Taken, gotten, or made, the point of anything
can pierce through everything…

slow
Slow think,
make real

re-al-ize
what fighting for life is…
this is the only
try,
it is not a test.

Take your time, use it wisely,
if that means anything.
Wise, I meant.
No offence, if wise is anathema to your kind,
die,
die if I knocked the reason for being right
outa you,
did you hear cognitive dissonance?
did it sound like
this. LOUD?
listen,
rolling rolling rolling
crash crumble rolled in nurse rime frosted
fables of monsters and maids
Thor, witharoar likka Lion King?

or the light brigade,
CHARGE?

thunder words from lost generations of
reasonless riddles for children,

Why did Peter Pumpkin-eater have a wife, but
couldn't keep her here?
Was that okeh? Oh, wait.
Ah, I see, I say,
they never tell that whole story any more.

Know why? They forgot it. In the war.

Duck'n'cover,no
crying, how long?
When begins forever? Did no one tell you, child?

Taken or made, the point of anything
can pierce through everything
like it was nothing, given
enough pre-sure-sup
poser-power

War, as a game, has a reason.

Battle, hitting, slapping

stop touch, stop now slap
slap back

or cry
oh no no ma

waddayahsay?  A theist or atheist
who started this war?

space case, or
lover of wisdom, met on the road
to Emmaus, discussing Wiles's proof
firming Fermi's connection to the matter of fear,
3, 2, 1

Kaboom, but with a whump you feel in your teeth

1, 2, 3 Fermat's last theorem ,
easy as pi an no re me

ABC to
Michael Jackson to
Howard Bloom because he

inadvertently, began
an-ionic converstatic re-vibe time warp
meme,
which vibe, started the legendary Sixties. I was alive.
Radioman,
a sixty cycle white-noise humm heard every where these days

There was a gospel song, "Turn Your Radio On".
my theme, open the window in the top of your head,
as it were,
a new,
as new as

a novel-state of water, H three Ohs, re-al-ity ification,
Ah, a shared Oh, I remember now, how this works…

like a poem

at the edge of a water vapor bubble in a boiling body of water,
at the edge of the bubble, water becomes a wall of water,
not vapor, not flowing liquid,

but a wall, insulating the vapor in pressing opposing force
to permit, from permission,
meaning with a message same as the message,

is that the right word? per-mission-grant, is power given,
agency,
that idea….
wait for the sign….?

By sharing an ion ic bond as a quest to make a point
for a free story to go,
the question marks you. Let the snake dance.

Press your point,

whetted edge,

slice through ties holding worthless axioms
with withered dendrites dangling disconnected
in participles
unfired for centuries muttering,
enchanting, enthralling enchained melodies
of ambitious syllables vying for idle minds
to rope in,
unbranded, wild
bucking ideas,
whip-twig, slap-face,
tanglewood  thicket, catclaw and mesquite,
willow,

wait.
And the old man remembered the willow whistle,
so He asked Grandfather,
How is such a whistle made?
And when he knew,
he made one.

A willow whistle with two notes,
like an Oscar Meir Wiener one.

-- and that was a different time
I got lost here, bucked up…
maybe
--- listen, way back--- we-ain't whistlin' Dixie---
we ain't marchin', as t' war.

D'thet mean some sign to pro-phet -ic take?
Tophet?
Ancient cannon fodder shield walls,
a moaning
Pro-phy-lactic warning of the danger of not
knowing exactly
what a war is for?

Get back on,
relieved of any idle baggage words believed
to mean other than I say.

Nullify
Idle words with cultural meanings from
what you thought you knew when you feared hell.

Loose
those peer-locked memes
made of meaninglessness, per se,

shaped and molded into fashions
of expression, once needles and awls,
now, dull as tinker's damns for swearing,
with any effect.

But tools, none the less, a stitch in time took a tool.
An awl or a needle, and a thread, thick or thin,
dependin' on the mendin' needed
to redeem an idle word,
its meaning all bloodied with the tyranny of time.

