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JH: Sometimes a poem will arrive while I'm thinking of poetics and structure, which may be a coincidence, as the thinking is lengthy. Ditto my reading. A poem is often the illustration of a definition of a word. As a definition has its own words apart from the word it defines, so an illustration (an instance, an example) has its own words apart from the definition it is to illustrate. The examination of a word is larger than any one poem or poet, which permits poetry's perpetuation. Will a word ever be used completely? If ever a word is entirely representative of its language, because a poem encloses it beyond interpretation, does the language die? This brings me to "Colloquy". There is the possibility that all of "Colloquy" is what The Translator hears/translates, if Signum is mistaken about The Translator being out of earshot, yet correct about The Translator translating words into English immediately or near-immediately upon hearing them. If so, the pauses between sentences and speakers could be instances of The Translator hearing, or translating, an untranslatable word as silence. Would this possibility be lost in a performance of "Colloquy"? What does writing a poem in the dramatic or even the colloquy form do to the reading of the poem? Are performers to be envisioned? When reading a sonnet, do you see pictures as you would a novel (if indeed you see pictures when reading a novel. Sometimes I do. I read such pictures as peripheral sightings, as I would take note, out of the corner of my eye, of a physical fact such as a tree or another book)? Whether or not performers are envisioned when reading a play, a colloquy, or poem written in dramatic form (or using terminology found in theatre, or alluding to drama), the idea of performers may be noted, providing another facet, or hedgehog quill, to the poem. In such texts, another existence is projected, one as independent of a reader's knowledge as the dictionary definition of a word. I once had a fascination with theatre that lasted for about two years. I read almost as many plays and theatre histories as I did poetry. My interest in avant-garde writing was spurred by reading plays and performance texts of the surrealists and dadaists rather than by experimental poems. I have never acted, though. Have you? I have seen few plays and no operas or ballets. The perishability of performance, memories of a performance seeming more like personal memories than memories of letters, and the conjuring of a performance in the reading of a play are all things that drew me to theatre. Here is a recent poem of yours, posted to Wryting-L, titled "Scraps Guilt Pprocess":

Dense marvel child, thought is weight. Thought is Walt Whitman
Incorporated, along a smooth river in green tempo. Variance occurs on march, walking to process while alert, firmed, dilate. Now we read
hence, here, the momentous. There was a crash of young person, wishing to be. Event of crashing young is a noun. Event of crashing young is noun falling down. Event is young noun falling crash of event. So much for that phrase lodge. We talk of tempo bout look, magnitude sand puns. puns shape language with diversion. The apples of this fall are ready. Are you full of time like the rest? You stop and read the margins, then inward, until a sentence is filled. Stop when you are done. Do not smack the sat one, last in essence, last in judgment, last in how we weigh. A crash of taught magnifies and spells a thrifty sort of doom, numbers then and now.

* * * * *

The wonderfully-balanced opening sentence of six words is halved by a comma, opens with "Dense", and closes with "weight".  The word "thought" adds to both "Dense" and "marvel". Many more marvels in this poem! Could you speak of this poem, please?

AHB: I can say straightaway that I was not being clever with Pprocess, it is pure, if such they can be, typo. Which brings the question of the author’s purpose and influence on a work. Errors such as that occur, and the author gets to choose whether or not to accept.
I do not have a lot of experience with theatre. Mostly what I have seen is amateur (6 or 7 Shakespeare plays, for instance), tho I've been to the ballet a number of times. I like dialogue and have written dialogues since I first began writing. I say dialogues rather than plays, because mostly they have been without story. I have not attempted to tell a story, but I like how speech (which Robert Grenier hates) can function in a not wholly contexted way. Thru out Days Poem, for instance, there are 'speeches', usually sentences attributed to someone (Tarzan, Jane, Fu Manchu). A narrative is implied but not exalted. The implication of performance, and the variability possible is interesting.

