I Collect words
Where I find them:²
Chunks of Unburied Poetry—³
Fragments of a Tradition—which is itself
A Mosaic wrought from crushed Ruins.⁴
Fragments of the Literature of the past
Survive here & there, imperfectly censored.⁵
My poetry is, if not a cabinet of Fossils,
A collection of Flies in Amber.⁶
All Fragments remind us:
Give Thanks, gather Praise.⁷
Scraps of broken Poetic DNA
Snapped from their context and
Original intentions, can still fizz & provoke—⁸
Literary movements survive primarily in the Ruins
Of the texts they leave behind, rather than in the unified
Literary histories that we create for them after the fact.⁹
I am like the man who takes a Brick to show
How beautiful his house used once to be …¹⁰
For Occupation this: the spreading wide
Our narrow hands—to gather Paradise!¹¹
…
There has never been a
Line read that I didn’t Hear—¹²
As if we forget nothing, and
Everything we have ever known is
Available immediately for Reference—¹³
As if my whole Vocation
Is endless Imitation—¹⁴
What I want to say
Comes in Ready-Made Phrases:¹⁵
I revel in Quotations
And yoke them strategically—¹⁶
Quoting with a good-natured grin a
Crushing Line from some great authority.¹⁷
Hastily Embroidering them with a few footnotes—¹⁸
My pen is chained to Footnotes.¹⁹
Taste the syllables and
Imagine them on the tongues of Others:²⁰
Is someone somewhere saying my words?²¹
It is Fair to hear words of the Ancient Speech
From the lips of other Wanderers—²²
Lend to the rhyme of the Poet
The beauty of thy Voice!²³
I have Listened and am
Not certain what can be done—
Except to Tell, over and over, to Tell—²⁴
Everything has been said, so the only thing to do is
Repeat what has been said—somewhere Unexpected.²⁵
By the incantation of this verse, scatter, as from
An unextinguished hearth Ashes & Sparks,
My words among mankind.²⁶
…
Oh you who come after us—read our Remains.²⁷
I used to think that a Dead person’s words die with them—
Now I know they scatter, looking for Meaning to attach to—²⁸
Bards of passion and of mirth, ye have left your Souls on earth!²⁹
The souls of the present and the departed Mingle,
Like guests at the same party: it makes life less
Determinate and death less conclusive …³⁰
From behind my voice—Listen, Listen—
Other voices sing: they comes from buried mouths & Sing …
They live now in our Gaze, we sustain them with
Our eyes, our words—that they’re not Lost!³¹
With what faith can our echoes Reverberate,
Saying that those who bear Witness to us speak for our time?
With what faith can we Deposit ourselves in language—
As though we’re not alone?³²
…
The reading of these documents
Enables me to utter my Thoughts:³³
The Coincidence of my feelings and someone else’s words
Or the peculiarity of my feelings as Released by their words.³⁴
These selected Quotes to which others could be added
Are a progressive means of Self-Identification.³⁵
The at present Unutterable things—
We find somewhere Uttered.³⁶
These words Echo in our ears as if for the
First time, yet they do not appear entirely strange—
Our Hearts must have known them in Another Life.³⁷
In every work of genius we Recognize our own rejected thoughts:
They return to us with a certain alienated Majesty.³⁸
…
All around us we behold
Where’er we cast our casual eyes:
The mighty Minds of old—³⁹
Our hours we spend in reading the
Best Authors, ancient & modern.⁴⁰
If you were not there yourself you must
Have heard it from Someone who was.⁴¹
These few stammered sounds most
Truly form a Lofty verbal Heritage!⁴²
I select widely and then pick out
That which is Excellent to Follow.⁴³
All of us would like to have been born infallible,
But since we know we weren’t, it’s better to Attend to those
Who speak in Honesty and good Faith, and Learn from them:⁴⁴
Voices of today grow Lovely speaking of Wisdom past—⁴⁵
Not to answer our deepest Questions, but to make
Available to us Answers that others have given.⁴⁶
I walk with lowered head
In the Footsteps of those before—⁴⁷
I Breathe the Air that the Masters breathed.⁴⁸
Improve yourself by Others’ writings so that you shall
Gain easily what others have labored hard for.⁴⁹
They who know the Oldest and the Best
Become themselves the Oldest and the Best!⁵⁰
All greats who foreknow their Heirs in art,
For Art’s sake are glad.⁵¹
…
We have made it possible for other eyes
Besides our own to contemplate these Wonders—⁵²
Our first & chief objective is the Preservation and
Handing on to posterity a certain important Mystery,
Which has come down to us from the Remotest ages—⁵³
Myth passed down across generations takes on the
Polished gleam of Truth and memories become Legend.⁵⁴
I Prize what you wrote
And Meet you in what I write—⁵⁵
Canon has no foresight beyond the
Speech & Gestures by which it knows itself.⁵⁶
We live to Learn their story who Suffered for our sake—
To Emulate their glory and Follow in their wake.⁵⁷
