Robert Creeley and the Genius of the Common American Place: Together With the Poet's Own "Autobiography" by Tom Clark . . . I believe this is the book I read online at archive . org, from which I screen grabbed this passage by poet Robert Creeley (click on this link):
https://archive.org/details/robertcreeleygen0000clar/page/1/mode/1up
I'll search the book and when I find the page number it is on I will update here.
>>>—<<<
for Valerie
American poet Robert Creeley's orientation above matches mine only I was born in the south, in South Carolina, in the early '50's, and woke up out of infant-swaddle waddled-then-toddled mist into the thrown world in the early 1960's also "complicated in many bitter ways", my innate, and daily confirmed, loathing of the south thusly drawing my conclusions about life and placement from and within the withered dug of that Christhaunted kudzu tangle of fuddlement and consternation - trapped, I found my "very real place" to be in books. And, perforce, stars. And star maps.
My fated parents inner and outer worlds were, of course, a direct result of their conclusions drawn, as in drawing breath, from their presentiments/predicaments, palpable consequent miseries alone and together were the weather system in which I came to resent being rooted, preferring winged things or, better, stars, constellations as I've said above. Above for me, good. Bound still to unavoidable rhizome, me mulch, gulch, glitch hook and crook DNA twined or wound (woond-ed) un- or re- strung still I'm hounded by such as their dirt scar-drawn, mare and mars flung O O O Mercy Bayou O O O Mercy Railroad Georgia Lantern Rebel Swung, a grandfather I never knew and dusty on and on - too late to ask they who made me.
So I'm painting in broad strokes here. Daubed impressions snatched from stray talk from big people in an undiscerning child ear.
Call me Fish Tail - whale spout caul on my head . . .
Being introverted intuitive meant orientation via inner life and inner world. Already dwelling in eternity, my personality number 2 ** [see footnote below] - the work, the crucible, and the in-stasy (dare say "insanity or pert near but not plumb") - has been entry/exit/flick/lick-wound/recover into ex-ternity having found that personality number 1 (the child of parents, social world, fraternity, etc) is a sometimes thing, rare, at least for me. I clot along with difficulty somewhat hemophiliac to the Confessional, memory's tip top limbs of an old sycamore at the edge of my father's garden, from there a view north to mountains that promised that I would one day escape the present hill, that squat mountain - Roper - say 3 miles away, and find a splayed path through dogma and doctrine into a wash-gouache sky/sea somewhat doppler-ed Derain or Cezanne - no Hopper for me, destined to be opaque, or to dye scrying. Yet.
Yet to come, come be, with the, my, final, this, flee north.
Not a plea.
Polaris my orientation.
And it's counter, the molten core contained/restrained.
Compressed. "Coagulatio," said my expensive shrink some years back, "is the goal."
to which I always added, do still, "...and stain" aka
and I'll slaw,
slauson, not
stifle a
Sycamore Trifle Song
Circumspect ago
this tree
grows still
a child's mind
a bedroom window
This house
this window
gone but for
frames' crater
now
once was
home memory's
red dirt
O stand radiant-starred late afternoon
O stained stark shadows' black frieze
astonished stooped man
time's wee piss-boy
damp bunk-bed mattress fears
O stand glazed from edges
gaze to bark
vine maps of escape
Iron shadows
impress long into
wet pit
sun shards
spy glass
throat sore
But the eternal V of wild geese I do see, reflect, neck sore looking high, no pond me, hand over brow to guard the glare of bright cloud beneath flaring sun...the V goes on in memory here encased by bricks between last century's World Wars (scars = history), present fire escapes not yet needed while I, irony of irony, 'scape on edge of iron escape above East 10th Street, frighten pigeons and doves, read Lord Buddha "on escaping desire...", how there's no exit, no transcending (though 5 stories above the compulsive street suggesting an end to the drives, Desire.
Desire - 'de' of/from, and 'sire' father
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top and I sang. - John Berryman from Dream Song One
No blame shall stain us now, father.
The heavy ball you hit to me is never caught,
a floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.
Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.
Each base of cardboard weighted with stone
is still our house; a bat, a ball, a mitt,
hard rules of the game undo all lust
for dark heaven shunning shining girls.
I was reaching for god then - not your fault - a lavender
boy early befriended by crows, already resigned to what
was given and what was to come, a softball between the
eyes, your attempt to guide me toward those diamond
thighs which, you often repeated, were everywhere waiting.
I blink still before you, head down, focused on Lion's Teeth.
I am your hard mystery, and soft, not so fast for I am fat
and cannot round the bases quick. I am your inherited
At four I pluck a wild strawberry you point to,
all authority and accidental grace. Revealing much,
still dew wet, sticky to the touch, opening sourness
deserves my frown. You laugh at my dawning smile
for its sweetness slowly yields a surprise gift
for what will always unite us, your fear that I too
will suffer your fate, untended desire gone to wildness
brought low beneath branches, slow embrace of
cradle-gentle boughs entangling legs and light
between the greater shadows,
and shadows shall win the day.
Still, these essential things are caught
for all our mostly wasted days of practice,
wild sweetness is a stolen base,
the tongue is an untended garden.
There is a burning soft hands can know
which shall finally run some headlong
for home, an inherited circle at the end,
a latter-day glad son gathering berries from shadows.
**Dandelion
**Carl Jung wrote of his personality number 1 and number 2. Like Jung I valued "anything that wanted to come from within." The following is from:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/30/carl-jung-ego-self
"In short, his childhood was disturbed, and he developed a schizoid personality, becoming withdrawn and aloof. In fact, he came to think that he had two personalities, which he named No 1 and No 2.
No 1 was the child of his parents and times. No 2, though, was a timeless individual, "having no definable character at all – born, living, dead, everything in one, a total vision of life". (At school, his peers seem to have picked this up, as his nickname was "Father Abraham".)
Jung was perhaps not so unusual, as many children indulge similar internal fantasies. Where Jung differed was in taking his inner life seriously. "I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come from within," he noted. Later he renamed and generalised No 1 and No 2, calling them the ego and the self. Achieving the right balance between the two aspects of the psyche is central to his theory of personality development, called individuation."
which is a-synchrony, just to remind =
absence or lack of concurrence in time
no rhyme scheme or known
reason though presumptions
occur in observation of patterns that
such are the habits of nature to assist
drawing conclusions which are surmises
which are in the end and beginning
always 'unhatched eggs' or, better,
words as eggs
(all praise) and what marvelous
vapor is restive life (as are days)
in thousand undulate congregations
no need for falconer after all
when Chaos a'daze of a Sunday
evening seems to know something
so falls into
purple fields
(O Low, remember)
edged by sheer snow peaks where
sheep surefeet know no fear of
heights and there do dung and
play fearless or at least pretending
not to fall in their waking dream
in a dead hatchling's
sparkless eye reflecting
dead eggs' perfect
forms soft brooded
upon as one might
brood one in hand
pondering which is
the better off the
flown lone one or
the ongoing nest
knot which can also
denote an egg -
hatched or not or
clotted everyly or
otherwise - is all
surmise who knows
what is the thing
joy's winged malingerers
in sudden annunciate
in sudden annunciate
thunder
flash as flash
can and (it,
Awe) may last
a long (a'wiley)
if
if
memory
serves
is glad
one's self
to have
hatched
and fledged
see what
glory can
be made
and had
at edges
(earth's
clearly domed
the shape of
eyes makes
it so)
and one knows or someday
will in lighter or heavier bones
scry the effort was/is made
at all as self portraits which
may or may not be the actual
who whom we perceive as
selves to be we (one
feather
at a time
necessary
dreaming
of
air) being adhered to dirt
so verily molded by known
and unknown forces within
which we make
or so we think
choose
but nevermind but
no
let us
return to mumur to suck in
sounds through and behind
lips and be naturally moved
bothered to somehow care
which with heart we indeed
do hard swallow at the
superfluity of
alphabet flocks.
