on language:
(25) (Transmissions)
The language is not ours
and we move upward beyond our powers into
words again beyond us unsure measures
the poetry of the cosmos
transcending
speech and hearing... faltering.
on the Muse:
(41) (Santa Cruz Propositions)
Old Mama Mammemory long lingering
half in half out of it,
and yet we sing still to Her, to the
shadowy Big Presence of her,
to the Dumb Waitress coming up from below
...Yet we need her. We don't need her.
...It is to say we leave her, we leave
everything for her. The mind is not content but
must build even of discontent histories,
palaces, commands, grand
impositions --all for HER!!!
Duncan talks about this idea a lot, but the Muse (or Muses) seem to be just a word to name a concept-- namely, the Inspirer, or where Inspiration comes from. He grapples with this concept-- is it mine? Hers? Do we need Her? Yes but we're trying not to-- do we write Poetry just because of Her? What's ours?
(63) (The Museum)
Grand architecture that the Muses command! ...above the struggling mind.
O Muses, ancient and overwhelming sisters we have so long playd in whose orders,
you stand between us and our Father;
you lead us on into this vale between slopes flowery and sweet where
all our grievances and memories of love run into song;
...we are lost in you. Pain
enters Being
drop
by drop.
Here, the Muses seem to relate to the idea of the Cloud in the Cloud of Unknowing: standing between us and the Father, or the true inspiration, or the source, or something. I definitely get the sense that it's something Other--the transaction is usually described as inspiration coming FROM the Muse, so it's Muse, poet, public; here, Duncan shows another layer-- One, Muse, poet, [presumed Audience, I guess].
on Art:
(77) This is not a baby on fire but a babe of fire,
flesh burning with his own flame
...The burning Babe, the Rose,
the Wedding of the Moon and Sun,
wherever in the World I read
such Mysteries come to haunt the Mind,
the Language of What Is and I
are one.
--5--
He's Art's epiphany [the burning babe] of Art new born,
a Christ of Poetry, the burning spirit's show,
He leaves no shadow, where he dances in the air,
of misery below.
Pretty straightforward-- what Art should be, or what Poetry should be, is united with Reality-- language not just as a tool, but a new Language that is Real to describe and to be the Real. Not consumed but alive.
on poetry:
(151) (JAMAIS)
must extend beyond the throw of the dice "a" just now, yet
no throw of the dice may chance IT.
Let us take the excellence of the style to be
lucidity--
...Verse, linkt to the Idea of that Governance,
moves "beyond";
...given in the Nature of Sound
which is God's Art, the principle of recognition
--Man's Art, an other arbitration of the whole
"Nature of Sound" in which
the "sameness" of the note is dismisst.
Not chance (see Mallarmé, I guess?) but lucidity-- and sounds, each different/unique but recognizable? Yet verse has moved beyond governance--
and
(266) (Close)
I make my realm this realm in the
patently irreal-- History
will disprove my existence.
The Book will not hold this poetry yet
all the vain song I've sung comes into it
...one tear of infatuation follows
as if it were love
Let something we must all wonder about ensue
one tear I cannot account for fall
this: the flooding into the flooding
this: the gleam of the bowl in its not holding--
I think this idea is gorgeous. The Book will not hold this Poetry (cannot, will not, both the Good Book perhaps and all Books). He seems to contradict himself here; he'll make his realm in the irreal (not the Real) but no one will account for it and the Book won't contain it-- then he ends on this water-in-water image. Beauty in fullness and emptiness?
on the Self:
(175) (Circulations of the Song)
I shall never return into my Self;
that "Self" passes out of Eternity, incidental!
...Again you have instructed me to le go,
to hold to this falling, this
letting myself go.
I will succumb entirely to your intention.
Contend with me!
you demand.
...I am falling into an emptiness of Me,
every horizon a brink of this emptying,
walls of who-I-am falling into me.
How enormous to come into this need!
on the Authentic:
(186) (An Alternate Life)
So I love what is "real". How awkwardly we name it:
the "actual", the "real", the "authentic"-- What Is.
I have come to it as if I could have been "away",
flooded thru by the sorrow of the unlived, the unanswerd,
tho I knew not and had not the courage of asking
the question that calld for it,
the real I did see. The real so toucht me
I could not speak before it.
playing with form:
(54) (Fragments of an Albigensian Rime)
Abel was a butcher.
He dealt in blood and meat.
He burnd the bloody carcass
and the sacrifice was sweet.
And Cain he was a baker.
He brought cakes and ale.
Or was it the Bread, and ripend Wheat-Head,
And a grail of red red wine?
The Father threw his offering down
and trampled on the Vine.
This is so genius because he allows the form to show the Father's dissatisfaction/what's lacking from the sacrifice, due to the break in rhyme: with Abel, we get meat/sweet in 7 syllables; with Cain, his meter is irregular, sometimes too short, then too long, then the right number of syllables but the rhyme is off-- it's like something is being forced into a space it's not meant for. It could work (in the way that Cain's sacrifice should be fine) but it doesn't-- and it's rejected.
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