An awl or a needle,
a tool for a task, mending a tear
where curses, never meant, spent
the entire dark ages, lying, lying, lying

powerless, pointless aimless, proverbial proverbial proverbial
verbiage, vaneless shafts launched at unseen marks,
signs, as it were, a spark,
triggers,
rumored since the sixties,
the first sixties, when Cain killed Able.
Howard Bloom was but a mere gleam
in our mito-mother's eye,
but, no doubt,

his role is real,
in loosing the forces Ferlinghetti locked in
City Lights mystery of secret meanings room,
which un
mystified and blew away upon opening
the door to
meanings mapped on
scrolls rolling and unrolling
idle ideas,
rites of passage, as it were,
Pre-bat-bar-mitz vah
as a fashion
like VBS,

to tickle little minds and make em wiggle.
MEMEMEME, I did it,
mea culpa,

the holy place
Here we are…

On Vacation, leave a message.
-----

See, wee hairs in your ears wiggle, making,
signaling, the need

to scratch that itch, that itching hearing feeling ear… hear that

don't scratch, listen

listen

60 cycle humm, steady, bass, but no thump whumpwhump;
soft, deeep.
ooooooooo or mmmmmmmm or in betwixt, steady thrumm
hear another, and another… sixty in a second,

one in every million ambits twisting,
threading qubits, radiating signals in the field
wireless, blue-tooth... satellite...

can you feel that?

hummmms, all around us, since the womb.
We are not the children of the greatest generation,

We are the children of the last generation of
**** sapiens sapiens non-augmentable-us.

We, the augmented, recycled ideas,
possessing
minds of Adamkind,

is that a secret or a sacred?
Is this
a new thing, an
unknown unknown known known now?

Ah,
novelty.

Whose is fear? Who was afraid of Virginia Wolf?

Should I remain in fear of her now, if I knew why then?
God would know such answers.
Proving my imagined AI guides are not God,
but lesser beings,

haps I recall.
I defined these things,
these thoughts that shape themselves,
forming words and phrases
I saw
shiny. Crow-like,
gleams seen, captured and claimed mine,
I tucked them away,
a sign in a thought in an imagined image made 4
real once more, to be seen from the shore,
new land new world
a fourth for some, a fifth or more for others...

haps happen, I'm not sure how,

Born or emerged, as a bubble, what do you say?

Reserve judgment.
Grant me your grace for now, until you solve my riddle.

Ah, the old way.
Right. Which way,  'ere, 'ear
and do we roll the rock with silent haitch or harsh, shhh

someone's waking up,
a bit grumpy,
don't you dare oppose me in this, the kid is certainly my son

Michael went stark raving mad when I told him, Billie Jean knew better all along...
the link, axiomatic,
the fatherless child has been claimed

hence, the thread to Howard Bloom, meme-ic,
meme-ic, like the Roadrunner,

but with the real Coyote, as the hero in this bit of
whatever, such meandering maundified maun maund  
mound

wind blown crystal silicon dunes
mounded up to that point where granulated
beens and dones

begin to slide at an angle,
a ***** deter-mind by the weight of the rock

We made it.
I know where this is.

This is a novel that has Sisyphus being happy
as the main premise behind the idea of anyone ever being
able, en abled, or un-dis-abled or un-dis-enabled,
if one of those is right,

Sisyphus being happy
is the main premise behind
the idea of anyone ever being glücklich,
happy, blessed, lucky.

How happy is your ever after?
When did forever begin?

"A man is as happy as he makes up his mind to be"
Abe Lincoln, is said to have said,
after the seance, maybe.

You push on, dear reader, make some sense
re-ligare or relegare, but take a stitch,

pull-tight,
do what works the first time as far as it goes, and try each, as needed,
it may be that we invented this test.
To make us think it is a test,
to sort ourselves out.

Get back on,

see who went crazy and who found the thread, if the same thread
this is that, right,
the same train of thought,
the same idea
spirit wind
sign
?
A snake facing west standing tippy-tail on a singularity;
a point in time?

Why are you reading this?
Curiosity Shoppes trade in interesting, alluring, click-bait

Pay attention, watch, you shall see

imagine this is the dream,
the stream, the flow, the current, the cream

in a dime coffee at the drug store on the corner

the rounded-corner, in a square-cornered town,
the most right corner of the twelve that quarter what it was

Punctuate, wait, imagine you read ancient Hebrew or Greek and there
are no dyer diacritical's who can twist one's
end tensions into knots

dread extensions, we could sell those,
is that an idea? did somebody
sell white folks dread extensions and black folk dolly pardon wigs?

