The poet’s mechanicity. Poetry and cynicism.

What does the poetry of cynicism look like? What would Stanley Cavell say?

Manners. I am not now nor have I ever been one to mistake cynicism for enlightenment.

Love. Sometimes, with some people, it’s more interesting to never see them again.

The poet’s mechanicity. Poetry professionalized.

The poet’s mechanicity. Poetry commercialized.

The poet’s mechanicity. Poetry weaponized.

The poet’s mechanicity. Poetry as a social science.

Sex and Poetry.

This episode: “Sex and the Collage Poem.”

Or you could say poetry is like sex, in which case you want to ask yourself: If this poem is sex, do I want to have sex with it? Well, if it’s a collage poem you don’t know where that poetry’s been, and the poet who wrote it really doesn’t want you to know; or maybe that poet will tell you, but then that’s like that poem saying, Yes, I want you to have sex with me, but just not with me exactly, I mean with these other poems.

Catherine H.

I usually get what I want, but not always. The only way I can describe it is she seems to be mistaking me for somebody else.

Finally, we see him back at the Greenmarket at Union Square, where we first saw him at the beginning of the film. He is handling the peaches. He holds one up for a closer inspection. Suddenly his expression changes. He centers his attention on the deep redness of its skin and on its curvature which he now likens to the curve of Marie-France’s behind. The red peaches have taken on a new meaning for him. Merci, Alain Robbe-Grillet.

The thing about the Mermaid Parade is everybody looks so bad and yet if you ask them they’ll tell you they feel fabulous.

 “By the end of the date I just wanted to be alone again. I didn’t care if I was being rude.”

 Manners. Free us from humbug.

 The Getting of Perspective.

 Grammar holds a wand.

 It’s your body. WTF?

 Most of what we call fate is really just mistakes that could have been avoided.

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.

Love. I want to buy you summer dresses. I want to buy a steel guitar and name it after you.

Moody. I want you to see the color of my eyes when I’m crying.

 The poet’s mechanicity. Poetry and wallpaper. It seems to me this poetry is better suited for wallpaper. My reaction is to say, if you make enough of it you can do a wall.

 Dreams are in the body. The mind just reflects, and like a mirror everything is backwards. If you could teach yourself not to dream, that would be a good thing.

 Love. I don’t ever want love to stop hurting me.

 —What’s that?
 —I’m dancing. This is how I dance.

 Manners. I Ching. There is no blame.

To be poetic is everything.

The poet’s mechanicity. Fabulosity.

How do I love thee? You are my yellow submarine.

There’s a whole belt of avant-gardist territory where to criticize them is like telling the Fat Lady at the freak show to lose weight.

“The Whale”

   It lived downstairs, in the Men’s room, at the old Brunswick alleys where my league used to bowl. Some boys, my age—twelve or thirteen, probably a little older—lured me down there and instructed me on how to coax it from its slumbers. You had to stand on a particular spot, and jump up a bit to catch hold of this metal bar that was a part of the stalls. Then, dangling for an instant, you reached for the hot-air blower and pushed its On button.
   This simultaneous action—of holding to the bar whilst engaging the blower button—resulted, more often than not, in the delivery of an electrical shock. And for an instant you’re made helpless, dangling there like an idiot while the boys gathered ’round you have a fit.
   And so, my fellow electricians, I leave you with this thought, but more than a thought, really, a fact. In the words of the great Watschandis, who dig a hole and dance around it with their spears held in front to simulate an erect penis, Not a pit, not a pit, but a cunt!

This is the part of the asylum where they let you go ’round naked. Robert Lowell is here. And so is Anne Sexton.

“How I Became Verbal Sadistic”

   If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is what I ate and what TV shows I watched, how they plopped me in front of Bozo and filled my bottle with Pepsi, how I suckled ragged the corners of my pillows and bit off the noses of my Teddy bears, how those teeth marks I left in Grandma’s kitchen chair sent my father into a seizure, how he beat me, then, and how I wouldn’t shit or speak to him for weeks, how my father flew for a commercial airline and could see me only once a week, and how I always managed to have diarrhea on the nights he took me out, how he stopped bringing home his girlfriends, and all the sitters that I had, and how Aunt Gloria saw after us for a while at the beginning, and why I bit her, and how she said I was possessed and got this Catholic priest to talk to me, and how he said I was too headstrong to be possessed and started all that commotion about my welfare when I asked if he knew of any nuns who were wet-nursing, and how they put me away and I was forced to make confession and damn nearly gagged on my Communion wafer.
   —It’s a sign! Auntie said.
   How I showed up one morning at Newark Airport and nearly got my father fired, how he took me up to Boston where he had an apartment and said we were gonna start fresh, how the doctors said I was sick, and how they gave me insulin, and how the blonde nurse sat with me and showed me where with the syringe, and how I never bit again but learned to sublimate the urge by saying fuck!

