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JH: In "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue", the first line of each couplet is the title of a Eugène Sue novel. In the second line of each couplet, the first word in quotation marks is followed by a sequence of words from the first instance of speech in a Pierre Corneille play, and the second word in quotation marks is followed by one word from the second instance of speech in that Corneille play, as is the semicolon. Capitalization in the play's lines, except for proper nouns, is reduced to lower-case, and punctuation marks found in the play have been removed. The chronology of word order in a "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue" couplet is the same as that of the Corneille play - the word following the semicolon doesn't precede the word following the final quotation mark.

Each word in quotation marks is from another couplet's second line. A word after a line's final quotation mark is quoted at the beginning of another line. The second quoted word is from the phrase between another line's quoted words.

couplet one partakes of couplet seven and four.
couplet two partakes of couplet five.
couplet three partakes of couplet six.
couplet seven partakes of couplet four and one.

schema of the above:

couplet 1. couplets seven, four
2. five
3. six
4. one, seven
5. two
6. three
7. four, one


I garnered words from Theatre choisi de Corneille (Editions Garnier Frères, 1961):

couplets
1. Horace
2. Suréna
3. Rodogune
4. Nicomède
5. Le Menteur
6. La Mort de Pompée
7. L'Illusion comique

No word outside of quotation marks is used twice, nor does a line share a word with a title. The pair of words after a line's final quotation mark mirror the instance of words in quotation marks. So far, I've written two other poems in this series, "The Jean Racine of Georges Simenon" and "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne". The selection of words for these poems are invisible: the Verne, Simenon, and Sue titles that were not chosen are invisible, and all Hugo, Racine, and Corneille titles are invisible; the words in the Hugo, Racine, and Corneille plays that were not selected for inclusion are invisible. The selection of words within these poems are visible: the words not placed in quotation marks are visible.

I intend to write more poems in this series, which is part of a larger series containing poems like "The Ducks of Cotton Mather" (see Antic View #84) and "The Edward Gibbon of Phillis Wheatley" (see Antic View #103). This series allows for development. For example,

Otoliths.

"The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne" mimics "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue". Five of the couplets in both poems share words:

Couplet one. "séduite" is quoted in both. "encor" appears and is not quoted in "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne", and is quoted in "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue".

Couplet two. "jaloux" is quoted in the same position in both.

Couplet three. "vainqueur" appears and is not quoted in "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne", and is quoted in "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue". In both poems, "Memphis" appears and is not quoted (in "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne", it is before the semicolon; in "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue", it is after the semicolon).

Couplet five. "jaloux" is in the same position in both. "madame" is quoted at the beginning of this couplet's second line in "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue", and appears (capitalized, as it is in the source edition of Hugo's "Angelo, Tyran De Padoue", where "Madame" is the last word of a sentence; in the Corneille source edition "Suréna", "madame" is not capitalized) and is not quoted at the end of this couplet's second line in "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne".

Couplet six. "vainqueur" is quoted in "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne", and appears and is not quoted in "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue".

(The source edition for the second line of "The Victor Hugo of Jules Verne" couplets is the 1964 Pléiade edition of Victor Hugo's complete plays.

couplets
1. Hernani
2. Lucrèce Borgia
3. Irtamène
4. Ruy Blas
5. Angelo, Tyran De Padoue
6. Amy Robert
7. Marie Tudor)

One need not know the language to read the poems in this series (which it has in common with many of the poems in my series GRANDUNCLES OF THE CATTLETRADE - see examples in Otoliths issues four and five). Readers could approach these poems like the Zukofskys approached Catullus, and the form would remain the same. In these poems, can the dictionary definition of the words be anything more than coincidental with the form, such as, in "The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue", "encor", "murs", "plus", "séduite", etc.? What do the coincidental (with the form) meanings of these words do to the meanings of the other words? Do the quoted words bring their phrases with them? Do they bring their Corneille plays with them? Speaking of the Zukofskys, you mentioned one of them in your superb poem