Well, speaking of such implication, you posted an implicative poem to Wryting-L, derived (in some fashion) from the work of Eileen Tabios, her tiny novel. Speak of this, please. Unlike many of the classical and classic authors that bubble up in your work, Eileen is quite alive.

On Eileen Tabios' Novel Chatelaine

A silk pocket
(Unattached? Perhaps!)
blue as a watering can
jettisons
an iron key.
Neglect oranges
a vineyard.
Are jettisoned, slowly, and,
despite poesy,
mortal as vines:
red roses
from immense crystal vases.
O hart,
from your horns: light once more!
From zero
bubbles no remorse.
From a pocket
blue and silk spumes
a key iron
as any iron sea.

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AHB: You say that the word porphyry came to you unbidden. With procedural work, there is the sense of the writing event, that you prepare for it. Maybe you are not even ready with pen or keyboard close by, but you think of ways to proceed. Is there an anticipation of the imminent poem as you ponder these writing structures? I ask because when I write, I begin, often, with a phrase, the poem’s first words. No more than that, elsewise I wear out the possibilities even before I actually write. Or, barring that starting point, I begin with just an inclination to write. Mayhap I err in thinking these approaches differ in some useful to decipher way.

This leads me to “Hold my Hand All the Way”, which is in fact an occasional poem. I attended a memorial service, and wrote the words before the service began, within that feeling and necessity (the title is from a song used in the service). It is, then, the surprise of what would surface then. Your procedures are play, in the serious sense of that word.

“Dunderhead Heaving” is just a bunch of phrases that were in my head. The phrase Stream of Consciousness is wielded frequently and awkwardly, implying automatic writing, or some ignorant stance towards the creative act. I think Joyce meant the continual voices and articulations one hears in one’s mind when one bothers to notice. Meditation practices focus exactly on these voices, in an effort to substantiate who we really are. Tom Raworth and Clark Coolidge are writers who have explored or exploited that stream. Sometimes when I am patently not writing, I mull phrases such as in this poem. The specific case of this poem, I began with real names (of those who could interview me) (not me, actually, I was ‘inspired’ by Nada Gordon writing that she would like to be interviewed), then the names became these noun phrases.

So now you may comment on the unusual piece that you posted to Wryting-L:

Colloquy

SIGNUM: See that figure there, across the water? In profile? Seated. The reader. That's The Translator.
ONYMA: Translator of what language?
SIGNUM: You have to ask? You haven't heard of The Translator?
ONYMA: Not this one. Is there a story?
SIGNUM: This translator, whether by decision or cause, I don't know, neither speaks nor writes any living language.
ONYMA: Dead languages, then?
SIGNUM: Only one. English. It could even be said that The Translator hears only in English, since words are translated immediately, or with near-immediacy, into English as soon as they are spoken. The Translator has said this, and also says this of written words.
ONYMA: Impossible.
SIGNUM: Honestly, I heard it from none other than Talu.
ONYMA: Then perhaps The Translator is untruthful.
SIGNUM: If not truthful, The Translator is guilelessly misstating or willfully misrepresenting. It could be a matter of miscommunication, since someone who knows English is the rarest of rarities.
ONYMA: I know a few words.
SIGNUM: Veracity aside, as a premise The Translator's condition is thought-provoking. For instance, would The Translator hear an untranslatable word as silence?
ONYMA: Hear as silence, or translate as silence?
SIGNUM: Would an untranslatable word be replaced from a store of deliberately falsely-translated words?
ONYMA: The notion of a store of deliberately falsely-designative words could serve as a definition of language.
SIGNUM: Or a history of language. Does The Translator incorporate untranslatable words, or any kind of foreign word, into English? How true is The Translator to the spirit of English?
ONYMA: English! What if I were to cry the word "poesy"?
SIGNUM: I...
ONYMA: Poesy! Unyielding impassivity -- surely, hearing an English word is worth something.
SIGNUM: The Translator is out of earshot, I believe. "Poesy"? Isn't the word "poetry"?
ONYMA: I understood it to be "poesy". "Poetry" must be a porphyrogene youth of yet another epoch.
SIGNUM: Within a dead language, what of anachronism, and what of archaism? Does The Translator change our native language, say, into Chaucerian English? Is what The Translator hears -- or, a comprehensive, converting Echo, instantly repeats -- a melange of English epochs?
ONYMA: Different epochs for different days! Different hours! Months! Years!
SIGNUM: Is it, as with the possibility of incorporating untranslatable and other foreign words into English, a matter of context and consistency?
ONYMA: Does The Translator know all living languages, not an impossible task, and hears English with every word?
SIGNUM: Like I said, food for thought. Let's move on.

