one up

one of the things about the sonnet that has interested me over the years I've been writing is that

it allows a kind of freedom which other forms perhaps don't—

in writing the octave, one is in a position of the normal poet writing the normative poem, i.e. a kneeling obsequious beggar, pleading with the reader, trying to please the reader, groveling our hearts out to smooth ease their way into and through the first eight lines—

but then with the sestet, the poet can abandon that humble act, and can in effect say to the reader, fuck you, did you think that I was going to cater to you all the way through, to kowtow to you for the entire 14 lines?  Ha!—here in the sestet I can do as I will, and you're powerless to prevent me—

I know you mopes won't stop reading no matter what outrage I play here in MY six lines—

Whereas the non-sonneteer writing the average poem must try to please the reader for its entire length, especially with verses longer than 20 lines or so, fearful that s/he the reader can stop reading at any point especially if they glance ahead and see that your piece is going to go on for another page or two—

But with the sonnet, really, I think, most readers who make it through the octave will at least start on the sestet and once moiled in its sticky six-essence will probably say to themselves well what the hell it's only 3 or 4 more lines I might as well finish the fucking thing—

they'll read your bloody sonnet all the way through in spite of,  despite whatever tricks and joicks in haps of tic-wreck shroudburst you've thrown in to satisfy your own arbitrary selfish whims,

the sestet crowns you Coriolanus Caligua again.

There is where you get to twist the nose of that snotty sonnet-reader.

///

drafts, roughs, worksheets [unfinished

/

only his heel is human

the rest of him is a god

every stalwart sinew steelshod

nothing's mortal but this heelblood

[

when we run our tongue

in through the boot-thong

longing to fellate

that fatal flesh, to

taste the meal of that heel,

the mortal meat beneath

his shinbone, the only

tender tendon in

his body's bold/bloody squadron,

the only nonweapon

part of him—the heel

his mom held him by

when she annealed

the rest of him in steel—

if only the heel is human

foot fetishists feast

on these Achilles kisses

[not usually known as

the unhardest part of the body,

but in his case [alone], it is

[uniquely] vulnerable—

welded together by anklebones

the penile stele of heel is here

the most fragile member of

[

 [that arch/fist/fiche/stele of flesh]

[heel/stele [

[that steeliest stele of flesh]

 [

if only the heart were too/also/similarly

vulnernable to love's [adverb] speartips

[

your hero needs no armor if

his Manolo Blahnik's stiffed/quiffed/bulwarked

enough to rebuff our lips

[

/his manolo-toed sandal's tough

enough to rebuff our lips

[

tongue rhymes with boot-thong

/greave-guard /  shinguard's /anklet

ankleboot/ tongued/ shin-tongued/

bootlet / bodkine / botkin 

impervious to spears and swordtips

/not immune to spears and swordtips

prey to love's spears and swordtips

*

/

a leaf fell and cupped your ear

attentive to your silence it whispered

the usual urgings/reasons to commit suicide

profusely clinging to the drowned self

can you admit/adjudicate how fugitively

the jigsaw solved by a missing piece

the poem completed by its lost line

how this indecisiveness is too binary

too eager to choose the one or the anon

a key-ring that sets fire to the sun

a wayfarer housed in wide open rags

an icicle locking into its cloak of claw

halo-effects perhaps but say [surround newcomers

an entering gueststar knocks first

and the cannibal's head up your ass

and the caveman's noggin gnawing

its way down your esophagus

may meet someday in the middle

of this hunger that devours us

endlessly via all orifices and organs

that strike time's tympani with

the thin notes of requiem [a voice in chains

Basho kicking a pine-tree for advice

cruelly they woke their sex up on me

chessboard on which shirtstripes flicker

feasting with pajama-trouser-flies

how many shark miles in your pheromones

abducted by life prisoner of a leaf

the pleats of my pantsuit climb squeaking skylines

[what prank to give my chair a hotfoot

the lovers show no mercy to the backed-up rat

[

/

*

a fairy tale painted yes by tininess

I furbish a lonely room of welcome

where no partake rises to bosom me

and homonyms trample my tongue

because I came to samesex myself

or I went to cohabit with death

to dine on means animal in nature

to greet filmstars in my gaunt lieu

[

assisting at the postponement of my poem

/

The days have dyed me naked enough

to hide behind: no scar alleviates

this boring surface.

I must stuff the ears of vanishing-acts

to stop the blind applause

from desiring more.  My glass

slippers left gashes in the floor,

grievous pits your ponytail longed

to bathe in.  We mourn your mere

whose petty life is timeless,

wrought from the moment.  Tired of its

exigent ways to wander onward,

down the avenues in a traipse of glory.

