What's good...
Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentlemen of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world's gentlemen, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.
Death is all metaphors, shape in one history;
The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the genders strip;
Child of the short spark in a shapeless country
Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle;
The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon,
You by the cavern over the black stairs,
Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam,
And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars.
Hairs of your head, then said the hollow agent,
Are but the roots of nettles and feathers
Over the groundwork's thrusting through a pavement
And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers, etc.
("Altarwise by Owl-Light" by Dylan Thomas)
What's bad...
same as books for the blind music
for the deaf bridge always thought
to be an elevator initially collapses but you
ego subject integral identity central conscious
you begin as feel it set against the problem
you always think of as somebody else's body
bodies body's body or bodies either here
where you don't hear where not listening
it begins to be alone alive just in time to stay
waiting same as food for the ones without mouths
same as philosophy
wit
essence
presence
just a moment ago ego move end subject
same as identical amenable reliable same as
magnifying practice signifying praxis integral
horizontal vertical diagonal syllogistic monistic
mnemonic anemic but forgets nothing of the mouth
month countrified begin it all beginnings
beginning to end with the upper palate
its anger on profit its transmission it's locale
the imaginal vaginal time that it left with
Tibet in bed saying that too has a meaning
having said it understands that having seen, etc
("Slightly Left of Thinking" by Steve McCaffery)
______________________________________
Just what's needed to evince differences between rhythms and stone cold 'thinking'. For Thomas a simple amble through apses and an abandoned abbey's "black stairs"is enough to make stars or the poet's prayers the "spark in a shapeless country" (second in lyrical efficacy only to Rilke). Here's an intertextuality the post-avants can't even imagine. The abysmal lack of heart-and wood-depth in McCaffery, on the other hand, is not to be believed: the absence, in particular, of any visible prayer wheels though blessed Tibet be mentioned. Do note the concern in both Thomas and Crane for the safety of children and the tranquility of vision, as the two are inseparable. Again, the slaughter of the innocents laid bare on cold slabs of "horizontal vertical diagonal syllogistic monistic" is never far from this type of bad: badlands of thought where mutants and offenses thrive and poetry is all but impossible.
Constellations, and sidereal influences in general, have enough nearness to real tides and affairs to stand a chance in verse. But where are the spaces (never abyssal only!) interwoven with the possibility of some sense in McCaffery that might turn it into more than chronic gibberish? I fairly believe poetry as bad as this is a pathology and a poet as bad as this a destroyer of heaven's eggs.
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;
Abaddon in the hangnail cracked from Adam,
And, from his fork, a dog among the fairies,
The atlas-eater with a jaw for news,
Bit out the mandrake with to-morrows scream.
Then, penny-eyed, that gentlemen of wounds,
Old cock from nowheres and the heaven's egg,
With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds,
Hatched from the windy salvage on one leg,
Scraped at my cradle in a walking word
That night of time under the Christward shelter:
I am the long world's gentlemen, he said,
And share my bed with Capricorn and Cancer.
Death is all metaphors, shape in one history;
The child that sucketh long is shooting up,
The planet-ducted pelican of circles
Weans on an artery the genders strip;
Child of the short spark in a shapeless country
Soon sets alight a long stick from the cradle;
The horizontal cross-bones of Abaddon,
You by the cavern over the black stairs,
Rung bone and blade, the verticals of Adam,
And, manned by midnight, Jacob to the stars.
Hairs of your head, then said the hollow agent,
Are but the roots of nettles and feathers
Over the groundwork's thrusting through a pavement
And hemlock-headed in the wood of weathers, etc.
("Altarwise by Owl-Light" by Dylan Thomas)
What's bad...
same as books for the blind music
for the deaf bridge always thought
to be an elevator initially collapses but you
ego subject integral identity central conscious
you begin as feel it set against the problem
you always think of as somebody else's body
bodies body's body or bodies either here
where you don't hear where not listening
it begins to be alone alive just in time to stay
waiting same as food for the ones without mouths
same as philosophy
wit
essence
presence
just a moment ago ego move end subject
same as identical amenable reliable same as
magnifying practice signifying praxis integral
horizontal vertical diagonal syllogistic monistic
mnemonic anemic but forgets nothing of the mouth
month countrified begin it all beginnings
beginning to end with the upper palate
its anger on profit its transmission it's locale
the imaginal vaginal time that it left with
Tibet in bed saying that too has a meaning
having said it understands that having seen, etc
("Slightly Left of Thinking" by Steve McCaffery)
______________________________________
Just what's needed to evince differences between rhythms and stone cold 'thinking'. For Thomas a simple amble through apses and an abandoned abbey's "black stairs"is enough to make stars or the poet's prayers the "spark in a shapeless country" (second in lyrical efficacy only to Rilke). Here's an intertextuality the post-avants can't even imagine. The abysmal lack of heart-and wood-depth in McCaffery, on the other hand, is not to be believed: the absence, in particular, of any visible prayer wheels though blessed Tibet be mentioned. Do note the concern in both Thomas and Crane for the safety of children and the tranquility of vision, as the two are inseparable. Again, the slaughter of the innocents laid bare on cold slabs of "horizontal vertical diagonal syllogistic monistic" is never far from this type of bad: badlands of thought where mutants and offenses thrive and poetry is all but impossible.
Constellations, and sidereal influences in general, have enough nearness to real tides and affairs to stand a chance in verse. But where are the spaces (never abyssal only!) interwoven with the possibility of some sense in McCaffery that might turn it into more than chronic gibberish? I fairly believe poetry as bad as this is a pathology and a poet as bad as this a destroyer of heaven's eggs.
