I've been corresponding with Steve Ellis, one of the most interesting poets
writing in the States (there's been nothing like his recent book, _The Long
and Short of It_, since Jack Clarke's sonnets), and I thought I'd pass along
his below ruminations about asteroids and other cosmic matters. With his
permission.

Kent


>From: "Stephen Ellis" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: asteroid to hit earth
>Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 23:48:07
>
>Kent,
>No energy in "cosmic time" can be transitory; "cosmic time" is equally
>transitory, so as energy seems to transpire "into" it, you have, in
>addition to the obviously temporal "lifetime", the element of proportion,
>whose facts of relation are a measure, ie., "mental", in other words,
>having design, which, as it may include its own demise, will never be any
>the wiser for having experienced it, if it in fact ever does.  In this, the
>largest sentient field available - knowing that one's "knowing" - has yet
>to rise to the level of the visible, although an earth-shattering comet or
>asteroid would certainly be a prime example of that exact circumstance.
>Perhaps it would be possible to construct one, and if so, the interesting
>question would have then to do with what differentiates the destructive
>capacity of the man-made item from what otherwise the naturalist may think
>of as a random sampling of nature's capacity to "do" likewise.  Either way,
>I say we've little to worry about; when the world ends, we'll all be there.
>  Period.  Like, finally.  As if we'd been waiting all this time for the
>something we'd thought the whole time too large to conceive, manifesting
>wordlessly right down our throats.  I'm presuming all world-ending natural
>disasters simply rise up out of our (collective?) past, whether personal,
>geologic or cosmic hardly matters.  The alphabets of our poems will be
>found scattered after the fact, throughout the forms broken by the endless
>encounters with the very same sentimental logic that permits me to
>speculate in this way, as Gurdjieff designated, "like a pianola."  Shake
>your fanny.
>x
>Steve
>
>
>
>
>
>>From: kent johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>>Reply-To: kent johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: asteroid to hit earth
>>Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 17:08:24 -0600
>>
>>Robert Kelly said:
>>
>>>So we have not the artifact of the poem, but the (fifty years ago Olson
>>>called it) transfer of energy, the gift of transform/ing, over to the
>>>reader.
>>
>>This I agree with completely. But what's numbing isn't individual death,
>>one
>>at a time, which the transfer of energy outlives, or perhaps feeds from--
>>it's the idea that this energy is, in cosmic time, merely transitory. And
>>once it's gone it is simply as if it never was.
>>
>>The Buddhist teaching of impermanence is one thing: Things arise and fall
>>away, yet always within an encompassing sentient field (traditional
>>Buddhist
>>teachings, so far as I know, don't contemplate the termination of the
>>world); but the coming asteroid/comet wipes out all sentience (though
>>there
>>may be a few smaller impacts causing only partial extinctions before the
>>Big
>>One-- something like Shoemaker-Levy-- hits).
>>
>>Of course, if there is life seeded here and there throughout the universe,
>>maybe this is no big deal. Or if Henry's fingernail-paring God exists,
>>maybe
>>no big deal either.
>>
>>But this issue seems to go beyond your typical existential awareness of
>>mortality. If the poem has some kind of eternity to it, I can bear it, I
>>think. But not that the poem as good as *never existed*.
>>
>>Well, as Ramon, my astonishingly handsome Honduran friend in the 1980
>>Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign would say (soon to die in a botched commando
>>bank robbery-operation in Tegucigalpa): "My dear yanqui, that's life in
>>the
>>tropics."
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