I build labyrinths for lip-readers

to run through, sprinting

[to pester day's girders, glide

to the cactus rodeo where nobody

can ride our spike-hiked hide.

]

/

*

the name stenciled on

your frankenstein kit is mine

but its letters distribute so

are they caught in the spread

of points on a betting card

yet causality you declare fervid

is the sole vocation the lone rune

by which gods can dispute their senses

so that no later than someday we

will believe in our superstitious

existence as names on dotted lines

clot up and thicken into a polyglot

ingot and yet all the gold in Fort

Knott cannot further bear or

absolve me from this longshot

/

the usual nostrums

the day to day recipes

trace sardonicisms on glass

pour seashell stones on the clown

///

drafts[ worksheets

*

Throwing dice at the bomb as it descends

will not decide the outcome of your body blown

apart by which action, yours or the bombadier's:

drone missiles fly contraire, unmanned for the sake

of purity, not marred by the sordid human hand

wiping grease blood feces off its digits.  The muddied

moment passes and we move reinspired by

this vision of non-involvement, virginal

again from the crime that mercifully excludes us;

and therefore we leave it to the computer

to choose those targets whose distance ensures
[our disinterest, its infant consequence

declares those boys' volleys of war a game
because as always the enemy's to blame:
the error inherent is theirs not ours to seek/shirk/see]

or repent since its intent was innocence:
pray for the prank forgiveness[indulgence] of childhood, each strike
/thank the prank-indulgence of childhood, each strike
unbloodied/left harmless by your armless mother's wince.
made harmless/turned harmless/ poured harmless
/
or repent since its intent was innocence
thanks to the prank-indulgence of childhood, each strike
shrived harmless by your armless mother's 
wince, your father's perihelion apogee/trajectory.

/thanks to the pranks of childhood, each harmless strike
unbloodied by your armless mother's wince.

/thanks to the pranks of childhood, each stab or strike
stays harmless as your mother's armless wince.

[thanks to the pranks they forgave in childhood
when each stab or strike stood for bad or good
depending on adult indulgence, punishment pain ????]


/
[no taint is what our semaphore quests for

and therefore we leave it to the computer
to choose those targets whose distance ensures

our disinterest intent, each infant consequence
prank forgiven by your armored mother's wince.

[pray for the indulgence of childhood, each prank
forgiven by your armless mother's wince.]

[repent since/because innocence was this war's intent:
pray for the pure indulgence/forgiveness of childhood, each prank
forgiven/unbloodied by your armless mother's wince.]

... 

*

Where the alley ends is always cast in shade

or simply too far away to be visible

so that is where the usual honorcade

parade has proceeded sure to disshovel

its heroes dumped as clumps of statuary

far past the garbage cans and armored dust

rained down each day's disdainful parody

as confetti junk thrown out from the thrust

of our palace tenements' wasteward sight

that shows for shame scoreboard teams of champions

hailed with all our collective love alight

along streets still streamering more war-wins.

Made trash the gods must stay there safe to hide;
only that pit supports their pedestals' pride.

/
Made trash the gods here stay safe in secret;
this pit is where their pedestals are set.
/

of our minds and tenements, waste-ward sight

from shame's time the hinder/shambling/scoreboard host of champions
/that shows for shame the scoreboard host/team/roll of champions

we hailed once, our collective love alight

along the streets streamering more war-wins.

Some victory is kept hid back there, secret

[It is our truth/victory kept hid back there, secret

in its pit, thumbs akimbo, games/its terms forgot/ we forget.  /regret[  pedestal-set.

[What victory is kept hid back there, secret;
that pit is where its pedestals are set.]

in its pit, thumbs akimbo, pedestal-set.
or pit, thumbs akimbo, on its pedestal set.]

///

drafts/worksheets[unfinished

[title]

Shadows are more indigenous to summer

Than other days; in sunless winter they may

Appear as friends from a former season,

Companions for an endless cold—because

You need a certain percentage of Bishop

Berkeleys if life is to pass, the armies rise,

The coffee boil.  But can this concensus

Include those in transit, at the bus stop

Patting their pockets automatically since

Statistics decide we don't all die at once,

And bandaids help with that.  Also the fact

We lack wings and therefore can linger in

Doorways comfortably, coming and going

Provides us such opportunity to meet and

Form treaties to support portraits of each

Other, adamant and guilty in their narrow

Frames.  The commute schedule timetable

Confuses every route with eternities as

(Cough venues, bruises perhaps, or sketched

Leisures of transition sidelining the road)

Times fall and evening secures an after-lag

Of it when mermaids keep their stomach

Pumps handy, mythical beings being always

In danger of being poisoned by the day

To day readiness when a window still holds

The unseen edge of its imminence over all:

So tense when candles on a windowsill

Indicate domesticity's anarchy, while

The frontbell is ringing a little something,

Whose wording has not come down to us,

We call it confluence or Cincinnati, some

Home at random under the habit of a snowpeak,

Pure alp up which the gaze drowns all hands lost,

August it wells with grass, with settlements.

