Recalculating Read online

  “A highly concentrated state of intoxication—a state which, like madness, frequently enables the victim to imitate the outward demeanor of one in perfect possession of his senses.”

  [Poe, Pym]

  It’s always darkest at night. A darkness day can’t touch.

  But we learn to live with it or anyway it learns to live with us.

  Think snow and see Boca.

  Crane is not metrical so much as parametrical.

  My palsied heart and I agree . . .

  It may be impossible but the concept is that we articulate our judgments, preferences, and beliefs while being aware that these are not universally shared; this holds a special problem for those whose beliefs include a belief in the universality of their beliefs.

  The cause of the cold is not the cold.

  We live facing the blinding sun of the not-yet born, in the shade of the dead. Meaning is the liminal space where the dead live in us as we look toward the future.

  “It is all very confused but more confused than confusing.”

  [Stein, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays]

  “Shadow, come, and take this shadow up.”

  Are we here yet?

  For now, I go hour to hour . . .

  If you are not part of the problem, you will be.

  MISFORTUNE

  after Nerval’s “El Desdichado”

  My morning star’s dead and my disconsolate lute

  Smashes in the blackened sun of torn alibi.

  In the tomb of every night, memories of

  Venetian reveries raw rub the inconsolable

  Pitch of the dark, where over and again

  I love you.

  BE DRUNKEN

  Be always drunk. That’s all: that’s the only question. So not to feel the horrific heaviness of Time weighing on your shoulders, crushing you to ground, you must be drunken ceaselessly.

  But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, in your fashion. But drunken be.

  And if sometime, on palace steps, on the green grass by an abyss, in mournful solitude in your room, if sometime you awake, drunkenness dimmed or done, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flees, of all that wails, of all that roils, of all that sings, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is and the wind, the wave, the bird, and the clock will answer: “It is the hour to get drunk! So not to be the slavish martyr of Time, be drunken; be drunken without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, in your fashion.”

  Baudelaire, “Enivrez-vous” (1864)

  LONG BEFORE THE RAIN, I WEPT

  Dun forgot t’ til me

  what I din fer you afore

  all the ’ittle nuthin

  we flooked in’ide the or.

  Dun forgot the whisters

  that I never known y’had—

  the intessant gloopy ghlisters

  ’ost in squamush seas of plaid.

  Nah, don’t forget the worgy blays

  or the foomish ’urple blain—

  then I acomin’ ’ome ag’in

  you’ll never known I ’ent.

  CHIMERA

  At dusk I found it silent there

  And sudden caught it in my hand

  It squeaked and hollered with despair

  But I was young of ruthless mind.

  I scooped and cupped it in my palm

  So it would no more come to harm

  Yet quick I knew to let it go

  It was not mine to have nor hold.

  E’er since that day I’ve gathered twine

  To knot and glue unto a rime

  Resigned that tunes will never bind

  Shimmering shadows tossed in time.

  BEFORE YOU GO

  Thoughts inanimate, stumbled, spare, before you go.

  Folded memories, tinctured with despair, before you go.

  Two lakes inside a jar, before you go.

  Flame illumines fitful lie, before you go.

  Furtive then morrow, nevering now, before you go.

  Lacerating gap, stippled rain, before you go.

  Anger rubs, raw ’n’ sweet, before you go.

  Never seen the other side of sleep, before you go.

  Nothing left for, not yet, grief, before you go.

  A slope, a map, insistent heave, before you go.

  Stone & stem, nocturne, leap, before you go.

  Compass made of bones & teeth, before you go.

  The wind up acts, delirium’s beast, before you go.

  Spilt quell, impatient, speaks, before you go.

  Rippling laughter, radiance leaks, before you go.

  No place, no sound, nor up, or down, before you go.

  Smokey, swollen seeps, before you go.

  Tossing in tune, just like last night, before you go.

  I’m nowhere near the fight, before you go.

  Nothing to make it right, before you go.

  It won’t congeal, no more deals, before you go.

  Hope a fence, well’s on fire, before you go.

  Slammed when you don’t, damned if not, before you go.

  A hound, a bay, a hurtled dove, before you go.

  Coriander & lace, stickly grace, before you go.

  Englobing trace, fading quakes, before you go.

  Devil’s grail, face of fate, before you go.