"Unpwned Momentum on Worcester", posted to the Wryting-L list:

accept these jet skies. remain unpwned but
surround a topic with servile pleas, for instants.
the dam seeps sanely. a whiff of common
ground seems like poem. no one relies
on Louis Zukofsky except
when the dread of melting seems
most dire. we relate in penned
moments, and come again. this sex
that stills the waters also ignites them.
those waters, sour when the rain is old,
charges us supremely.
we wr ite of daffy fiends, nuclear almonds,
cousinly trapdoors, and more than
enough. enough is a surcharge yet
when we exceed, primroses, pure as
water. water went the way, into the
breath of Worcester. we write
poems as staggering targets, gullies
for freshets, lapsed pining in the daily
reward program. such reefs and poems
that we assay, trying times but love
intends. it has this hold, it is
our boat. we right in deed and that's our
place. place is the name. such, that is,
that Worcester, least of all, can
hold. Zukofsky rips a
new one there, every day.

---

You've written many Worcester poems. Could you speak about them, please, in addition to "Unpwned Momentum on Worcester"?

AHB: There is an obsessive necessity in your methodical details, which fascinates me. And that your work indicates the boundaries, or possibilities, of the thing there. That thing being the presence, or present, of a poem.
Regarding my poem, I wonder if I meant jet skis when writing it. Maybe not. I feel real edgy in using the negative of pwned, pwned being a word I got from my son’s vast experience of internet communication and gaming. I began writing about the Worcester series for you but that was only descriptive of what I had done so far, not useful, so I dumped it. I realized that I didn’t know why I was writing the series, what was pulling me. I can reveal that the poems are, modestly so far, a collaboration. I have been instructed to call my collaborator “an unnamed correspondent”. This person is en scene, and inspires and informs what I have written. I have taken words therefrom, as well. The Worcester poems, still in progress, continue in their way from my Brockton Poems, which were written full 8 years ago, in the early blush of my late blooming (I sort of rebecame a poet in 1999). I should explain that Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, Abbie Hoffman, Robert Benchley (Benchley being a surprisingly strong influence on my writing) all lived in Worcester, as did rocketman Robert Goddard, and John Adams taught there. And when Freud and Jung visited the US together, where did they go? Clark University, in the 2nd largest city in Massachusetts. Shades of Guy Davenport. It is a basis, let us say, Worcester is, for poetic cogitations and divagations, if not method. Thus I have Zukofsky in its midst, and so forth, as can be seen. This all directly goes against your own more considered methodology, I know, but I think we arrive at similar places, i.e., the poetic.
As I wrote about the Worcester series, in what I discarded, I relished the specifics of my method and interest. Which are participles of the work but are more rumours than dynamic instances. This is problematic for me. My anecdotal evidence of a working means does not seem useful to others, or is so only in haphazard. I find a keenness in your description of your method. My Worcester series stems from an eagerness. I think clarity would come the more I work on it, and the more I intrude my correspondent’s input. I should add (because it may look suspect) that the correspondent is a real person not a literary device, and it was this person’s choice to be referred to thusly.

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JH: I've yet to write a poem from beginning unceasingly to end. If a lyric takes hours to write, how is the poem's inspiration heard by its author? If a sonnet has, for instance, one hundred words, Erato could intone it under a quarter of an hour, though its sonneteer may take hours, in a day or over months, to complete the poem. Another hundred-word lyric may be written nigh-synchronous with its inspiration, and be as powerful as the sonnet in my example. In a poem there is an equivalence of nuance and definition. Definitions of a word lengthen with the shadows, and shade becomes foundation. One faces this when reading, and re-reading, a poem; one faces this when writing a poem. An author may record a poem's first appearance to his or her mind, the first reading, or an author may record a re-reading of this poem. In a re-reading, what happens to the first reading? If new information, minute or momentous, enters, as is inevitable, a re-reading, it is not a copy of the first reading. If by definition a poem is powerful, this is a lot of memory to discard, even if only one element is altered (this also applies to the re-reading of another's poem). What is the author who delays recording a poem's appearance until a given re-reading, whether the second or twenty-fifth, waiting for? Words can be altered once they are written; the literary does not prohibit re-reading.

