It seems a while since I last posted - explained by a) looking after the girls & b) reading Robert Duncan's 'Letters' in greedy snatches.
The 'Letters' volume is absolutely fascinating - for the length and frequency of exchanges, the sense of poems taking shape, and - as with Letter 93 - extraordinarily 'open' discussions of Duncan's poetic process & creative theories.
Reading Duncan is like a 'Curriculum of the Soul'. A Letter sends me to the poems (at present The 'Selected' or 'Opening of the Field') which, in turn, send me off to Duncan's reading (Milton, The Zohar, Rimbaud, Olson, Creeley ...). Or to music - Stravinsky, Wagner. I've decided to listen once again to 'Das Rheingold' - aware that I am hearing it through Duncan's ears (his dizzying ability to fuse Cosmic and Psychological).
How long is needed to really do justice to Duncan's work? A year? Ten? A life-time of reading, re-reading, researching, mulling over, allowing a line or phrase or poem to 'dis-close' its meanings & constellations? While also being - 'being' - in the sense Duncan would have understood as - part of a house, home, other lives, daily chores. (How typical he resists Levertov's suggested edits to the 'Storm of White' - retaining the lament for his dead cat. What - elsewhere - he terms the "stink of the real").
And yes, we resume the 'day job' on Tuesday ...
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Today, boys and girls, we’re going to look at ‘Song of the Chinchilla’ by Lisa Jarnot*. I liked the poem immediately – and I’ve given it to ...
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