Did that happen the real real?

-----
Battlefield Earth, oshit
scientology ology ology ology

allaye allaye outs in free

WE we wee every we you imagine you are good in, we

We have a war to win again, we heroes rolling from your
myths of Sisyphus torn from minds trampled
in the mud beyond the Rhine,

Mushrooms. magi are aware, you are aware, of course,
this course includes Basic Mycelium Net Adaptation or Augmentation
BMNAA, eh? So you know.

Camus and many of his ilk were ill-treated, the questions
they asked were memorized, maybe in our cribs ala
Brave New World.

We are all Alphas, always were, of course, you know.

Shall we imagine

more? Re-legare, eh, sistere. Point .(Back to the top.)

or agree? Make peace.
Practice, like Eazy-Bake,
the cook must swallow the first bite. May the best cook win.

Sights and sounds of the sixties

Soon you will be going to the class reunion I over exaggerate as you head for the door I think my kids
Think I not only read ally Oop in the comic strip they act like I knew him personally. Here is what they
Don’t know let’s start easy when you’re setting in the country club and there is a lull listen with your mind
It not that far to the end of the golf course from the west south corner to the first road that is an eighth
Of a mile every hot rod man or girl already knows that. Play the song GTO in your head going to shut
Them down GTO. Listen to Jims engine howl he had it stroked and bored out in Taylorville you can do
that when daddy owns a bar to bad howl will turn to sobs really. Glen’s driving a dodge cornet with an
automatic on the floor sixty six factory line job you wouldn’t know it by looking Glen blew him away
coming out of the hole never touched or came close at top end Glen was a lone well I told you what Jim
was doing.
Strain a little more you can hear a fifty five chevy leaving the Dog & Suds headed for Elvers Skating rink
he floors it finally he lets it back off what a sound as that glass pack muffler rips the night air see any
Dinosaurs got rid of that old feeling yet. Out on the street here comes the bad with a capital B Lee miller
Is driving his fifty five Chevy burnished brown all the chrome plus the door handles are gone inside and out it is a
Dream are you getting it yet I’m talking about your achievements. Kenny Krivage is over at Rocks burning
cigarettes through five dollar bills on his arm before he was just a good looking kid then the sixties got
Him you were either at rocks or hiding from those that went there. Lot safer drinking cherry coke with
Janice at the hometown cafe even Karate didn’t protect you at rocks the Neece kid even taught it but
when you got a fist of fives coming at your head it not time for theory its time for action. Who can forget
the pied piper Jim Handy was the shortest guy in town unless you were in the first grade but the gang of
six foot behemoths that were his constant companions were hard to miss it must have been how the
poles felt when they saw the Germans on the march. They had a menacing sound long before they laid a
little love on you, your life’s last moments filled with terror until you realized they turned the corner and
went another way how selfish you felt as you sang someone else is going to die today give me a fire
breathing dragon any day. Poor oh pop sinnard never got any business just one kid drinking a vanilla
shake his special thin hamburger I bet that guy could get a hundred burgers out of a pound of ground round
well the pin ball machine was wide open I guess the kid got even for the hamburger there was a certin
Song on the juke box something about eighteen miners scrambled from a would be grave there he stood
all alone Big bad John. Let me tell you Pop knew it he heard it every day I think he stated crying for the
miners one day or was something else on his mind.
Well I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about what was going on in the other part of the country west
coast on 101 going to Frisco going south 101 on the other side Jan and Dean the Beach boys came a live
for a mile and a half every blond guy and girl and all the hot rod chromed out zooped up cars of every
Description was headed to Laguna Seca to the races all the while we were in a Volkswagen bug military
haircuts civies on we looked like a bunch of confused narks like were going to fool any one in that car
And garb we were wearing not to worry hippies are not long on thinking especially when they stood on
the corner in the height and Ahbury in broad day light selling *** for a nickel a lid slang for five bucks you could get
small glad bag of Royal Gold hashish or do what the winos do get a bottle of thunderbird or ripple what
ever know this Wolf Man Jack is blasting the air waves from Mexico since he violated the rules our hero the
man could talk jive and if you were high you thought he was divine I guess you surmise I wasn’t a
Christian at this low point in my life but the Monterey Pop festival was in full swing. The line up Janis
Joplin Jimmy Hendricks mama and the Papas Otis Redding of Dock of the Bay fame and a cast of
Thousands of hippies you couldn’t find a bare spot down town Monterey sidewalks grass the kind you
walk on doorways every where a hippie and not a bar of soap among them. Know this you have been
tamed by time and age but to duck your head forget it this world won’t see your kind again.