  Suspended deanimation, recalcitrant fright, before you g

  Everything so goddamn slow, before you

  Take me now, I’m feelin’ low, before yo

  Just let me unhitch this tow, before y

  One more stitch still to sew, before

  Calculus hidden deep in snow, befor

  Can’t hear, don’t say, befo

  Lie still, who sings this song, bef

  A token, a throw, a truculent pen, be

  Don’t know much, but that I do, b

  Two lane blacktop, undulating light

  NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some of these poems were originally published in Aerial, Baffler, Barrow Street, Blackbox Manifold, Boog City, Caliban Online, Cimarron Review, Claudius App, Coal Hill Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Critical Quarterly, E. G. Reader, Electronic Poetry Review, Esque, Fulcrum, Golden Handcuffs, Green Integer Review, Half-Circle, Harper’s, Hobo Magazine, International Literary Quarterly, Island Magazine, Journal of Interdimensional Poetry, Lingo, Lyric &, MiPoesas, NO, Non, Onedit, Plume, Poems & Poetics, Poetry, PoetsArtists, Prague Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Rampike, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Shampoo, Tikkun, Vallum, Vertaallab, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vlak, War & Peace, Weekday, and Work.

  Recalculating includes my translations of poems by Velimir Khlebnikov, Osip Mandelstam, Charles Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Régis Bonvicino, and Catullus. These translations were collected in Umbra, a pamphlet from Charles Alexander’s Chax Press (Tucson, AZ, 2010). “Umbra” was originally published as part of “A Person Is Not an Entity Symbolic but the Divine Incarnate” in The Sophist (Los Angeles, CA: Sun & Moon Press, 1987). “I’ve been given a body . . .” (from Stone) and “To empty earth falling unwilled . . .” were written for Modernist Archaist: Selected Poems by Osip Mandelstam, edited by Kevin Platt (Miami, FL: Whale and Star Press, 2008), and were also published in Shofar. Some of the other translations were published in S / N: NewWorldPoetics and New American Writing. Thanks to the heirs of João Cabral de Melo Neto for permission for the translation of “Psicologia Da Composicao,” from In: O Cão sem Plumas (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Alfaguara, 2007). “After Leminski” is a collaboration with Bonvicino.

  Some of these poems were included in The Introvert (Paris: Collectif Géneration, 2010), with accompanying pictures by Jill Moser, Yang Yongliang, Carlos Amorales, Jiři Čirnický, and Dominique Figarella; each artist made twelve copies of the book.

  “All Set” was included in 100 Poets against the War, edited by Todd Swift (Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2003).

  “Before You Go,” with pictures by Susan Bee, was
published at artcritical.com (2011).

  “Breathtails” is a libretto written for Anne LeBaron, scored for baritone, shakuhachi, and string quartet. It was commissioned by Thomas Buckner.

  “Brush Up Your Chaucer” was written at the invitation of David Wallace and presented at the Contemporary Poets Meet Chaucer panel at the New Chaucer Society’s Conference, Fordham University, at Lincoln Center, summer 2006. It was published in Hotel Amerika 6, no. 1 (spring 2008).

  “Catullus 85”: Richard Tuttle suggested we work together on translating the much translated “Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. / nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.” The possibilities included: “Hating & loving. Query: why’d I do that? / Don’t know, just sense it & it’s excruciating” and “Odious & amorous. Hey: why’d I do that? / Beats me, just feelings & I’ve been crucified.”

  “The Importance of Being Bob” written for the Bob Perelman feature of Jacket, no. 39 (2010), edited by Kristen Gallagher.

  “In Utopia” was first published in the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (New York: Occupy Wall Street Library, 2011).

  “Ku(na)hay” was included in Best American Poetry 2008, edited by Charles Wright (New York: Scribner’s, 2008).

  “Lenny Paschen Redux” is a recasting of the monologue for The Lenny Paschen Show, the libretto for a 1992 opera with music by Ben Yarmolinsky, collected in Blind Witness: Three American Operas (Queens, NY: Factory School, 2008).

  “Not on My Watch,” while not written for this context, was selected by Franklin & Marshall College to be part of a public arts project adjacent to the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, commemorating the grave of radical abolitionist and civil rights advocate Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

  “Recipe for Disaster” was written for the Suzanne Bocanegra recipe issue of Esopus (2010).

  “Talk to Me”: On April 18, 1999, I performed this improvised poem as part of Deb Singer’s “Impulsive Behavior” series at the Whitney Museum’s Philip Morris space. Also on the bill that night were Edwin Torres and Bruce Andrews performing with Sally Silvers. A video of the performance is available at PennSound (http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Whitney.php). The text was first published in Fulcrum 7 (2011), with a response by Dubravka Djurić.

  “A Theory’s Evolution” was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Dec. 29, 2006), with the title taken from a recent Inquirer headline about a Darwin show at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

  “Todtnauberg” was published as part of an essay, “Celan’s Folds,” in Textual Practice (2004).