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JH: Thanks for the background on "Contents Of Lenin Trial"! I agree that the Apollonian and Dionysian meet within both of us. I think all approaches are born of thought - emotional and spiritual approaches as well as intellectual approaches. By thought I mean Mind. I see literature as something that places these categories outside of the individual, in order that they can be both confused and separated (naming separates, yet also allows something to disappear within a hail of fellow words). Sometimes I am surprised by what I write, it seems to come from someone else. Does this happen to you? I've thought that instead of an individual author tapping into some sort of collective unconscious, there's often the case that a poet is just a random instance of a human and something specific taps into the poet. We've got at the issue of radio angels before in Antic View, and this topic may be related.


AHB: I think it is all I can do to indicate the background of a poem that I've written. The method I've chosen, and the circumstances surrounding the poem's writing. I have no idea beforehand. The only reason I believe such a method works resides in my feeling that I have trained myself in this way. But anyway, I feel like something specific taps into me, at least at times. By the same token, I feel the very unspecific as well, insofar as I recognize the effort and intention of certain poets and their works, thru my having suffered the same effort and intention. For instance, Whitman's stupid poems, the ones where he's trying to force the poetic issue. Been there, done that, sympathize and empathize with the instinct and urge. What now would be called flarfy experimentation (received text) has right along been a tool for me to get a different line to those radio angels, as a means to get away from that over-invested, concerned citizen of Poetry Land. Does that internal concened citizen of Poetry Land bother you much? Mostly, that person does not bother me, but sometimes...