Poems and Fragments by Elise Cowen, edited
by Tony Trigilio
(Ahsahta Press, 2014)
with a
reprint of
Crept Into My Shoe: Elise Cowan [Cowen] in Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts Number 5, Vol. 8, (The Mad
Motherfucker Issue), Editor Ed Sanders, 1965
We write poetry to remember, and sometimes we write poetry to
forget. But hidden in our forgetting, encoded there, is our remembering—our
secrets. Poetry holds paradox without striving to solve anything. --Diane di
Prima, from Some Words About The Poem, in The Poetry Deal (2014)
I am not writing about Elsie Cowen because she slept with Allen
Ginsberg. I am not thinking about her because she jumped through a window to
her death. I am reading her, and thinking about her, and writing about her,
because we now have a book of her poems, and can begin to work with her as a
poet.
Page 60: Emily White Witch Of Amherst
begins
The shy white witch of Amherst
Killed her teachers
with her love
and then, on p. 26
Emily,
Come summer
You'll take off your
jewelled bees
Just to establish, reading and taking notes, writing from and
through those notes, there is a history or two, whether we like it or not, no
matter who cares, or how they care -- nor when. Trigilio writes: "My
editorial decisions are guided by a simple strategy -- to stay out of Elise
Cowen's way." Which is perfect, exactly what was needed, for getting this
book into existence. But those of us who will be reading it, from now onwards,
will not want to get out of Elise Cowen's way. We want to get in her poems, in
her way, and think our way out, feel our way around and out, by which I mean
write our way in and around, as we might if we were writing instead our Emily
Dickinsons. Now that we have this book of her poems, we can address her as a
poet, as poets who are her readers
p. 28: Teacher -- Your
Body My Kabbalah
"Your / Frankenstein / Deberoux Baptiste"
p. 40 [Trust Yourself -- But Not Too Far]
"The sound of the smile of Decroux's peopled
ass moving
under"
Trigilio's notes, p. 134
Marcel Carné, Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)
"production difficulties caused by the Occupation"
context doubts
with the mime pair
retrofitted
to aristocrats & thieves
"the dancing
tendons
of memory"
celebrations
in a rotting
history
That is not a way out. It starts standing, two feet firmly in
the poems of Elise Cowen, and takes a few notes, does a little research, writes
its way near and against (beside), not wanting to be anything other than -- one
poet in the company of another poet, following the poem into an unforgotten
future. At the outset of the book Trigilio opens us to a prose poem:
"I don't want to make your poem out of dead jonquils &
stored crocus bulbs that may never bloom again but the shocks of memories that
will live again."
For ourselves, as readers of this book of poems by Elise Cowen,
it can come as a sense of responsibility to read the opening poem in reference
to the book in hand. There will have been so far three steps towards this
present: 1) Trigilio putting the book into existence; 2) reading it, back and forth, in and out, taking notes and doing
research; 3) writing what occurs to us to write -- what happens to us, to
write, coming into and out of our memories, it really is always only one step
at a time, with a world swarming around us as we walk.
A year or so ago I wanted to start writing and thinking about
the poems of Elise Cowen, but I didn't yet have this book, so I looked around
online and found Number 5,
Vol. 8 of Ed Sanders' magazine, from 1965. That turned out to be an
excellent place to start. Remember, Elise Cowen was a poet, and we have a book
of her poems. Never again will anyone have any excuse for thinking about her as
merely a tragic minor character, a footnote to the lives of The Beats.
03.14.2018
Crept Into My Shoe: Elise Cowan [Cowen] in Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts Number 5, Vol. 8, (The Mad
Motherfucker Issue) 1965
Pre-formed performative engagement activates dangerous access,
in every excess time scrimmaging with the self-pulse prosthetic recollections,
not quite the wolves of Voltaire slinking through the alley to devour
experiments illegal and at large. Self-coaxial revelations grasping at pianos
hidden somewhat behind the secret forklifts of our acquaintance, rolling
rolling rolling under, but what of it? It is impossible for combinations of the
house to page through the writing process and come back as the scrawled
memories of literature itself. Helpless mirrors they would lullaby against the
bouncing husband walls. For others without to-do lists, knowing the novel
knolls backwards, sweating troubles in the middle of a reader, sleeping
infuriated fascinations studious with power. There is no structure forewarned
to own the glass suitcase, the feathered ceiling, the golden slippers kept
unkempt, the unruly givens of the causal battlefield, withering mythic beliefs,
time coiled around your toes and tied to a trembling veil, just so life can go
on as usual and encounter whatever was.
Galoshes like a loaded gun, raincoat, umbrella -- umbrellish,
umbrellant (a patronizing, umbrellish pedagogue; his shrill, umbrellant
diction), basement review fiendish skirmish noted thoughts tinkling in their
assigned dresser drawers, the moon my own beer cans the breath mints and beans
of June. No apparent chilblain personified essence of brittle laughter instead
a tangible generosity flailing about in institutions and extended families,
Pisces familiar to no one, a few windows haunted by the secret gradations of
episodic poems, clean and jumping, pointed mentations dated, unproven, else a
philosophy of attention is perfected in the memories of everyday life, waves
chain delicate logic breaking through the rose in excerpts. Soon the mottled
lattice will be later than whatever it was about. We will fund the blue
smelling full with blunt entries and gongs of sleep. Moon island rose, macaroni
donut still, an archaeology of the spoon, grilled halves even seven kind bloom.
Indifference specializes in dismissive organization. Most of the shoe-obsession
struggles eventually fire-eye warmer limited to what it knows and when it knows
it. Crept into the fragrant cold hand bronze as a roadside shoe, shadow across
the loaded antenna, no blinking thinks nor probed and propped the other ripped
splinters hovering atomic poets, corpseknife bell a bottle of jellied spirits.
Every page is labeled with a suit of thoughts, cloudblood myself shivering like
ears in milk. Underneath the woven corpses can wear them in their dye.
Once remembered a sliver of everything hiding in each act.
Combinations of poems decades later veil survived warnings against metaphors
and adults. Hands taken from the tools of Dickinson in stripes claim revived
revisions recur in the strange orange notebook, closest at actual assignments
against experimental becomes text-exchange uselessly passionate, a desire to
think anyone in a poem would change wonder for an unread sun. That much is
folded into the shirt and flattened with a mangle press. Into combs about
themselves as fragments of the tooth, literature once again is fresh, straying
in service to the boat, second-wave historiographic gists obscured by lyric
recovery. Demise into bats and tuba. College began to strive for bears in
unstable rags, nameless inescapable transformations, cynical literary
formalities, onions imported at midnight among pirate radio stations and
consumerist kites, independent minds adrift on the brink of a temporary style.
The rotting dawn. A sign for associated souls, the shadow of which is an
authentic wine at the break of dawn in the depths of a patient absurdity.
04.16.2017
*****
Jim Leftwich is a poet who lives in Roanoke, Virginia. Recent publications include Volumes 1 , 2 & 3 of Rascible & Kempt (Luna Bisonte 2016, 2017, edited by John M. and C. Mehrl Bennett), Tres tresss trisss trieesss tril trilssss: Transmutations of César Vallejo (Luna Bisonte, 2018) and Sound Rituals, collaborative poems by jim leftwich & billy bob beamer (mOnocle-Lash, 2018, edited by Olchar Lindsann).