REGARDING MY LAST COLUMN
I must apologize for the following, which it contained:
Eel to be but meadow
ceiling except round where miscue as table
elbows fading faint ink kneels her bruise up
It should have been:
E
e
l
to be but meadow ceiling
around except,
except where miscue at's table elbows
(fadeth fainth i nk)Kn
E
e
l
s
HER bruise up p
ast the trepanned blink is
Its title was correct: "Try Blinker, Trepan, Is It Tells." In my haste to get my column in,
as the saying still goes, in spite of all Dr. Ackerman's wratheous mutters against it (by
which I mean the saying, not my column, which Dr. Ackerman, needless to say, is still
not allowed to read), I accidentally inserted the wrong version of the verse (my 1917
draft, in fact, with its excess of Rupert Brooke, and his three handboys).
Ironically, even the above version is now out-of-date, for I have since mathematized and
overscrawled it in many hues (spittlelessly, which in no way reduces its value, regardless
of what Professor David Graham says). I tried to get the publishers of The Atlantic to
release their rights to it so I could reproduce it here but they refused. It's just as well.
From the complaints I got about the column from Lost & Found Times "readers," I doubt
that any of you would have wanted to see it.
Not that all the complaints were unjustified. Much of the coherence my columns are
admired for was lost due to my misprinted epigraph, which was, in effect, the premise
from which the column's entire argument sprung, if you don't mind my saying so. There
were typos, too--for instance, "a sort of collage both graphically torn from Nature leaf-
formuously" for "binge-vacuuming," and "Irving Weiss" for "Whoopi Goldberg." And I
certainly should have been more forthcoming about New Smyrna Beach. Nonetheless,
characterizing the column "unadulterated crackbarf from a sypohilitic four-year-old's left
nostril that even The New York Times wouldn't print," as 341 readers wrote, was uncalled
for. Yet will I soldier on, my critics notwithstanding. To them, I can only sigh, with Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, "There is a sad throughout all life,/ that culls against the nicest knife,/
and beats and beats against all love,/ but must be ris'n unsmirked above." Or was that by
Edna St. Thomasino O'Hara? Whichever, it's high time I got this column started.
I will preface it with a poetic epigraph. I won't let a few hundred airheads de-
professionalize me. The epigraph is, once more, from my own work. Its title is "Try
Pansy, Ain't Is Is Not, Not Is." Its connection to my previous epigraph is intentional.
mee
(lO)
down
me
dowed dowd
nonth
e
less
scinging her
bru is
e
up to Ceceiling.
(o dem joobies)
(o dum sainties)
(o best ainties)
The relevance of this text to the item under review, Bogg, No. 72 (available for $5 from
John Elsberg, 422 N. Cleveland St., Arlington VA 22201) may not be obvious to those of
you lacking your mittens, figuratively speaking, but there's a Guy Beining collage on the
cover of Bogg with lots of sideways newsprint but no other text save the words,
"DETAIL," "SWORDTAILS" AND "ENTAILS," in the upper righthand corner. Samuel
Beckett's head dominates the work. It has something I can't identify; it seems a glass rod
where it crosses his eyes. I'm not sure what else it may be. At one end, it slightly
resembles a ruler. The important thing is that it distorts Beckett's eyes in a strangely
interesting way to slab out an eye-motif. For, fully trepanned to the four is something that
seems an eye with an ear as its pupil, and a nose and mouth with something round on a
white square on top of the nose/mouth's eye. An alternate vision, for sure, and editor
Elsberg should be complimented into higher yesses for truly almost alonesomefully
making his magazine what he says it is, "A Journal of Contemporary Writing," with it and
such other otherstream poems as a quietly strong one by Geof Huth whose four words, in
separate panes of a window, are "ope(," "poen," "o'er" and "poem," but also such quietly
strong knownstream poems as Edward J. Reilly's haiku, "'oh'/ the child's one word/
butterfly above her sandbox."
Then there's Ruth Moon Kempher's "Daisy Poem," which consists of a silly drawing of a
flower whose stem goes through the i's of the following typed lines: "This/ is NOT/ an
experiment// I know what/ I'm/ doing." Under that is Don Winter's "Boast": "I can talk
without/ moving my poems." Several others of Bogg's poets use a form I've been seeing
around of late in which the text is divided into two blocks with an aisle between them.
Simple, but when well-used, surprisingly effective, as in Kathy Ernst's "The Messenger":
one day goes by time he says
another for the voyage
a messenger comes I leave
he climbs touching affectionately
the spiral stairway the little book
there are indistinct
openings on the table
in the clouds
covering the bay
Remember the Huth. Think openings! See the book, open the table!
Here's one last sample of the poems in Bogg (because all the witt of the preceding has
worn me too much out to do more from here on except quote). The sample is Miles
David Moore's "Fatslug XLVII": "John Kennedy, Schumann and Wilde/ Left Fatslug's
house today./ They stayed a year, then hit the road,/ For Fatslug's now older than they.//
At night they haunted the bedside/ Of Fatslug, disheveled chub,/ Whispering that very
soon/ He'd join the Forty-Six Club.// They packed up and called a cab/ When Fatslug
turned forty-seven,/ Thus putting off for one more year/ His ticket to Hell or Heaven.//
JFK, Bob and Oscar/ Fled as if given the sack./ In their place are Alex the Federalist,/ Oz
Judy and Dharma Bum Jack."
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