Boogie Woogie evidently has whisk-fringes. The alchemist-shaman-genius-wizard-freak-medicine man is always a fringe figure. Never part of the conventional social structure. In order to listen to the shuttling, whispering ancient language of energy (long faint sighs across the millennia) you have to shut out the gray noise of the market place. Unglue the lids of the nuclei and release the pure white phosphene stuff inside.

“Music” is form. At the higher levels of energy, beyond even the electronic, there is no form. Form is pure energy limiting itself. Form is error. A forest creature approaches the protein vats. He dips his spoon in and slops up prophetic credentials.

The clusters of notes are like pulsing electron grids imbedded with Van Allen Belt movies. I guess it’s metal music. The earth is a core of molten metals, covered by a thin layer of slime (soft, vulnerable organic tissue). Metal is good. It performs its own technical function. Metal has individuality, soul. Plastic copies the form of plant, mineral, metal, flesh, but has no soul. Androids are plasticised citizens who carry themselves like wallet-size replicas of Captain Beefheart robotisation moves. The title track of this album is a plea for lingual relief from plastic decalcomania.

Beefheart’s sonic poles are entomological / archeological. Numb metalloid drones contain scrapings of bone-mealy lemur tongues and cool dinosaur rock modules (Smithsonian Institute Blues or The Big Dig), contrapuntal tarpit anthems to our fanged ancestors (Petrified Forest), plus generally atonal insect-agony amid high-class Bug Music even invaded by those broom tongues I mentioned earlier (The Buggy Boogie Woogie). All this sounds best listened to over Sennheiser headphones. The earpieces are foam rubber not plastic and that’s important for picking up all ambient muzaks here, for instance the kitchen zinc smelt reference 1:34 into Japan in a Dishpan.

The only person I know who buys records wouldn’t buy this one (I got my copy free). But that’s OK. Captain Beefheart is probably more famous on Venus than Stan Kenton ever was, already.

Lick My Decals Off, Baby (Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band): TC, from Rolling Stone, 1970, reprinted in John's Heart, 1972

Untitled [Nagano, Japan]: photo by benson, 1 September 2017

Untitled | by ✞bens▲n

Untitled [Nagano, Japan]: photo by benson, 1 September 2017

I told you. Bigger! Bigger!: image via Sam Kim @samkimasia, 5 September 2017

Being a nuclear-armed dictator is such a lonely job. So I roll out the ICBM to warm the night and keep me company.: image via Sam Kim @samkimasia, 5 September 2017

For all the cool people saying that Koreans aren't worried about NK, you might consider the results of polling my poli sci students today.: image via Steven Ward @StevenWard, 5 September 2017

Foreign selloff of South Korean shares accelerates as North Korean nuclear tension deepens: image via Sam Kim @samkimasia, 5 September 2017

North Korea has taken an ICBM out of its missile factory and is moving it west by night, South Korean daily reports: image via Sam Kim @samkimasia, 5 September 2017

When the pink lady goes black, you know something's definitely gone wrong in North Korea: image via Sam Kim @samkimasia, 5 September 2017

This show of collective leadership is likely just a show. Anyone who would say no to Kim Jong Un is dead or missing.: image via Sam Kim @samkiminasia, 3 September 2017

They Walked All the Way

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who had crossed the border into Bangladesh on Friday, after days of walking to escape violence in their villages.: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 1 September 2017

Nobel laureates warn Aung San Suu Kyi over 'ethnic cleansing' of #Rohingya #RohingyaGenocide: image via Amjad Hossain Rumon @ahrumonbd, 4 September 2017

Rohingya refugees walk through rice fields after crossing into Bangladesh at Khanjorpara village, south of Cox’s Bazar, on Friday.: photo by Bernat Armangue/AP, 1 September 2017

Recently arrived Rohingya refugees resting in a mosque in the Kutupalong camp, Bangladesh: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

Recently arrived Rohingya refugees resting in a mosque in the Kutupalong camp, Bangladesh: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

A Rohingya refugee cries upon arriving at a makeshift refugee camp called Kutupalang in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in August.: photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters via The Washngton Post, 2 September 2017

A

Rohingya refugee cries upon arriving at a makeshift refugee camp called Kutupalang in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in August.: photo by Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters via The Washngton Post, 2 September 2017

Two Rohingya children carry their belongings in Teknak, Bangladesh, on Thursday. Three boats carrying ethnic Rohingya fleeing violence in Myanmar capsized Wednesday, killing at least 42.: photo by Suvra Kanti Das/AP, 31 August 2017

