Recently I just finished a mss entitled,
After Language,
Letters to Jack Spicer.
Apropos of today's discussion, I thought I would share one of the letters.
(For those not familiar with the work of the late Jack Spicer, Google can
introduce.)
**
Dear Jack,
This is a dream about American poetry. It takes place in a basement in which
a cat is a poem, taking out one rat by the neck, one after the other. The
basement is absolutely full of them. In another dream‹in the same space‹a
poem is the grip around the necks of two snakes, one black, one white, each
one swinging back and forth. The flashing, slick tongues are the ideal
poem¹s syllables: each one snaps and stings. In awe, and no doubt terror,
one stops to worship this, an inescapable clarity.
Jack, Edgar Allan Poe was your mother. Odd to say, you never mention her.
She brought you to the basement, the pit. Swinging without stop, she taught
you the well-made poem is a pendulum with a blade. Time and its inevitable
cut. A poet¹s choice is to swing with it, orŠYou know the rest of the story.
A claustrophobia of rats sinks the lines of most poetry in America.
(italic)
Didn¹t you or Edgar Allan Poe once say that?
Both of you, down in the basement, banging on the tombs, a dead man¹s wit
kicking up a storm, dancing with the reaper, making those, terrible, but,
aw¹ beautiful, ³knock them on their ass,² chisel your way through the
concrete floor‹go ³jumpity, jumpity²‹hacksaw blues. (all in italic)
Once, many years after you were gone, I saw a rat scooting across the back
floor at Gino and Carlo¹s.* Pretty scary that was, too.
Stephen
Gino & Carlo was the bar in North Beach, San Francisco, and his legendary
headquarters for meeting poets, discussing their work, etc.
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