[The following is in celebration of the recent publication by MadHat Press of Selected Poems by Harry Crosby, which brings back the work of a major but twice forgotten avant-garde poet from the period of American poetry between the two world wars.
Photograph by Susan Quasha from 'Lightning Strikes from Below.'
Whereas a proverb is a kind of condensed-language poiesis sharing wisdom about Reality, a preverb engages the wisdom impulse at the level of natural language complexity. This means that no statement claims to be “true” as representing the Real. Instead, a self-true verbal gesture plays itself out mindful of the oscillating contrary possibilities emergent in language itself.
On the first day, not one angelic personage came to me, no fish, no wanderer, no visitor, no stranger, but the entire Book of Words was before me. It was a real book, and I had to read it all the way through.
On the first day, not one angelic personage came to me, no fish, no wanderer, no visitor, no stranger, but the entire Book of Words was before me. It was a real book, and I had to read it all the way through. This is no parable of reading. It is not a memory of learning or being taught something.
[From the edition newly published by Xylem Books, an imprint of Corbel Stone Press, 2020. See the author’s note below for more on Loose’s engagement with the ancient Ogham runes.]
We’re thrilled to announce the release of A Book of Infernos by Jerome Rothenberg. You can buy A Book of Infernos exclusively through our website, here.
Poems and poetics