CURRENTLY

I'M READING JACK GILBERT.

in the berkeley public library the other day, i stumbled upon jack gilbert's books. i'm not sure why. i have heard the name, i think maybe because he was part of the "poetry as magic" workshop conducted by spicer and duncan. but his work is clearly of another world. one of those clear poets i seem to get entangled with from time to time (last year's model was william bronk - he still runs like a charm). one of these people, i think (perhaps weirdly) of bernadette mayer and elizabeth bishop, who are complicated, but neophytes can love them too, you know. listen to the sheer music of these lines:

O lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the winds labor.

very regular, and not consistent with the beefheartian sense of the labors of rhythm, but really, and i don't use the word much, ravishing. this book, "the great fires" is a book that i keep putting down because, like a great album, i don't want to overdo it. in the words of goldmember, "isn't that weird?"

This is also one of those poets who doesn't jibe with my love and sense of the decorative, and in this sense, is more of a bronk, austere type. and i love it. it's sadistic, because all my sense of the world is, "oh, look at those beautiful golden shoes! how can people make those and kill one another?", and gilbert is more like this, from a poem called "the abnormal is not courage."

the poles rode out from warsaw against the german
tanks on horses. rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers

[...]

It was impossible, and with form...


this is not robert duncan. it's so traditional, you know? in subject matter, in execution, but the mind behind in the poem is saber-like:

Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear.


etcetera. I want to think of this, i want to be like this, because i've been reading holderlin and he affronts my sense of the the bounty of repitition, the kierkegaard repitition. the fragile one that our nation kills. Don't stress in the storm.