Poeta Doctus

A week back I shared an unpublished poem “Unreal, that is, to the real itself…” and in the week since by a kind of weird serendipity I’ve been engaged in a dialogue concerning evolutionary psychology, reductive physicalism, by extension materialism and transcendentalism, so on and so forth, all of which tie into the question of the Real and what can be known of it.

I’ve made my polemical stance in this regard known in an ironic manner in the poem “Get Real” (it is a poem after all; how can it not be ironic?) so in light of the past week’s ink spilled (what is the on-line, digital version of this expression?) on the matter, I share here the prefatory poem to my second trade edition, Ladonian Magnitudes ‘topos tropos typos” (a confession’. The opening words are Charles Olson’s.

“for nine years
“three words constantly
“forced me down

“or kept me
“in or possibly
“steadied me…

topos tropos typos” (a confession

there is a freedom to be learned

a tradition earned

every wave of particular

not men or women, some

generation, not a sapling

scored around the oak’s core

but decision

not to attend what’s passed

for the new, not to accept the world

as given), &

stopped my reflection
stepped

the light
red

antistrophe

more vivid
that night

than the rain
wet street

(“E’en thus along the gulf moves every flame,

“A sinner so enfolded close in each

“That none exhibits token of the thief

O

read

the archetext!