Poetry

[sus]

His reading was catholic

 

[sus]

His mother ran a school in Lawrence. He taught classes when he felt like springtime. The children were barefoot. He was enemy of the sedulous ape

 

[sus]

He leafed thru anthologies. Pound showed him bohemia. Jiu jitsu. Flipped him heels over head at a restaurant. Frost was just as strong as Ezra. He just wasn't ready. Read more Greek and Latin than Pound, too, he reckoned.

 

[sus]

He didn't belong to any party.

 

[sus]

He was named Robert after Lee

 

[sus]

He reckoned his place among infinities

 

[sus]

The greatest adventure of man was science

 

[sus]

He went to Harvard to study under James. The philosopher was away on sabbatical. Santayan would have to suffice

 

[sus]

He went his own way. He didn't want to be difficult.

 

[sus]

He liked to fool, but quickwittedly—not by the dogged obscure

 

[sus]

He talked in contraries.

He used tone of voice to double the meaning of lines

 

[sus]

He had farmed some. He had puttered around.

He had walked and talked; he liked to talk a lot

 

[sus]

Like a sneak he stole leisure time.

Scholars had always been beggars but now they delegated their begging to the president of the college

 

[sus]

He saw poetry as performance. Poets were athletes. Men of prowess. Their thoughts were feats of association

 

[sus]

FROST

This thing of performance and prowess and feats of association—that’s where it all lies. One of my ways of looking at a poem right away it’s sent to me, right off, is to see if it’s rhymed. Then I know just when to look at it. The rhymes come in pairs, don’t they? And nine times out of ten with an ordinary writer, one of two of the terms is better than the other. One makeshift will do, and then they get another that’s good, and then another makeshift, and then another one that’s good. That is in the realm of performance, that’s the deadly test with me. I want to be unable to tell which of those he thought of first.

 

[version]

 

[luka]

what is it

 

[version]

Édouard Glissant.

 

[luka]

never heard of it. fruity like rimbaud. i like that sort of thing.

 

[version]

Yeah, the intro talks at length about the influence of Mallarmé, Rimbaud and a few others.