Dreams are Confused

Dreams are confused, yet men seek clarity there

Oracles speak with twisted tongues; men trust them and do not despair

From confusion--dogma, false hope

Through fog, on slick roads--stupid, dismal determination

A Short Cultural History (A Fragment)

Meanwhile the great edifice crumples, creating danger zones where

sharp edges create an "attractive nuisance." Once, these

borders were policed by well-meaning bureaucrats.  The culture

coarsens and grows bewilderingly nuanced at the same time. "Shit happens"

on the one hand, and, on the other, infinite gradations of identity, in the small gap

between two otherwise indistinguishable genders. The response

was supposed to be that that the most subtle and the least subtle among us

"lack all conviction." But it isn't so. Those working against the obesity epidemic by day

would join in protests against "fat shaming" in the evening but if you thought

there was a contradiction in this you would be very wrong. That's just one example.

I'm speaking off the record here. I can't even mean what I say anymore....

The Testament of Mateo del Olmo

I lost one book to alcoholism

one to debt

one to depression

another to life itself

and so I leave to the world these four books of poems

Pristine, Poems of Salt,

The Diamond in the Rough,  Rawhide Visions

A Small Country

We literary people, even the smartest among us sometimes

need our convenient caricatures

reclusive Emily, expansive Walt

Baudelaire the flâneur

casual Frank O'Hara, abstruse Ashbery

cool Miles, eccentric, dissonant Thelonious



But in Monk's music there is a universe of music

vast territories of mood, texture, color

childlike simplicity and recondite complications

or at the very least a small country it would be nice to visit

How to Surrealism

Cashberg's other masterpiece of the early 70 is How to Surrealism.  This long poem goes for the opposite effect attained by the semantic saturation of Brackishness Scruple.  It aims instead of the semantic diffuseness and non-repetition. He said that his aim was to avoid the development of any thematic threads, but that has not prevented critics from reducing it to a kind of quest narrative, in which the poet-hero makes his way through a labyrinthine landscape in search of the perfect musical phrase.  I offer a brief sampling of this 700 page poem:



Arrest. Hysterocommuncal. Brackish. Mudlip. Froggish. Imp.  Stereoderivative.

Greenlight. Densehouse. Immune. Ity.  Foreigneity.  Garage. Toadfill. The.

Asteriskite.  How? Mumblebirds. Championkite. No. Isthmus.  Isthmus.

Sur. To. Tainment.  Brockstyle. Fandom. Austerishity. Sheepishtude.

Hunger. Hattrick. Mysteriousheit.  Under. Mambo.

Ach!  Moonbroom. Fingerscale.  Fingerclaw.  Ugh.

Peninsularlarlar.  Umpteenth. Clinging.

Howitzer. Tulane. Surfeit.  Howitzer. Tulane. Surfeit.

Howitzer. Tulane. Surfeit.  Howitzer. Tulane. Surfeit.

Arugula. Impress. Naturaleza.  Zippified.

Mustardine.  Goateesimilitude.

Why. Bitters. Turpentudinous.

Derive.

Ascot. Benjaminish. Restitude. Amore. Puck. Margarine. Awe. Mainline. Lagging. Hurt. Flog.

Asterdine. Mug. Hantine. Lake.

Howitzer. Tulane. Surfeit.  Howitzer. Tulane. Surfeit.

Never. Impactifullness.

Haste.

Deterioration. Binding. Differential. Genius. Sacred.

Missment. Thole. Snifter.  Banal.

Mugrunt. In.

However. Twostep. Surgeon. Aggress.

Hypnotonormativity. Whether.

Vista. Masculinitad.  Obviate. Osteoneurosis.  Illfit.  

BRACKISHNESS SCRUPLE

Jack Cashberg's BRACKISHNESS SCRUPLE is one of the lost masterpieces of postmodern literature. Published by Black Sparrow Press in 1970s in a limited edition of 40 copies, numbered and signed by the author, this 500-page poem was never anthologized, due to the author's refusal to compromise the work's integrity. It is with some trepidation, then, that I offer this all too brief excerpt. To the critic who called the work "a tedious exercise in semantic saturation" he replied: "don't you think I know that, you fucking idiot." To the Freudian critic who associated brackishness with the id and scruple with the superego he was equally withering. Though often accused of copying Coolidge and Ashbery, he always maintained that his own Self-Portrait in a Bowler Hat was published 10 years before Ashbery's similarly titled work. 


Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Hindemith. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  So much depends. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Upon. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple. A. Brackishness scruple.  Red. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  So many. Brackishness scruple.  Wheel. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Ple. Barrow. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Hindemith. Glazed.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple. With Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Rain. Brackishness scruple.  I had not thought death

had undone. Brackishness scruple.  Ish. Brackishness scruple.  Water. Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  So many Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Beside. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  The. Brackishness stumble.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness stumble.  White. Among twenty snowy mountains. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple. Of Man's first disobedience. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Stumble. Brackishness

scruple.  Hindemith. Brackishness scruple.  Ish. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness stumble.  Brackishness scruple.  Hindemith. Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Ish. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  And the. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple. Brack. Back.

Ple. Ple. Ple Ple. Ness. Brackishness scruple.  Apple pie. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Hindemith. Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Fruit. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Of That. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Brackishness scruple. Scruple stumble.  Scruple stumble.  Scruple stumble.  Scruple

stumble.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple. Ness.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple. The only

moving thing. Brack. Brack. Ple. Ple. Ple Ple. Ness. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Hindemith. Glazed. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  With

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Rain.