Bloomingdale’s is just a five- or ten-minute walk from my building, depending on the hour, and on the weather, and depending, of course, on the shoes. I was on Lexington, across the street opposite the glass revolving doors, finishing off my cigarette. I was thinking about how great my coat felt on my body. It really fit me well. And it really kept me warm. It was just a little worn around the buttonholes. And around the collar, I suppose. I suppose I’ve had it for, well, going on, like, four whole years. And I was whistling the theme to the movie The Vikings, and making this great segue into the theme from the movie Star Trek, and then back into The Vikings, and then a segue into the Slinky song. My cousin used to have a Slinky. The Slinky is the most stupid toy in the world but it has a great theme song, right up there with Mystery Date. I can also do the Casper the Friendly Ghost song, and from there segue into the theme from the movie Peyton Place. I like the game photography, it’s very nineteen-forties. You get a bunch of guys and gals together, you turn off the lights, and you see what develops. I once watched that whole stupid movie with my Aunt Gloria, and she was, like, transfixed, literally transfixed as though what the hell she was watching. I was also getting into this stare. I had this stare thing going. I had my eyes wide open. And it was tempting, almost overwhelmingly so, to just let myself go, to lose myself in my stare. I was watching the shoppers come and go, in and out, all sorts of people. People from all over the world. And thinking yes, for sure, the most beautiful women in the world can be found at Bloomingdale’s. I could see myself, entering the store, in my reflection on the glass of the revolving door, and then immediately, to be wafted in the scents of the perfumes on the midway. I was bumped into by this woman. She was rushing out. She seemed as though she was fleeing a fire. Her eyes were open wide, and rather bulging and glassy, but not as though she had been crying, I mean as though she had just wakened from a terror. Could be she just had perfume in her eyes. And she had a little girl in tow. Somehow or other I caught the child’s eye and she winked at me and sort of flipped her little hip at me. She was wearing these little white cowboy boots and her dress came to just below her bottom. The woman tugged on the child’s arm. The child’s feet were put in motion so fast, but as though they had lost contact with the floor. And then I noticed there were firefighters everywhere. Some had stationed themselves in the aisles, and some were moving about in what seemed to be a pretty well rehearsed choreography. But then I saw these were not real firefighters, these were female models made up in firefighters’ uniforms. They had the black firefighter coats on, with the yellow reflective stripes, and they wore the firefighter helmets, and at the bottom just their perfect legs, and then a four-inch stiletto heel in fire-engine red, and then a wrinkle in fire-engine red ran up the back of their stockings, and in one hand they held a gleaming new red hatchet, and in the other a sample of Engine Co. No. 44 lipstick. And they all had fake mustaches in their noses, but to accentuate their Engine Co. No. 44 lips. And up and down the aisles was rolled out these flat mock-ups of fire hoses. And there were hydrants, in fire-engine red, set beside the firefighters stationed in the aisles. And then above us, suspended from the ceiling, there were tightrope walkers, made up as bellhops, and trapeze artists flipping through the air. Trapeze artists, made up as bellhops, doing flips and acrobatic stunts. There were contortionists. These slender Oriental women, made up as bellhops, and in the most discourteous of positions, going about on their hands herky-jerkylike all up and down the aisles. And as they went about they were farting perfume in blue puffs of combustion. I felt something tugging at my coat sleeve. I looked down and I saw that little girl again. She was trying to tell me something. Cou-cou-could you co-come with mm-mme over here, over here, pu-pu. . . . She led me by my sleeve through the counters and the crowds, to a place the other side of the midway. Her mother showed up and took her by the arm. This time she lifted the child in her arms and carried her away. The child winked at me, over her mother’s shoulder, and pointed to a class of kindergartners seated on the floor. They were being addressed by a model, made up in trench coat and dark fedora hat. The fedora had a dramatic pinch to it and her eyes were concealed beneath its brim. Her belt was cinched so tightly, but to accentuate her tiny waist. She held a bottle of perfume in her hands, and she was fondling its plastic seal, as though she were about to rip it open. And she was teaching them, in a lisping Castilian voice, to say the perfume’s name. Espy. A little boy hopped up and faced me. He said his name and held his finger to his chest. I’m Christopher! I felt my legs buckle out beneath me, and my backside bump against the floor. I tried to pick myself up but my legs were paralyzed. The little boy came and stood beside me. I’m Christopher. I know, I said. How did you get here? The little voice came against my ear, and as he did I took his hand. Hit and run. I shook off his hand and tried to crawl away. My legs stuck out as though they were on backwards. Look over there. . . . He pointed to a woman behind the Chanel counter. That’s my friend. But I can’t see, I said. I can’t see above the counter. . . . I tried to push myself up. She’s my friend. Yes, and I want to see her, I said. Oh help me to see. . . . I pulled my body toward the counter. She’s my friend, and I love her. Oh yes, I’d love to see your friend, I said. Oh please help me to see. . . . She’s my friend. . . . But where is she going? Christopher, I want to see her. . . . At last the model ripped the seal, and all the children purred and rose to their feet. Some stood on tiptoe, as though to lift their noses to the scent. The Oriental contortionists had surrounded me, their upside-down faces made expressions of curiosity to one another. It seemed to them by the way that I was holding myself up that I was trying to outdo them, and they began laughing at me, and farting perfume in my face. I reached for the child’s legs and climbed up his body ’til I had him in my arms. I could taste his golden hair in my face. I managed off my knees and I lifted him, and I hurried him away to the revolving doors.

