JIM LEFTWICH Engages
Olas Cursis by John
M. Bennett
(Luna
Bisonte Productions, 2018)
"...continues
to challenge or befuddle the tired, cliché-ridden world of North American
poetry..."—Anonymous, quoted on the Small Press Distribution website
On the
cover, designed by Cathy Bennett, is a head, a visual poem made by John mostly
of torn texts, collaged with enough clues to permit us to see (read) a head --
an irregular green circle with a black center for the right eye, a vaguely
lightbulb-shaped figure for the left; a U-shaped discoloration, tilted to the
left and flattened at the bottom, for a nose; two strips of pages torn from the
same discolored book as lips.
Above
the right eyebrow are the words "cloud count" --
Dripping
from the center of the right eye are the words "squat bread" --
Floating
in the black void of the mouth are the words "wave and smoke" --
What
happens if we add these seven syllables to "shut dirt," the first
poem in the book? We might add them as line 6, right after "TV storm
wallow knot lunch."
"cloud
count squat bread wave and smoke"
We now
have an 11-line poem, six syllables per line, except for lines 5 and 6, which
have seven syllables. Do you think Bennett counts syllables? I doubt it.
Stresses? No. Do you think he is counting vowels and consonants as they are
distributed through the poem? Loot doom spoon groom? Shut lunch thunk bulb?
Faucet tube? Matter falling wallow wall wallet? Shiv sink middle mind time swim
clicker dirt?
No.
When
you have written tens of thousands of poems there is no longer any need for
counting anything. All you have to do is listen, and watch as the poem unfolds.
That is all you have to do, because you will have gotten very good at doing it.
And -- you may find yourself saying, when asked how long it took for you to write
your latest 10-line poem, it took me fifty years (and that will be in fact the
only accurate and honest answer).
This
"shut dirt" is shut tight. Between the first word in the poem
("shut") and the last word ("dirt") nothing gets in but the
poem itself. Which is why I have concocted a line from the
controlled-text-demolition of the cover and forced it into the middle of this
self-contained system, the poem-as-open text. Open in fact -- experientially --
however, only if opened by the reader. The collaborative practice/process of
meaning-building is always an asymmetrical power relationship. The author calls
the shots. "This is an open text -- because I say so." In the case of this particular poem, there
are 10 lines, each one having 5 words. Each line has four 1-syllable words and
one 2-syllable word (except for line 5, which has two 2-syllable words and
three 1-syllable words).
These
are the terms established ("terms of engagement" -- t.o.e.) in
"shut dirt" for collaborative (cosemic, "having to do with the
pragmatic facticity of a making-sense together") interactions between
writer and reader. (Slow down, and read that sentence again: it is an
associational theory of everything, a t.o.e., i.e. a poem.) A theory of
everything must be provisional, subjective, local, ad hoc and improvisational,
or else it is not a poem. A poem, then, must be a complete cosmos unto itself.
A grain of sand. Nothing can be added or taken away, or replaced by a
substitute as in translation.
Why do
you think I have added a line? Is it because I hate poetry? No. (Who told you
that?) Adding a line is like breaking a window, or kicking down a door. It
begins the process of letting out all the other poems sleeping inside. All of
which will be variations on the form of the love song (there is, in the final
analysis, no other kind of poem).
Reading
down the center I find the following:
stopper
doom
torch
spoon
wallow
wore
wall
wallet
halt
bulb
Which
leads inevitably to this:
stopper
bulk
doom
salt
torch
pallet
spoon
ball
wallow sore
wore
fallow
wall
soon
wallet
scorched
halt
broom
bulb
hopping
Last
year Bennett published a book entitled The
Sweating Lake. As a sort of anti-blurb the master-neoist Jack A. Withers
Smote wrote, succinctly: "This is not poetry." (And if you know who
Jack A. Withers Smote is, you know the particular weight that judgement
carries.)*
Jack A.
Withers Smote was co-conspirator and partner in rime with, among other mad, bad
and dangerous-to-be-around characters, the protean neoist hackmaster, Dr. Al
"The Blaster" Ackerman.
This
"shut dirt" is shut tight, and between the first word in the poem
("shut") and the last word ("dirt") nothing gets in but the
poem itself (which is a version of everything -- condensed, under pressure). It
is difficult, though by no means impossible, to squeeze a thin 'l' in between
the 'r' and the 'd' of "word". It happens all the time. We hardly
notice anymore.
