sw00623st3-poetics

Another clear morning.  At 8:07 the thermostat temp had descended
to nearly 70.  At 8:26 the furnace came on.  It is now 9:10 and is still
warmer in here than it needs to be.

-

In 1959 I entered Marquette University, and became a Schroeder Hall
resident.  One day I took a walk toward downtown along the north side
of Wisconsin Avenue.  When I came to a bookstore I went in to browse.
A large reddish-brown hardbound stopped me.  Near its jacket's top in
bold black print was D A N T E.  Beneath this name was an upright oval
containing a sideview of the poet's head.  I glanced through the book,
attending especially to the photos of engravings accompanying the text.
I read some passages.  On the jacket's front flap the original price had
been crossed through and a sale price listed.  I bought the book.  It is
presently sitting to the left of me on my dictionary.  I brought it into my
bedroom about a week ago, but I did not start reading it until late last
night.  So far I've read the first five cantos.  The chosen 69 engravings 
are by Gustave Doré and the blank verse translation by Lawrence
Grant White.  The book was published and copyrighted by Pantheon 
Books Inc., New York in 1948.  How much of this book I read during
my year at Marquette/ I can't say.  I thought I'd used it for the paper
I wrote--which I also still have--for an Enlgish course I took in 1960,
but when I went through that paper today I saw I had used Laurence
Binyon's 1947 translation: The Portable Dante.  I may have gotten
that book from the university's library.  I'm not absolutely sure what the
proper title of the book I have is, but my best guess is: Dante Alighieri 
The Divine Comedy  The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

-

My paper: "The Fourfold Chariot": has a 9-line Prologue stanza I wrote.
This stanza has a rhyme scheme: aababcbcc: the same rhyme scheme I
used when five years later in the upstairs apartment in the Brumwell's
house in Solon, Iowa, I began writing Onefor (Justan Tamarind).  It
staggered me as I read it and began to think it might be, a fact I proved
moments ago via a "Justan Tamarind" search from Googleland.  It still 
does not prove I invented it, but I did first use it in 1960.  Here it is:

I rode the fourfold chariot through lands
Of liquid fire and ice where hope on sands
Did die, where endless sorrows strolled;
Where blackness killed the dancing golden strands
Of beatific light.  While thunder rolled
In bowls of coldest dew; the lively steeds
Increased their speed past Purga's prayerful fold,
My spirit skipped across the rolling meads
And stood in awe where paradise proceeds.

I'm shameless.  I know.  And that I was only nineteen then is no excuse,
which is not to say I've improved since.  I may have devolved.  My paper
is dated May 2, 1960.  That same semester a poem of four lines and two
sonnets I had written were accepted by the Marquette Journal, but a far
superior poem to any of mine, a longer and less encumbered poem, was
also accepted.  I have not yet been able to track down that poem's author,
but I have kept the Journals mine were in, and so have kept his.  Sharing it
would be a pleasure, dark as it in someways is, but I have no right to.  Its
title is: "Pride's Offering to the Gods": you will just have to imagine the rest.
Conjunctions of that nature always make me think, make me wonder, make
me want to say: I"ll bet there are more great poems written by unknowns
than there are by knowns.

-

Speaking of mysterious conjunctions, I am in the midst of one right now
as the result of a "beyond language poetry" search.  It is an essay by a
poet new to me: Richard Jackson, an essay published in the Cortland
Review.  He focuses on the sounds of words, and how poets can get
carried away by sounds, and how sounds carry meanings beyond those
meanings words normally have; so that while a poet needs to maintain a
kind of control, the words with which a poem is made depend on those
sounds inherent in them for the sake of that poem's vitality.  One example
Jackson points to is/ canto 5 of Dante's Inferno.  How is it this kind of !
occurs?  In my life they do so over and over and over and over and over.
Free will?  Yes, but--.  I am providing a link below and then returning to
read the second part.  It is PM 10:55, and amidst needs, I have finished
attending Jackson's essay.  The first poem he explores in index2.html is
"The Writer" by Richard Wilbur, a poem I recently read.  In reflecting on
his concluding remarks, I at this moment realize how all poets (no matter
their differences) are united: as users of language in ways which expose
the cultural prisons attempting to enclose and silence us / as users of
words in ways which seek to express the inexpressible / as explorers 
and preservers of freedom/ however we are able to do so.  If the forces
of deception prevail, all will die; for all such forces are bearers of death.
Upon the reigns of imagination and empathy inside each human/ so much
depends.


-------------------------
Richard Jackson on Language-Driven Poetry


Brian A. J. Salchert