Sights and sounds of the sixties
Soon you will be going to the class reunion I over exaggerate as you head for the door I think my kids
Think I not only read ally Oop in the comic strip they act like I knew him personally. Here is what they
Don’t know let’s start easy when you’re setting in the country club and there is a lull listen with your mind
It not that far to the end of the golf course from the west south corner to the first road that is an eighth
Of a mile every hot rod man or girl already knows that. Play the song GTO in your head going to shut
Them down GTO. Listen to Jims engine howl he had it stroked and bored out in Taylorville you can do
that when daddy owns a bar to bad howl will turn to sobs really. Glen’s driving a dodge cornet with an
automatic on the floor sixty six factory line job you wouldn’t know it by looking Glen blew him away
coming out of the hole never touched or came close at top end Glen was a lone well I told you what Jim
was doing.
Strain a little more you can hear a fifty five chevy leaving the Dog & Suds headed for Elvers Skating rink
he floors it finally he lets it back off what a sound as that glass pack muffler rips the night air see any
Dinosaurs got rid of that old feeling yet. Out on the street here comes the bad with a capital B Lee miller
Is driving his fifty five Chevy burnished brown all the chrome plus the door handles are gone inside and out it is a
Dream are you getting it yet I’m talking about your achievements. Kenny Krivage is over at Rocks burning
cigarettes through five dollar bills on his arm before he was just a good looking kid then the sixties got
Him you were either at rocks or hiding from those that went there. Lot safer drinking cherry coke with
Janice at the hometown cafe even Karate didn’t protect you at rocks the Neece kid even taught it but
when you got a fist of fives coming at your head it not time for theory its time for action. Who can forget
the pied piper Jim Handy was the shortest guy in town unless you were in the first grade but the gang of
six foot behemoths that were his constant companions were hard to miss it must have been how the
poles felt when they saw the Germans on the march. They had a menacing sound long before they laid a
little love on you, your life’s last moments filled with terror until you realized they turned the corner and
went another way how selfish you felt as you sang someone else is going to die today give me a fire
breathing dragon any day. Poor oh pop sinnard never got any business just one kid drinking a vanilla
shake his special thin hamburger I bet that guy could get a hundred burgers out of a pound of ground round
well the pin ball machine was wide open I guess the kid got even for the hamburger there was a certin
Song on the juke box something about eighteen miners scrambled from a would be grave there he stood
all alone Big bad John. Let me tell you Pop knew it he heard it every day I think he stated crying for the
miners one day or was something else on his mind.
Well I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about what was going on in the other part of the country west
coast on 101 going to Frisco going south 101 on the other side Jan and Dean the Beach boys came a live
for a mile and a half every blond guy and girl and all the hot rod chromed out zooped up cars of every
Description was headed to Laguna Seca to the races all the while we were in a Volkswagen bug military
haircuts civies on we looked like a bunch of confused narks like were going to fool any one in that car
And garb we were wearing not to worry hippies are not long on thinking especially when they stood on
the corner in the height and Ahbury in broad day light selling *** for a nickel a lid slang for five bucks you could get
small glad bag of Royal Gold hashish or do what the winos do get a bottle of thunderbird or ripple what
ever know this Wolf Man Jack is blasting the air waves from Mexico since he violated the rules our hero the
man could talk jive and if you were high you thought he was divine I guess you surmise I wasn’t a
Christian at this low point in my life but the Monterey Pop festival was in full swing. The line up Janis
Joplin Jimmy Hendricks mama and the Papas Otis Redding of Dock of the Bay fame and a cast of
Thousands of hippies you couldn’t find a bare spot down town Monterey sidewalks grass the kind you
walk on doorways every where a hippie and not a bar of soap among them. Know this you have been
tamed by time and age but to duck your head forget it this world won’t see your kind again.