This small piece of your poetry Blazes suddenly
Like a purple Blossom in our mouth—⁵⁸
It is no more than the Duty of they who
Achieve Greatness, to leave behind, in their ascent,
Such Landmarks as may guide others to be great—⁵⁹
We become fully Human as we Learn from those who lived before,
And we are most completely part of the Human Odyssey
As we Pass information on to those who follow us—⁶⁰
You’ll Learn from them, if you want to—
Just as someday, if you have something to Offer,
Someone will Learn something from you:⁶¹
The Transmission from mind to mind,
Cherishing Pulsating, Living Truth.⁶²
…
Here: take my hands—Speak with them—⁶³
To experience your own mind Dancing with another’s.⁶⁴
What invokes us is those Energies
Which we at the moment are.⁶⁵
If anyone will come after me—
Let them Deny themselves!⁶⁶
The Purpose of poetry is to remind us
How difficult it is to remain just one person.⁶⁷
As we become less sure what comes from One,
What comes from the Other, or even from Someone Else,
We become clearer about “What is it to Write?”⁶⁸
Research has shown that ballads were produced
By all of Society working as a Team.⁶⁹
No endeavor is complete without
Being One with Myriad things.⁷⁰
Masterpieces aren’t solitary births—
They are the outcome of many years
Thinking in Common, by the body of the people,
So the experience of the Mass is behind a single Voice:⁷¹
Classic poems & plays are written Collaboratively in the original
And also by anonymous Re-Writers of subsequent generations,
Small value is placed on preserving a “true” text,
Since the work is understood as an Ongoing Process—⁷²
Together we will accomplish a Work
The Fame of which will never die!⁷³
…
Immature poets imitate, mature poets Steal—
Bad poets deface what they take, and
Good poets make something Better—
The good poet welds their Theft
Into a whole of feeling which is Unique,
Utterly different from that which it is torn.⁷⁴
Bad Theft: degrade, skim, steal from one, plagiarize, imitate
Good Theft: honor, study, steal from many, credit, transform.⁷⁵
Our interest does not lie in raising parrots
That just rehash their master’s voice—
But rather in Passing the torch to
Independent, Inventive, Creative spirits.⁷⁶
I reduce the thoughts of Giants to Emptiness,
And print the pronouncements of Nobodies as Truth!⁷⁷
That they to Future ages may be known—
Not copies drawn, but Issue of thy own—⁷⁸
Taking Fire from another and Re-Endowing
That which has enkindled it with a still Fiercer Flame.⁷⁹
The next generation will be Better than ours, but we shall
Be the ones who made that better generation Possible.⁸⁰
If we may never Know it, what does it matter?
Others will See it after us.⁸¹
…
Watch us Arrange our Listening:⁸²
Compositionally arranging Mosaic Clusters—⁸³
Our pens shifts words & Fragments of sentences
From one line to another—with Insertions and Cross-References,
In the haste to finish an exposition which has gone through
Successive, approximate drafts, always unsatisfactory …⁸⁴
Pages from different books Mix together—
We organize them into the stories they belong to.⁸⁵
Poetry can repair no loss, but it Defies the space which separates
By continual labor of Reassembling what has been scattered.⁸⁶
We reexamine key pieces of the Mosaic, take them out,
And fit them into an entirely different Mosaic—⁸⁷
We reduce the classics to an Anthology, and
Reassemble whatever material is suitable.⁸⁸
We Patch together our every image
Into your Universe of Perception—⁸⁹
We are blessed with selves who are
Come to make our Shattered faces whole—⁹⁰
The wise as on they journey Treasure every Fragment clear,
Fit them as they may together, imaging the shattered Sphere—⁹¹
We seek the power to transfigure these motley Sheds of reality
Into a gorgeous Palace, the parts merged into a perfect Whole—⁹²
When any single thought emerges into consciousness we cannot rest
Until it is brought into Harmony with the remainder—
Every isolation is an abnormality, an untruth—
Truth is a whole Thought World characterized
By Complete Inner Harmony.⁹³
…
O blessed letters, that combine in One
All ages past, and make one live with All!⁹⁴
We reject none, accept all—then Reproduce all
In our own form: poems Distill’d from poems.⁹⁵
We are quiet earnest Searchers dedicated to a Task
That many Predecessors have begun before us,
That we will one day leave to our Successors:
A tenacious, long-lived, never-ending work—the
Accumulation of the effort & dedication of many Generations.⁹⁶
Their Antique pen would have express’d even such a
Beauty as we master now, so all their Praises are but
Prophesies of this our time, all us Prefiguring.⁹⁷
We are Heir of all ages,
In the Foremost files of time—⁹⁸
The Generations gather—
Our good times reach one Best of all.⁹⁹
There wants yet the Master-Work:
The End of all yet done …¹⁰⁰
¹ Philip Whalen, Minor Moralia
² Fatamah Asgar, Oil
³ Paul Celan tr. Michael Hamburger, Landscape
