(no subject)
A letter from Leon Dacter to Kenneth C. Oliphant, poet
Kenneth,
I’ve been eating nothing but movie popcorn for nearly two months now; Rowan has appropriated a small theater for me to view the films in every day, and I am beginning to develop a true esthetic, especially in the light of Eisenstein’s silent manifestos. The image of the woman’s mouth gaping cut against a bird singing. A vise cut against a set of furrowed eyebrows cut against an approaching train. As with much language, admonishment of the blatant cases often affects a perspicuous alertness to the subtler happenings. I believe that the close up is terribly underexplored. I was reminded of a poem you sent me, one from this recent collection you inscribed as “the good sir, Canit Elephant”, which contained the line
“…shall send to me the details
spinning down into my senses
a virus of perception as an tactile
idée fixe…”
I like the poems, Kenneth. I do. They are neuroticisms of language to which I am partial and I dare say enamored of. And speaking of this idée fixe, as you so put it, what of “Laura”? Who is she, Kenneth? What love so haunts you as to compose countless elegiac poems to this same cipher? Or is she too a creation of yours, a postmodern vision erasing the need for any established memories? You are a cunning craftsman, I think. You have created moving characters before, and I don’t doubt that “Laura” could simply be another, or more accurately a sort of idée fixe transferred to the reader, a monomania or wraith of a created mind given to us as that mind’s essential consciousness. Yet, I wonder, for never have I known your poetry to be so chillingly direct and also riddled with your own sort of snagging phrasery. I refer, of course, to the poem of yours I posted in my own journal long ago, included to my surprise in this recent edition with innumerable other compositions calling out to this mysterious name.
And this poem, this particular poem, struck me:
In the mouth of the bay
lies the body,
eaten by a pelican
or by the numerous fish in the pelican’s
mouth.
How ugly becomes the body
relinquished of its deposited life,
as fish in the stomach,
or the pelican after swallowing plastic bags.
Aegrescit medendo.
This my father always told me.
While I don’t always agree with your insistence on peppering lucid poetry with Latin phrasings, this one agreed with me, sheerly, I think, for its bitterly wrought inventiveness. My father was a brooding, quiet, and fastidious man, but I knew a fellow as a child whose father would constantly tell him, “Life may make you puke now and then, but there’s no getting off alive.” You have never truly spoken to me of your father, or of his mien, but I have gathered a vivid image of his existence from your various poetic descriptions over the years. I do not envy you such a childhood, but you have come out of it well.
I know that you are often disheartened by the lack of response to your wok, piecemealed as it may be by publishers, or, more accurately, a lacking response to the substance of your work. I mean to assuage that as best I can, but this I am afraid is the nature of poetry. Only the didactic poets can arouse a palpable reverence or awareness for their work, a phenomenon of heightening one’s written words by the bulk of an explanatory or mystifying empennage of spoken words. The poet as lecturer. The poet as guru of their own aesthetic. In this respect I call them didactic. Philosophy in poetry alone has been murdered, or possibly never existed as any real movement. We build understandings from biography, as with Rimbaud, or from eloquent distortions by the original speaker, or by fervid interpretations, at best handed down-possibly by all three. I admire the ambition of your a priori verse, but in the macrocosm it is certainly lost. You should not grieve this fact; in futility, you are offering lessons only the few will take, hoping to be received by all. I have always sensed, though, an inherent dissatisfaction in you. Perhaps you have little ability to perceive a larger whole in your mind’s eye as anything but a dystopia, and out of that you relentlessly compose dystopian beauty. And escape. I do think that words are your escape. Your madman “Jabberwock” verses exemplify this well.
I wish to write you more soon, but I must devote myself to studying the intricacies of cinema while I am capable. Know that I will be reading your book in all its depth as soon as I can, and immediately after shall send you a proper exegesis as I see it.
I will possibly post a few selections to my journal now and then. As I said, I do enjoy them.