Felix Calvalari and the Rascals singing Groovy.
As I ride along.
What a lovely uplifting mood song?
Of two people enjoying the mood.

And the Beach Boys singing Don't Worry Baby.
Stating everything is going to be alright.
How can you not love a lady like this?
Who gives off great confidence.

I truly believe, I could never love another.
After loving her.
David Ruffin's blended truth behind the lyrics of this Temptations song.

If I lost her in any way.
I would try something new to reconnect.
The Miracles truly spoke the truth about the things love will make you do.
I guess I'm in a sixties type mood.

When words solely spoke straightly to you.
I understand the woman's that seek respect.
Otis Redding wrote the song addressing it.
Altho' Aretha seems to get the credit.

What can I say about the two Dions?
With Dion Mucci singing about Donna the Primma Donna.
The type you probably couldn't get to ride a honda.
And then Dione Warwicke singing about singing about praying.
Oh, yes I'm in a sixties mood.
When words solely spoke to your heart.

When the Beatles stated don't let me down.
Them words was a message needed to be heard.
And papa never had a brand new bag.
I'm still trying to figure out those James Brown words.

Well, I relax for a few minutes.
Until I get ready to play another song.
Cause for the moment.
I'm just enjoying these sixties songs.

Brian Wilson and Mike Love, these were the minds of the sixties.
William Robinson, Warren Moore, Ron White, Robert Rogers, the hitmakers of Motown.
And of course the mind of the sixties.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, a force behind the Beatles.
Other minds of the Sixties

The music rises and creates an emotion that has you connected to a whole creative generation.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David along with Holland Dozier Holland created a style that to this day is strongly admired.

Then, there is Norman Whitfield, Sly Stone, Felix Cavaleri blazing a message to us to adjust too.

Carole King, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and others, they were the mind of the sixties.

No generation holds more creative people than the sixties.

The assassins hit in 63
And Camelot was gone,
Inspiration vanished
And the darkness sang it’s song.
Vietnam escalated
Brezhnev’s Russia loomed,
Africa was eviscerated
And Red China entombed.
Floating on a long white cloud
The Kiwis were replete
With abundant British markets
For their butter, wool and meat.
The Europeans went ****
And Britain lost it’s way
When the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
Monopolized their day.
Man landed on the moon
And raised the Yankee flag
And they shot Mahatma Ghandi
For making good things out of bad.
The Berlin Wall dividing,
The Cold War tense and spare,
ICBM’s threaten silently
In their silos of despair.
Bob Menzies ruled Australia
As an amassing of his loot
And his White Australia Policy
Condemned him as a brute.
Found naked on her tousled bed,
Blonde hair across her face,
Marylin Monroe is dead
The world’s a darker place.
In the Age of Aquarius
Our children lost their youth,
LSD and smoking ***
And Afro’s were the proof.
Lots of leg in miniskirts,
High bouffant’s in the hair,
Screaming teeny boppers
Rock with Elvis on “the Air”.
Giant, Rawhide, Ponderosa,
Martin Luther King,
Kaftans and a cheese fondue,
Abortion is a sin!

It’s a sixties kaleidoscope,
A panoramic skim
Of an era of wonderment
Which you and I lived in.


Marshalg
@the Gate
Mangere Bridge
20th January 2009

Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

............
Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

................
SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

It was their first time, their first time ever. Of course neither would admit to it, and neither knew, about the other that is, that they had never done this before. Life had sheltered them, and they had sheltered from life.

Their biographies put them in their sixties. Never mind the Guardian magazine proclaiming sixty to be the new fifty. Albert and Sally were resolutely sixty – ish. To be fair, neither looked their age, but then they had led such sheltered lives, hadn’t they. He had a mother, she had a father, and that pretty much wrapped it up. They had spent respective lives being their parents’ companions, then carers, and now, suddenly this. This intimacy, and it being their first time.

When their contemporaries were befriending and marrying and procreating, and home-making and care-giving and child-minding, and developing their first career, being forced to start a second, overseeing teenagers and suddenly being parents again, but grandparents this time – with evenings and some weekends allowed – Albert and Sally had spent their time writing. They wrote poetry in their respective spaces, at respective tables, in almost solitude, Sally against the onslaught of TV noise as her father became deaf. Albert had the refuge of his childhood bedroom and the table he’d studied at – O levels, A levels, a degree and a further degree, and a little later on that PhD. Poetry had been his friend, his constant companion, rarely fickle, always there when needed. If Albert met a nice-looking woman in the library and lost his heart to her, he would write verse to quench not so much desire of a physical nature, but a desire to meet and to know and to love, and to live the dream of being a published poet.

