Articles - December 2012

I.

The title is “wrong”; alchemically it is right; but the essence of purpose is not downward. It is upwards toward heaven. These books of poems reach that way; reach many ways.

It is not downwards; it is toward the sky, we go there if we are to reach heaven. These poems reach that way.

And the devil steps between each word.

The “poetic process” here is toward heaven; it is a cleansing of life so that we may strive toward perfection. Pound says the love of a thing consists in the understanding of its perfection.

I. Under the gazebo
 

For out there lies the great campaign that comes first and last, the ultimate adventure of the individual into himself.

John Whiteside Parsons, Freedom Is a Two-Edged Sword

The Dragon and the Unicorn is Kenneth Rexroth’s second long philosophical poem about World War II. As in “The Phoenix and the Tortoise,” he quests for some saving source of hope in a stricken world, this time through firsthand inspection of America and Europe. Rexroth dates the composition “1944–50” to establish its connection with the last years of the war and those immediately afterward — obviously a period of massive emotional upheaval.