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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