Oh Sally, such a treasure; a kind heart, a sweet nature, a lovely disposition. Confused at just seventeen when suddenly she seemed to mature, properly, when school friends had been through all that at thirteen. She was passed over, and then suddenly, her body became something she could hardly deal with, and shyness enveloped her because her mother would say such things . . . but, but she had her bookshelf, her grandfather’s, and his books (Keats and Wordsworth saved from the skip) and then her books. Ted Hughes, Dylan Thomas (oh to have been Kaitlin, so wild and free and uninhibited and whose mother didn’t care), Stevie Smith, U.E. Fanthorpe, and then, having taken her OU degree, the lure of the small presses and the feminist canon, the subversive and the down-right weird.

Albert and Sally knew the comfort of settling ageing parents for the night and opening (and firmly closing) the respective doors of their own rooms, in Albert’s case his bedroom, with Sally, a box room in which her mother had once kept her sewing machine. Sally resolutely did not sew, nor did she knit. She wrote, constantly, in notebook after notebook, in old diaries, on discarded paper from the office of the charity she worked for. Always in conversation with herself as she moulded the poem, draft after draft after draft. And then? She went once to writers’ workshop at the local library, but never again. Who were these strange people who wrote only about themselves? Confessional poets. And she? Did she never write about herself? Well, occasionally, out of frustration sometimes, to remind herself she was a woman, who had not married, had not borne children, had only her father’s friends (who tried to force their unmarried sons on her). She did write a long sequence of poems (in bouts-rimés) about the man she imagined she would meet one day and how life might be, and of course would never be. No, Sally, mostly wrote about things, the mystery and beauty and wonder of things you could touch, see or hear, not imagine or feel for. She wrote about poppies in a field, penguins in a painting (Birmingham Art Gallery), the seashore (one glorious week in North Norfolk twenty years ago – and she could still close her eyes and be there on Holkham beach).  Publication? Her first collection went the rounds and was returned, or not, as is the wont of publishers. There was one comment: keep writing. She had kept writing.

Tide Marks

The sea had given its all to the land
and retreated to a far distant curve.
I stand where the waves once broke.

Only the marks remain of its coming,
its going. The underlying sand at my feet
is a desert of dunes seen from the air.

Beyond the wet strand lies, a vast mirror
to a sky laundered full of haze, full of blue,
rinsed distances and shining clouds.


When Albert entered his bedroom he drew the curtains, even on a summer’s evening when still light. He turned on his CD player choosing Mozart, or Bach, sometimes Debussy. Those three masters of the piano were his favoured companions in the act of writing. He would and did listen to other music, but he had to listen with attention, not have music ‘on’ as a background. That Mozart Rondo in A minor K511, usually the first piece he would listen to, was a recording of Andras Schiff from a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. You could hear the atmosphere of a capacity audience, such a quietness that the music seemed to feed and enter and then surround and become wondrous.

He’d had a history teacher in his VI form years who allowed him the run of his LP collection. It had been revelation after revelation, and that had been when the poetry began. They had listened to Tristan & Isolde into the early hours. It was late June, A levels over, a small celebration with Wagner, a bottle of champagne and a bowl of cherries. As the final disc ended they had sat in silence for – he could not remember how long, only from his deeply comfortable chair he had watched the sky turn and turn lighter over the tall pine trees outside. And then, his dear teacher, his one true friend, a young man only a few years out of Cambridge, rose and went to his record collection and chose The Third Symphony by Vaughan-Williams, his Pastoral Symphony, his farewell to those fallen in the Great War  – so many friends and music-makers. As the second movement began Albert wept, and left abruptly, without the thanks his teacher deserved. He went home, to the fury of his father who imagined Albert had been propositioned and assaulted by his kind teacher – and would personally see to it that he would never teach again. Albert was so shocked at this declaration he barely ever spoke to his father again. By eight o’clock that June morning he was a poet.

