Written in the 70s — He worked

Posted on April 28, 2018 by JMN

He worked on her [***], balled into a striving that sweated their two bodies [***], past caring where she was, if she had [***] [***]. She was beginning to signal [***] in her eyes, her [***] was tensing. But all that mattered was the [***] he was [***] toward, the fall. He shifted forward, making the angle more [***], drowning in [***]. Guiding on the [***] [***] of her [***] [***], he felt at last a loss, a dispersion, and dragged with a shiver the [***] slow [***] deep from [***] [***] [***]. When the [***] [***] he was already [***].

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

70s-5a redacted

Written in the 70s, 70s-5a redacted. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Five Quotes About Poetry

Posted on April 28, 2018 by JMN

“It’s the poet’s business to make poetry out of the unexplored resources of the unpoetical.” (T.S. Eliot)

“I would sooner give the laurel to vigorous error than to any orthodoxy not inspired.” (W.B. Yeats)

“A poem by its nature operates beyond rational control.” (Kay Ryan)

“Ezra Pound’s caked and crusted erudition…” (I forget who said this, but God it’s true.)

“Poetry is always dying, always going to hell.” (Donald Hall)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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From Memory

Posted on April 28, 2018 by JMN

“Ozymandias,” poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, http://www.poetryfoundation.org

This sonnet triggers a puff of schadenfreude. It’s fun to imagine that, given time, the desert swallows braggarts.

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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This Is Stag Country

Posted on April 26, 2018 by JMN

Lamont Ledbetter buys the jerseys for the Birch Sidewinders every year. Well, not him personally, but the Stockmen’s Bank over in Birch where he’s president. We’ll play Birch at homecoming. Tuck Ledbetter is a starting corner back for the Sidewinders, but his sister Trance wants to play volleyball here for the Lady Stags — they don’t have a team in Birch. She’ll stay with her aunt Shyanne out in Purling Rill, drive her doolie home on weekends. Lamont and Katelynn promised her a new Silverado with the King Ranch package if she keeps her elibility. If that young lady doesn’t make her grades, it’s not because her parents aren’t trying.

I heard Trance has her eye on Rhett Farber. It’s not common for a Junior girl to go after a Freshman boy, though he does run the four-forty awful fast. You ask me, Rhett needs to keep his head in athletics, and Trance needs to date older boys. I think I’ll mention this to Katelynn when I see her at the game. I can’t imagine her and Lamont would approve of Trance dating beneath her class, especially a Stag and not a Sidewinder.

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Social Math — UK

Posted on April 25, 2018 by JMN

The venerable Henry Purslane Chichester, Sir Alistair Chichester’s ancestor, is much remembered in Chichesterton-Upon-Hogg for having wrested Henry’s Bog from the Burlingame clan in 1427. (A diehard remnant of the Burlingames still refer to it as “Burlingame’s Bog.”) Henry’s Bog has afforded abundant game and blood sport to countless generations of Chichesters.

Question: The Bog measures 2.8 square hectares. It comprises three-sevenths of the Chichester estate. How large is the estate?

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Listening to…

Posted on April 25, 2018 by JMN

Patricia Barber. I hear a lot of her music on my streaming sources. This amazing artist is prolific, and sings unfailingly fresh-sounding covers of standards, like the one I just heard: “Bye-Bye Blackbird.” Her vocals and arrangements and accompaniment are dark and
textured and thrilling. She speaks French!

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Written in the 70s — Góngora

Posted on April 25, 2018 by JMN

Góngora – Mallarmé – Joyce
Hopkins and the Arabs

under threat, constant, of the
blade sweetened
whetted-sweet blade who self-denied the host
second-chanced fall the same
weak one, none such weaker language
tongue on verge (of)
tongue simply
rung toward union vía
purge and illumine dear one,
dearest unit, secure rest,
period and decline.
PEDAJIVE
“Was there a drain in the psychic energy? Did he sorta fatigue on you?”
S.O.
In case I gave the impression, with hemming and hawing, that I had written something obscene:
Lest you think I wrote something obscene, I hasten to translate the worst:
“I would like to kiss every freckle on your lovely (long) neck.”

70s-10a

Written in the 70s, 70s-10a. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Written in the 70s — Formalism

Posted on April 25, 2018 by JMN

FORMALISM….
finger any one food and say, ‘That’s what does it.'” What does is it his mind, the life-shaper.
The main struggle in my life is for form — its own form. Definition; delimitation of boundaries.
How necessary is solitude, literal aloneness?
Who refused to be guest; who denied himself to the host. Beerbohm called himself the perfect guest. Gary leaves money on the TV in his sister’s house. Withheld himself from hospitality. A refusal to be loved.
Maned Exeter, anchorite, ascetic, voluptuous to a point (unrecognized).
SUN SPRING
All that time I was trying to say something I should have been trying to say nothing.
MIND ON TIME
Given to alarm life-love, cooking on the water surface light

70s-10

Written in the 70s, 70s-10. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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“Man Gesturing”

Posted on April 25, 2018 by JMN
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“Burning the Brush Pile”

Posted on April 24, 2018 by JMN

I find among my keepings a poem by Galway Kinnell published in the New Yorker June 19, 2006. Its title is “Burning the Brush Pile.”

Tending the pile, the speaker discovers a small, half-burnt snake still alive:

“It stopped where the grass grew thick
and flashed its tongue again, as if trying
to spit or spirit away its pain,
as we do, with our growled profanities,
or as if uttering a curse, or — wildest fantasy —
a benediction. Most likely it was trying to find
its whereabouts, and perhaps get one last take
on this unknown being also reeking of fire.
Then the snake zipped in its tongue
and hirpled away into the secrecy of the grass.”

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