Better than friends with money, friends who’ll give you their old clothes.

Ask yourself, is this someone you want to have a weekend with?

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been emotionally abused.

“To be one-hundred percent honest in love is infantile.”

Today’s secret word is spit.

Some young women are just too smart . . . that is, for the people around them. And they’ll seek out an analyst just to find someone who can keep up with them.

A Fragment

—the breath and palm
and leaving only brightness, and weightlessness

lifting, irresistibly
all the bodies of the saints

Today’s secret word is merkin.

This movie was shot on cell-phone video. It’s the footage of the head of Jacques Derrida on the body of the Bigfoot.

On the receipt she wrote, ministre de corbeille à fruits. I said, That is an act of poetry, and she said, And for me. This is a photograph. A vélo-taxi on a Paris boulevard. On the back of it was written, ministre de corbeille à fruits. She said the soul is a stranger on earth.

Manners. Plato. Timaeus: And into this body, subject to the flow of growth and decay, they fastened the orbits of the immortal soul.

Manners. She leads with her biology.

Slippers.

Great redundancies in world history. “War crimes.”

Love. The thought of you suffering kills me.

Today’s secret words are mortify and loathsome.

Uber Gretchens.

It’s like Ralph Waldo Emerson being Ralph Waldo Emerson at a midwestern school run by Kantians. It doesn’t happen.

In this case anonymity is synonymous with nonentity. It’s an in this case anonymity is synonymous with nonentity situation.

Manners. Jacques Rivière. “A man does not get what he deserves, but what he resembles.”

Now Playing at the Sadistic.

In the envelope, this letter, where it read, You are too well-balanced to be a poet. Your poetry insults the poetess in me. And in the margin, Quite so. This photograph. Someone I did not recognize. I told her, replace your apostrophes with commas and use as few contractions as possible. That night, as she slept, I rewrote her poetry, replacing her apostrophes with commas and using as few contractions as possible. In the morning I took her to see where the comedians lived. The pool is empty now, but see there? See that crack in the foundation?

In the morning I took her to the House of Hearts, to the place of the Destroyer of Hearts. The pool is empty now, but see there? See that crack in the foundation? That is where Medius fell. This is Procopius, Greek historian and proto culture critic who made scandal his specialty and survived into his seventies. The man with his pants at his ankles is The Fool.

In the morning I took her to meet the Climack sisters. They are something out of the Brontës, she said. The cure depends on your having what you want and doing what you want. Conjugation, my love.

In the morning I took her to meet Stephanie Smothers. Every song Bob Dylan wrote is about Stephanie Smothers, I told her. I think I’m in love, she said.

Manners. Recoverable at will. It’s not immoral to be unhappy. I wanna marry Peppermint Patty.

This poem must be seen to be heard.

In this case diversity is synonymous with achievement. It’s an in this case diversity is synonymous with achievement situation.

And how the summers were so long. And probably, I suppose, because of all the disappointments. We built ourselves a bungalow, just father and myself, atop this mountain where the streams were packed with crayfish. The paths there were ancient and strewn with shiny beads and arrowheads, all for the collecting. On sunny days, and after rainfall, the bald rock sparkled all its minerals. You could almost see the mushrooms blooming. I found myself a friend with little Christopher, who told me secrets, and I told him mine. I’m happy to have you for my friend, he said. And you for mine, I told him. We built a tree house and carved our signs into the wood. Mine was an arrowhead, his was a star. We slept inside a tepee at the bottom of our tree and kept a fire going all night long. And then one day, as I sat upon my roof handing nails and shingles to my father, I noticed little Christopher coming up the road and I was taken by the keenest intuition. Christopher, and I, and my father and our house, and the nails and the hammer and the shingle and the ladder and the ground and the sun and the sky and the stream, and the crayfish, there. . . . We were all One. Us, all and everything was One. And Chris’s shiny hair was a golden helmet, and in his arms he held a golden sword. I sprang to my feet, shouting, Christopher! Up here! My father was taken by surprise. He turned suddenly, to grab hold of me, and lost his balance. He fell from the roof and lost consciousness. And later that day, in the hospital bed, he died. And somehow, but leave it to the logic of adults, I was never to see Christopher again.
      There is a space inside that house that I have never explored. It is the attic. And when he pulled that ladder down it brought with it such warm and succulent air. How I stood into that draft, as he climbed into the shadow, sustaining myself by his love.

It was a long walk home, down to 56th at York. At first I couldn’t think about it, the whole scenario resisted whatever angle I tried to penetrate it from. I was watching myself in all the windows and fingering the fluff inside my pockets. I was smiling, too. And oddly, I suppose, I was feeling a rush of euphoria. I felt aloof, even. I felt as though I had just fallen in love and I was thinking, isn’t this inappropriate? I was enjoying the walk and my reflection in all the storefront windows. And I was thinking I might go shopping, into Bloomingdale’s, and maybe check out their duffle coats. And then I felt a little anxious, and for a moment I thought it was morning and I panicked on how I might be late for class. And then I did something real unusual, I checked the street sign to learn where I was at. I usually have this sixth sense about my location, in fact whenever I’m asked to give directions I usually do so by the compass point, saying how to proceed in north or south or east or west and, really, this drives the tourists crazy.
      The first thing I thought, feeling this way, was to somehow get back to Lydia, but I just as instantly knew how ridiculous that was. I tried, I tried by imitating him, I tried to decipher that murmur he’d made, but all I could come up with was wanderer, wandering, wondering. I thought of them going to make love, and this made me panicky again. Each time I thought of Lydia’s behind I had to stop to catch my breath and regain my balance. I rested awhile at a parking meter. At one point I rested on a stoop and took out a book and tried to read for my homework. Everything, however, and much to my dismay, was ripe for the association. I had accustomed myself to seeing her behind in every melon on the street. There were grocers everywhere. And I think I lost control of my facial muscles. I thought I was smiling, but when I looked at my reflection up close I in fact realized a terrible grimace. I also noticed there was gook in my eyes, and I wondered if I’d been crying.
      When you’re a boy you hear all sorts of myths about the girls, like how the girls can’t just make love, that they require an emotional attachment. I had since learned that this was indeed true for the girls but that for women it’s another case entirely. I also knew that where Lydia was concerned making love was a real team effort.
      When I got home I hid myself under the covers. I was instinctively curled up into a foetus. I tried to will myself to disappear, and when that didn’t work I said a prayer. Nothing flashy, please. No white smoke and applause. Just a soft and quiet disappearance. I was sobbing pretty deeply. I thought about the phone and thought, what miracle, what miracle if only she would call. I swore aloud, of how I would not be possessive. I swore to Christ I’d have it any way she needed. If only she would call to check up on me.
      I think it’s so for everyone, at least when you’re a kid, that you have this pretty reasonable sense of immortality and immunity, a sort of psychological shield against the belief that anything catastrophically bad can happen to you or to your family. Things like cancer, and divorce, and alcoholism, or like losing a brother or a sister or a friend when they’re so young and supposed to last forever, or like watching your father lie helpless on the ground and then the ambulance taking him away. These things defeat that shield, and growing up is just so much realization that you’re not immune, you’re not immortal, anything can happen to anyone and at any time and there’s nothing can be done. Being an adult is knowing that at any moment Christ may strike you down, and still carrying on as though it didn’t matter.

The fireplace was made of stone, stones the size of skulls, small skulls, set in cement. Smooth, the round, the blues and gray of buried slate. And there were flutes of branch, or tibias, buried into the cement. And I thought of our little bungalow, and of our black cast-iron belly stove, and for the first time in my life, I wished they had held onto it.
   —Do the stones get hot? I asked.
   No one answered.
   Thea was tending to the fire. The logs were white and black and smeared with amber sap. And they were moldy and sweet smelling. She wore a pair of suede mittens. And when she went down on her hands and knees I saw, beneath her pleated kilt, I saw a little of her cheek. And I saw Dawn, then, and she was watching me.
   —It’s our only source of heat, Thea said, piling the logs and then lighting the kindling, and then placing it so.
   —Is there something I can do? I asked.
   —We have loads of blankets, she said. Dawn? Stephen, take one for your lap. In a couple of hours we’ll be roasting.
   Dawn was mumbling to herself. She reached inside an old, battered trunk. I could smell the cedar on the wool. She sat herself on the sofa and covered her lap. She started rubbing her hands together, to make warmth. As she rubbed her rings were making clicking sounds. She knew it was annoying her mother, who was still on her hands and knees. Then she said, if you stand next to the window you can see your breath. You can make frost on the window. We don’t come here too often in the winter any more. Just to flush the toilets.
   —Thank you, Dawn, the mother said. Believe me, Stephen, it gets like a sweat house in here.
   The girl was still all bundled up.
   —I can tolerate just so much discomfort, she said.
   And I thought she said the so rather deliciously, if somewhat like a college girl.
   —May I see your rings? I asked.
   I thought at least this would stop the clicking noise.
   —Dawn? the mother said. Get some glasses down. And the pear brandy.
   I was beginning to get the impression that we were there, for the most part—that is, aside from flushing the toilets—that we were there for my sake alone. When she returned I offered her my mittens.
   —I’ve been keeping them warm for you.
   She left the snifters and the brandy on the coffee table. And then she pulled the mittens off my hands. But as she did this, she made a face as though to say, I still think you should keep your distance.
   I poured the brandy. I took mine and took a little taste, and then I put it down in one shot.
   —Sometimes the pipes get frozen, she said. And you have to make into a meat-loaf pan. And then you have to take it outside and dump it.
   —Winning, Dawn! the mother said, still on her hands and knees.
   And it was difficult to keep my eyes from beneath her kilt.
   The girl took a little sniff and then a sip of her brandy. She licked her lips, and then she put it down in one shot.

Dots & dashes.

Tomboys.

That child. When I was that age I was having conversations with people. I was obstinately silent. I never read before so many people before. What they don’t know is I’m doing poses out of Edward Gorey. I showed her pictures of my childhood at Spofford. It’s not the number of friends you have, it’s how many are paying attention. It’s the difference between a poetry of Yes-or-No logic and a poetry of Yes and No super-logic. Snobbery is a (form of) commodification. To be read in the voice of Ygor from Son.

That morning, downstairs in the laundry room, we encountered a thumb disguised as a woman. It had a child attached to its chest. I said the end of woman is the child. She said the end of woman is the thumb.

Inside the water a yellow disc fell calm amid blue space. Restless, in the encircling pine, cicadae sang. She found herself surrounded, within a giant crown, was tipped by reaching pine asway like angel wing. Has he placed amiss his crown, him off to bathe in yon brown lake? But see, he returns!

He drew the blanket to his chin, opening his eyes to realize not the blanket, but the woman’s robe, instead.

You need to stand on your head.

I’m sorry but I can’t remember a thing about last night.

Anything that’s not wrapped in newspaper or that comes out of a thermus, he doesn’t want it.

The Cobb is a “Hollywood Rendition,” you know.

The monster rises from the pit. The lovers turn. She screams. He fires. Roll credits.

I understand the skeptic in metaphysics, I even understand the skeptic in ethics, but the skeptic in poetics fools himself into believing he is doing anything other than practicing a charivari.

Memnon acted reasonably.

Sidney Place.

The Italian sports car, its brake engaged, slid some inches on the driveway gravel before halting in its place beneath the portecochere. Above them clouds were gathering; wisps of glistening cirrus halted high above like monitors; sensing no resistance, they summoned their brothers, the cumulus; they arrived, arrived, increasing their number, then seemingly cumbersome they hovered, waiting; pondered a bumbling.

A constellation.
In a month or so I’ll grow bedsores. What will she say to that?
   —Let me smooth some elbows on your cream. Feel better?
   —Delightful. Some here?
   —I see. . . .
   —And my shoulder blades.
   —I see. Why don’t I just give you a rub? So tell me what you did today.
   —Well, after long deliberation the gods have seen fit to ratify my proposition. We’ll be raising the new constellation on the evening of the fifteenth.
   —You don’t say. Congratulations.
   —Draco’s out of town ’til the thirteenth, Hercules enters the clinic on the seventeenth. The most crucial obstacle, filling those two vacant spaces, was finally hurdled late last Saturday when the Big Man made a show and came ’round to granting us a couple stars.
   —Quite an accomplishment.
   —I’d say. He won long applause. And then you know, the entire chamber turned ’round and applauded me. The Big Man too! Although He didn’t stand. You know I have to admit I was a bit choked up. Then Cepheus tapped me on the shoulder, and guess what? Cassiopeia kissed me on the cheek! Hercules invited me out for a drink, but I declined. You know what happened the last time we went out drinking two-o’clock in the morning.
   —A national disgrace!
   —I’d say. I got off easy. The press has yet to forgive Herc.
   —Do you suppose those women’ll ever get their lives back in order?
   —Beats me.

She took the name Brons Hermione. And I, Harpis Bandoneon.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Turn-ons. Kindness.

Turn-offs.

The poet’s mechanicity. The poet as ironist. Where he fails is in that his irony fails to rise above the rank of sarcasm.

The first college I attended was a small private two-year music school on the southern fork of Long Island. It was here that I learned piano and how to read and write music. Of all the required courses I disliked solfeggio the most as my voice consistently refused to perform publicly thus causing myself, my instructor and my classmates, repeated disconcertion. In sum, my study of music proved only privately rewarding. Accomplished musicianship was not, it now appears, my primary motivation. I did however gain the possession of a certain pleasurable memory as regards my English Literature instructor. She proposed I train my efforts to the written word.
     Lydia was plain in that widely imitated Connecticut sense of plain. Comfortable moccasin loafers, blue candy stripes, Van Doren’s country wife with straight blond hair to just above her collar in the neat appearance of a town girl. She drove to school in a white imported station wagon. The operative word, here, is white, as no matter the make of the vehicle, so long as it is white. Lydia led me to search for allegories in O’Connor and in Hawthorne. I wrote an exposition on “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” making a whole lot of mistrustful stuff out of Red Sammy’s monkey and that chinaberry tree. I went so far as to mention Nostradamus. I wrote on Goodman Brown, comparing him alongside Faust. I made a great to-do over avoiding the Freudianesque and this, I suppose, was the edge to her interpreting my sensibilities as home grown.
     Her schedule, it so turned out, was ordered so that our English Lit. session just happened to mark her final obligation of the school day. This coincidence facilitated our acquaintanceship, it brought us together in a somewhat extracurricular sense as we both eased into the habit of my accompanying her from the building. It was our routine that from the classroom she would next a quick stop into the department office, where she would signature the book, and from there we would continue for the parking lot. We would lean beside her car discussing, beyond the daily themes, my prospects for transfer to a traditional four-year institution. And sometimes, weather permitting, we would slip into the car and she would start the motor and turn on the windshield wipers.  
     Lydia must have sensed in my temperament some sort of emblematic or suggestive characteristic that had either gone unnoticed or had had a dissuasive influence upon my other instructors, both of this time and earlier. For she was being more than poetic when she told me, You must not allow yourself to become discouraged. Your true mettle lies in perseverance. I was not then prone nor indeed was I fit to interpret her remarks as anything like keen empathy or diagnosis, rather were they received as general if curiously stirring caution. Still, however, this was serious. However should I become discouraged?

Donation Street.

The poet’s mechanicity. We can say about his work, it points the way. And add, it in itself is not there, but it points the way.

Charmer and narcissist. The charmer thinks you’re going to take one look at him and love him as much as he loves himself.

Those were magic days. What was I? Twenty? I was stoned all the time. I was chain-smoking cigarettes. I was haunting the bookshops. All I wanted was my books. I was reading all the time. I could go twenty-four hours, inside my books.

God bless you, Mr. Semmelweis.

Manners. Price upon request.

I want to write poetry that can only be read with the third eye. I want to write poetry that can only be seen with the third eye.

Don’t allow yourself feelings of despite. Nowhere is more obvious than at bottom doh.

The poet’s mechanicity. The thing to consider, when considering the “ethnopoetic,” is that in every case the “ethnopoetic” is a declension.

Manners. The audacity of pigeons.

“Auto the Vampire”

I have never seen the sunrise. I have read descriptions of the dawn, and of noon and of dusk, seen from mountaintop, valley and shore. I have collected French paintings, and drawings and photographs, from the world over, of the drama of the sunlight.

Manners. Do you really want your kids to think it’s okay for the dog to drink out of the toilet?

The gorilla doesn’t know it’s a gorilla; actually, the gorilla thinks that you are another gorilla, only that you’re acting really strange.

Just as there are freaks and there are “made” freaks, there is poetry and there is “made” poetry.

To hear her tell it: He said The Beatles were not good instrumentalists, and so I slapped him.

Manners. As in the case of personality, wit is lost on those who have none.

The future ends in an explosion.

A finished system. A finished person. Both are done with.

Manners. Don’t make fun of Elvis.

Do you know “Adventure” from Winesburg, Ohio?

The poet’s mechanicity. The tab key as a form of punctuation.

This isn’t flirting. This is worship.

If I say, “this is not a poem,” it is no more derogatory than if I say of Pirandello, “this is not a play.”

We practiced pulling up and then jumping out and hurrying into the buildings.

Do you know the scene where he drinks water from her hands, and then he looks up?

Do you know the hissing swans?

The poet’s mechanicity. The ostrich prefers fire to the sun.

God sees us through the eyes of other people.

Wick. This is pied-à-terre. Without you I'm nothing.

STOP ALL WARS   BOYCOTT HOLLYWOOD

The poet’s mechanicity.  Metaphor? Gurgling is not an inflection.  Neither is clearing your throat.  In the beginning was the capital letter.

This scene takes place on the beach.

The sky looks painted on.

Nowhere is it written that every time you order pizza you have to get the pepperoni topping.

The poet’s mechanicity. For me, poetry, and the experience of the poet, has always been something esoteric. Incredulity and cynicism are the enemies of the poet, are the enemies of poetry. The enemies of poetry will take advantage of your idealism.

Bird song in morning. Reminds me of college and of my insomnia. And how I first saw Ms _____. Eddie’s Parade, four o’clock in the morning, she was feeding the _____. I came beside her but before I could tell her the wind blew her dress against her body and, I. When I awoke she was kneeling beside me. I think you were sleepwalking.

Cf: In dreams.

I’m thinking of Betty Parsons.  Popcorn disagrees with me.  Goes viral, the definition of new-media poetics.  

I’m thinking of Betty Parsons.   

Manners.  This is sublimation.   

Turn-offs.  Cruelty.  Rudeness.  Gratuitousness.  Contrarians, equivocators, prevaricators.  

Do you know what it means to be the black sheep? Well, I’m the black sheep of the black sheeps. That’s why you’re with me, she said.

And if you were a flower you would be a . . . touch-me-not?  

Girls.

Cf: Girls (play audio).

You are so totally without guile, she said.  And that is why you are so totally clueless.  

The poet’s mechanicity.  As a poet she makes a fine self-publicist.  

My psychology. Rather be a bird of paradise than a canary.

Ass-kissers like to have their asses kissed.

Cf: Poet and Docent (for sooth).

What about this sentence don’t you agree with?

People who are not religious do not know how religious people think, and that is why the left has no solution to the Holy War, except to call it something else.

It’s a case of the when pushed, push back harder mentality. Which is of course the opposite of Zen (and of Christianity).

It’s a case of the incredible shrinking life.

Cf: October 08, 2009.

The tell is the kenspeckle.

In the bookstore the cat is sleeping. In the Judaica section are all the books about the Nazis. This is Munch’s portrait of Count Harry Kessler.

Manners. Wash your hands after touching money.

And if you were a superhero your special super power would be . . . sneakiness?

Manners. Imagine yourself an actor, or, better, an actor in the role of someone who understands where and how to inflect.

You think you know people, but you only know your idea of how you think they should behave.

Cf: October 02, 2009.

There are witnesses. There is no need to exaggerate.

To be read in the voice of Max Adrian’s Delius.

Bartók. Cummings. Delius. Ahoy.

The audacity of pigeons. She said the pigeons have Brooklyn accents. She said I saw you in the subway. I asked you is this train going to Brooklyn. You had the worst case of hat hair.

This is the toboggan we took the spill on. (This is the spill we took the toboggan on.)

She is too intellectual to have children. The biology of childbirth disgusts her. She said the whole birth and death business, why subject a loved one to that? The whole matter of excretions! The whole manner of excretions! It’s a one giant cringe for Man, one giant cringe for Mankind situation. Pray for your children, foolish woman. If you could talk to the animals in the zoo, they’ll tell you how much they hate us.


Manners. An anthology of poetry by women who have had episiotomies.

Introduction.
Part One: The Midline.
Part Two: The Mediolateral.
Part Three: Forks and Knives.

Pencils.

Old dogs kill me.

Manners. The Love Project (Anabasis, 1993): “Love is at once contingent & spontaneous; at once uncaused & self-caused. We can wish for love, but we cannot choose it.”

That morning, downstairs in the laundry room, we encountered a chin disguised as a woman. It had a child attached to its chest. I said the end of woman is the child. She said the end of woman is the chin.

The poet’s mechanicity. Whereas this one says, suffer for your art, this other asks, why pay retail, and contents himself with “collage.”

The dachshund weighs less than the corgi.

If you want to stretch a sweater, sleep in it.

In my dream she put a sprig of parsley in my mouth.

After the dances, she was so affected she began to speak with a Russian accent.

Before we go any further I want you to know, bossa nova brings out the Snoopy in me.

My father’s an absurdist, only he doesn’t know he’s an absurdist. He has the burger on the challah bun and says to the waiter, let no man come between my raw onions and my polo pony.

I am not now nor have I ever been one to mistake turpitude for enlightenment.

We think the world of each other.

The camel kneels to receive its burden.

I have this in black.

This is Bobbin, she was named for a mechanical part.

She made the sign of the cross upon her forehead saying in German (but I translate), If it drives me crazy. She made the sign of the cross above her heart saying in German (but I translate), If it kills me.

She fell asleep at the writing table. I took her in to bed. I returned to her writing and read, where it began in a letter to Cabala Girl, Angel, when I heard the news I made the sign of the cross for you.

She fell asleep at the writing table. I took her in to bed. I returned to her writing and read, where it began in a letter to Timon, Deliver yourself from revenge, that is your bridge to the highest hope. I have met him and the impression is not good. How does one say, sour breath and rotten teeth. Or, what is the opposite of charming. We read, Psalm 38, and there is no soundness in my flesh, for my loins are filled with a loathsome disease. We’re all looking forward to be meeting again in that great golden cornflake in the sky.

She fell asleep at the writing table. I took her in to bed. I returned to her writing and read, where it began in a letter to Justine, I cannot tell when you are lying. Ask yourself, is this someone you want to have a weekend with?

She fell asleep at the writing table. I took her in to bed. I returned to her writing and read, where it began in a letter to Supergirl, My favorite scene is where you are relaxing. I want to have cigarettes with you.

She fell asleep at the writing table. I took her in to bed. I returned to her writing and read, where it began in a letter to Juliette, There is a night I will never forget, and it is what I will remember you by always. It was not meant to be a sleepover. It was snowing, and it was snowing forever. You walked me to the door and I was about to leave but when I saw the snow I was taken by the most superstitious fear. You did not plan for me to stay over. And in the morning your mother (and her boyfriend—I remember him, he was a student) made waffles.

Every cabby knew the way to Sneden’s Landing.

Little Miss Showers went to the spa, and came home with not a hair on her body.

Manners. According to Margaret Anderson, where concerns romantic love, “I have found romantic love where, alone, it can exist for me—in someone whose nature it is to regard sex as a mystery and a gift.” According to Margaret Anderson, “Don’t complain about anything—just leave the room, or the city, until you can act like an attractive stranger.”

I took the Vespa, because I want to have her arms around me always.

We thought the same thing but for different reasons.

The next morning I read in Jung that the basket is a symbol for the maternal body (for the womb—a basket of fruit may symbolize fertility). A basket may also hide a secret.

I said for Lawrence the end of man is woman. She said Lawrence is the most unamerican of writers, then adding, Among the most. I suppose I can think of several Germans. In America you don’t like the word philosopher. You take it out of the titles of your children’s books. Americans put their faith in common sense, I said. Egalitarianism and common sense. She said if common sense were folk sense it might cure a wart, but as such it cannot tell you anything you don’t already know. And that is the fallacy of common sense, it makes a virtue of ignorance. In America you have dangerous books. Your best writers, Emerson and Thoreau, they are useless to your liberals. One of our politicians said Emerson was a proto Social Democrat. He was laughed at by the academicians, who said he was conservative.


Manners. D.H. Lawrence. Kangaroo: Australian Labour has set out from the first on the principle that huge fortunes should not be made out of its efforts. We have had the obvious example of America before us, and we have been determined from the start that Australia should not fall into the hands of a small number of millionaires and a larger number of semi-millionaires. It has been our idea that a just proportion of all profits should circulate among the workers in the form of wages. Supposing the worker does get his pound a day. It is enormous, isn’t it? It is preposterous. Of course it is. But it isn’t preposterous for a small bunch of owners or shareholders to get their ten pounds a day, for doing nothing. Sundays included. That isn’t preposterous, is it? They raise the plea that their fathers and forefathers accumulated the capital by their labours. Well, haven’t our fathers and forefathers laboured? Haven’t they? And what have they accumulated? The right to labour on, and be paid for it what the others like to give ’em.


To the simple-minded everybody’s simple-minded.

The parallels to the Roman Empire are frightening. More frightening are the parallels to pre-Hitler Germany.

The taking of Elian at gunpoint.

You have people here who actually worship their leader. When this began to happen in my country, that’s when things began to go bad.

There is an essay, over a century old, by one Dr. S.J. Holmes in which it is reasoned the role of sex in the evolution of the mind. Here one finds compared the elaborate wooing of male birds—their mating call, that is—with the articulate language of man in such summation as the function of the voice in the vertebrates is primarily to serve as a sex call. Granting this, the most eloquent of speakers ought to be among the most alluring—sexually winning, that is—and conversely, the sexually alluring ought to be found among the vocally eloquent. Now on the whole, this is untrue. Although there are exceptions. Some choice exceptions can be found at the opera. . . .

In the morning we both agreed we cannot stand the sound of Yoko Ono’s voice. (In the morning we both agreed we cannot stand the sound of Yoko Ono’s voice.)

To the simple-minded everybody’s simple-minded.

Never use the word helmet to describe a person’s hair, unless you’re describing Louise Brooks. It’s wonna them to the simple-minded everybody’s simple-minded situations.

She didn’t know there were rickshaws in Manhattan. In church there are mandalas everywhere.

Jonathan left the kibbutz to join an ashram. It’s a Jonathan left the kibbutz to join an ashram situation.

In her dream she was gang-fucked by The Band. I understand the man who carves a cross into his forehead.

She wrote, Last night we made love like two retards. And then the doodle of the Wonder Wheel.

I was madly in love with her for two years, and when we broke up, amicably, she gave me back everything I had left at her apartment, everything except my volume of Neruda’s love poems.

She was from Germany. She wanted to see where Lennon was killed.

If you don’t know why people do things, how can you know what things mean?

Say no to hunger.
Say no to ugly wrinkles.

We met a man named Tom who said clearly, Tom, my friends are not your friends and what is more my friends will have nothing to do with your friends. And nor will I. We met a man named Aloysius and that was enough. Later that morning we met Dolly on her way to a tea party. May we come along? Corky, tell us about your open invitation to stay at Davy’s any time. I have an open invitation to stay at Davy’s any time. Thank you, Corky. Corky, tell us what you told the doctor when he told you about your special chromosome. Doctor this is my worst fear realized. Thank you, Corky. Did you say something, Corky? The word you’re looking for is holophrastic. Thank you, Corky.

Manners. Stendhal on love: “He who is indiscreet cannot love.”

Better than akin is condusive.

In 1987 she wrote, all the pilots drive Lincolns and have pink skin. The stewardesses fuck like bunnies. After Cixous, the envelope is sealed with a kiss, is this poetic justice? Write for rules and detailed information.