The exodus of civilians from Myanmar into Bangladesh over the past week had reached 76,000 on Saturday, according to the United Nations.: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

The exodus of civilians from Myanmar into Bangladesh over the past week had reached 76,000 on Saturday, according to the United Nations.: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

Rohingya refugees in the overflowing Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh, on Saturday.: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

A Rohingya refugee praying in a cemetery at the Kutupalong camp.: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

A Rohingya refugee praying in a cemetery at the Kutupalong camp.: photo by Adam Dean / The New York Times, 2 September 2017

Yesterday the photo took from teknaf. Condition not good. Need food huge tent for #Rohingya #Refugees #RefugeesChief @JamilaHanan @KofiAnnan: image via Md. sadik khan @Mdsadikkhan, 4 September 2017

I can not look at the child's eyes! What crime is this foolish child? He does not know his identity, #Rohingya: image via Ella Angelta @EllaAngelta, 29 August 2017

Why whole world is silent on massacre of #Rohingya Muslims. Embarrassing silence from whole world. #Burma #StopRohingyaKilling: image via Aisha Syed @AishaSyedJIW, 30 August 2017

Humanity Is Dead But Humans Are Alive. #Myanmar military violence against #Rohingya muslims. #PrayForRohingya: image via Parisa Rezael @ParRezael, 31 August 2017

As world celebrates Eid Al Adha #RohingyaMuslims are scarifying their sons, daughters, fathers and family. #RohingyaGenocide #Rohingya: image via Muhammad Latif @latifkehar, 2 September 2017

#Bangladesh border guards have been helping #Rohingya refugees into vehicles to reach safer places. @FortifyRights: image via @FortifyRights @FortifyRights, 3 September 2017

This was until recently a #Rohingya Muslim village. Now it's just charred destruction. 700 buildings burned. Myanmar.: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 3 September 2017

1M #Rohingya at risk of genocide, as army carries out ethnic cleansing. When victims are Muslim, silence of world leaders is deafening.: image via Rula Jebreal @rulajebreal, 3 September 2017

Over 1m #Rohingya are at risk of genocide according to holocaust memorial museum; if this man was muslim the whole world would know him.: image via Adnan @AdnanSadiq01, 2 September 2017

#Rohingya refugees fleeing attacks in #Myanmar pour into #Bangladesh. The line is miles long.: image via Matthew Smith @matthewfsmith, 3 September 2017

Exhausted #Rohingya children fleeing from #Myanmar. 12 days walk for this family. #genocide #ethniccleansing #conflict #murder #bangladesh: image via Shafiur Rahman @shafiur, 3 September 2017

Local hero: this Bangladeshi man spent his day helping exhausted #Rohingya refugees carry their belongings from the Naf River to safety.: image via Matthew Smith @matthewfsmith, 3 September 2017

My statement on the #Rohingya crisis in Myanmar: image via Malala @Malala, 3 September 2017

Shores in the lower reaches of the Caladan River, Rakhine State, Myanmar. | by syaolyao cska

Shores in the lower reaches of the Caladan River, Rakhine State, Myanmar: photo by syaolyao cska, 5 January 2017

Coast. Rakhine. Myanmar. | by syaolyao cska

Coast, Rakhine, Myanmar: photo by syaolyao cska, 5 January 2017

Mother and Child [Dhaka]: photo by aninda kabir [aviik], 24 May 2017

Keep moving whatever the situation! | by ashik mahmud 1847

Keep moving whatever the situation! Manikgonj, Bangladesh.: photo by Ashik Mahmud, 20 January 2017

Homecoming (Sarajevo, 2016) | by Alfredo Oliva Delgado

Homecoming (Sarajevo, 2016): photo by Alfredo Oliva Delgado, 27 December 2015

Night on Earth (Sevilla, 2017) | by Alfredo Oliva Delgado

Night on Earth (Sevilla, 2017): photo by Alfredo Oliva Delgado, 28 March 2017

Downstairs [Tangier, Morocco]: photo by Alfredo Oliva Delgado, 28 April 2017

Childhood.. Opportunities are not the same in every side. In spite of realizing that we complain..: photo by Achuyat Saha Joy, 2 January 2017

