This morning's notes toward a new poetry

I imagine much different poems than Andrew Joron’s
being surrounded by a much different essay.

These newborn poems will be filled with a wily imagination, primarily, though they will carry the bagged head of a sadness & lament (of mortality, & for political mistreatment). They will keep moving, & they may even be joyous & pleasurable & strangely accessible, carry non-poetry readers through them even as they make us feel & think

The essay will not be properly philosophical, but will be properly political, as it will expose in clear and critical language something specific that is happening & our place within it & a potential exit

That is, it will be fundamentally critical AND imaginative

But within a very basic language. It will be, perhaps, another absorbing narrative. But it will have a weight & insistence & explicitness that the poetry, perhaps, manages to carry only indirectly.

If it has the insistence & explicitness, then perhaps it does not even need the weight, & can move quickly


*in response to Andrew Joron's Fathom
** & Calvino's Six Memos for the New Millenium

Time to step up & lead, Barack

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barton-kunstler-phd/time-for-obama-to-fight-a_b_275332.html



President Obama is the boxer who came out with one big swing (the crowd roars-- Guantanomo closing!), settled into his more conservative game plan based on scouting reports, and then, after a couple bloody rounds, finds himself in worse shape than he thought---- but who still has the capacity to fight, and to get the crowd on his side---if he would just show a little life












CUBE SONG

for Eric





You put a cube in the desert.



It starts to melt.

It fills with water.



It makes the desert colder.





Leaves don’t really exist

The animals are drifting



A few still come to drink at the windows





*



I know I said that



I know I don’t remember