A Poem is first of all an amulet, an OBJECT bearing energy (c.f. the objectivist poem as object and Olson's poem as "at every point a high-energy discharge"). The poem is first of all a charm, relic, medicine, compass, key.

In between grading I was trawling through Geof Huth's many Blogs. I hit upon his posts about John Martone and he's been a real find (Huth too!).

Martone's poems are perhaps just too austere for me to get a handle on (right now anyway) but the collage work is really electrifying.

We are not talking about the poem sitting on a page like a jewel in a ring but the two inseparable, Eshleman’s THE ONE ART given its place. In this context, to “reproduce” (i.e. publish) a poem widely is to pass on as little of it as the “reproduction” of a painting or sculpture. We would speak instead of instances of a poem – think of the poet as writing down the poem again and again. The signed book carries a weak, memorial suggestion of this; those priceless books handmade by the poet in editions of twenty-six (Bob Arnold, Cid Corman, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jeremy Seligson, Emily Dickinson) come closer, almost close enough. The next step would be to take up Vietnamese tu phap or find an American equivalent to Japanese sosho. We must learn how to write again, from the beginning.[*] Inscribed by hand preferably on stone, wood, paper, that which bears an organic relation to the world wherein its power resides, a poem is an act of sympathetic magic. Here we see Levertov’s organicism brought to the medium itself. Crude, yes brut, an arte povera, WITHOUT ILLUSION of being “above” anything (much less “it all”). The poem as medicine. And life today is nothing if not in need of healing.

Hitting upon Martone is sending me back to Niedecker (this time for real), Lew Welch, Kenneth Patchen and - to find out about - Eshleman & Cid Corman.

And the timing's great: as of midday today it's the holiday! Eight weeks in which to explore.

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(quotations from John Martone, sourced from http://ux1.eiu.edu/%7Ejpmartone/vis/neolithic.htm)