Sincerely,
L.L. Dacter
Kenneth,
I’ve been eating nothing but movie popcorn for nearly two months now; Rowan has appropriated a small theater for me to view the films in every day, and I am beginning to develop a true esthetic, especially in the light of Eisenstein’s silent manifestos. The image of the woman’s mouth gaping cut against a bird singing. A vise cut against a set of furrowed eyebrows cut against an approaching train. As with much language, admonishment of the blatant cases often affects a perspicuous alertness to the subtler happenings. I believe that the close up is terribly underexplored. I was reminded of a poem you sent me, one from this recent collection you inscribed as “the good sir, Canit Elephant”, which contained the line
“…shall send to me the details
spinning down into my senses
a virus of perception as an tactile
idée fixe…”
I like the poems, Kenneth. I do. They are neuroticisms of language to which I am partial and I dare say enamored of. And speaking of this idée fixe, as you so put it, what of “Laura”? Who is she, Kenneth? What love so haunts you as to compose countless elegiac poems to this same cipher? Or is she too a creation of yours, a postmodern vision erasing the need for any established memories? You are a cunning craftsman, I think. You have created moving characters before, and I don’t doubt that “Laura” could simply be another, or more accurately a sort of idée fixe transferred to the reader, a monomania or wraith of a created mind given to us as that mind’s essential consciousness. Yet, I wonder, for never have I known your poetry to be so chillingly direct and also riddled with your own sort of snagging phrasery. I refer, of course, to the poem of yours I posted in my own journal long ago, included to my surprise in this recent edition with innumerable other compositions calling out to this mysterious name.
And this poem, this particular poem, struck me:
In the mouth of the bay
lies the body,
eaten by a pelican
or by the numerous fish in the pelican’s
mouth.
How ugly becomes the body
relinquished of its deposited life,
as fish in the stomach,
or the pelican after swallowing plastic bags.
Aegrescit medendo.
This my father always told me.
While I don’t always agree with your insistence on peppering lucid poetry with Latin phrasings, this one agreed with me, sheerly, I think, for its bitterly wrought inventiveness. My father was a brooding, quiet, and fastidious man, but I knew a fellow as a child whose father would constantly tell him, “Life may make you puke now and then, but there’s no getting off alive.” You have never truly spoken to me of your father, or of his mien, but I have gathered a vivid image of his existence from your various poetic descriptions over the years. I do not envy you such a childhood, but you have come out of it well.
I know that you are often disheartened by the lack of response to your wok, piecemealed as it may be by publishers, or, more accurately, a lacking response to the substance of your work. I mean to assuage that as best I can, but this I am afraid is the nature of poetry. Only the didactic poets can arouse a palpable reverence or awareness for their work, a phenomenon of heightening one’s written words by the bulk of an explanatory or mystifying empennage of spoken words. The poet as lecturer. The poet as guru of their own aesthetic. In this respect I call them didactic. Philosophy in poetry alone has been murdered, or possibly never existed as any real movement. We build understandings from biography, as with Rimbaud, or from eloquent distortions by the original speaker, or by fervid interpretations, at best handed down-possibly by all three. I admire the ambition of your a priori verse, but in the macrocosm it is certainly lost. You should not grieve this fact; in futility, you are offering lessons only the few will take, hoping to be received by all. I have always sensed, though, an inherent dissatisfaction in you. Perhaps you have little ability to perceive a larger whole in your mind’s eye as anything but a dystopia, and out of that you relentlessly compose dystopian beauty. And escape. I do think that words are your escape. Your madman “Jabberwock” verses exemplify this well.
I wish to write you more soon, but I must devote myself to studying the intricacies of cinema while I am capable. Know that I will be reading your book in all its depth as soon as I can, and immediately after shall send you a proper exegesis as I see it.
I will possibly post a few selections to my journal now and then. As I said, I do enjoy them.
Sincerely,
L.L. Dacter