In Good Company
Filed under: The Brouillon | Tags: Ezra Pound, Jerome Rothenberg, Louis Dudek, poems, poetry, Romanticism
Comments (1) 
Jerome Rothenberg posted today some poems from his “Pound Project”, a set of sixteen-line poems that riff off lines of Pound’s. Rothenberg writes Pound is “a strong poetry influence for many of us ([him]self [& myself] included)”. And the poetic at work in his series echoes that at work in a sequence of poems I wrote in response to (Ezraversity graduate) Louis Dudek’s penultimate book of poems.
Rothenberg has been an important influence and/or poeticultural coworker for me, too: his Technicians of the Sacred strongly orients my own understanding of what poetry has and can be, and his Poems for the Millenium assemblages, especially Volume III, Romantic and Postromantic poetry, resonate with my own present concerns. It’s good to be in such spiritual, poetic company, however physically distant.
Vallum’s poem of the week: David Bradford’s “Cute Bear”
“Cute Bear” is Vallum‘s poem of the week by long-ago ex-student and poet contemporary David Bradford, readable and hearable, here.
Back to the Skunkworks!
Filed under: poems | Tags: Carl Jung, flying saucers, mythology, poetry, ufology, UFOs
Leave a Comment Just last week, a friend recently publicized a chapbook of mine composed and published 
over twenty years ago, and the response, livelier than any to any of my work in recent memory, encourages me to return to the work that chapbook began.
I shouldn’t be surprised, in a way. This poem was the center-piece of the performances I gave during a tour of Germany in 1996, and then, too, the response was gratifying: one audience member excitedly came up to me to say he would buy everything I would publish, and a friend I made during that tour, the German novelist Georg Oswald, approved with pleasure the approach I took to the material. And a few years later this sequence was well-received by Terry Matheson, a professor of English who has applied narratology to alien abduction reports and who was kind enough to even teach the poem below in one of his classes.
So, for interested parties, I append one of the first poems from this project, the last poem of my first trade edition, Grand Gnostic Central and other poems. and return to back-engineering this “modern myth of things seen in the sky”.
Flying Saucers
Tuesday three in the afternoon 24 June 1947
Kenneth Arnold of Boise, rescue pilot, businessman, deputy sheriff and federal marshal, U.S. Forest Serviceman
At 9,000 feet crystal-clear conditions
Alone in his Callair between Chehalis and Yakima
An hour’s detour searching for a lost transport
Out of the blue a flash like just before a midair crash
Made him look left north of Mount Rainier
To see at ninety degrees
Nine seeming jet planes in a V pointed south
The echelon vaguely bobbing and weaving
Flashing reflections
Twenty-four miles off
Against Rainier’s snows, tailless—
Flying nearly forty miles
Between Mounts Rainier and Adams
Three times the speed of sound
The first crossed the ridge bridging the mountains
As the last came over its north crest five miles back
Nine crescents needing to be
Half a mile long to be seen
Flying that fast that far away
So smooth mirroring sunlight
Like speedboats on rough water
Wavering in formation
Like the tail of a Chinese kite
Wings tipping flashing blue white
Each like a saucer skipped over water
For the Record: “Reading Dudek’s The Caged Tiger”
Filed under: poems | Tags: innovative poetry, intertextuality, Louis Dudek, poetic form, poetry
Comments (2) One of the ironic aspects of the digitization of cultural artefacts and the blissfully ignorant acceptance if not celebration of this process is, apart from those documents excluded from the process in the first place, the inevitable decay of links and websites and the consequent disappearance of the works they hosted. Such was the case with the poem below.
When Louis Dudek’s penultimate volume of poetry The Caged Tiger was published, I read 
it with some irritation and sought a way to express it other than in a review. The compositional answer was to write poems that intervened in the original, engaging in a kind of dialogue; the relation of the new poem to the original is underlined in [28], below. The words in bold are Dudek’s; the numbers in [] are the page numbers of his original book.
The novelty or singularity of this formal maneuver to contemporaneous and subsequent compositional practice I leave to the determination of the learning of the reader; the poem was written the year of the publication of Dudek’s volume, 1997.