Brackishness scruple.  I had not thought death had undone. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness

scruple.  Water. Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  So many

Brackishness scruple. Brackishness scruple. Beside.Hindemith stumble. Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.

Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple.  Brackishness scruple. Brack. Brack. Ple. Ple. Ple Ple.

Given Name

I had to fight for my name

though I was given it

[with little right: Pa warn't no Daedalus

though handy with the jigsaw and the chainsaw

{¡Bulging Muscles! though saw the wild look to my eyes

and shirked away (then I knew I was crazier than Jesus






Icarus Jonson founded the hard-boiled school of American poetry sometime in the late 40s. He is known for his unconventional and expressive punctuation and unsentimental view of life, as well as his feuds with Jack Cashberg and Valance Fullerton. Biographical details are sketchy.

Late Ashbery

It is known that Ashbery didn't revise much, instead preferring to write many poems and throwing out  those that didn't match up to his standards. Here's one of the uncollected poems of Ashbery, that I found once written on a napkin in a New York City restaurant shortly after he had dined there. I can't prove that he wrote it, but I'll offer it to you anyway, just to set the record straight. It certainly is not one he would have wanted to save:    


MERLOT DREAMS

Roses are red, and that disquiet among the almond leaves
like antique shelves, told you the gig was up. Meantime
Elmer sold his last possessions, you know the type, always
looking for an angle of repose among angelic figurines.
He didn't dig it, he said. That was that. I on the other hand
foreign to that lexicon and the start-ups it implied, could
not finish anyone else's sentences, much less my own.

You think it's easy being this uptight. Singing for my supper was ok
as long as this was understood as a lame excuse for a metaphor
but what then? More derivative gargling in the movie set saloon?
Hot cakes? Merchandise returns? In the routine
rambling there is a certain snapping point, one you'd
have to be a fool not to improvise on your own while
unseen forces move into position, just before the fall.

Après moi...  But how did this end, really? Not like this
surely, as afternoon gathered its forces amid crumbling icons.
We turned the page, and there was nothing written there.
But the expected result turned up anyway, as though
they had forgotten to cancel the newspaper for their trip,
and the seedy music died down once again, but not for good.

It's De-Lovely: Fragment of a Treatise on Aesthetics

and loveliness... what of prettiness, is that the same thing?

Being easy on the eyes? (But that won't apply to the lilting tune.)

Glamour? Sex appeal? Those are separate streams

Like attractiveness and the handsomeness of a "handsome woman,"

applicable only to human beings and other living creatures

where sexual attraction needs strikingly gorgeous visual feasts.

 Beauty itself is none of these things, though not separable from them either...





 

I am a poet

I am a poet








but care little for my archives

Similes

The way liar and lyre are pronounced the same way

is like the way I once used to confuse "In a Mellow Tone" with "On Green Dolphin Street"

Or "On Green Dolphin Street" with "Stella by Starlight"

as forgivable as losing one's train of thought in the crowd

as the misuse of baking soda

***

Writing bad poems was no defense

just a defense mechanism

he said

when people were yearning for quality

***

So it is with you

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy

read my poems aloud

in her Dublin accent

and made them seem

not written by me

in my dream

including this one

Cleaning Poem

What if cleaning was your hobby?

You could subscribe to magazines, take classes,

(maybe teach them yourself in night school

once you got really good),


indulge in fine cleaning materials

and tools, treat it like any other pastime

like bridge or mountain climbing,

crossword puzzles or playing a musical instrument,


with the added benefit of cleanliness.

Why do we call some things work and other things hobbies?

You might think I'm being facetious, but this might be a good one for you

or, if not, for someone utterly unlike you in all respects.

For a certain woman

If you think the mirror reverses writing
then write a message in the mirror for me
in lipstick

But you do not wear lipstick
so this poem is not
for you

Peacock

There was a cartoon
of the Tower of Babel

furious activity and singing
bright colors, seen on our family's first color tv

I've never been able to find it as an adult
I remember too the NBC peacock

opening its multi-colored feathers
to that three-note melody

a symbol meaningless
on a black and white screen

This is just to say

The red wheel
barrow

is not
described

all we know is its
color

Humbled

People say they are "humbled" when they win a prize

Something the opposite of humbling since it should make them justly proud

of their accomplishments



I think what they are doing is hedging their bets a bit

by going for the opposite emotion

or maybe they really are "humbled" in a way I don't fully understand

Visual

A good poem should be visual

Lorca knew this and Allen Ginsberg

Pere Gimferrer thought so too

Not to mention William Carlos Williams

with the red wheelbarrow and white chickens

and the purple striped nightgowns imagined by Wallace Stevens

I think Baudelaire had a strong visual imagination too

But I do not

Penumbra

A good poem must have a penumbra

an evocative or haunting aura

suggesting something not present in the

things mentioned in the poem itself

unlike this poem that just sits

flatly on the page

Ron Padgett Poem

I'd like to write a poem like the ones Ron Padgett wrote

for Jim Jarmusch's movie Paterson

If I get it right, there'll be a certain satisfaction in the imitation

If not, then it will be something of mine, original

If not necessarily very good