 [title?]

Shadows are more indigenous to summer

Than other days; in sunless winter they may

Appear as friends from a former season,

Companions for an endless cold—because

You need a certain percentage of Bishop

Berkeleys if life is to pass, the sun rise,

The coffee boil.  But does this census

Include those in transit, at the bus stop

Patting their pockets automatically since

Statistics decide we don't all die at once,

Breastbraving uniformity for a patch/cache of

Eternities.  Simple wounds could hatch

Your winglessness.  Bruises when tiring

Times fall and evening secures an after-lag

Of it, when mermaids keep their stomach

Pumps handy, each doorway pried from

Adamant guilty portraits.  What pane bears

The unseen edge of its imminence over

Our sill's tense anarch of candles, while

The frontbell is ringing a little something,

Whose wording has not come down to us,

We call it confluence or Cincinnati, some

Home at random under the habit of a snowpeak,

Pure alp up which the gaze drowns all hands lost,

Dreadful it wells with grass, with settlements.

POEM

I tried to phone the Amnesia Hotline
But its hashtone forgot me in the rush
To publication of my hemlines which
Strayed at times to coincide with
Youth and years astride the Nazi
I married.  Hasteless my diary claims,

Facing me off against my sister half,

Its entries present me as someone who
Outspent his coins' grief on verities
Of disbelief, for less and less.  Juicetipped
Thighs, you feed them figs with the brink
Of your tongue, the streets are packed
In gutter but I am gone, gone to war
To avenge how childrens' toys are always
Poe-cast into premature funerals. 

Buried young.  Before their time.

FILM VERSION

Drifting into the blindfold's focus I find

My face entirely by tracing yours no mind.

The cyclops probe that won't take no:

So I was pretending this grief was new,

Not some old, come-apprehending love—

Nor can, I thought, the horizon be likened

To a trafficcop's palm.  Portraits of

Manny's Lacklounge, whole libraries lichened
With its plus and absence shorn-records us

While all I see myriads me.  Devoured by it

I fear this sitcom in sync with doubt may not

Know that if you took a sumac's leaves and

A sycamore's leaves and switched them around

With shears and glue, who'd notice what tree— 

Bod McDylan, kicking out his butler, maybe.

But the rest of us, living in these

Glass-bottomed attics at length-ease,

Would we dolly or is it pan, would we
Sort of fellini forward towards it, slowly.

///

drafts/roughs/worksheet

/

I believe I existed

in the blink of no one's eye

scurrying facade

that screened me awake aloud

I awoke unknown my face

familiarized only by sunglasses

the blink of no one's eye held me

for a mote moment

By all the sun allows to follow me

like the shadow I am

might it last less

than the age of behold

Orchard articulate

rose wise

my eyelids were

carrion wafers

I was the blink of no one's eye

delighted to be the blink

of no one's eye under

so many eyelids or garage doors

Pleistocene ferns burst from oiltruck vents as

I pull my old blood over me

gathered

the goatscape awake aloud ancient

[

the eternity in my left wrist abhors
the instant in my right
[

jungles use leopards as a condiment

/as leopards condiment the jungles I devour
surveying

in nature's typeface

reproaching your monotone

I poisoned a locus of space

exposing my nipples

to a mask faced evoe

3D until I awoke

uneasy was my face alien

lasting even less than squint

I pity tomorrow

that river of exposed entrails

which dwarfs today

///

now-forgotten oddity

*
Peter Straub reminiscing about poets of the 1970's, including a couple of "now-forgotten [oddities]":

Thomas Tessier and I had been friends since meeting one another at a 1970 poetry reading in the cellar of a Dublin pub called Sinnot’s, and our literary conversations had taken an unusual course. In 1970 and ’71, we talked about Geoffrey Hill (a modernist English poet), Derek Mahon (a not very modernist but anyhow wonderful Irish poet who was a friend of Thom’s), Wallace Stevens, John Berryman, John Ashbery and Yeats. In 1972, we were on to Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Mark Strand, Bill Knott (who called himself St. Geraud, “virgin and suicide,” and wrote brief poems seemingly from the point of view of someone recently deceased), Greg Kuzma (another now-forgotten oddity whose poems we found hilariously inept), Thomas Mann, Henry James, Federico García Lorca, Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch, along with all of our earlier enthusiasms.