AHB: I respond after a lengthy hiatus. Not writing is part of writing. The literary does not prohibit not writing. I have been busy but it is not as if I could not have stolen moments to limn a few lines in reply. That wonderful back cover blurb of O’Hara’s Lunch Poems comes to mind, with this picture of FO walking the New York streets, typing lines on stray Olivettis, and never missing lunch. I think this replies to your questions. There is a need to wait sometimes, to go inarticulate, to await the word itself. The poem knows its flowering just as does the mighty daffodil. I think how resistant I was to Pound’s chockablock, but not to Olson’s. Or Creeley, goodness! His work always betrayed the necessity of working within stricture, whether of form, or of thought pattern, or emotional inkling. Yet so much of his earlier work, parlaying rhyme and metre especially, that I could not abide. Only when Pieces showed some new (to me) extension, did I start to pay attention. I have been thinking much about Creeley lately, reading some but also reexamining my assumptions and previous ideas. What you say of the writer goes equally for the reader. What is a reader who delays recording a poem’s appearance until a given re-reading…?

You posted the following poem to the Wryting-L list. One listee wished that you had provided a translation. I get that, but I think he misses a possibility by not accepting the poem strictly on its own terms. Je parle un peu, but what if I did not have un poco Français? How would I to read this poem eh? (A friend of French-Canadian descent spoke of how his grandmother would say, I don’t know, me, more like a transition than translation into English. Just as my New England tongue actually bespeaks ay-yuh without my noticing. I could not ‘do’ a New English accent if you asked me). Your method with this piece, I know, is methodical random selection of lines. Do you have visions of readers approaching the texts like the Zukofskys approached Catullus?

The Pierre Corneille of Eugène Sue

LA SALAMANDRE
«séduite» approuvez ma faiblesse, «encore» batailles; applaudir

LES MYSTERES DE PARIS
«jaloux» aux murs d'Hécatompyle, «nous» vous; madame

JEAN CAVALIER
«trompée» plus heureux le sceptre, «vainqueur» Parthes; Memphis

LATREAUMONT
«batailles» occaison encor se renouvelle, «grotte» voyais; secours

THERESE DUNOYER
«madame» mais puisque nous voici, «murs» jaloux; malheur

KARDIKI
«Memphis» vainqueur vit ses prospérités, «plus» Pompée; trompée

MATHILDE
«voyais» cette grotte obscure, «faiblesse» inquiétudes; séduite

134

JH: Poetry, and the poet (in the specific use of the term in Antic View #133, which is how I'm using it in this 134th installment), appears from wherever thought appears, and is as distinct from idea, instinct, emotion, and that thought bears as idea, instinct, emotion, etcetera are distinct from each other; yet, as an idea - of custom, or of what is suitable to reason - may dispel an emotion, and as an emotion may quell an idea, or one may strengthen another, so may poetry, and the poet, respond to and influence varieties of thought. If poetry, and the poet, appears from a source outside the author, such as Muse or Daemon, then poetry, and the poet, is received by thought via the author's sense(s) of sight, sound, smell, touch, taste - singly, totally, or any combination.
In dream visions wherein poems are revealed, the dreamer's senses are depicted within the dream, if not actually put into play by the dream. A poem is as alien to its scribe as much or as little as that scribe's ideas, instincts, emotions, and all else his or her thought bears. We write our own poems to the same degree as we think our own thoughts. Writers of poems think their own thoughts to the same degree as other people think their own thoughts. The amount of thought the poem-writing process requires is prodigious, whether the time and energy an author consciously expends is as torturous as an alchemist's search for the Philosopher's Stone or as gossamer as blinking. Speaking of alchemy, thanks for your kind words on my "The Melting of Salts, or, A Defence of Poetry". The ultimate result of a successful alchemical process is the recipe. The recipe is what the gold, predicted by the lead (the lead is the foundation, without which there is no alchemical gold, no poem on the paper), predicts. What process created the recipe that is "The Melting of Salts, or, A Defence of Poetry"? There is mention of a reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley's essay "A Defence of Poetry", an "entire reading", which is an ideal of any who aspire to be an entire reader (who, in turn, could be an ideal of an author such as Shelley), an utmost reading of each word, of the whole text. An entire reading is mythical (and nonetheless possible), and indeed the ambiguous words "may" and "infer" are ambiguously placed: the inference from an entire reading of Shelley's essay is mythological, or all of the fourth sentence of "The Melting of Salts, or, A Defence of Poetry" is mythological, including the entire reading of Shelley's essay (and the essay itself - title, content, and referents - does it survive these Delphic vapors?). Are the words of the first paragraph's four other sentences made mythological by the fourth sentence? Is the second paragraph affected by the fourth sentence? I'm much taken by your poem "Tom Brady lives with us all", recently posted on the Wryting list:

