In defence of imitation

IN DEFENSE OF IMITATION

*
No, I'm not capable of such; I can't defend the indefensible practice of imitation.

Bad habit picked up in childhood or adolescence, wasteful act that must be outgrown.

Immature artists imitate; mature artists steal.

To paraphrase Eliot's injunction judgment.

It's not just that mature artists don't imitate, they initiate:

They create (synthesize, fashion) a mode their own—

each mature artist is unique, a continent split off from the mythical

Pangaia . . .

And those of us drowning daily in the oceans that separate the Land of Rich from the Domain of Ashbery,

salvation have we none.

*
As many Truthsayers have pointed out (see the comments appended below for some of their axioms)

my poetic process seems fixated stalled at an adolescent stage . . . .

The Verdict is in. The Jury finds me immature.

If I could only learn—if I had only learned—to steal!

Thievery is the path to maturity, the road I failed to take.

*
I don't know if Charles Tomlinson is a great poet, but by Eliot's measure he is a mature one.

He did forge a singular style, a work that's reckon in its pace and placements.

I value his verse, and,

being the stunted stripling I am, was drawn to do my doom,

i.e., ape it.

Of course I always try to dignify-deny this shameful predilection with the term, "homage" . . .

(I even vanity-published a book of such poems under that rubric).

Anyway, here's my attempt at Tomlinson,—

puerile mimickry: call it callow, juvenile,

(parodies are permissible, but not this:)

condemn me for deliberately trying to write like someone I admire:

—the worst heinous a poet can commit, the prime crime, the original sin of unoriginality—

:

ON A DRAWING BY CHARLES TOMLINSON

By a swath of inks the eye
thinks it sees solidities
which alter with the watercolor
way his brush washes its dye

in distance, though even this
finds a faraway fixed not
by the surveyor’s plumb but
by the action of the thumb

delaying all the fingers meant
to draw out of the paper,
splashed dry. The clean grain

catches what it should retain
if enough pressure pleasure
is applied to the stain to lie.


Note:
Tomlinson is not only a distinctive poet, but a visual artist of repute. His graphics grace the covers of many of his books. This Homage attempts to imitate his verse style, or one of his verse styles.


*

Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

*

Dipalma, Raymond (Ray) ed.
Doones Volume 1 Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 (all published).
Bowling Green, Ohio: Raymond Dipalma, 1969-70. First edition. 8vo. Wraps. All four numbers of Dipalma's little magazine of experimental poetry, published in Ohio before he moved to New York City. Contributors include Ted Berrigan, Merrill Gilfallan, Ted Greenwald, Darrell Gray, Anselm Hollo, Robert Kelly, James Tate, Bill Knott, Ron Silliman, Larry Fagin, etc. Condition is near fine to fine with minor toning. Price: $125.00

*
What can I say—

it was the Sixties, man.

*

suspect

...
"ActionYes" is an always-interesting webzine that publishes poetry in translation as well as English originals—

reading its latest issue the poet whose work I was most struck by is Andrew Lundwall . . .

I suspect that if I were his age I'd probably be trying to write this sort of thing:

