Hello cris & Keston,
Just to thank you both for the welcoming words which mean a lot.
Also happy to return the compliment Keston. It was rude of me (but not
intentionally so) to address the issue of Gulf War even that obliquely
without addressing you personally. I had intended to spare everyone my
further weasels in this holiday season but now i can blame you cris for
these few words more. Loath to trust my judgement today since effects of
insomnia last two weeks is really kicking in now--misspelling 'playwright'
an early sign perhaps.
Look forward to hearing the case for the USA & I'm more than ready to
believe in that. Just that I would expect an English poet or what is more
problematic, an 'English poem', to give an update on the the grand
simplicities of Dorn's, Oxford, Part vi; 'Of the "English" Colonies
'(North Atlantic Turbine p42), the irony in its inverted commas and its
claim (although he might have given honourable exception to the French film
industry) that "when western europe so glibly/ puts down/ America/ it puts
down, literally,/ itself./ do you know America/ IS the world." While the
Lady is busy, more or less as we speak, scotching silly season rumours that
she wants to tow the island out into the wild blue yonder in some goon show
scenario, it's as well to remember that such atlanticist fantasy is rooted
in Hakluyt's "Particular Discourse", in Beeching's words 'that America could
ultimately make England economically independent of Europe".
Also that the Dowland reference could well be accomodated to USA as a major
presence via the simple line of transmission ('the line fed through' (TSMSD)
echoes two references to lineage/ line, partly reinforcing the sense of
mayhem & usurpation in the scottish play. I don't want to anticipate what
you might want to say and i find myself here on the edge) my line of
historical transmission would be Olson's: 'Gloucester your first house was
as Elizabeth's/ England'. The reason I stress Dowland is that I think the
poem ends, signalling his importance:
"I know that what/ you set under a minded shade tree is hit by
first debate/ and the air locks in, at a dab rack roaming the field."
A minded shade tree may, or may not, be a green thought in a green shade but
if this isn't a poem anticipating its own critical analysis I don't know
what it is! We've just had "he grasping at critical/backflow fade... don't
sleep yet " which sounds personal, its urgency reinforced with gethsemane
to everley bros echoes. I take 'the air locks in' as an old-fashioned pun;
something, a poem, if satire then a rocket, is signed, sealed & ready for
delivery. The airlocks are closed,{{ cf 'reader docking',(TSMSD)}} prepare
for.....government, response ability.. and this is when the ayre also locks
in, as in Eliot's "Burnt Norton" :"My words echo/ thus, in your mind". I
hear 'The air locks in' like Vonnegut's repeated 'free will kicks in' in
'Timequake' ie takes effect. The ayre/air sings Elizabeth, Goddess as, later
the wind was to cry Mary.
If you'll bear with me I'd like to say some more, perhaps tomorrow about
how echo works in this poem but the final words 'a dab rack roaming the
field'. You think of a dabchick, being a dab hand at, you think of yourself,
and freedom, you think your pretty smart, but you're small, is the field an
open one?? "If you do not come too close".
Meanwhile the magician, the prestidigitator, has retired, you're on your
own;- at a dab rack; abracadabra; with the ABCs of it.
All best,
John
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