/
Here's the link:

 http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/07/various-encounters-with-karl/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=various-encounters-with-karl

/
And Peter Straub is right of course.  He's simply stating a well-established fact—

I am a "now-forgotten oddity" (and Kuzma is "another" one)—

/
It's simply a fact:

That no legitimate publisher will publish my books.  

That I have to self-publish my books which no one buys when I do publish them.  

That no magazine will accept my poems—don't take my word for that, go look through the twentyfive pages posted here:  
http://knottpoetry.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=20

/
Etc., etc., etc.

///

haiku snafu

*
On page xii of "The Poetry of Postwar Japan" is a fascinating excerpt from Donald Keene's "Modern Japanese Poetry"(1964),

where he summarizes a 1946 article by a professor of French literature, Kuwabara Takeo, which

"assert[s] that the difference between a haiku composed by an acknowledged master and one by a bank clerk or a railway engineer was barely perceptible. 

Taking a hint from a method used by I.A. Richards in "Practical Criticism,"[Kuwabara] asked a group of colleagues [fellow professors at Kyoto University] to evaluate various haiku, some by masters and some by dubs, first removing the names of the poets. 

The results were so chaotic that Kuwabara felt justified in his claim that most people judge haiku by the poet's reputation and not by the works themselves. . . ."

///

Wallace Stevens on Obamacare

*
Most contemporary USAPO are presumably in favor of the USA having a national health service similar to that of Canada and Europe et al,

with insured coverage for all—

if the Poetry Foundation took a poll of USAPO, wouldn't you expect most of them to vote yes to this proposition—

Life, we know, consists of propositions about life,

as one of our greatest poets has informed us—

might we also learn something from him regarding this question of universal health care?

He did issue a position paper about it, actually,

in the form of this sonnet on p. 200 of his 1954 Collected:

IDIOM OF THE HERO

I heard two workers say, "This chaos
Will soon be ended."

This chaos will not be ended,
The red and the blue house blended,

Not ended, never and never ended,
The weak man mended,

The man that is poor at night
Attended

Like the man that is rich and right.
The great men will not be blended . . .

I am the poorest of all.
I know that I cannot be mended,

Out of the clouds, pomp of the air,
By which at least I am befriended.


*

Why FoxNews hasn't cued this crap up for its blowhards to spoutificate on, is a puzzle—

It's all there: the rich, the right, (the rich are right and the workers are wrong),

the great men

(you know: the billionaires whose untaxed offshore-loot is funding all the rightwing propaganda reichdoms)—

the great men must never slack their fated duty of upholding capitalism

to ever waste a dime on

"the weak man," "the man that is poor," the "workers"——

And me! Me!? I'm the poorest of them all! (can't you just hear Bill O'Reilly whinnying this out with glee?)—

I know that society cannot be mended, that collective salvation is evil . . .

—But then of course at this end-point of Stevens' poem

the spinners at Fox would have to misreport and mystify his atheistic conclusion

that no cure for our ills will mercifully fall from God pomped up there in the clouds,

although the air (the terrestial air!) is friendly to us—

*
Say there, you twain two, you fine husk-fellows shearing the hedges round my mansion, care for a cup of Darjeeling?  I can't "befriend" you of course,

and I can't use my high position in the insurance industry to advocate public-subsidized health coverage for all,

the idioms (you don't understand what 'idioms' means, I know) surrounding the class distinctions inherent in our society

can never be breached by any heroic linebreaks wielded from Brecht or Neruda or Eluard or any of those unmendable unmentionable Marxists, I'm afraid.


*

"Any evaluation of Stevens . . . must somehow be able to accommodate . . . astonishing linguistic richness on one hand and an impoverishment or hollowness of content on the other. [... ] [T]he inner hollowness of this verse will tend to return . . . in those moments in which it becomes (momentarily) clear that Stevens' 
only content, from the earliest masterpieces of Harmonium, all the way to the posthumous [poems], is landscape. . . ." —Fredric Jameson


*
I'm like the poorest of all, ephebe effendi, I ain't got no god buhu to panacea my soul (got no soul, either)—

unlike you religion-opiated masses I got no Lourdes, no faith healer to mend my pain,

you should be pitying me, not me you—

you think you got it bad, look at me:

I have to find my nepenthe, my ether in mere air, in nature—

I'm the poorest of all, never mind my mansion on the snazz side of town, my penthouse office suite,

ho, what are you poor weak workers with no health insurance complaining about, anyway!  What's your problem, parvenu?

///