* * * * *

Colloquy indeed. This piece is more directed than much of your work. You had a purpose…

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JH: An excellent definition of poetry, your "A poem is a surprise in the words you live with"! Is surprise, or perplexity (perhaps a facet of surprise), the same height as reading, hearing, or interpreting a poem? Is the divide between a poem's poet and public illustrative of the ideal plurality of reading (or hearing) a poem? Is surprise one of the responses that brings a poem into the light after it is written? Is the poem an obscurity that no light can illuminate? What is observed when one encounters a poem? Only the poem, recognized as being a poem, and any allusions, personal or historical, one adds to the poem. Recognition and ventriloquism, and recognition through ventriloquism, this is what is observed when one encounters a poem. Recognition and ventriloquism lie atop a poem, what lies beneath? AHB: A poem is an obscurity that no light can illuminate, indeed. Within that obscurity is the life of words, primeval, primordial, prime. In this picture, surprise is energy of involvement, of noticing the actions of words and our confrontation with them. Words as microbes, or something. Well, this seems to bring me to a recent poem of yours.

For Us Tempunauts

William Collins' Ode To Fear, to dissuade John Wilkes Booth
Youth And The Bright Medusa, to allay Lizzie Borden
Helen of Egypt, to daunt Cesare Borgia
Winesburg, Ohio, to dissuade John Wilkes Booth

Lycidas, to hinder Elizabeth Bathory

Baudelaire's Poe, to deter Gilles de Rais
The Case Of The Negligent Nymph, to allay Lizzie Borden
Would Une Semaine de Bonté turn aside Cain's hand?

The Ballad Of The Sad Café, to daunt Cesare Borgia
The Left Hand Of Darkness, to dissuade John Wilkes Booth
Milton's Lycidas, to hinder Sawney Beane

The Age Of Innocence, to daunt Cesare Borgia

Baudelaire's Poe, to deter Charlotte Corday
John Milton's Lycidas, to hinder Gary Gilmore

* * * * *
I have read me some Philip K. Dick, but did not recognize the reference to a story of his in the title. What is familiar to me is placed in unfamiliar (surprising) relationship here. The collisions and intersections here are invitingly baffling. And presented in something like a sonnet form. I want to present another of your poems that appeared on Wryting-L.

Porphyry

Issuance, pathless you had been
Unlikeness, pathless you had been
Nightingale, pathless you had been
Allurement, pathless you had been

And from whose hand, imposture, your voice?

Of fable, my words, and of my words, no fable
Of Virginia,my words, and of my words, no Virginia
Oh, for a verse to height sable Virginia with fêtes!
Of fêtes, my words, and of fêtes, no expectation

Reverie heights hours rich with imposture, cypress heights a shade
And from whose hand, nightingale, your voice?
Polis heights error, wilderness (heart or nail) heights voyage

First, you use the word porphyry more than I ever have, I am sure typing the title was the first time I ever writ the word. Beyond that, the weird rhythm, as of a rite, for instance The Tibetan Book of the Dead. You may now explain the procedure behind or beneath this gem.