Bashbariya Beach [Bangladesh]: photo by Rubayet Tanim, 11 August 2017

IMG_9435 {Shitakundo, Bangladesh]: photo by Rubayet Tanim, 11 August 2017

IMG_9423 {Chittagong, Bangladesh]: photo by Rubayet Tanim, 11 August 2017

Moinot Ghat, Padma River, Bangladesh: photo by Rubayet Tanim, 11 July 2017

Kamalapur Railway Station, Dhaka, Bangladesh: photo by Rubayet Tanim, 31 August 2017

Kyeintali | @Kaing Daw, Gwin Village, Kyeintali, Rakhine, Myanmar: photo by Myo Zin Ooo, 28 August 2016

Thunderstorm. [St. Gilgen, Salzburg, Austria]: photo by Christoph Hetzmann, 26 August 2016

John Ashbery 1927-2017: Qualm (Asleep in New Shrine of Patriotism)

Home of Warren G. Harding | by toddwendy

The home of former President Warren G. Harding in Marion, Ohio: photo by Todd Petrie, 21 March 2011

Qualm

Warren G. Harding invented the word “normalcy,”
And the less-known “bloviate,” meaning, one imagines,
To spout, to spew aimless verbiage. He never wanted to be president.
The “Ohio Gang” made him. He died in the Palace

Hotel in San Francisco, coming back from Alaska,
As his wife was reading to him, about him,
From The Saturday Evening Post. Poor Warren. He wasn’t a bad egg,
Just weak. He loved women and Ohio.

This protected summer of high, white clouds, a new golf star
Flashes like confetti across the intoxicating early part
Of summer, almost to the end of August. The crowd is hysterical:
Fickle as always, they follow him almost to the edge

Of the inferno. But the fall is, deliciously, only his.
They shall communicate this and that and compute
Fixed names like “doorstep in the wind.” The agony is permanent
Rather than eternal. He’d have noticed it. Poor Warren.

John Ashbery (1927-2017): Qualm, from The New York Review of Books, 19 February 1981

Actress Elsie Janis of Marion, Ohio: photographer unknown, before 1915, from The Theatre, v. 21-22 (1915); image via Julien Felsenbaugh, 18 August 2017

Untitled [Mermaid]: photo by Miroslav Tichy, n.d., via The Online Photographer, 15 August 2008

A curious visitor inspects the mysterious moving marble sphere atop the Merchant family grave marker. Marion Cemetery, Marion, Ohio.: photo by Postdlf, 12 July 2011

Palace theatre, Marion, Ohio | by M Floyd

Palace theatre. Marion, Ohio.: photo by Mark, 23 February 2011

Barn, Marion Ohio.: photo by gardener41, 5 November 2004

Marion, Ohio.: photo by OZ in OH, 15 August 2009

Beautiful Beaches of Marion Ohio | by Keith M Avery

Beautiful Beaches of Marion Ohio: photo by Keith Avery, 25 April 2009

San Francisco - SoMa: Palace Hotel San Francisco - The Pied Piper of Hamlin | by wallyg

San Francisco - SoMa: Palace Hotel San Francisco - The Pied Piper of Hamlin. The Pied Piper of Hamlin, a 6-foot by 16-foot mural in the Pied Piper bar of the Palace Hotel, was painted by Maxfield Parrish in 1909. Commissioned by Frederick Sharon for six thousand dollars, the Palace hotel places the value of the piece, as of 2009, at $2.5 million. The Palace Hotel, at 2 New Montgomery Street, re-opened on December 15, 1909, completely rebuilt after the devastation of the 1906 Earthquake. The original Palace Hotel, originally built in 1875 by architect John P. Gaynor as envisioned by William Chapman Ralston and William Sharon, was reputedly the largest, most luxurious and costly hotel in the world. While the hotel survived the quake structurally, it was decimated in the ensuing fire that swept most of downtown. Frederick W. Sharon, son of the original owners, brought George W. Kelham in to design the new caravansary. It took three years of rebuilding under the supervision of New York firm, Trowbridge and Livingston. Over the years the Palace Hotel gained prominence among the traveling elite. Presidents Harrison, McKinley, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Clinton all spent time here. President Warren G. Harding died in office while visiting the Palace Hotel in 1923. Famed tenor Enrico Caruso was a guest at the hotel on April 18, 1906 when the earthquake hit. John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Oscar Wilde were guests, and actress Sarah Bernhard caused a stir when she arrived with her pet baby tiger. Kala-kaua, the last reigning king of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, died at the old Palace Hotel in 1891. Leaving its mark on the 20th Century, the hotel hosted President Woodrow Wilson in support of the Versailles Treaty and in 1945, catered the banquet honoring the opening session of the United Nations.: photo by Wally Gobetz, 6 September 2009

