Second pantoum based on an expurgated line

The mission took root after the women themselves

raised concerns that aggressive animal rights

groups, spreading to hobbits and elves,

might think in Uighur; Bermudan blights

raised concerns that aggressive animal rights

please put them back in the closet:

might think in Uighur, Bermudan blights

that drowned the town before they tossed it?

Please put them back in the closet,

and sketch a return to your natural food roots

that drowned the town before they tossed it

into a salad of squalid swamp shoots;

and sketch a return to your natural food roots,

because there is no other way to expand

into a salad of squalid swamp shoots

that cover like netting the new female land;

because there is no other way to expand,

the mission took root after the women themselves,

that cover like netting the new female land

groups, spreading to hobbits and elves.

First pantoum based on an expurgated line

Please put them back in the closet,

these small items whose deft toes are soiled,

not knowing anymore which comet's tail caused it,

which dying star indefinitely toiled.

These small items whose deft toes are soiled

know which previous age their work resumes,

which dying star indefinitely toiled --

though you, feeding ones, engorge your pantoums:

Know which previous age their work resumes,

and you will know the quality of your sins,

though you, feeding ones, engorge your pantoums

on air that fragrant, bluely thins.

And you will know the quality of your sins

only within, underground, in an enclosed space

on air that fragrant, bluely thins

where your small blue thumbs begin to trace.

Only within, underground, in an enclosed space,

not knowing anymore which comet's tail caused it,

where your small blue thumbs begin to trace:

please put them back in the closet.

Easy Green Proof Part 2

Again in part 2, I pulled a "bad line" from the stanza. The version published in Telephone had its first seven lines reading as follows:

The hominid group

Appears to have got all cramped up

Unable to move its toes

To swim away in the nearby ocean

Or even get outside

If these racists ever had any notion

Of what outside really means

I pulled out the line "If these racists ever had any notion" mostly because, believe it or not, at the moment of the editing I was uncomfortable with the idea that, even though I obviously wasn't really accusing anyone of being a racist here, may even have been using found language (though I don't know that with any assurance this long after the original composition), I would feel myself qualified to accuse anyone, even in theory, even hypothetically, of being a racist. Now, I do feel that discomfort, and the accompanying resentment which I try a little harder to repress -- but is that any reason to get rid of the stanza's central rhyme, as well as to weaken one of the central ideas I was playing with -- that humanity, though it may come from a population of sea mammals (something I didn't really believe at the time, certainly don't know, but remain fascinated with) was also racist in its biological foundation? I'm still pretty sure that central idea deserves to be weakened, but I guess there is no certainty in the writing of poetry.

Anyway, the whole meaning of the line "Of what outside really means" is completely changed now because it has been re-connected (as if in some genetic experiment working with chromosome strands) with the line "Or even get outside". I like the metaphysical dimension that replaces the bio-politics because of the change.

In the meantime, I've determined to use both the line "Please put them back in the closet" and "If these racists ever had any notion" in new poems, and if they get written I'll include them on this blog so you'll see how sausage really gets made, regurgitated, and re-made in my brane.

Easy Green Proof Part 1

The notable changes I made between the magazine and book versions of this section were to change the ellipsis at the end of the line

Of dinner that lasts...

into a full stop

Of dinner that lasts.

I have to note that at the moment, as I write, I can't swear the change was intentional. In both cases, the punctuation is unique in the poem. I think the ellipsis fit better with my original idea of writing a "New York" poem with a certain amount of comic book diction allowed or required, but with every line having a pristine quality of its own emphasized by capitalizing the first letter of the line the way poets did centuries ago...

On the other hand, the bare couplet

Remember the inconceivable heat

Of dinner that lasts.

seems more effective to me now with the full stop. It forces a mock-monumental (would that be mockumental?) seriousness upon the nonsequitur, as it were.

The other thing I did in the first stanza/part of the poem was to remove the line

Please put them back in the closet

after the line

Into a lather, without meaning to

and before the line

If you want professional help you realize

This change was certainly intentional. I got rid of the line as I got rid of others (to be mentioned as we proceed). But why? It's not a particularly "bad" line in terms of the diction, or the non-flow, of the stanza, nor can I state with moral certitude that it's more unnecessary than other nonsequiturs piling on each other here. I believe I purged the line because I was trying to prevent the reader from going immediately to obvious social or political readings I hadn't consciously intended, or maybe no longer consciously intended.

And to get to the heart of that dilemma of mine, I need to think about the Ted Berrigan poetry I've been reading. As someone with a prejudice against most forms of political statement in poetry, I'm always amazed in reading Ted Berrigan at how he collages in political, sometimes incendiary phrases and feelings in a way that is fundamentally non-judgmental and aesthetic.

I have to think more about that...

I have to think more about that.

Easy Green Proof in Telephone

Telephone was definitely the biggest deal poetry magazine I ever got any work in based on cold submission, and to this day I look at "Easy Green Proof" in issue 16 and feel a quiet pride and self-importance granted to me by no other accomplishment. This is not at all to dismiss the pleasure of being published with equal care and effort by people who were friends, or friends of friends, but that element of being personally connected necessarily calls into question the purity of someone I didn't know, in particular Maureen Owen, a great poet in her own right, deciding my work should go into the mix of poems by people I considered real, if rarefied, presences, like Hannah Weiner writing to spirits or Andrei Codrescu.

It took me years to realize that I'd misspelled "harnessed" as "harnassed" and the editors of Telephone had taken my spelling as intrinsic to the poem. And for years after that, that was the only thing I wanted to change about the published version of the poem -- I felt that way about no other work of mine at the time.

Part One: Easy Green Proof

When I wrote "Easy Green Proof" I was finishing up my undergraduate thing by majoring in maths at U.C. Santa Barbara, 1979-80, and thought I was entitled to the figure. Actually most of what I remember about proofs during that period was sheer memorization. My favorite example of that was my final exam in the differential geometry segment of my topology sequence, a course that was basically out of my range, then and now, because I've never mastered advanced calculus (line integrals and the like) and basic calculus is often more misleading than not in the field. Anyway, our professor (a visitor from Britain who was never less than courteous, no matter the ignorance of myself and a few other laggards) gave us the option of going for a bare pass in the class if we could just memorize and regurgitate on paper the proof of the so-called Hairy Ball Theorem, which as I recall it now was a claim that any sphere with hair required at least one fixed point from which all cowlicks could proceed... I memorized, regurgitated, passed, and have no memory of the proof itself.

The dedication, continued: Christina Mengert

And finally, leading to the final poems in the book, I took another UCLA Extension on-line poetry class with Christina Mengert, who is able not only to support whatever her students are doing and offer critiques to make the poems better, but also is cognizant of everything going on in the world of poetry today. I highly recommend her book 12x12, for all the insufferableness of most of the poets interviewing each other, for an apercu into how the sausage is made these days, an anthropology (verging on anthropophagy) of the area just below the top of the poetry world's food chain in the twenty-first century, a preview of the history of our literature.