wild poem renders make of death. the gosh of looming windows stills in soon the stuttered sequence. we read the room of filling tune aloft, whilst straining call overtly dooms the moon a preying time. dash the quickened dear till of the football life. the means is quell to the gnostic mention. a love of lists and pools of mountain lump greengage tremble mumbling rill and trill till the soil transit. posit often
cluster, run the moon again. again the staid and dying, again the oxygen refrain, again the dog of when that was. now the post and fueling, now the word unveiled, now the gesture compost. here the rife of fends for all. it is the day of daily parade, taken to a road.


Could you speak on this poem, please?
AHB: well, the New England Patriots won THAT game: I wrote the poem directly after the Pats defeated the Giants to end the regular season. and really, that's all Delphic vapours, whether or not I am a dedicated fan or not, and I’m not. The game itself was closely fought and exciting, so the poem expresses that nature. And yet, it doesn’t express anything, particularly, not directly, as statement. Poetry is often a presentation of unexpectedness. I could have written a paean to Tom Brady, the hero, but the writing event was not a matter of statement or opinion. Instead, I see as I look at the poem (the forethought was unthought, as usual in my writing), there exists a translation. Words are used, let us say, wrong in the poem. The wrongness is weighed by expectation, so that the less the reader expects, the more the reader can glean. Which is the hard won and inconsistently understood lesson of my formative reading (all credit to the Robert Grenier who helped bump me onto the path). So there, I have spoken of my poem, which expatiation allows me to see the workings that I blithely assumed as I wrote. You are more methodical in your process, but do you ever write in a fevered rush? I’ve done things like write non-stop for an hour, that is, as literally as possible keep pen (I wrote by hand) moving.

133

JH: I haven't felt betrayed by or denied of poetry; whenever I find myself a long-unvisited though previously experienced writer of poems, I get a posthumous feeling that I should enjoy while it is able to be felt. At this time, I don't consider myself long-unvisited. During, and immediately before, writing a poem, the poem and the poet exist simultaneously. Afterward, the author (who is culturally referred to as a poet) is, to the poem, just another reader. The person outlives the poet s/he was while writing the poem. A poet is what mediates the poem and its person. Why is there, often, more than one poem per person? Does the same poet re-visit its person, or is the person's poet a new poet each time? Does the appearance of the poet have phases within its person? If so, after the last phase, the extinction, of a particular poet, does another poet necessarily have to appear within the person? Helpful to consider in the question of phases may be Fernando Pessoa, as well as Artaud's autopsies of Ducasse/Lautreamont and Coleridge (in two 1946 letters, found in English in "Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings", edited by Susan Sontag). The idea of the Muse may be analogous to the appearance of a poet within a person, especially the idea of possession by Muse or Daemon. Why are some people accessible to visitations by a poet (and thus a poem), and some are not? If poetry constantly thinks of the human, and a person is not constantly writing poetry, does this mean a poet has human qualities only when it appears to a person who is to write a poem? Where is the poet when it is not appearing to a person -- does it, during this time, reside in the same place as poetry? Does a poem sometimes make a solitary visit to its person, a poem unknown because a poet has not made a simultaneous visit to that person? Does a poet sometimes make a solitary visit to its person, without a poem making a simultaneous visit to that person? Is this poet sans poem detected by its person? If so, is this because a poet has human qualities? If a poet is what mediates the poem and its person, are words what allow this mediation? If the poet has words, how are these different from the words a person has? Is rhythm what poetry provides? Is this rhythm the structure that moves the written poem from one line or sentence to another?