*

4 Poems by Andrew Lundwall CAMP YEAH petals will plug porno depths fueled in hammers of look which frogs on the shadows of camp yeah — delirium will you enter me now? the elect scuffed — pepsi midnight is a voracious socket squirts on immortality clinically like that hungrily fuck taped using in rodeo trance to the immense smile — camouflage lambs are lying to seem out some new throbs and confusion a new lion of scrawled eye-catching shackle of want the jazzy spurted fissures — high-speed binoculars of arthritic champagne session engulfed in microwaved captivity — is that a way to wait? asked sacrifice cob i have sold a fir to your eyelids and rationalized their crumbs — bewitchments smoked cyan taillights dragged so nevertheless that it made industrial-strength missionary corridor silver to sound — whimper chewed with painted heartbeat more metaphysical than a bellyful of toes chose * ZEROS intense minutes of zeros unfolding only the curious mysteries are kissed to it made of horny hallucination in tulip state of squirt — robotic electric typewriter to fix this time unwinds the flakes of star-capital flickered with toy pump turntables about the nerves — walls on which clock knots huddle and painters with magnifying stripes fix over half-inch omen machines — cheekbones all worried to please this powerful hologram musky sewage edges carved with strangers — vise of breath is beautiful in dirty playroom weeks of half-grown details where dancing interferences steer the skeleton of blur about — this mathematical delirium pussy is amazed beyond the hurrah of files * BLACKOUT apnea of a trolley orgasms in a load of distress — ecstasy squirmed becomes known into lost clitoris — scared croissants and twisted visitors in galleries of synapse — porno-hurried curtains that province icicles — pee erupted like a stiffening eavesdropper — mermaid phones skull you blew it at desire you fug like a scarf where were you when you sam jesus had a picture of arithmetic? — twisting out incense smudged high-pitched cassettes — thighs are down so much for geographic limbo of the pleasure laser * SURVEILLANCE tower rumbles a mechanical moonlight it passes fast to understand feeds more like a yearning with italian alarms — clothing smoked apart between catholic helicopters and throbs these routes will electric for such blonde galaxies — mnear some shrieked gutter of unconscious rose a brow of shock it is not a waist deciding its frequencies — mouth card burbs transient-colored halloween of windshields — jolts do frantically provide snails of satellites — some perverts in bubble daisy me from your box skin job like a vacuum-sealed consciousness about scrape — gloves wiggling up negative twang of cosmetic steel — searchlights skewered thigh-high squeeze this optic record — crazy-looking someplace of surgical cram opera all that ever icons

*

don't you dare

. . .

Please don't stick me on any list with Russell Edson.

I've seen my name included alongside Edson's in groupings by various critics and commentators re the USAPO scene, and it gripes me . . .

because I have zero in common with that wealthy gentleman Russell Edson.

Rich poets, upperclass poets, huh—

Edson, Louise Gluck, William Matthews, C.K.Williams, Mark Strand, Richard Howard et al,

money rolling out of their childhoods,

cash propping their educations at the best schools,

trustfunds supporting their poetic practices—

I hate them all. I curse them for a penny—

They are nothing to me.

*

uh this first poem

the horror

*

I've whined and complained earlier on [a previous] blog about the demeaning coverage my last theoretically-real book received from Poetry (Chicago) Magazine.

Until that hackpiece appeared in early 2005, they had not critiqued any of my books for 33 years, in fact since the May 1972 issue where my book “Nights of Naomi” was savaged as part of an omnibus review by Charles Molesworth.

Anyway, between 1972 and 2005, between the time of these two bookend reviews by Molesworth and Meghan O’Rourke,

I published what, 6 or 7 books, none of which Poetry Magazine deigned to take notice of.

Different editors, yes: Daryl Hine in 1972, and Christian Wiman in 2005: but it’s interesting to note that the magazine’s editorial policy toward me did not change in that time.

Just as they used the 2005 “review” to spread vicious gossip about me, so they did the same in 1972. The 1972 review set the tone for the 2005 one.

Here’s an excerpt from the Molesworth:

“Rumor has it that Knott’s habit of giving his birth and terminal dates together originated when he realized he could no longer face the horror of a poetry reading he was scheduled to give.”

So, here’s the sequence:

in 1972 Poetry Magazine prints a rumor that says in effect that I’m afraid to give (I can’t face the horror of) poetry readings—

And guess what happens then, after that "review":

My reading invitations dry up.

No one asks me to read. From that point on, for the next 3 decades,

I barely manage to get an average of about one reading a year.

I receive almost no requests to give readings because everybody knows,

everybody has heard that I can’t “face the horror of a poetry reading.”

Hey: it said so right there in Poetry Magazine.

