Articles - December 2012

What Gerrit gives us

Gerrit Lansing. Photo by Marc Sanchez.

I.

The dark grammarian

Gerrit Lansing with Yukon Jack, October 2011. Photo by Jim Dunn.

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.

Gerrit Lansing: Under the gazebo / evening

Jim Dunn and Gerrit Lansing in front of the Erik Lomen Mural, Beverly MA, September 2011. Photo by Angela Dunn.

I. Under the gazebo
 

Gerrit Lansing: A personal reliquary

Or, notes toward an essay

“One of the Company of Light” by Derek Fenner, 2008.

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

Rexroth's 'The Dragon and the Unicorn'

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.