AHB: Hey, who the heck is writing these poems we see, that 'we' wrote, or someone else did? It is a question that seems both highly charged and overly concerned. How much thought does the process need? In my youth, I was just along for the ride, to take that writing moment and go with it. as I became more conscious of the results, I became more conscious of my process. times when I felt a charge in the writing but in reading over the work I'd wonder where the energy went (knowing it had to go somewhere). that's when one starts wanting to supplicate the Muse (in one conception of the act) or otherwise con sider the way the work is compelled. I wrote for a couple of years before I faced a reconsideration of what I was doing. Robert Grenier, as teacher (reckoning that this was before LANGUAGE poetry became branded), indicated a different attitude towards words and procedure. the lesson wasn't easy for me but I finally got around the inclination to say something. that is, I stopped cornering the work that was given me, at least not so much. so there is that accepting of transport that is the creative act, which is a trust in process. and a sense, as well, of ungripping every lesson learned. and my friend, the new work, or poem, comes along, a visit or implication. easily enough, I can forget this friend, as in: absence makes the heart grow fonder. thus my hard drive is full of works that I have not looked at since I wrote them. is it 10 or 15 minutes of life, the time I took writing, or does their potential live beyond my distance? of course they live on, perhaps to be seen again by reading eyes...

I will now include a poem that you posted recently on the Wryting list (our practice field?). it shows your interest in alchemy. I've tussled with Jung enough to see thru the muddling haze that surrounds the subject, and remembering that Isaac Newton probably wrote more on alchemy than on any subject. a philosophical conception, let us say. I think you hit the nail on the head, tho it is not a nail and it has no head.

The Melting Salts, or, A Defense of Poetry

A substance that passes through the fire (that is to say, the line) becomes metaphorical. As most of the Sulphur turns metaphorical, the incombustible Mercury remains (often still garmented with combustible Sulphur) as a liquid Salt or a celestial Salt, or both. The Salt in the ashes is its fixed counterpart. It may be inferred from an entire reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry that what is commonly referred to as "Spirit of Philosophical Wine"(the delineable metaphor), and also as the "Secret Fire" (the readable metaphor), and also still the "Alkahest" (the destructive, or the audible metaphor) will, by itself or containing the tinctures or Salts of various subjects, when burned, produce this type of volatile Mercurial Salt as an exalted fixed remainder. The volatile is for a health of an entire reading, the fixed is for transmutation of metals.

You, reader, can go about crying in your nakedness for the burning through the line, but the burning through the line is done after the vestal stage of an entire reading, which does not occur before the mortification of the atramentous stage, which is not enjoyed by jumping up and down. Beware the eating of the burning through the line, for where will its Sibylline clouds lead you? Only back to lead; beware, reader; you will poison yourself beyond repair.

