Poeta Doctus

For me,  September 11 is often shadowed (if not overshadowed) by the Dawson College shooting of 2006, which (as a teacher there) I witnessed, from a fortunate, safe distance.

Today, however, reflecting on the work, I opened Ladonian Magnitudes by chance to the poem “Epistle to Zsolti”, a versified missive to my friend, Hungarian sound artist Zsolt Sőrés. The letter, as much as it overtly expresses a desire to correspond and communicate with a distant friend, as a poem, has other motivations, one of which was remarked by the “Gefin” in the poem (Hungarian-language poet Kemenes Géfin László, a close friend at the time), namely, the death of another friend, writer Daniel Philip Brack (DPB), September 13.

In acknowledgement of this manifold synchronicity, and in warm memory of DPB and the other friends in the poem, and the attachment that motivated it in the first place, I share it here.

 

Epistle to Zsolti

 

been on a Tom Waits

immersion course

for weeks now

buying him all up

latest and lastest

new or used

listening to just one new song

a day

carefully

these days Foreign Affairs 1977

like Blue Velvet’s soundtrack

reminiscent of Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch

 even a couple of “One-eyed Jack’s” in the lyrics:

our cinematic interests

our show’s DAT I’m so eager to hear

because of a heightened self-consciousness about Performance

teaching again now two weeks

Primal Shamanic poetry and poetics

that is “magical”, “sacralizing”, “holy-ing” “aestheticizing”, “estranging” language-act

& “The Truth is Out Where?! Exploring the Unexplained”

eager to get you a draft of our interview (!)

write up a short article on why my favourite books today are Hungarian,

namely yours and Gefin’s

Poems for Jolanta urged me

around high noon today

to likewise edit the literary remains of dear departed DPB

Yes! He in the Budapest Suites

hopfrogging with me a parodic waltz

through that night empty streetcar subway hub under intersection of those big utcas

loud and lively red eyed Bacchic old electric blue shark skin suit skinny black tie 50s grey hat

who one Friday

September 13

overdosed OD’d

in San Francisco LA

right out of rehab

he who made

our furious correspondence

into spontaneous pseudonymous

“heteronyms” like Pessoa’s?

Kierkegaardian personae?

serial surreal literary works

whose literary remains

but for one

now lost?

novel on old 5-inch floppy

now my care

hardly able to pick them up

for grief

for guilt

the years since

so really should get together with Cronenbergian croney and computer design wiz and get to it

Did I ever send you photos of the Trabante?

Hold-ups began on our return in July

when installing Flashcard reader jammed access to my Office Suite

& December saw the whole house of cards come crashing down

Just when the Raelians announced they’d cloned a human being

& BBC Radio 4 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung feuillton Times Higher Education Supplement all wanted my opinion

now I’m waiting for the cheques and checking my expectations that something poetic might come out of it

Sleeping, eating,

& now working

are all I’ve been able to do since December 3

But now apparently energetic enough to send out some feelers

which seems appropriate for someone who aspires to be

the antennae of the race