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JH: The sonnet "Five Unicorns And A Pearl" has three lines that are repeated three times each ("Gertrude Stein, Three Lives", "Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers", and "John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers"), two lines that are repeated twice each ("Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales" and "William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain"), and one line that appears only once ("Henry James, The Portrait Of A Lady"). I chose the titles that are half of the lines in order to name their lines. The "My" of "My Mark Twain" implies "one", certainly, bringing the polyvalence of language into the poem ("My" also refers to the lyric "I"). The title of the poem, "Five Unicorns And A Pearl", is also the title of a diary in Carl Jacobi's story "Revelations In Black" (first published in Weird Tales in 1933). The impetus for this poem was my wanting to write a poem whose lines equaled a one, a pair of two, and a trio of three. These numbers add up to fourteen, thus the sonnet form, which also allowed me to vary the placement of the lines. Aside from the mimicry of the sonnet form, what, other than patterning, is the reason for the lines being in their respective places? I have been wondering about the difference between procedural poems and patterned poems. A procedural poem implies a source text (or texts) and a specific (formal?) process that creates a new text from the previous text (or texts). If there are literary references (for instance, surface literary references such as titles and authors' names) instead of quotations, and no other linguistic material, is this a procedural poem? The alternation of lines in "Five Unicorns And A Pearl" implies movement, but there is no reason for the movement, such as in my GRANDUNCLES OF THE CATTLETRADE (see Antic View #83) or The Recital (see Antic View #115). What is the importance of movement to the procedural poem? Is pattern, in the absence of narrative, static?

AHB: A pattern poem may be ‘mindless’, in that the pattern might outweigh other energies of the work. Mindless in the sense of going forward mechanically. When writers are too betrothed to patterns, metre and rhyme, say, our interest as readers diminishes because the pattern is just repetition. Emily Dickinson’s subversion of the strict tempo patterns is the locus of most interest for me, and I suspect for others. Rhythm is pattern, and that’s interesting musically (or more richly, Terpsichoreanly), Bo Diddley beat or double jig, but I do not think the logopeian thrill resides in that rhythm. Procedure seems to be a sort of translation, or let me say transmogrification, because it has more syllables. Procedure activates in a text and a dissatisfaction or hope, finding ways to open text(s) to unexpected possibilities. In “Five Unicorns”, the reader recognizes that you have gathered (in you mind) these particular texts, and saw them connect somehow. There is a pattern to what you have done, but the pattern is not the engine of its motion. In the making of your work, you actively process your reading. All writers process their reading, but you do so consciously, and your interest is not to collect modalities that you can use, but, perhaps, to release found modalities into their own activities. I like that you cite Weird Tales, which certainly is a locus of weird possibilities. I play with procedure, but am awkward in the process.

I do not think the use of procedure versus the sort of practiced unleashing that I endeavour is a large differentiation. A poem is a surprise in the words you live with, however that may come about.

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JH: A poem clarifies a mystery by stating it (and opening new mysteries that usurp the previous mystery's empery). A poem is the mystery of language, a mystery that cannot be clarified by any language outside poetry, nor any language outside a particular poem. A poem can ask questions, inferred or ending with the standard interrogative punctuation, that go unanswered within the poem, but, unlike aesthetics, can leave nothing unfinished. In a poet's oeuvre, words recur from poem to poem, and a reader may make a case for the recurrence of themes, but one poem does not complete another poem. In the past two years I've near-consistently written poems with Grecian and Roman names that would have themselves persons. I didn't set out to do this. This particular ancient world and its poetries are part of the definition of any one of the names of the figures in my recent poems. "Helena" is comprised of excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe's "To Helen" and from the first scene of the fifth act of Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus". In an earlier poem, "Helen", I combined excerpts from Poe's "To Helen" with excerpts from H.D.'s "Helen", and introduced a word, "languors", not found in either poem:

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home, remembering past ills and past enchantments, the enchantments of all Greece, the languors of old Rome. The agate lamp within thy hand. The lustre as of olives where she stands. How statue-like I see thee stand, remembering past enchantments and past ills.