132

JH: Let me pluck a couple more strings of "Mimicry In Ruins". In the second sentence of "Mimicry In Ruins", the opening quotation mark may start at "pass", and the closing quotation mark may be placed after "says", or "den", or "hope". Nature could be the original speaker of "Beauty is body as places". What is being imitated when ones writes of past experience? Is it the act of writing an account that is doing the speaking, and thus the person who had the experience is what is being imitated? What words convey is the imitated and the imitable, whereas words have their own pasts and their own immediate and future contexts. Writing has become a language, which borrows words from another language (e.g., English) or languages (e.g., English, Italian, Latin) to such an extent as to obscure the fact that writing is a language without words, only forms, whether these forms are syntactical or cultural/literary. Is poetry analogous to this definition of writing (and can poetry only be analogous to a definition, and never to the thing defined?), or does poetry borrow from writing in much the same manner as writing borrows from language? Does poetry's borrowing, whatever it is, lead one to think poetry has no words of its own? Writing's borrowing does not lead me to think writing possesses words that are translated into human language; writing is an act. Poetry is dependent on words for visibility, yet is itself linguistically invisible. Writing cannot desert a writer unless soundness of body and brain has previously deserted; poetry can desert its author at any time. Poetry is not an action; it moves of its own impulse; it does not have a knowable constitution. The words of poetry are as its thoughts, and are translated into human language. Are we to suppose poetry thinks of us constantly? By "us", I mean human language and its dealings. If poetry is intermittently, and incidentally, concerned with the human, can any or all of its other concerns be inferred? The surface self-sufficiency of words independent of what they convey may be what attracts poetry to words, or poetry may detect an analogy between this self-sufficiency of words and the isolation of past experience from present experience (which includes the act of writing).

AHB: 1st, apologies for not answering you sooner. “Are we to suppose poetry thinks of us constantly?” it seems only fair that it does, as we claim, don't we, to think of poetry all the time. Writing stays with us, but poetry, its a shifting thing. because of busyness and distraction, I haven't been writing in the same rhythm as usual. I am not blocked, in the sense of having poetry denied me, just having trouble squiring the time and concentration to get to the writing. in The White Goddess Robert Graves personifies the muse, the triple-goddess, towards which the effort of writing goes. I don't entirely buy the picture but I still find the sense of process useful. I mention this because I wonder if you ever feel betrayed by or denied of poetry. I've admitted that I'm not writing so much as has formerly been my practice. I notice that you aren't posting a great deal at Wryting and wonder if you are in a trough as well. and more importantly to this discussion, do you lose the muse ever? I'll say that I went thru a long stretch of dissatisfaction. I was not energized by poetry, my methods (I started using a computer) changed, and such, so that, tho I wrote a lot, it wasn't poetry. as you write, "Poetry is not an action; it moves of its own impulse".

131

JH: Thanks! The method in "Mimicry In Ruins" is my consideration on what of the poetic is outside a poem, and what may be elicited of this segment of the poetic (which is the same through every poem, or is different despite each poem that is written?). In poetry (that is to say, poems), there is a mimesis of human language and earthly doings. Can poetry provide a mimesis of the poetic? Having mimicry as a character in a poem could help in underscoring the poetic among the poem.

Is the "I" of the third sentence Mimicry speaking of itself - i.e., the narrator quoting (mimicking?) Mimicry, or is the narrator reporting Mimicry as speaking of the narrator? The narrator has addressed him/herself as I ("I'm") before, in the first sentence. There's a possibility the entire poem is spoken by Mimicry; if so, Mimicry alternates between referring to itself in the first person and the second person.

If mimicry is personified, is the mimicry apt, is the personification apt - who, or what, exactly is being mimicked, and who, or what, is Mimicry's subject? Are there more than one subjects being mimicked? Is there but one character named Mimicry in the poem?

Is "there Reason's..." stated by the narrator originally, or as a report of Nature's narrative ("if I'm to believe Nature")? The rest of the poem could be a report by the narrator of Nature's narrative, a continuation of "makes Reason nakedness...".

There's an ambiguity in the use of "I" in the third sentence: if the narrator languish, then Mimicry mimics in the fourth sentence this languishing. Is there mimicry in ambiguity? Thus, a multiplicity -- in mimicry? The fourth sentence allows the question: is Mimicry termed Eagle when in the Thicket (only when there ; especially when there)?