Reading Dudek’s The Caged Tiger
[10]
The transcendental then is merely the unknown
—No: how what’s known is—
inside out: no silhouette
no eidos no idea:
The transcendental’s how you know
you’re facing the mirror
…
Aside from yourself
the world
things
How it all happened
to come
together
‘s beyond you
…
Neither this nor any mystery’s gnawed
The mystic’s “the tight-lipped”
Tongue’s quiver locked up
[3]
Art is a dead god’s tongue
whose words
we still like the sound of
“the music of the spheres”
night’s white noise
the whole spectrum
of electromagnetic radiation
visible and audible
only to the radio-telescopes’
timpani tipped to listen
idle humming
“I-am-I”’s sound poem
[8]
Time’s transcendental
A watch
[15]
As one of those
in downy feathers
mouth open
happened on
spring mornings
[39]
in the cage too tight to lie in
a small pot nobody empties
wire mesh hardly a reach up
nights icy rain
days the sun throbs
the face in the cool mud
[28]
The bass beat faster than a raver’s heart at daybreak
shudders the whole body in the spot and strobelit dark
College boys and girls in their personal fashion statements
each writhe alone in cigarette smoke fog and pheremones
[99]
The old are removed
to their graves
and the young come up
to fill their places
i.e., as a “[f]ine bod”y
closed in a dipping casket
Old Heracleitus
renewed every sun
Zsolt Sőrés: Everything that interests me has its essence in sound
Filed under: The Brouillon | Tags: Ahad Master, Experimental music, noise music, sound art, sound ecology, Zsolt Sőrés
Comments (1) 
If you’ve read the poem “Get Real” I’ve shared here and wondered just who Ahad Master is, you can read an interview with him, here!
Tha stance toward Reality
Filed under: poems, The Brouillon | Tags: Charles Olson, metaphysics, poetry
Leave a Comment 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!
“…where lives the virtue of poetry…”
Filed under: poems | Tags: Charles Olson, Chris Banks, Grand Gnostic Central, Ladonian Magnitudes, Novalis, poetry, poetry criticism
Comments (2) Yesterday, Canada’s Chris Banks baldly posed the question to his Facebook friends “What is authentic poetry?”. I (mis)remembered, after my own initial contributions to winding or snarling the ensuing thread, I had written a poem that addressed at least “the virtue of all authentic thinking” (and I’m hardly the first to imagine or suggest that poetry can be a kind of thinking). I post that poem, below.
It was written at the same time as the poem that opens Ladonian Magnitudes, “topos tropos typos’ (a confession”, itself composed before even my first trade edition, Grand Gnostic Central. It’s title is a quotation from Charles Olson. Whether it is possessed of any qualities that might be construed as “authentic” I leave to the judgement of the reader. For my part, I cite again, as I did first in yesterday’s thread, Novalis, from his Fragments and Studies 1799-1800, #671: “Schwer schon ist zu entscheiden, doch einzig mögliche Entscheidung, ob etwas Poesie sei oder nicht”: It’s already difficult to decide, but it’s the only decision possible, whether something is poetry or not.
“Unreal, that is, to the real itself”
where lives the virtue of poetry
and all thinking free
of the tyranny of the real
in perceiving the real
flow, elementally
fluid, hence watery
form forms
breath
seen in Winter
as slippery
hard and cold
as ice to the head
cracked
as the sea, unfathomable
God as Melville says
pondering
from the masthead
a shriek above
the water
a shriek
above the water
the same
‘Thanks’, plural of ‘thank’
Filed under: poems | Tags: gratitude, haiku, poetry, Thanksgiving
Comments (3) 
In part because it’s American Thanksgiving and in part as preface to my launching a new chapbook this Sunday, I post here a sequence of faux haikus originally shared over a number of days on my Facebook author’s page in 2016 that each mark (or, more philosophically, “trace”) a moment or spot-in-time of gratitude.
Thanks
Walk to work over Park Mont
Royale: birdsong &
melt burble in stereo.
#
Ekphrastic “tiny heroes
hunting flying grass-
hair butts” from an ex-student.
Facebook messenger giggle
threads nearly daily
with ex-student writer friend.
#
Not my fault but likely got
a student expelled
& yet I still feel regret.
Is it the Waldmeister garb?
Everyone asks me
directions on the Mountain!
Suffocating poetry
festival panel:
Happy, two friends to sit with.
#
An invitation to watch
a friend’s family eat
chicken, vegetables for all.
“He thinks everything he says
is a pearl”—a brown
pearl, a soft brown oblong pearl.
[This gratitude haiku is
in breach of Facebook’s
Terms and Conditions of Use]
#
A session on the Holy
Mountain, the Living
Room, Eichendorff Anlage.
The Extending the Table
cookbook my sister
gave us years back used daily.
Everything for tomorrow’s
Basic Raw Vegan
Protein Overnight Oats on hand.
#
A damp, cool, April Monday
morning; walk signal
turns as I step to the curb;
green buds heart high on
pussy willow; chickadee
trio met on Mont
Royale for palmseed breakfast;
lithe black Lab mongrel
mindless joy hunting squirrel,
redpink tongue aflap;
retiree, I imagine,
crouches down before
March End Prill, camera balanced
to film the melt stream.
#
Feeding the Mountain
chickadees again this time
four & lower down.
Fritz Lang on meeting Goebbels
& high-tailing it
out of Germany on YouTube.
Realizing a friend’s “today’s good”
status updates are
his own gratitude haikus.