⁴ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁵ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
⁶ Marianne Moore, Forward to A Marianne Moore Reader
⁷ Bell Hooks, Appalachian Elegy
⁸ Gregory Maguire, Sugarplums
⁹ Peter Gizzi, Process Statement of Ode: Salute to the New York School
¹⁰ Bertolt Brecht tr. unknown, Motto
¹¹ Emily Dickinson, I Dwell in Possibility
¹² Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginning
¹³ Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
¹⁴ William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality
¹⁵ Wisława Szymborska tr. Barańczak & Cavanagh, Landscape
¹⁶ David Lehman, Introduction to The Cento
¹⁷ Anatoly Kim tr. Leo Gruliow, Road Stop in August
¹⁸ Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
¹⁹ A. Pat Malcolm, The Poet is a Full-Time Student
²⁰ Foster Noone, Fostering
²¹ So Chong-Ju tr. David R. McKann, A Sneeze
²² J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
²³ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day is Done
²⁴ Susan Griffin, Torture
²⁵ Ann Lauterbach, Alice in October
²⁶ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
²⁷ Charles Wright, The Silent Generation III
²⁸ Victoria Chang, OBIT
²⁹ John Keats, Ode
³⁰ Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
³¹ Circe Maia tr. original, From Behind My Voice
³² Mahmoud Darwish tr. Fady Joudah, Wedding Song
³³ Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
³⁴ Matthew Bevis, Some Birds
³⁵ Alexandra Grilikhes, The Vanguard Artist Dreams Her Work
³⁶ Henry David Thoreau, Walden
³⁷ C.P. Cavafy tr. Rae Dalven, The Inkwell
³⁸ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
³⁹ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Scholar
⁴⁰ Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
⁴¹ Homer tr. Samuel Butler, The Odyssey
⁴² Francis Rolt-Wheeler, History of Literature
⁴³ Confucius tr. Edward Slingerland, Analects 7.28
⁴⁴ Seamus Heaney retelling Sophocles, The Burial at Thebes
⁴⁵ Lenore M. Coberly, On Purple Mountain Inside
⁴⁶ Clifford Geertz, Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
⁴⁷ Edmond Jabès tr. Rosemarie Waldrop, The Desert, II
⁴⁸ Edgar Lee Masters, Archibald Higbie
⁴⁹ Socrates tr. unknown
⁵⁰ Chandogya-Upanishad 5.1.1
⁵¹ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Casa Guidi Windows
⁵² Jules Verne tr. Robert Baldick, Journey to the Center of the Earth
⁵³ Leo Tolstoy tr. Louise & Aylmer Maude, War and Peace
⁵⁴ Marilyn Nelson, The Boley Rodeo
⁵⁵ Anne Stevenson, Elegy: in Coherent Light
⁵⁶ Donald Revell, Their Smile’s in Tact: A Canon’s Afterlife
⁵⁷ George Linnaeus Banks, What I Live For
⁵⁸ Pablo Neruda tr. Robert Bly, Letter to Miguel Otero Silva, in Caracas
⁵⁹ Edgar Allan Poe, The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.
⁶⁰ Donald J. Ortner, Forward to Smithsonian Timelines of the Ancient World
⁶¹ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
⁶² Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen
⁶³ Ukamaka Olisakwe, Slut
⁶⁴ Toni Morrison, The Dancing Mind
⁶⁵ Charles Olson, An Open Road
⁶⁶ Matthew 16:24 (King James)
⁶⁷ Czesław Miłosz, quoted by Jane Flanders in The House that Fear Built
⁶⁸ Gilles Deluze & Claire Parnet tr. unknown, Dialogues II
⁶⁹ John Ashbery, Hotel Lautréamont
⁷⁰ Dogen Zenji tr. Tanahashi & Aitken, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
⁷¹ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
⁷² Ursula K. Le Guin, The Matter of Seggri
⁷³ The Epic of Gilgamesh tr. N.K. Sandars
⁷⁴ T.S. Eliot, Philip Massinger
⁷⁵ Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist
⁷⁶ Incarcerated person, quoted in Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
⁷⁷ Jidi Majia tr. Denis Mair, Looking Back on the Twentieth Century
⁷⁸ John Dryden, Mac-Flecknoe
⁷⁹ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
⁸⁰ Fidel Castro, Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals 30 June 61
⁸¹ Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, The Cherry Orchard
⁸² Ghassan Zaqtan tr. Fady Joudah, Betrayal
⁸³ Jed Rasula, Sound and Savor
⁸⁴ Italo Calvino tr. William Weaver, The Form of Space
⁸⁵ Nghiem Tran, We’re Safe When We’re Alone
⁸⁶ John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
⁸⁷ Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
⁸⁸ Georg Lukács tr. Rodney Livingstone, Realism in the Balance
⁸⁹ George Abraham, Against Consolidation
⁹⁰ Audre Lorde, Outside
⁹¹ Priscilla Leonard, Happiness
⁹² Yukio Mishima tr. John Nathan, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
⁹³ Rudolf Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge Based on Goethe’s World Conception
⁹⁴ Samuel Daniel, Literature
⁹⁵ Walt Whitman, By Blue Ontario’s Shore
⁹⁶ Hermann Hesse tr. Ursule Molinaro, Narcissus & Goldmund
⁹⁷ William Shakespeare, Sonnet CVI
⁹⁸ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall
⁹⁹ Wendell Berry, Elegy
¹⁰⁰ John Milton, Paradise Lost