Where President Warren G. Harding sleeps in New Shrine of Patriotism, Marion Cemetery LCCN2007663481 | by Fæ

Where President Warren G. Harding sleeps in New Shrine of Patriotism, Marion Cemetery [Ohio]: photographer unknown, American Photographic Co. August 31, 1923; image by Ashley Van Haeften, 14 February 2015 (Panoramic Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)

John Ashbery: The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers

"In a far recess of summer / Monks are playing soccer." Monks Playing Soccer, Xiahe, China: photo by Kitetraveller, 6 October 2006

.......He was spoilt from childhood
.......by the future, which he mastered
.......rather early and apparently
.......without great difficulty.
.......BORIS PASTERNAK

...............I

Darkness falls like a wet sponge
And Dick gives Genevieve a swift punch
In the pajamas. “Aroint thee, witch.”
Her tongue from previous ecstasy
Releases thoughts like little hats.

“He clap’d me first during the eclipse.
Afterwards I noted his manner
Much altered. But he sending
At that time certain handsome jewels
I durst not seem to take offence.”

In a far recess of summer
Monks are playing soccer.

"Her tongue from previous ecstasy / Releases thoughts like little hats." Tiny hat: photo by Jon Seidman, 26 November 2009

...............II

So far is goodness a mere memory
Or naming of recent scenes of badness
That even these lives, children,
You may pass through to be blessed,
So fair does each invent his virtue.

And coming from a white world, music
Will sparkle at the lips of many who are
Beloved. Then these, as dirty handmaidens
To some transparent witch, will dream
Of a white hero’s subtle wooing,
And time shall force a gift on each.

That beggar to whom you gave no cent
Striped the night with his strange descant.

"My head among the blazing phlox..." Phlox borealis: photo by Ghislain118 (AD), 16 January 2009

................III

Yet I cannot escape the picture
Of my small self in that bank of flowers:
My head among the blazing phlox
Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus.
I had a hard stare, accepting

Everything, taking nothing,
As though the rolled-up future might stink
As loud as stood the sick moment
The shutter clicked. Though I was wrong,
Still, as the loveliest feelings

Must soon find words, and these, yes,
Displace them, so I am not wrong
In calling this comic version of myself
The true one. For as change is horror,
Virtue is really stubbornness

And only in the light of lost words
Can we imagine our rewards.

John Ashbery (1927-2017): The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers, from Some Trees (1956)

File:Field mushroom at Staunton on Wye - geograph.org.uk - 604849.jpg

"...Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus". The common edible field mushroom (Agaricus campestris) in a meadow to the north of Staunton on Wye: photo by Philip Halling, 3 November 2007

Ashes

Most illuminating conversation w/ JA, American Embassy, London, Autumn 1964:

TC: [Extended picaresque narrative recounting recent exciting travel adventures North Africa blah blah blah.]

JA: Big deal.

Most interesting JA axiom: I only write poems when I need the money.

Significant influences: Tennis Court Oath --> The Sonnets.

Biggest shock re. JA: Learning he'd called Stones the best first book of poems by an American since Harmonium. First thought (me): "the thrill of a child's first dead hand". [Q. Tennis Court Oath].

Elation only moderately qualified by later discovery of myriad similarly hyper-magnanimous say-anything JA "critical" assessments.

Well, kindnesses, then. A kind man.

And now he is gone. Den altar icon to a billion ambitious politely tweeping random-professariat XXI Century dronebots.

JA faves all time, The Picture of Little JA in a Prospect of Flowers [looking back to the Little JA of the XVII Century, A. Marvell]; At North Farm.

Top Hin [LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 5 September 2017

John Ashbery: At North Farm

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/La_terre_rouge.png

La terre rouge: photo by Guy Néchois, 2007

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,

Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

At North Farm: John Ashbery (1934-2017): At North Farm, from A Wave (1984)

Wheat farm, Walla Walla, Washington: photo by Russell Lee, July 1941 (Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Wheat farm, Walla Walla, Washington: photo by Russell Lee, July 1941 (Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Wheat farm, Walla Walla, Washington: photo by Russell Lee, July 1941 (Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing. Since we have always shared all things with them and have always had a part of their strength and, certainly, all of their knowledge, we shared likewise this experience of annihilation. It was their annihilation, not ours, and yet it left us feeling that in a measure we, too, had been annihilated. It left us feeling dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had taken on a look of hardness and emptiness. What was most extraordinary is that they left no mementoes behind, no thrones, no mystic rings, no texts either of the soil or of the soul. It was as if they had never inhabited the earth. There was no crying out for their return. They were not forgotten because they had been a part of the glory of the earth. At the same time, no man ever muttered a petition in his heart for the restoration of those unreal shapes. There was always in every man the increasingly human self, which instead of remaining the observer, the non-participant, the delinquent, became constantly more and more all there was or so it seemed; and whether it was so or merely seemed so still left it for him to resolve life and the world in his own terms.

