Novalis Quote/Poetry Project's Fiftieth/Sven Birkerts/4 Ed Coletti Poems/David Meltzer Tribute/

POETRY HEALS THE WOUNDS INFLICTED BY REASON

 -Novalis (the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of Early German Romanticism.)

 POETRY HEALS THE WOUNDS INFLICTED BY REASON

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from "Onward"  by Sven Birkerts (editor of Agni) in the AGNI Newsletter December 2016 following the 2016 presidential election:

As Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, "There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair... There are levels and levels, of course.  Czeslaw Milosz famously asks, in his poem "Dedication": "What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people:"  This is a gauntlet as much as it is a frame.  It forces us to ask what kind of saving he means, for surely there is no literal way in which poetry or any literature, directly achieves that aim.

I believe milosz means us to think how expressions affect the soul, how they might hearten when there is loss of hope, or clarify when there is confusion - or expose rhetoric and cant and, as the adjuration has it, "speak truth to power."

Those are the considerations that I have felt reactived, and they create the context - the frame - of my reading.  I can't not ask myself" is this work telling me something I need to hear in this new order of things?  I'm not saying it must directly protest abuse or injustice or mendacious opportunism.  But do I feel that the words have been put to the page out of some recognition of larger human urgency"  Do they - if only in their fresh or arresting placement - signal that this is not business as usual?  Are they blowing the dust off all the things that Matter?...

...Not that we can travel back in time to recreate what was.  Of course we can't.  Our model is a spiral: a circular momentum forward in time.  These are not the days of the counter-culture; we are not back at that place of origins.  But - and this is important - we do see the logic of certain repetitions.  And these repetitions tell us that if nothing was gained once and for all, neither was it lost... 

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Village Voice Article "The Poetry Project's Half Century of Dissent"

 

February 10, 1971, on a Wednesday night in the East Village, a full moon glowed in the wintry sky over St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. Inside, a group of New York's most cutting-edge scene-makers gathered at the Poetry Project to hear a reading by poet and Warhol aide-de-camp Gerard Malanga. Andy was there, as was Lou Reed, along with poets Gregory Corso, John Giorno, Joe Brainard, and Bernadette Mayer. First up that night was a dark-eyed, lanky young poetess by the name of Patti Smith. An up-and-coming playwright named Sam Shepard, with whom she'd recently become involved, was there in support, as was her closest friend and collaborator, Robert Mapplethorpe.

Read the entire article 

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Check out these 4 Ed Coletti Poems (good ones) from 

an interesting site!



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Gerald Nicosia contacted me in response to this posting and to share with us his fine poetic tribute to the recently deceased great Bay Area and world-renowned poet David Meltzer.  Thank you, Gerald.

 

The Poet as Proteus

                                                            for David Meltzer (written when

                                                            he was about to turn 70)

Every time I see him he’s someone different

Sometimes he’s a merry red-faced

George Burns with a cane

Sometimes an aging cowpoke

In faded jeans and ten-gallon hat

Sometimes a minor movie star

Eyes hidden behind shades

Nothing visible but huge moustache

And sly smile

Not giving a damn about Academy Awards night

He’d rather spend the night

Alone writing another poem in

Those endless small cheap notebooks

He’s been filling for over fifty years

With his humorously disguised

Stiletto intelligence

I remember him as the minister

At Jack Hirschman’s wedding

Giving a sermon about “Alpha and Omega”

That no one could understand

Least of all frowning Hirschman

Waiting to grab and kiss his new wife

He’s also been my serious and optimistic

Literary advisor on numerous occasions

He always turns up like

An angel or

The bearer of a mitzvah

Just when I most need him

Like the ABA in L.A. in ‘94

When my big book on veterans

Had been orphaned and he

Pointed me toward the next publisher

I’ve always loved the fact that

He scorns anyone making

Poetry for money

But he gives a kind nudge

Not a slap when he

Sees me or anyone else

Slipping a bit off

The altruistic path

No one funnier to listen to

Even at almost 70

No poet sexier to the ladies

He carries his greatness

Lightly like a shawl

Of memories, joys, and

Sadnesses

Always with him

But hardly noticeable

Until he takes it off

And asks you to

Hold it for him

Awhile

And you feel its enormous weight

And wonder how

He has worn it so long

With that perpetual

Soft easygoing cheerfulness

That will be the mark

He leaves on all of us

Whether we

Read his poetry or not

And he doesn’t care

If we read it or not

The joy is

In the making

And he doesn’t sell

That secret

Like most great writers

But gives it

Not even for the asking

But just along with

The grace of

His company

To those

Lucky enough

To find it.

                        -- Gerald Nicosia

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