April 2018
Robert Knox
rc.knox2@gmail.com
rc.knox2@gmail.com
Notes: The 'daemon' is the ancient Greek idea of the spiritual force that inspires the poet. I borrow from the critic Harold Bloom the phrase, "the daemon know how it's done" -- a concept Bloom says he owes to Ralph Waldo Emerson -- for my poem "Daemon Lover."
The second poem plays off a well-known poem (almost an anthem) about the nature of poetry by Archibald McLeish, "Ars Poetica." McLeish's poem asserts that poems don't need to be loud and pushy, or require 'explaining.' I take rather the opposite tack in "R's Poetica." That's a lot of borrowing for a little poem that is only "R's."
The third poem, "I Too Mislike It," responds to Marianne Moore's perhaps equally famous poem on the nature, and excesses, of poetry (simply titled "Poetry"). Once again, apologies to the lovers of this classic.
The second poem plays off a well-known poem (almost an anthem) about the nature of poetry by Archibald McLeish, "Ars Poetica." McLeish's poem asserts that poems don't need to be loud and pushy, or require 'explaining.' I take rather the opposite tack in "R's Poetica." That's a lot of borrowing for a little poem that is only "R's."
The third poem, "I Too Mislike It," responds to Marianne Moore's perhaps equally famous poem on the nature, and excesses, of poetry (simply titled "Poetry"). Once again, apologies to the lovers of this classic.
Daemon Lover
("The daemon know how it's done" -- Harold Bloom)
The wandering ear hears
the daemon along the shore
in autumn's moan and breaks the chain of illusion
Everything happens in the past. No one can live in a present
that fires too quickly, like the pilot in the old stove
that keeps us alive but can't tell us what it means,
that passes too quickly, breathing through time's stuffed nostrils,
coughs once, maybe twice, then shakes us off
like a dog breaking the neck of something small and barely alive
The daemon breaks the necklace
of time: finds the someplace else
where the wind is the voice of an ancient clown,
face painted with oak and peanut butter fungus,
where the ruler of days is not watching
where the wild guys (and gals) ask you to dance
and put their thumbs in your ears and grin,
the sand coils with talking snakes
eager to justify the ways of their clients to deathless gods
and the sea speaks in the tongues of the pre-syllabics
chants the vive, the moan, the eternal flow,
the wave breaking with the low certitude of voices
that say nothing sensible, because nothing is
something that has to be said
R's Poetica
A poem should be noisy, busy, loud
A poem should make
A milk truck proud
Stepping out of space and time
Reaching for the golden rhyme
Sure we want to have our kicks
Picking flowers, doing tricks
Down
The river flow the sticks --
Never to reach
A fine poetics
*
A poem should grab the moment's ring
Of thee, dear headline,
Shall I sing?
Bring the chalice to the lips
Gargle not with tiny sips
Let forth the news --
Apocalypse!
No tender hand, no sadly silent mumbled drum
I count my heartbeats on my thumb
*
A poem touches on the spine-like moss
Such moments as the ancients gloss
The hour comes, his sword to shake
From out the woodpile,
The vernal snake
And, lastly, holding all above
Sheltered beneath a spindly love
For love, the theme,
and plot, the panic
summers wild and times Whitmanic
I Too Mislike It
("We do not admire what we cannot understand" -- from "Poetry" by Marianne Moore)
I too mislike it.
The gnawing need to paint yourself on the wind
In order (one supposes) to grip the sands of time,
if only to feel the grit beneath the fingernails,
and put some dirt in the whorls of the prints.
Still sometimes a record must be scratched
on bare faces of granite
or carved in tree trunks as the locked initials of lovers
against the time when love peels
like worn bark.
We must cultivate our gardens,
as the man of theory said,
and think them up, as the poet said, with real toads.
While planting songs of love and longing
to attract those bright, elusive butterflies of love's imagination,
in the rawness of March and April earth,
as real and raw as these tender fingers can tolerate,
And endure the occasional visitation
of the uncouth and shockingly capacious wild turkey,
who brawls his way into sacred space
and does not know when to stop.
© 2018 Robert Knox
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