After they printed that nonsense

—oh yes, they labeled it a “rumor,” but everybody knows how such floaters spread and take on the facsimile of fact—,

after Poetry Magazine used the venue of what was ostensibly a book review to, to,

what’s the term I’m looking for . . . well, what would you call it?

One thing's for sure: after that May 1972 issue appeared, my reading career was destroyed.

*
There is an alternative truth to this tale:

perhaps my "reading career" was aborted/ thwarted not by this review in Poetry Magazine,

but by the fact that no one liked my crummy lousy poetry enough to invite me to read:

or by the fact that I was no good at giving poetry readings—

I can remember hearing, as I eavesdropped from bathroom stall or around a corner, audience members commenting about how boring and bad my reading was:

I can never remember being praised by anybody in those minuscule groups who attended my infrequent readings,

those scowling scattered-seat-fillers who scuttled so quickly once I had grimaced out my final words—

. . . in fact, the more I think about it, I realize that the reason I didn't get invited to give any (or hardly any) readings

was simply that people hated (hate) my poetry, ergo why should they invite me to read . . .

In fact, I probably got as many invitations as any other fourth-rate poet like me.

*
Just one question: Poetry Magazine has in its long history published hundreds maybe thousands of reviews of poetry books:

have they ever, in the text of any of those reviews,

printed rumors and gossip about any (living) poet other than me?

Is there a single instance, can you remember a similar case

where the reviewer paused in the course of his or her consideration of the book under review,

parethetically paused to share some precious oddment of rumor gossip about the poet whose work they were supposedly appraising—

can you recall another such incident in the pages of Poetry Magazine?

I haven’t read all those reviews, so I can’t say for sure, but I think not.

I think I am the only one to have been so honored.

*

lebensraum

page-hogs

*
What is the motivation of those print poets who insert a lot of dead space into the body of their poems?—

Who spread a poem out over ten pages when it could be printed on two or three with normal stanza and section breaks.

Have you seen the poems that do this?

A few piddly words or phrases appear, clumped or sprinkled on the length and width of each page:

these fragment/segments are surrounded or interspersed by as much blank empty white space

as the size of the book format affords.

Surely their purpose is to use up as much paper as possible, to kill as many trees as they can.

Isn't that why Michael Palmer puts double spaces in between his lines,

so his poems can fill up twice the space that regular poems use, so they can fill up twice the number of pages,

and use up twice the amount of paper, and thereby kill twice as many trees?

(And oh yeah: double his bibliography)—

(Oh but of course it's not

*ecocidal egomania*

that causes these poets to claim more page-space for their poems than others use,

no, it's an esthetic choice doncha know.)

**

make it nuke

BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

*
T.S. Eliot (looking back in a 1953 lecture) asserted that "[T]he starting-point of modern poetry is the group denominated 'imagist' in London about 1910." If that's true, then—

modern poetry begins with Pound's "In a Station of the Metro":

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Pound's note on this poem quotes a trans. of a haiku ('The fallen blossom flies back to its branch: A butterfly.') by Arakida Moritake (1472-1549).

The fallen blossom soaring back to its branch: the petals on a rain-wet bough.

Both images kigo-ize Spring, the season of beginnings.

Or rebeginnings: April is the cruellest month [because it] stirs dull roots with Spring rain.

Roots and branches. Fore and after.

After World War Two, the foremost movement of new poets to emerge in Japan are called the Arechi, or Waste Land Group. . . . (their eponymous magazine is founded by Tamara Ryuichi). . . .

The fallen blossom flies back to its branch: the Bomb falls on Hiroshima: its vaporized bodies rise: the apparition of the crowd is now a cloud that will rain nothing but ends upon us.

No rebirth, no emergence of poetry movements. The cycle does not continue. The nuclear winter gives way to no Spring, no point of departure . . .

Eliot: "The point de repère usually and conveniently taken as the starting-point of modern poetry is . . ."

*