The agate lamp within thy hand. The still eyes in the white face. The lustre as of olives where she stands. The folded scroll within thy hand. Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face: white ash amid funereal cypresses. The enchantments of all Greece, the languors of old Rome. How statue-like I see thee stand. The still eyes in the white face remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees, unmoved, the agate lamp within thy hand. Thy Naiad airs have brought me home. The lustre as of olives where she stands. White ash amid funereal cypresses.

This is writing with pre-existing phrases instead of pre-existing words. Arrangement, selection, and repetition are where I as another writer am seen, and if the mythological references are read as corresponding to a preoccupation with antiquity and mythology in my previous poems, then my hand is more distinct, though still unidentifiable. Your poems are expansive toward names, including figures also appearing in mythology, history books, and articles about celebrities. One example is "Helen's Door", which was posted in March to Wryting-L:

this is a new poem, a button insistent on the start of 'things'. a poem is a language, fieldstones in the field of Troy. workers unite, telling Trotsky hilarious. the years prove fiendish, and someone kills Trotsky. Trotsky is not a poem, he was associated with a man. when he wrote poems, the stars lit a framework upon which the exacting nature of words could be made brilliant. stars are sharp. Jennifer Aniston was the moonshine near Brad Pitt. we need that area of a poem, even thinking that a clicking monstrance like Jennifer collides meaning in a way. something vital in play, then, as we read thru the script. Jennifer Aniston is stipend, residual check (of course), and a hairstyle choice. Helen—you know, of Troy—got some stupid for a pattern. well, we walk into that, the armies meet for 10 grueling, then playful gods show half interest nothing tells a better story. when Angelina—you know her—spent the chance, it was grand occasion. the threads of language left Agamemnon and Menelaus, cool umbels over the seed of Greek lit, and portaged to a stuck prepositional rebroadcast. meanwhile, centaurs of activity raided the hamstrung rendition. we are tired when we forget. A new poem is just the last poem marked up. then Troy falls, and Odysseus shadow dances for James Joyce. all that in comp lit captivity, for you, dear Reader, to unweave. the good career move will always surprise. Jennifer as unction is always next door.

Could you speak of this poem, please?

AHB: I bet I could speak of this poem. I will first say that you supply a copy of what I sent to the list. This copy reveals my haste. I am inconsistent on capitalizing the initial letter of a sentence. Decisions such as that are part of the process, however mundane they may seem. I was comfortable with no capitalization of the initial letter, but now I am rethinking that, and I have yet to train my fingers to follow thru. Even issues like this are important, as the poem is made. The poem is an indication of what is around me. I have read at least four translations of The Iliad (Fagel, Fitzgerald, that scholar that Pound knew, and Pope), but the instigation of the poem is the movie Troy, and furthermore the unavoidable tabloid intrusion of Jennifer Aniston with every visit to the supermarket. I am not fascinated with her, but with the apparent fascination that she receives. Is she then Helen? I do not know, but she is hard to escape.

I feel that I remain receptive as I write, and allowing Aniston and Agamemnon to cohabitate the poem’s space is a sort of duty, a presentation of my inscape. This inscape is not edited, or at least I am comfortable with silly conjunctions and the burbling of the popular clutch.

Bottom-lining, you and I found our ways to a resonant place. I have absorption of popular culture while you seem more involved with the classical text (as evidenced by the text: I have already indicated that I have studied the classical texts, am not wholly relying on pop culch). Ok. Your latest poem to Wryting-L is an oddity of sorts, but seems to relate here.

Five Unicorns and a Pearl

Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales
Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives

William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain
John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers
Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales Henry James, The Portrait Of A Lady
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers
Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers
John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers

My wife read it to me, I had yet to read it, and delivered it straightforwardly. The rhythm caught me. The conjunctions seemed pregnant, but I cannot fulfill their promise. The titles bear numbers, mostly. The James and Howells both imply one. At least in line count, the poem looks like a sonnet. I do not know your procedure, and have publicly guessed wrong on your work (what I thought was procedurally written was written brain to hand to paper). It would—you would agree?—be the reader’s task to decipher the procedure, why each line is implanted as it is. I do not know how you ‘chose’ the works here, but there is some sense of absorption, the works were available to you. To ponder procedure in cases like this is an involvement. Jackson Mac Low described his procedure carefully because that was part of the work’s invitation. N’est-ce pas?

