this is the part of the Angela de Foligno (a franciscan ecstatic) poem from Da3 (this is goiong to make a mess of the line breaks -- you're gonna have to buy that book!); in general, too, elsewhere in the book, I was trying to conflate "don't tread on me" with Mary treading on the snake, an image I tried to use several ways, but didn't end up "popping":
Directory Tree
Standing near the cross, I stripped myself.
1. pleasure
1.1. dead, followers, Aline
1.2. tree I have never seen . . . maiden
1.2.1. flower (body), light, cross
1.2.1.1. pistil
1.2.1.2. stamen
1.2.2. hips, fruit
1.2.3. petals, sepals
1.2.4. pollen, seed
1.2.4.1. cell
1.2.4.1.1. nucleus
1.2.4.1.2. zygote
[107]
2. codex
2.1. page
2.2. letter
I lay naked on the dirt floor with my arms outstretched, as on a cross.
Is this error, arase, uproot?
My Ticonderoga No. 2.
Broken pencil. Refraction
toward
Fort Ticonderoga. Green Mountain
Boys, Green Mountain Boys,
fir hat, fir branch,
catamount
tavern. Resist.
Two sides, separated by a furrow.
What are they up to? Freedom freedom from this, from farming,
growing food, always contingent, hairy root vegetables. Animals
have ruined.
Free bird. Poets understand poets understand not (a whit).
Useless unless bareback on the river of blood
poetry manifests poets beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom
grows / grounds cinder
after the field, false incendiary
and erroneous spectre attendance appearance
b/w more from patrick re: flags:
The motif of the intervening statements between the couplets were taken
from Betsy Ross flags ("Don't tread on me" and "An appeal to heaven"), a
quote from the Founding Fathers about the original flag of 13 stars and
stripes, and of course the constitution.
http://www.provo.org/mayor/Public_Information/Historic_Flag_Collection/f
lag-Wash.gif
http://www.provo.org/mayor/Public_Information/Historic_Flag_Collection/f
lag_gadsen.jpg
"A new constellation": On 14 June 1777 (my birthday) the Second
Constitutional Congress met in Philadelphia (my home hometown, the home
of my family), voting to create a national flag. The Founding Fathers
wrote: "Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen
stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars,
white in a blue field representing a new constellation."
The last segue of the liberty tree flag "An appeal to heaven" allows a
transition to ever-so-slight images of 9/11, of who has died, who is
dying and who is surviving. This flag has incredible resonances with
Hunter's work, not only with her swastika'd flag but also with her
cigarette butt art, with 9/11, and with the American flag. But how to
tie all of those together, and into something bigger?
...
My attitude at the time was that we might
somehow "take back" the flag fron the mealy-mouthed regressivists by
aligning ourselves with the dead of 9/11 and the language invoked in the
event's name. We must fight to "take back" the language and iconography
of America, and it must be done in the very muck of the vernacular. And
that vernacular is surely not the latinate of the learned. No battle is
too small!
[I would say my more modest goal wd be to take back history from the continual purging that is done to "protect children" or make more religiously tolerant the texts...]
Patrick's poem itself (not posted here -- perhaps YET) in fact reminded me of some of the lost poems of the poetesses I study -- of course Lola Ridge -- and some of those poems in THE MASSES and Emma Goldman's journal, MOTHER EARTH [which along with the Modern School is a point of intersection between MAN RAY and RIDGE].
Directory Tree
Standing near the cross, I stripped myself.
1. pleasure
1.1. dead, followers, Aline
1.2. tree I have never seen . . . maiden
1.2.1. flower (body), light, cross
1.2.1.1. pistil
1.2.1.2. stamen
1.2.2. hips, fruit
1.2.3. petals, sepals
1.2.4. pollen, seed
1.2.4.1. cell
1.2.4.1.1. nucleus
1.2.4.1.2. zygote
[107]
2. codex
2.1. page
2.2. letter
I lay naked on the dirt floor with my arms outstretched, as on a cross.
Is this error, arase, uproot?
My Ticonderoga No. 2.
Broken pencil. Refraction
toward
Fort Ticonderoga. Green Mountain
Boys, Green Mountain Boys,
fir hat, fir branch,
catamount
tavern. Resist.
Two sides, separated by a furrow.
What are they up to? Freedom freedom from this, from farming,
growing food, always contingent, hairy root vegetables. Animals
have ruined.
Free bird. Poets understand poets understand not (a whit).
Useless unless bareback on the river of blood
poetry manifests poets beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom
grows / grounds cinder
after the field, false incendiary
and erroneous spectre attendance appearance
b/w more from patrick re: flags:
The motif of the intervening statements between the couplets were taken
from Betsy Ross flags ("Don't tread on me" and "An appeal to heaven"), a
quote from the Founding Fathers about the original flag of 13 stars and
stripes, and of course the constitution.
http://www.provo.org/mayor/Public_Information/Historic_Flag_Collection/f
lag-Wash.gif
http://www.provo.org/mayor/Public_Information/Historic_Flag_Collection/f
lag_gadsen.jpg
"A new constellation": On 14 June 1777 (my birthday) the Second
Constitutional Congress met in Philadelphia (my home hometown, the home
of my family), voting to create a national flag. The Founding Fathers
wrote: "Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen
stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars,
white in a blue field representing a new constellation."
The last segue of the liberty tree flag "An appeal to heaven" allows a
transition to ever-so-slight images of 9/11, of who has died, who is
dying and who is surviving. This flag has incredible resonances with
Hunter's work, not only with her swastika'd flag but also with her
cigarette butt art, with 9/11, and with the American flag. But how to
tie all of those together, and into something bigger?
...
My attitude at the time was that we might
somehow "take back" the flag fron the mealy-mouthed regressivists by
aligning ourselves with the dead of 9/11 and the language invoked in the
event's name. We must fight to "take back" the language and iconography
of America, and it must be done in the very muck of the vernacular. And
that vernacular is surely not the latinate of the learned. No battle is
too small!
[I would say my more modest goal wd be to take back history from the continual purging that is done to "protect children" or make more religiously tolerant the texts...]
Patrick's poem itself (not posted here -- perhaps YET) in fact reminded me of some of the lost poems of the poetesses I study -- of course Lola Ridge -- and some of those poems in THE MASSES and Emma Goldman's journal, MOTHER EARTH [which along with the Modern School is a point of intersection between MAN RAY and RIDGE].
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