This is the apocalyptic, visionary Whitman, the Whitman who is akin to Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Here, in a single stanza he goes from a vision of ice to a vision of an unearthly city, utterly destroyed. This was before the civil war. He seems to have ascended to a Hurqulayan Interzone. Or else he fell asleep [...]
Hayden Carruth, 1921-2008
The Last Poem in the World
Would I write it if I could?
Bet your glitzy ass I would.
Like many poets my age I first encountered Hayden Carruth without realizing it, by reading his anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us, in high school. Here was where we discovered Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, Philip [...]
Mayakovsky led me naturally back to Whitman. I remember well being astonished by Whitman in high school. Here was a man in the mid 19th century who saw it all, saw everything. But over the years he became an encrusted classic. Every now and then I would pick up Whitman and sometimes he’d strike lightning, [...]
This is from Doctor Drink, by JV Cunningham.
4. Epitaph for Someone or Other
Naked I came, naked I leave the scene,
And naked was my pastime in between.
George Oppen was poorly served by early collected and selected editions of his poetry. I could never get a toe-hold on his work through those publications. But the 2002 New Directions edition, The New Collected Poems, edited by Michael Davidson, changed all that. Here were all the poems published as he had originally published them, [...]
This a poem of George Oppen’s, a favorite of my friend Randy. I had read Oppen and not had much sympathy for him until Randy showed me this one, in The New Collected Poems. But all of that is for another post. For now I just want to put this poem up.
Psalm
Veritas sequitur…
In the small [...]
Frank O’Hara was not the first poet I read, but he was the first poet i read whom I felt was speaking directly to me in and through a world I knew intimately and in a language I knew how to speak. I didn’t need to analyze, translate or interpret what he was saying; he [...]
Seems to me the filthy old 2nd Earl of Rochester deserves to have a female companion. It is obviously a little more decorous but I have no doubts about where the fountain lies where rage is cooled.
The Disappointment
by Aphra Behn
(1640?-1689)
1.
One Day the Amarous Lisander,
By an impatient Passion sway’d,
Surpris’d fair Cloris, that lov’d Maid,
Who cou’d defend [...]
Here’s a smutty tidbit from the Second Earl of Rochester:
So a proud bitch does lead about
Of humble curs the amorous rout,
Who most obsequiously do hunt
The savory scent of salt-swoln cunt.
Some power more patient now relate
The sense of this surprising fate.
Gods! that a thing admired by me
Should fall to so much infamy.
Had she picked out, to [...]
contact: jon@lastbender.com