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JH: A poem having few words allows concentrated interaction among the words. The array of relations (including contradictions) is less than in a long poem. This limitation, which occurs upon comparison with an appreciably longer poem, is literal and not poetic: the poetic is boundless in its references and mysteries whether a poem is one sentence or a thousand cantos. In poetry, a flambeau and a pharos alike are will o' the wisps. Is length chosen by the author or the poem? One could lengthen one's short poem and condense one's long poem. One could by accident or design edit out the poetic in one's long poem, and one could, with one's short poem, stop before the poetic appears or edit it out. This editing could happen after the poem is written or during the writing of the poem, whether willingly or unknowingly. Why would anyone willingly remove the poetic from one's poem? How, practically, could this be done? Would this entail removing certain words and phrases, either leaving nothing in their place or replacing them with other words? Would the remaining original words noticeably interact independent of the replacement words? Could the remaining original words somehow indicate the removed words (indicate not the removal alone, but the words that were removed)? A poem is complete unto itself, but with the removal of even one word it would no longer be the same poem (thus no longer complete unto itself), and in the instance of the removal of the poetic it would not be a poem at all. The poem in the absolute is free from revision but manifests itself, a manifestation complete or partial, via the poet. The poetic in a poem is what is commensurate to the poem in the absolute, the poem as it reveals itself to the mind of the poet who is to write the poem. The poetic is not solely what of the poem in the absolute is transcribed or recited by the poet, but also what is fabricated by the poet to resemble (a trompe l'oeil for whose eye, a mockingbird's song for whose ear?) the poetic, as some of the poem in the absolute may (must?) be lost to the poet in its appearance or in the poet's writing or recital, lost through the poet's misapprehension, ignorance, forgetfulness, haste, lingering, etc. This fabrication is a correspondence (in all the meanings of the word "correspondence") with a part of the part of the poem in the absolute, a correspondence brought about by the meeting of the poem in the absolute and the poet in their shared language.

AHB: You write acutely that "the poetic is boundless in its references and mysteries whether a poem is one sentence or a thousand cantos." That is apt and accurate. The poem is a mystery word landscape of endlessness and possibility. In writing, one follows the instigation: in rewriting, one aims for that reference and mystery.

I think of Williams’ savvy assertion, that you cannot get the news from a poem, but people die every day for lack of what is found in a poem. Poems are empires of thought and language activated into unique distinctions that clarify mysteries by the act of enacting them. Does that make sense? Because we write with an eye to surprise ourselves, as well as the reader. Here is a recent piece that you posted to Wryting-L:

Helena
I might have unto my paramour that heavenly Helen which I saw of late. Ah, Psyche, too simple is my wit to tell her praise. The agate lamp within thy hand. Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter when he appeared to hapless Semele. How statue-like I see thee. Ah, Psyche, from the regions which are Holy-Land!

The agate lamp within thy hand. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? In yon brilliant window-niche brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter when he appeared to hapless Semele. The agate lamp within thy hand. Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face. Be silent, then, for danger is in words. Too simple is my wit to tell her praise whom all the world admires for majesty. How statue-like I see thee in wanton Arethusa's azured arms. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Ah, Psyche, the agate lamp within thy hand. That heavenly Helen which I saw of late. Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter when he appeared to hapless Semele. Be silent, then, for danger is in words.