#
Rainer in Heidelberg e-
mails me RE: a fish
& crow for a new haiku.
I’m here! Chickadees call; in
among roots, under
a bench two tiny Chipping
Sparrows; standing still
roadside a Mallard I could
look in her black eye;
white underwing then bark grey
back of a Cooper’s
Hawk pair; trunks and branches arch
a hall for birdsong;
quack honk pair call overhead
two Canada Geese.
#
Haematite & red
jasper pendant stones gifted
from friends worn daily.
#
Overhead overheard a
sparrow hen’s sighing
invitation to her cock.
Searching for chickadees I
spot a hawk broad wings
spread glide in two slow circles.
The gratitude haiku I
could write every day
about my Bedrock of Love.
#
More to be grateful
for today than seventeen
syllables can say.
#
Kisses waking me
three times last night after three
days cities apart.
Discussing poems
& coming to understand
some matters are style.
#
One martini to
dissolve pedagogical
moronicity.
#
Sunday morning sun warms rain
wet pavement; German
summers rise to memory.
#
Sitting myself free
from an intoxicating
toxic old mentor.
Getting progressives
have fought so much against they
forget what they’re for.
That uncanny first
green of grass & full foliage;
May in Montreal.
#
Scholarly duties
discharged—time to write & read
& think—poetry!
Morning walk to school;
chance meeting with Adrian,
gentle bookseller.
#
Distant Keel scholar
friend reads my latest poems:
“More soon! Herzlich, d.”
Brunette shoulder-length
mop, fair-face toddler; behind-
soother grin, “Bonjour!”
#
Doktor Pfeiler asks to read
“Bochum” at the Ruhr
Uni Anniversary.
#
France outlaws food waste;
Neckar gulls rise & circle
Hölderlin’s tower.
[Dear friend, the pseudo
haiku means thanks for the news
& Celan’s poem!]
I read hash high mice
horny but too stoned to climb on
yawn then lick themselves.
#
Tropical muggy
Montreal summer monsoons
cooling afternoons.
#
Despite knowing better grave
nostalgia wins out;
music of my youth.
#
Day after I’m told
chemo’s on the horizon
Archer season six.
#
The chick says Feed me!
The cock says Fuck me! The hen
says Leave me alone!
Message with Georg
about how The Walking Dead
is a great Western.
Every day Petra’s
home not teaching I ambush
and stroke her soft skin.
#
The naturopath
asks if I was an athlete
in my younger days.
#
The inanities
of my fellow travellers
to Toronto end.
Cloudless skies warmer
than forecast; little Grey Goose;
yellow fields like home.
The wisdom of George
mindful of his feet; Uncle
Andrew’s belly breaths.
#
A baker’s dozen
sparrows flutter dust bath tubs
in reno dirtsand.
#
Three hot tropical
I imagine days; frozen
red grapes to snack on.
#
Rigpa, Amor, learning, Poesie: what more do I need in my life?
#
What I have to say to you friends needs more than a haiku’s syllables
#
Couchlock or sitting full lotus, meditation bench, or straightbacked chair
#
Empty the cache, re
boot, meditate, and get back
down to the real work
New Chapbook: Blank Song / sangue blanc
Filed under: The Brouillon | Tags: chronic lymphocytic leukemia, CLL, poetry
Comments (2) Though it’s been six years since my last trade edition, March End Prill, I haven’t been utterly unproductive.
Sunday 26 November I appear with four other performers at Montreal’s Words and Music show where I’ll launch my new chapbook, Blank Song / sangue blanc, that collects recent, miscellaneous poems along with the collection’s title sequence that addresses my recent experience with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.
The show happens 20h30-23h30 at the Casa del Popolo, 4873 Boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec. Entrance is CAN$6.00.
Copies of Blank Song / sangue blanc, in a limited edition of 26, lettered, signed, and handbound by the author will be available.
The event’s Facebook page is here https://www.facebook.com/events/201784977033640/
Coming (back) to Jakarta
Filed under: The Brouillon | Tags: Coming to Jakarta, Peter Dale Scott, poetry, Suharto
Leave a Comment This week, files concerning US involvement in the massacres following the anti-communist coup in Indonesia led by General Mohammed Suharto in 1965 were declassified. Their reception illuminates both that dark time and continuing efforts of the US establishment to mitigate that involvement.
A by turns harrowing and clear-eyed poetic probing of this time is Peter Dale Scott‘s 
Coming to Jakarta, the first volume in his monumental Seculum trilogy ( which includes Listening to the Candle and Minding the Darkness). If poetry can be “news that stays news”, then maybe a rereading of that first volume, if not the trilogy, is in order.
Happily, Freeman Ng has recorded Scott reading the entirety of Coming to Jakarta, supplemented by Ng’s interviewing Scott after each part concerning that part’s genesis and details.
My appreciation of Scott’s Seculum can be read here.