Prince = princeps, one who takes the first part... one, then, who is to to be imitated, prey for Mimicry. Pass - "pass as"/"pass for" versus "pass by" ("Prince, pass" as in the "Horseman, pass by!" of Yeats' "Under Ben Bulben"). Is "Prince, pass" said by the narrator, or Mimicry? Is the second sentence to be read as "Prince, pass, for Mimicry says, 'yours is a suitable den...'" or as " 'Prince, pass,' Mimicry says. 'Yours is a suitable den...' "? Regarding the former, "yours is a suitable den" could be the only words attributed to Mimicry in the second sentence, with "and my treasons..." spoken also by the narrator. Should this "Prince" be capitalized outside the poem? Would it be capitalized if it wasn't at the beginning of a sentence? See Antic View #115 for a discussion of apostrophe and capitalization. Is speech with its human content enough to make personification out of apostrophe?

"That Mimicry termed Eagle languishes in the Thicket seems wasteful of the fox.": perhaps Mimicry is thus termed fox - by whom (could the poet have a say in this?)? If the fox is a character (and a reference to fox as a mammal and not as a figure), does this mean the fox doesn't eat the bird (Eagle) due to ignorance, pity, or because the fox is not fooled by Mimicry's being termed Eagle? Were the poem to continue, would fox become capitalized? In the world of "Mimicry In Ruins", was Beauty, Nature, Reason, or Mimicry, etc. capitalized before the first sentence?

"Prince" could refer, literally or as an honorific, to one of the Principalities, the highest choir in the third sphere of angels. Principalities tend to nations, which lends a reading to the word "den" (as does the word "fox", to which the word "Prince" may refer), and to the word "places". Angels are associated with stars, and the planet Venus was once thought to be a star. "Venus" may refer to the planet, the Roman goddess, the word, or may designate some character outside the poem or previously named in the poem.

Does "Beauty is body as places" refer to ruins? Is there an element of mimicry in ruins? Aurally, "Thicket" and "Mimicry" mimic each other; etc. ... t/reasons, Reason's... the imperfection of mimicry... Lady Macduff defines a traitor as "one that swears, and lies" (Macbeth, IV, ii, 46 - 47).

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a sensation is worth millions. Attempting to unravel four relatively short sentences takes more words than comprise "Mimicry In Ruins". Sensations, in the merest sense, are almost as compact as a poem. Or do sensations fall short of a poem? Aside from sensation and analysis, what else does a poem provide? Speaking of sensational poems, you recently posted to Wryting-L a poem entitled "this, by which we speak, poem":

The simplicity of pond, watchwords, the going rate. Think of intelligent draining of economic constants in the gloom above the cold water. Federation selects this rood of land, with water for offertory and remembrance. Cornstalks saved for decoration, in the imagined gusto of that ended autumn, asseverate a position. Means of replying fizzle thru results, until daybed burns in the solitude of autumn light. After effects realize their broad distinction. People care for carnival, late blooming asters and crocus, and so much depends. Now the pond, nobly engraved in literary matters, produces a squeal. A few mallards have murdered a bench, have interrupted the speech of fences, have created peerages of paths. Wild strange makes a cold bay. Languages piece together but still a stream edge shifts for a picture and latter proof. No dose remains except a pungent arriviste lost for matter. This mighty day concerns many dull moments, and leaving everyone behind. Thus a Thoreau enscribes some rich matter, forest duff. And other proven numbers ply for adding. And the changes magnetize in harsh elements and willful puff. The endgame resists, then stutters then period. It's like we are words, but water too combines with breath. Earth too, fire too. Features of this funny business, this capacious colony of reaching for ideas, isolate in solvents and unsolvable. No philosophy but the days on end. Colourful something in the midst of elsewise, then a poem, legacy train, trailing wind by which we speak...

across the water, et cetera, climate of something, positioned, thrilled, imposed and functioning... after which statement, the business of bees... degrees...


Could you speak of this poem, please?