It just occurred to me that this poem, and others of yours, makes me think of H.D. Her writing was an envelopment of a poetic world, Greek poetry. Does that in any way describe your own work? This poem, like others of yours, seems constrained b y an indicated language, and yet parlours (with the French verb parler behind it) of conversation and intelligence seem to be infused within its seemingly severe borders. And you have written sentence long poems, likewise spreading in their embrace. What is the inkling of such writing? That Helen Doolittle was a patient of Freud is a note worth contemplating. I mean that there is a sense of release into the torsion of her imagination, at the same time the self-consideration of Freudian analysis. I guess I can conclude with the question of your relationship to the words, when you write so strangely

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JH: Why do I not write a poem daily or yearly? Writing one poem a month is not a plan of mine. Once I write a poem, I spend time reading it by itself and in relation to other poems of mine (especially poems closely preceding it). The next poem I write isn't necessarily influenced by the previous poem. I don't begin a new poem until my thoughts of the previous poem are no longer in the forefront. The rhythm of this permits, so far, about one poem a month. When writing a series the poems follow each other more closely, chronologically and otherwise. My Virginia poems are not part of a series in this sense. I don't have a plan for the Virginia poems as a whole. In the last two years, I've only written six Virginia poems. It may be I am taking longer to read the figure that is Virginia. "Beneath The Ray" may be compared to "Mimicry In Ruins" (see Antic View #130 and #131). "Beneath The Ray" possibly quotes individual words, "Mimicry In Ruins" possibly quotes phrases. How to relate certain words within "Beneath The Ray" to each other to make an interpretation or a reading (is the difference between an interpretation and a reading a matter of degrees, with a reading occurring upon a person's seeing and/or hearing a text, and an interpretation requiring posteriority to a reading?)? The double meaning of "lyrist", one who plays on the lyre and/or one who composes lyrical poetry, in the second sentence is not invalidated by the appearance of "lyre" in the fourth sentence. If "lyrist" in "her lyrist" means an author of lyrics, it is possible that, if the second appearance of the word "her" refers to "Virginia" and not "rose", Virginia's mentions were authored by another. If "lyrist" in this case refers to the player of a lyre, this doesn't mean the lyrist isn't also a lyrist, or that Virginia's mentions weren't authored by a third lyrist (if indeed there are words accompanying the lyre). In "Beneath The Ray", the words "higher", "brighter", and "brightest" imply a hierarchy of lyrists. How to return to every single word in a poem ("O, the constancy of the rose, and how like imaginings!")? Within a poem, the first appearance of each recurring word is a lost Arcadia.

AHB: I learn from your method, which is not so much foreign to me as unthought of, or not yet incorporated in how I work. Periodically I look thru my archives, and by that I mean the last 9 years (since I met my wife, uncoincidentally: I almost never consult work before then), I find individual poems and working themes, that I ‘take back’, accept now. But I do not have a plan, nor have I the time to delve the mass (I await the MacArthur Foundation’s check). Each poem is a particular event (I started to use seems like as the verb but indeed I

know

), derived from previous events, each being a poem. I can see how you would say that your Virginia poems are not a series, still, they represent a consistency of your attention. I would love to see your work en masse, collected. Charles Olson did not just write Maximus poems, and he discarded a number that I think belong in them (I guess we have to trust George Butterick in this matter, and I do, but still…). The Maximus Poems highlight and asseverate Olson’s field of attention, or I mean focus. In sticking with the igniting energy as you do, you allow a fulfillment of the line of your thinking. I have long wished to find my Maximus/Cantos/A/Leaves of Grass, etc. Days Poem(makes a great gift!!!) is a microcosm of that possibility, it was each day’s attention span. It was also a wearing effort that I could not sustain in that form. I want to try staying with a poem in the way that you do. My writing is constantly an experiment, in a very plain sense of the word: a test to see if the present articulation provides a path. As usual, I am talking about myself, but I do want to remark on the short pieces that you have lately writ. ‘Mere’ sentences, which look so sparse and hopeless of endeavour, yet the Donne-like twists of their syntax and waywarding is lovely and new. Do you have a sense of these pieces in their brevity expanse, I mean in the concentrating poetic which endures in them? Oh, I imagine that you do…