BERNEVAL

We set here as a prelude to a page from Ronald Johnson Radi Os (Berkeley: Sand Dollar, 1977) what are the concluding lines of T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding”, the last of the Four Quartets.

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

I have always thought that the rose and fire become one in the rose window of a cathedral whatever architectural splendours lie at Little Gidding. Regardless of my adolescent imagination, the lines serve me well here for not only the conjunction of fire and rose but also for the half-heard in the stillness.

Radi Os is a poem produced by erasure of the 1892 (Crowell) edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Some gentle soul has nicely paginated the library copy and on page 31, in a tiny hand, refers the reader to the front page. A transcription does not do justice to the spatial dynamics produced by the erasure:

in the shape / as of / above the / rose / through / rose / rising / the radiant sun

And so to the front page: where “rose” is a verb: tree / into the World. / Man / the chosen / Rose out of Chaos: / song,

The kind reader’s linking of the front to the rose page echoes some of the observations observed in Guy Davenport’s afterward

From book to book he has grown more responsive to light and pattern in nature; he believes that light evolved the eye to see itself […] These pages at first glance look haphazard (as a Cubist painting seemed to first viewers to be an accident). They are not. There is a page that has the word man at the top, flower in the middle, and star at the bottom. There are other words on the page, and they help us see the relationship between man, flower, and star. One order of word gives: man passed through fire / His temple right against The black. It is, for instance, electro-chemical energy in brain cells derived from photosynthetic sugars in vegetables whereby we can see a star at all, and the fire of the star we call the sun thus arranged that it could be seen and thought of by nourishing the brain. Is that system closed? Did the sun grow the tree the made the paper you are holding, and the ink on it, so that it can read this book through your eyes?

With a bit of rearranging the cycle fits the stream on screen.

And so for day 2241
31.01.2013

If there is any doubt about the technical term “bearing down” it would be dispelled by one look at the cover of Penny Chalmers (Penn Kemp) Bearing Down (Coach House Press, 1972).

It is of course about the joys and tribulations of giving birth. But it is birthing in a particular space: the institution of the hospital. At the end of the book, there is a reproduction of a menu. It is obviously Easter time.

In the upper right corner are some thoughts of the season (unattributed)

Easter is no time for argument.
Lilies don’t argue; they bloom.
Springtime doesn’t argue; it comes.
Music doesn’t argue; it sings.
Beauty doesn’t argue; it beckons and points.
Love doesn’t argue; it outlives our griefs.

Which thanks to the World Wide Web we can ascribe to Frederick B. Speakman, author of sermons, in fine fettle for presenting an argument (“Easter is no time for argument” is itself an argument).

Down the right margin in landscape orientation is the a comment (we are uncertain in whose voice) it appears elsewhere as attributed to Patsy Gray (Age 9) from a piece about grandmothers:

They don’t talk baby talk like visitors do because it is hard to understand.
When they read to us, they don’t skip or mind if it is the same story again.

There are are more reproductions of hospital literature from the chaplain this time in which are interpolated other bits of unattributed sentimental poetry. For example

Said the Robin to the Sparrow:
“I should really like to know
Why these anxious human beings
Rush about and worry so.[“]

[which we trace to Elizabeth Cheney]

Both the hospital literature and the interpolations are in Courier, the ubiquitous typewriter typeface. We are faced with the question: did the poet place these in the spaces or were they found there? The one clue, layout of the interpolations in a perpendicular position, doesn’t apply to all the space cramming instances. All do share a crowding effect. There is quoting going on. Who is doing it remains uncertain. I vouch for ironic insertions by the author given the wry wit exhibited in a number of the birth poems all the while bearing down.

And so for day 2239
29.01.2013

Ronald Johnson
Eyes & Objects (Catalogue for an Exhibition: 1970-72)
Jargon Society, 1976

The beginning from “The Inside-out Sphere”

I offer this sphere I found,
like water held
in a rind of light.

And an ending from the end of “Windwindow”

ascent descent and accident

Eye and ear are pleased and the mind set adrift.

And so for day 2238
28.01.2013

George Johnston in “Convocation Address: Queen’s University, 29/5/71” distinguishes between happiness and joy.

Love is very dear.
     Happiness,
unhappiness,
getting our own way
and so forth
cost the Earth.

But joy
     is free,
unasked-for, unexpected, undeserved
     as an honorary degree.
These are the last rhymes this morning
     from me.
And a joy it is to mark the occasion with such mirth.

George Johnston. Endeared by Dark: The Collected Poems.

And so for day 2237
27.01.2013

Eclipse. Iris.

All night the blood moon measures the dilation
of your pupil, pinprick or dinner plate
in this plenum where our attention fails to die.

A stanza from one of the poems (there are many) entitled “Standard Time” in Liz Howard Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent. This one occurs on page 9.

And so for day 2235
25.01.2013

Words are insufficient: the mountains “remain to be described” And yet the poet establishes a sort of grandeur “in whatever mode”:

They wait to be described […]

geologist, surveyor, artist:
crowsfeet on a map, the heavy
colours cut and carved, numbers
and weight, percentages, all
methods to paraphrase
certain immensity.

They remain
to be seen:

Douglas Barbour A Poem As Long As The Highway

It’s the waiting and the remaining that get stressed as they hug the left margin.

And so for day 2233
23.01.2013

In memory one puts a period.

All we have in this country is landscape,
Granite shivering with light[.]

That is where memory stops.

But there is more (always more):

All we have in this country is landscape,
Granite shivering with light,
Winter sun, brightness that never
hints of the dark.
This place is inhabited by dreams,
The movement of glaciers.

Good to remember what exposed all that granite.

M.T. Kelly. “All We Have” Country You Can’t Walk In

And so for day 2232
22.01.2013