Wallace Stevens (1888-1955): from Two or Three Ideas, a lecture on Baudelaire's La Vie Anterieure, given at Mt. Holyoke College, April 28, 1951 (in Collected Poetry and Prose, 1997)

Farming near Klingerstown, Pennsylvania: photo by Scott Bauer, 2005 (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)

5 comments:

kent5 September 2017 at 15:06
TC,

Very hard to reflect on the passing of JA. I still feel he's the greatest of our age. But know too I've been to Marion many times, my late great friend and my high school Methodist youth group leader, living down the block from WH memorial house that we would piss on the bushes after nights of "bonded bourbon" -- with you and your reputation living in "Psychedelic Peyton Place" -- and hoping the danger would go away. It hasn't. It won't. I don't think Justin Verlander will make up for Houston's pain. Where's Ted Berrigen when we need him? k
tpw5 September 2017 at 17:32
Thanks for this one, Tom. Especially the Ashbery poems (and remembered dialogue) and your poem to Joanne Kyger.
TC6 September 2017 at 02:39
Kent and Terry,

Thanks very much.

Kent, double dittos re JA & Marion.

Ah, those awful Ohio memories! Akron! Toledo! Elyria! Deliria!

In University Heights, Ohio I once had a dorm-mate who regaled the long locked-in Ohio winter nights with fond tales of his career as a dogcatcher in Batavia, NY. Often did handstands on back of chair while narrating. Highlight, every time: exhilirating evenings of "pissing off the Peace Bridge".

(I think this may be what is meant by the phrase "white nights"... melting into "yellow nights"??)

Bottom-most on Ohio memory list, humongous car crash on turnpike somewhere near Bowling Green (site of legendary Battle That Never Was except in "minds" of Drumfies... or maybe just Kelley-Anne Cuntway?).

Ah... harum-scarum ambulance ride to forlorn Ohio emergency room... my second Ohio emergency room, by that thrilling point... highlight of adventure, ending up in same motel with Frankie Valli & Four Seasons (though they would never know.)

But it is fairly certain Ohio and/or WGH meant next to nothing to Ashes. After all, how could they? (Poem doubtless emanates from cited interesting axiom.)

JA, great enjoyer of Proust, claimed to have been deeply instructed early-on by MP, not so much in arts of memory as arts of understanding human conduct -- by the end, everybody has betrayed everybody, as he pointed out. Very disillusioning knowledge for young person, sd he.

All credit to our predecessors in po, who actually got through all way to end of Proust!! No wonder they were so nutty!

Terry, remembered dialogue is 100% verbatim, as conveniently brief. (Difficult to convey the beauty of one of the the most crushing sarcastic smirks e'er smirk'd by worldclass sarcastic smirker.)

And there they went, in two little words, up in smoke, all my precious exotic whiteboy Berber hangout recollections!

If only one were able now to vanish from ancient crumbly whitemind with equal alacrity that picture of the face of the fraudulent "humanitarian" b-queen of myanmar, chief hypocrite of the bhud-pod regime that is doing the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people -- who were born there, grew up there, lived always in abject poverty there, and are being exterminated there now. The Jews of Asia, but w/o the convenient Israel arrangements. Nobody's kicking out the inhabitants of any other place, to make way for the Rohingyas. They have only the kindness and humanity of the already overwhelmed Bangladeshis. Like the Dreamers, they have nowhere else to go.

Jeff Sessions taking notes.
John Burger6 September 2017 at 17:13
Thanks.

thanks.
TC6 September 2017 at 23:40
My pleasure.

Tuesday, 5 September 2017

They Walked All the Way / Joanne Kyger: September (My desire / that bade me speak in church) / First it was Chittagong then it was Cox's Bazar / John Ashbery 1927-2017: Qualm (Asleep in New Shrine of Patriotism)

Joanne Kyger: Monday Before The Recall

5 comments: