He had not dipped his feet in ink
before entering the forum.
He had not entered through the second-floor window
even once.
He had worn no hammer around his neck.
He had buried no sandwich under the pines.
He had not traced a headstone with the tip of his tongue,
nor had he the intention!
He spoke no nocturne.
He had taken no photograph
of a Mughal emperor.
He had not once stood backwards in the elevator.
He had not once been a widespread famine.
I wanted to answer in Poetry, but my poetry-pump seems to be dry right now.
I wanted to say that your last poem really stuck. It reminded me to respect quiet power of words used correctly. It was full of meanings at odds. It was exactly the opposite of how I feel, and therefore exactly how I feel. Did you know it was a perfect poem right after you wrote it?
and this one totally kicks ass, too. Adventures in negative space. The title is beyond me. Is it for weakness that He has Never? Those old Mughals, elusive, have left behind only their Structures like turds or uninhabited hermit-crab shells for tourists to gawk at…I know that He is not an American, because he has never been a Widespread Famine. I know He isn’t TTL’s maha-Name.
February 13th, 2009 | #
‘The Gesture’ by George Oppen
The question is: how does one hold an apple
Who likes apples
And how does one handle
Filth? The question is
How does one hold something
In the mind which he intends
To grasp and how does the salesman
Hold a bauble he intends
To sell? The question is
When will there not be a hundred
Poets who mistake that gesture
For a style.
February 14th, 2009 | #
(I point those questions more towards myself than either of you) (p.s., like the poem inga)
February 14th, 2009 | #
“And how does one handle
Filth?”
Lemme tell you, That question takes up 9/10ths of my consciousness these days. FILTH! this city is FILTh, I am Become DIsease. Calcutta is DISEASE! Six more months…very few months. Let’s see, I think my typewriter has something to say on the issue
kolkata is a tongue that licks filth and turns it to clay, molds it into cups of tea and painted gods. colddrinks, thumbs up, subconsciousness and the ecstasy of servitude.
so if you make any progress on that one, let me know asap.
February 15th, 2009 | #
Actually, on second thought, writing that last comment got me to an understanding of the title of this poem, which is exactly dead-on, therefore. I am, at times, unusually weak in the struggle to simply inhabit, which is my primary job and struggle here, to simply inhabit a city as a foreign substance. Unusually weak in the face of an ocean of misery which generates an unending flow of human waste. When I first read it, I was doing everything resisting identifying myself with the He in this poem (i know that it was written in a far away consciousness, one that was always a blissful mystery, who I can’t even geographically map these days, and so I must assume is inhabiting a different world than I at the moment). But now I can’t resist. I’ve begun to identify myself with actions untaken, places unseen. Wanderlust for me operates in the negative; I constantly understand the urgency of places unbeen, feel the irrational need to be them, incorporate them into my life. With pride I count the seven primary locations of my life, and yet they feel inadequate. moreover, the artistic negative, the nocturnes unspoken, crush me. weigh me down immensely. Are a primary location of my desiring machine. TORTURE.
My daily life is enmired in spiritual questions, in questions of karma and dharma. And so when two poems such as these emerge from another lifetime, words that clarify me and lift me into consciousness, I must take them as great gifts, given of course not only to me, but given to me, at exactly the right time for me, just when I needed them most. perhaps the harvest of seeds sown? Your intention in authorship, which I will never be able to access, is irrelevant, but I cannot ignore the words.
While I’m being mushy, I’ve often felt exactly the same about your words, TTL–you always wrap up my turmoils in your theoretical wisdom and challenge me to conceive of them as things that must be conceived. Your quest takes you to the edge of knowledge in all directions. In our blissful disagreements, where they come, I find a capacity for consciousness that would otherwise be forever closed to my simple mind, intellectual realms that would have remained covered by the dust of preconceptions and assumptions.
And jp, my brother. that’s a whole other chapter. joy.
So thank you. For being instruments of the ____________. (because I’m still waiting for your Name, TTL)
I feel sorry for taking it There, but there it was. I felt compelled. Now I need the strength to press submit.
February 15th, 2009 | #
“To handle filth is to meet with the sublime. It is to approach a view of the world from which all human intention appears as mute and insubstantial, and still to take up this standpoint by a supreme act of courage in an effort to represent the scene, the inhabitance of landscape in which a fragile, singular human body braces itself against the onslaught of the world’s innumerable affections.” -something I wrote in a paper about that oppen poem
Thanks for feeling compelled Jed; I’ve been waiting for something to compel me to respond, and while nothing has, something will. There are several I’s in your last line; one that feels sorry, one that felt compelled, and one that needs the strength to press. This last one is the one we need to center our identities on, if we are to reach one another.
February 24th, 2009 | #