AHB: I'll just add to your plucky exegesis that Aristotle, in his Poetics, speaks of all art as imitative. You have a unique methodology that does seem to go inside and out of the words that form your poems. Not to sound blurbish. And I sense an attachment to that meditative meandering with which you create your work. I'm not certain that I am saying what I mean. I'm thinking of my own work, which I pretty well forget once I've written. For me, a poem (that I've written) is the remnant of an experience. Perhaps it is an imitation of an experience. Your pre/post-involvement confirms a different relationship, somehow. Your poems arise from an enlightened position in which you set the machine running. I think I contribute myself to the words (that I write), and let them say themselves. I mean all of this descriptively, not judgmentally. I like your work, and I like mine. As to my poem “This, By Which We Speak, Poem”, it is a way of comprising Walden Poem, just as earlier I comprised the porch here. Walden Pond is a few miles away, thus a resource. My wife and I made an effort to visit the pond often, after a few years of neglecting it. The experience of Walden, or any place, is all the sensory info one might absorb. And that sensory info becomes words. My poem is, simply, those words laid out. For the reader. The phrase 'so much depends' comes from I need not say where. I use it as a conscious recognition, just as it was originally used, really. Walden, of course, has a history. Kick a rock, it may be the same one Thoreau kicked on the 5th of July. Et cetera. Personal history exists. 7 years ago, Beth and I sat on the benches that rim the pond, and I read from the manuscript of Days Poem, which was about 20 pages long at the time. Those benches are now underwater, the pond's water level having risen that significantly. The poem is a comprehension of a place and time. I believe the history of poetic time exists just prior to the few minutes of actual writing. Honestly, I trust that conception.

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JH: "Poetry is the realization that one reads or speaks poetry" -- is the realization in poetry? Or does poetry stand outside realization, being inconvertible? Is poetry workable, as clay and words? Words may be worked into poetry, but can poetry be worked into words? There's a theory that words are frozen poetry, dead metaphors, etc., but surely this Edenic view derives from coincidence -- words being similar to the facets of a poem. A reader unspools a poem the same way a newspaper article is unspooled, and an auditor receives a poem the same way a radio commercial is received. A poem can go unrecognized, by who would be its poet, as well as its reader/auditor: a poem, then, is not universal, even if written or spoken in a universal language; a poem is individual, integral, and incommunicative to living and dead alike. If a poem could be divided into words, a group of words could be arranged into the shape of a poem; but a poem has no shape.

AHB: Straining language beyond grunting observation is a weirdly embellished metaphysical state. Such writing lunges away from the simple noun-and-verb request for the salt shaker or query where the scissors are. Poems are made from the same material as those utterances but work (if poems work at all) entirely differently. Poetry also or often is made with a Poetic Diction, which changes with the era. I guess we simply identify a possible state called poetry that lives in the relationship of certain gathered words. As you say, a poem has no shape. Atomic particles are really lovely inferences; likewise much of what we know of outer space is supplied to us by hints and where we take those hints. Poetry, thus. Whitman eschewed rhyme and metre (and thank heavens he did, having failed his Tennyson imitations) and called it poetry. Dickinson casually and consistently broke the established poetry rules. This is old news today, we all strike paths of (what we call) invention. The point is that poetry's boundaries aren't easily marked. Our philosophical problem consists in the nature of the communication that occurs between poet and reader and poem. As I think you do, I see the poem as a character, an equal in the triad. It comes to each poet and each reader in a different way. That (whatever that was) being said, I now offer a poem that you posted to Wryting-L.

Mimicry in Ruins

Beauty is body as places, and, if I'm to believe Nature, makes Reason nakedness, there Reason's the very ruin of Mimicry, termed Eagle in the Thicket. Prince, pass, Mimicry says, yours is a suitable den, and my treasons have shrouded me past sight of Hope. Mimicry says, I would be at the side of Venus, and languish in her wake. That Mimicry termed Eagle languishes in the Thicket seems wasteful of the fox.

The diction of this poem is poetic in an old-fashioned way, except that syntax carries more modern jostle. There's some implication of language at its most high-flown, but there's something rattling about it here. I recall being wowed by Christopher Marlowe's Tamerlane for its wildly lofty poetic exclamations. As a play it is mainly an excuse for some really amped Elizabethan language. In fact, the Elizabethans are simply fat with this language called poetry. You seem to drink from a similar fount, where language is a dizzying indirection, a lovely effort to be effortless. Please speak more of your method, which I infer owes much to your involved reading.