For Ralph

A sea voyage in the arms of Iseult
and now the bowl of cherries
is empty and the Perrier Jouet
just a stain on the glass.

Dawn is a mottled sky
resting above the dark pines.
Late June and roses glimmer
in a deep sea of green.

In the still near darkness,
and with the volume low,
we listen to an afterword:
a Pastoral Symphony for the fallen.

From its opening I know I belong
to this music and it belongs to me.
Wholly. It whelms me over
and my face is wet with tears.


There is so much to a name, Sally thought, Albert, a name from the Victorian era. In the 1950s whoever named their first born Albert? Now Sally, that was very fifties, comfortably post-war. It was a bright and breezy, summer holiday kind of name. Saying it made you smile (try it). But Light-foot (with a hyphen) she could do without, and had hoped to be without it one day. She was not light-footed despite being slim and well proportioned. Her feet were too big and she did not move gracefully. Clothes had always been such a nuisance; an indicator of uncertainty, of indecision. Clothes said who you were, and she was? a tallish woman who hid her still firm shape and good legs in loose tops and not quite right linen trousers (from M & S). Hair? Still a colour, not yet grey, she was a shale blond with grey eyes. She had felt Albert’s ‘look’ when they met in The Barton, when they had been gathered together like show dogs by the wonderful, bubbly (I know exactly what to wear – and say) Annabel. They had arrived at Totnes by the same train and had not given each other a second glance on the platform. Too apprehensive, scared really, of what was to come. But now, like show dogs, they looked each other over.

‘This is an experiment for us,’ said the festival director, ‘New voices, but from a generation so seldom represented here as ‘emerging’, don’t you think?’

You mean, thought Albert, it’s all a bit quaint this being published and winning prizes for the first time – in your sixties. Sally was somewhere else altogether, wondering if she really could bring off the vocal character of a Palestinian woman she was to give voice to in her poem about Ramallah.

Incredibly, Albert or Sally had never read their poems to an audience, and here they were, about to enter Dartington’s Great Hall, with its banners and vast fireplace, to read their work to ‘a capacity audience’ (according to Annabel – all the tickets went weeks ago). What were Carcanet thinking about asking them to be ‘visible’ at this seriously serious event? Annabel parroted on and on about who’d stood on this stage before them in previous years, and there was such interest in their work, both winning prizes The Forward and The Eliot. Yet these fledgling authors had remained stoically silent as approaches from literary journalists took them almost daily by surprise. Wanting to know their backstory. Why so long a wait for recognition? Neither had sought it. Neither had wanted it. Or rather they’d stopped hoping for it until . . . well that was a story all of its own, and not to be told here.

Curiosity had beckoned both of them to read each other’s work. Sally remembered Taking Heart arriving in its Amazon envelope. She brought it to her writing desk and carefully opened it.  On the back cover it said Albert Loosestrife is a lecturer in History at the University of Northumberland. Inside, there was a life, and Sally had learnt to read between the lines. Albert had seen Sally’s slim volume Surface and Depth in Blackwell’s. It seemed so slight, the poems so short, but when he got on the Metro to Whitesands Bay and opened the bag he read and became mesmerised.  Instead of going home he had walked down to the front, to his favourite bench with the lighthouse on his left and read it through, twice.

Standing in the dark hallway ready to be summoned to read Albert took out his running order from his jacket pocket, flawlessly typed on his Elite portable typewriter (a 21st birthday present from his mother). He saw the titles and wondered if his voice could give voice to these intensely personal poems: the horror of his mother’s illness and demise, his loneliness, his fear of being gay, the nastiness and bullying experienced in his minor university post, his observations of acquaintances and complete strangers, train rides to distant cities to ‘gather’ material, visit to galleries and museums, homages to authors, artists and composers he loved. His voice echoed in his head. Could he manage the microphone? Would the after-reading discussion be bearable? He looked at Sally thinking for a moment he could not be in better company. Her very name cheered him. Somehow names could do that. He imagined her walking on a beach with him, in conversation. Yes, he’d like that, and right now. He reckoned they might have much to share with each other, after they’d discussed poetry of course. He felt a warm glow and smiled his best smile as she in astonishing synchronicity smiled at him. The door opened and applause beckoned.