Except
when we are reading a certain kind of poem. Blaster Ackerman was one of the 14
Secret Masters of the World!, as were his other 17 pseudonyms. All of them
together added up to one secret master. It has been suggested that Bennett
himself is one of The Blaster's pseudonyms. Don't believe it. It is much more
likely that Bennett, too, is one of the 14 Secret Masters of the World!
(warning: if you yourself choose to use this phrase, do not neglect the
exclamation point; it is mandatory and/or essential, like the apostrophe in
'pataphysical).
The
poem "shut dirt" consists of 50 words. One poem plus fifty words =
51. On page 51 we find the poem "was is" -- which begins
net
seizure and the
cold
ape name the c
ramped
leg smoke
cold
seized ur shape
grifter
,sneeze lif
ted off
yr name not
(a
music like Thelonious Monk, the melody to "I Mean You" switched and
double-peeled like a hiccup in the squelch, hinges parsed by brine times
flexing in the squeeze) (net > not; seizure seized sneeze; name-name;
cold-cold) (shape / grifter = shape-shifter, in this case the words
themselves).
lathered
on yr crow
ned ape
dis corp
oration
paid the
off al
left behind
you
shapeless after
's cold
clam or
Shape-shifting:
crow
> crowned ---- as line-break device
discorporation
> corporation > oration ---- as em space device & line-break device
paid
the off al > paid off > offal ---- em space. line-break, and asyntactical
devices
cold
clam or > cold clamor ---- em space devices
All of
which might remind us of Kruchenykh and his Sdvigology (or
"Shiftology") of Russian Poetry. The word "sdvig" means
shift, displacement, shear, dislocation, break, passage, transition. Many of
Bennett's devices are varieties of shifts, displacements, transitions.
This is not to suggest any necessary relationship of influence, but rather
similarities of thinking arrived at by taking different routes through the practice
of making poems.
The
last line in the poem is
swollen
spring rain
followed
by an empty line (a line of blank em spaces)
followed
by the last last line:
six
single inverted commas, two empty em spaces, and a final single inverted comma.
No one
will see this rain without thinking of Apollinaire.
Scattered
throughout the book are black & white collaged heads and "stick
figures" similar to the ones on the covers. The one on page 35 has
something drooping or dripping or slipping or squirting from between its legs.
Its legs, torso, arms and head are made of torn scraps of text from a magazine
or book. A tongue emerges from its neck and curls in on itself at the end of
the following line
And
strange to tell, among that Earthen lot
which
comes from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
And
strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some
could articulate, while others not:
And
suddenly one more impatient cried--
"Who
is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"
The
eyes have been drawn with a marker at the bottom of page 73, which has been
turned upside down, and from which four long tendrils of scrawled hair flow out
onto the page.
On page
24 I found the first of 13 hacks related in one way or another to poems I had a
hand in writing. As a form of collaborative ongoingness, hacks almost insist on
being hacked. One poem leads to another poem. That's how we came to be in the
condition we are in today, in a golden age of poetry, adrift among its
incessant astonishments. Here is a cento made of the first lines of those
hacks:
the
soaping crowd tempor hangg
baby in
the furnace was
the
blank excess lung foot
sp lit
stat us no te f
window
ox ialic f
cross
the hinge
valve
strong eye en
a
conquis la terre it
thriving
worms the
her
name is dominant engine
en
manos de los viles shirts
letters
wind bleak sword be
the
borderless bullets
thimpai
nn corck he
____________________________________
*Bennett/Leftwich email
exchange re Jack A. Withers Smote (02.23.2018)
Bennett: re Jack A. Withers
Smote: have i ever told you the tale of that name? Ackerman used it some, but Smote wasn't his
creation - let me know and i'll tell all (or at least all i can remember)
Leftwich: i thought Smote
was your concoction, which you shared at times -- willingly or otherwise --
with Ackerman.
Bennett: Yes, Smote was my
creation, who wrote some gruesome poems for a zine of Ack's focusing on ghastly
tales of the old south, in honor of E A Poe...
There were several issues/deformations of that zine -
Then there were the many
editions of Smote's The Librarian for the Criminally Insane: and, damn, in my
old age I forget if I wrote all of that or if that was a collab. with Ack. whatever, that's a question for the scholars,
the important thing is it's by Jack A. Withers Smote, whatever his mixed
genetic codes.
After the Librarian, I
wrote some Smote, Ack & I collab'd on some, and Ack wrote some, and who
knows, maybe others. One of those Monty
Cantsin-type names. He still shows up
from time to time in things i write, such a great name, i think, consider the
initials!
02.21/22/23.2018
*****
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).