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JH: Baudelaire wrote somewhere (isn't it a red flag that I'm starting with a quotation? Or maybe it's just that, as Ezra Pound wrote, Americans are fond of quotation) of the indolence that comes with those who wait on inspiration. These days I write one or two poems a week, at best. It does make me crazy, as I'd like to write more. When I'm finally writing a poem, I always wonder what the problem was that prevented a poem from forming - it seems that my brain would take every opportunity to provide an activity that
I enjoy. But writing, especially poetry, may not have much to do with the brain (sorry, Paul Valéry). These delays of mine are psychological rather than worldly. But enough about me, and Baudelaire, and Pound, and Valéry. Lets talk about you, and Heidegger's moustache:


You Dirt of Thinking

all occult is Heidegger's moustache. all fuck off reminds of fur from before the apt phrase. all stuff is ignorant sorting. all stuffing is cooled inside wallop. all giving needs lost fragment. all sentences swirl after toasting. all toasting is example. all explanation dies in form. all hate is a choir after all. all finding needs a bleed. all giving up is just retarded. all retarded is a pistol formed from words. all words is useless. all useless is next day. all next day is famous. all famous is alone. all alone is malleable. all malleable wins the prison. all prison is mobbed. all mobbed says so. all says so lucks out. all lucks out is retarded. all retarded is expressly purpose. all expressly purpose NEEDS A HOME. all NEEDS A HOME waits here...

smother after all with you, dirt of thinking.


An excellent poem, and the final line perfectly fits with the form. "all hate is a choir after all" is a great phrase. Could you speak about this poem, please?

AHB: I remember this one. Most of what I've written the past month has been flarfy experiments. This sort of writing, playing with texts, has been easier to do (or comprise) in my current distracted state than 'making it up' type of writing. But this poem came out of some anger deriving from some attitides directed by some towards my son (he has Asperger's syndrome, a form of high-function autism). and I'd been reading Heidegger's Poetry, Language, Truth (not sure that's the title). I can't remember if the repetition of all is the anaphora you've mentioned a number of times. it is a conscious 'device', a rhythm maker. I wonder if there is a word for the sort of concatentation I employ thru much of the poem, whereby I take the last noun of a sentence and make it the 1st noun of the next. I don't really choose to use the technique, but I always marvel while writing as the terms link and link. I think I'm saying here that this is a rhetorical poem, in the good sense. As so often, I wrote this poem, sent it to Wryting-L, then moved on. I have to admit, not letting modesty prevent me, that the line "all hate is a choir after all" is a good line. The art therapist Shaun McNiff writes that one should regard an artwork that one has produced as an offspring. The work comes from the artist, but it isn't part of the artist, in the same way that child is not part of his/her parents. When I see something that strikes me in my own work, I say gee. it's a surprise to me, it is new. Do you do much writing in your head? Do you feel indolent in this state of your not writing much?