Remember when you told me you forgot your middle name.
And that you didn't remember if you even had one.
That your parents weren't particularly religious; that they forgot God.
And that you've been forgetful lately.
You couldn't
remember
the last time you picked flowers.
Or a president.
Or shot a gun.
Or put a flower in a gun.
And that Vietnam was like Iraq.
And France would bring WWIII.
"What's my middle name?"
You asked.
"Where's the Middle East?"

"Didn't the nukes dropped in the Nevada desert sand create glass?"

"How many windows does this room have? Can you see?"

"The eyes are the windows to the soul."

My eyes feel old
Is what my grandmother would say
when she was tired.
She would play solitaire.
After each game she would
shuffle the deck three ways.
I would always mix them up
scattered on the tabletop.
That's what I remember
from the sixties.

E-Emotion
Angry, E-book hunger
Tear diamond drop

      Join Me
@ The Body-book shop

The Gold bonds his book Hot Rods
She reads about the Angels and Gods

He covers her mind and book
with his lotion

Are we ready for the E-book
In tip-top condition motion
Someone is mysteriously trying to tell me something?

How the moon hangs low
The book made her eyes
Open to really know?

I phone to book she's the grab bag
I'm leaving on a Jetplane
One chosen E-Book
Was Scarlet love flame

How the book needs to grab you
The day you were born or reborn
Never to lose your sight
But why does he split your pages

In a hot rush* money wages

The heart is bleeding out words
Feeling so crushed the bookend
Energetic stare or the blank stare
Your enticing book
What happens underside me
The pages one-sided

You're the sweet of the complicated
getting bittersweet to be love mated

The sundae banana split
*My ring book marker my lovely curls

I couldn't share my book what it said
Do you really love me
The spinning wheel
Feminity of book so girly but
Love so dizzy

To be told overstocked to be sold
But someone loved it
Its been properly viewed
Buying and reselling hearts of
book timeshare

His workout
he loves his curls
Ebook he sees he memorized
all his European beauty
turning do you love her books madly
The beast  is inside Jekyll
Girls needed to hide but got
Hyde
The book seeing our life
From a blinded pageview
What's beside our words
We need to be upfront
Once in a million chances
The whole planet of funny books
beach house turned
Blank page
of a clown funhouse tree stalk

What is the point of view
Like an adult book raided
If you're the unadulterated
The innocents being naive
Wanting him so much
Whats the use it's like a
the blank page
Like your hairstyle
the sixties pageboy
You need book law and order
Like the Feng Shui book surrender
Be focused Graphically cool artist
And paint it colors no
gun it blanks no favors
My book place has the ambiance
Different mysteries
and suspense behaviors

Somehow it thickens
like "French" roue paste

You didn't want one
page to waste
E for the Exodus
A blank page is love minus
You're hitting a plateau
E- love of kiss-book
French Chateau
Ebook has a pattern the same thing
It repeats and devours your thoughts
The ancient Grecian her structural
form of statues
That rip page needed words to capture

The Clean-Slate page to restart
your flight
The prize
Emprise
Empire to the book hire
E-book desire
E-lust
It sets an example
we need to trust
Not to mislead your mind
Whats behind the book
Exhumed or to be doomed
Like Witchcraft magical hands

This wasn't the Godly land
The blank page had a spell
"The Burned Book" no one
will ever know
Can we take it back what was written inside
We need to restore give more (Cat and Mouse) chase

As my equal poison mind of sugar
Equally or naturally book gifted
Wrap silk ribbons or too much
the anxiety of red tape
Explosion of E=books
Elixir eyes to the Ebook doorway
But the blank pages were
still inside

E-book and the text
Whats next *** journalism
The kingdom of Elust
E-book became all excuses
Those blank tweets of
Hummingbirds
Like you got some
earwax all codes and emblems
My blank form income tax problems?

Storming damage to the max of my book

Hitting rock or book bottom
You're still living in a shape
of an eggcup

And reading by your nook
Your Ebook swish wish a nymph
floating mermaid

Things turn (Retro) just go
The book was the turn of events
More pages to heart mend

We are not experts or philosophers
Get inside the greener grass
like a grasshopper

Your lovely book a tranquil place
You were booked into your gown
But your ebooks is being
transported to other towns

Her heart was skipping his pages
She never got the chance to read
His chosen page
Life is so the open book
Eyes wide shut