Thinking of the idea of the beginning of things... a radical origin which includes ourselves, somehow... inclusive. Dream Songe.
Berkeley, Blackstone, LaFarge, Henry James... all converging on this actual place called Paradise, for one reason or another.
I wrote this poem almost 20 years ago. I can't even remember what it all means - somebody will have to look into it.
1968 in America. The crumbling of a bond of generations. Fathers against sons, & vice versa. War creeps into the interstices of many a familial psycho-drama. We were there. Establishment corroded by acid.
Tell me 'bout your journey; I'll tell you about mine.
"The line" is the line of generations; of the Way; of meaning. The ground of ordinary life, the foundation, surveyed, laid out. What was understood. The line was broken. Children went looking for answers in all the.
"It must be abstract," writes Wallace Stevens. In order to let the imagination play, let it go, let it be primal, let it have no prior coding.
"Masters of color" : maestro di color che sanno. Aristotle, according to Dante. "Master of those who know." The philosophical experts on reality. Berkeley, George. Irish Bishop; dreamer-at-large. The Universe is a spiritual encounter... something personal & creative.
Something personal & creative. This is possibly the lesson of Paradise Valley.
It's a kind of crevasse, very salty, with horsegrass, near the Atlantic... something fundamental, feminine. Something aching underneath these endless battles of men & boys.
What's my line? Good question.
13
A point. Then a line to the end of the.
Peninsula (perpendicular). Then think distance.
Masters of color, doing flat time against a sentence.
A close-knit family of synecologists, in kimoni.
What's your point? The point is in the line now,
Dino – forms frame for all the others.
The other colors.
De-materialize a bus ad. I? Material? Huh?
Point of all that – brushpaint? Graffiti pencil
spray? Sprigs of lilac, yam? Quiet!
The laird is taking out his sketch kit!
LaFarge draws rock on rock – tensile,
spare, tireless. Emerging out of mica, coagulated
puddingstone to papyrus to pencil –
doubleplay! – looks like a stencil
scraped against igneous fireclay (disintegrated)
– or skeleton of a cedar. Shadow of Berkeley's hat
in figured birchbark. Simple. Fractalimbs am
tapering – congregated, candelabra-wise, om-
nipotent aureole singing in the branches – art!
O awful Ark of Armenian cubits, cubed!
Tahiti of exiled tic-tap-toes!
Show us the mud-slides, Prez!
Before the humanoid hokey Cahokian potsherd is – unrubed!
LaFarge was married beforetimes, in New Orleans.
Bartholdi berthed, booked Liberty in his own backyard.
Complete Red Goddesses peep from every shard
(every word, almost). The spinning clay lip leans – shines.
Square seed packages on their backs, they leap –
greenhorns – from almost nothing on! She made me. . .
Out of a doubleseedy notch (C dusky) see
synecdoche – a wavy Q – become one major creep!
Horsegrass in Paradise Valley (Newport)
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