To Live to Bleed for Glory
(for Duane Locke)
I’ve gone back to the basics.
Back to my notebooks from my
teens.
That’s where the fearlessness
lives.
That’s where I find the poems
that are not poisoned by the
prospect
of someone prodding them,
judging them, staring at them
from head to toe. This is
where I find
True Poetry. Poetry that wants
nothing more
than to push! Poetry that is
screaming
for the bending of the
envelope!
Poetry that is likely not
going to ever be published
because it’s not an “imitation
of poetry”
which is the wretched dreck
that has swallowed
the soul of Contemporary
Poetry. Professors and editors
have never been more off the
mark than today.
Still, the “masa confusa”
shines, in pencil
and in pen, when I look back
at those teenage pages!
Others will never know of them
but at least
I know they exist which is
more than enough for me!
The Truth is, Academia must
die for True Poetry to live.
Simple fact. Academia = jobs =
the necessity for the celebration
of mediocrity = the need to
“put a finger on” what poetry
is/can be = at the end of the
day, money.
I know that wall is thick and
made of concrete and metal.
I know that the first one
through the wall is always the bloodiest.
For fucks sake, my head has
been bleeding for the past four years!
I will ram my head against
that wall day in and day out.
I will sacrifice myself for
all those who’ve been dinging
away at that wall for their
entire lives!
I will be the one with the
blood and no glory
because I was never here for
glory. I’ve always
been smashing at that wall
for full velocity limitless
poetry
and blood is much more
beautiful than glory could ever be.
I see Felino Soriano starting
to fade a bit! This
TRAVESTY must NEVER happen.
How many other geniuses have
fallen through the cracks of history?
Why doesn’t Heller Levinson
win the Pulitzer Prize
every year he publishes a new
book?
I do not think those who want
to cage poetry
and keep it in nice and neat
rows
have any idea how fuckin
serious,
and dangerous, I Truly fuckin
am!
I promise you, though, they
will find out!
Heath is an inveterate promoter of prolific but undeservedly obscure poets. Among his favorites are Duane Locke, Felino A.Soriano, and Heller Levinson.
ReplyDeleteUniversity of Tampa professor of English and poet-in-residence, Locke lives estranged, he says, and as an alien, not understanding the customs, the costumes, the language, some form of postmodern English, of his surroundings. He was the leader of the Immanentists, a group of poets who practiced what he called "linguistic realism." He has had over 7,000 poems published in over 500 print magazines and is author of 34 books of poems
Sargasso and Sponges
Sargasso and sponges
Stick out their tongues
To touch my ankle.
All the houses on the shore
Put on tuxedoes, went
To the wedding of the tattoo and the dollar.
I stayed here, alone,
With Sargasso and sponges.
Soriano died in October of esophageal cancer at 44. He began writing poetry in 2000, had his 1st acceptance in 2001, and then stopped submitting until 2006. After learning to adapt jazz forms with philosophy he developed “a sacred practice of writing that creates an abstract comprehension of environmental happenstance.” After his epiphany he published over 5,200 poems in over 600 online and print journals and 77 print and electronic collections of poetry, and was the founding editor of “Counterexample Poetics” and “Of/with.”
Of figuring into such excitement
what resuscitates proclaims
diversion from a death
-near where walking awoke
from the darkened forensics
dedicated to obtain facts or
fundamental mores into
which notion does not
mention failures or fade-in|out
predicaments; the spectral
collaboration divides as
does an hour’s arrive/abscond
narrative, whole in which the hand
holds and decides, — . . .
Levinson has published a novel and poems in over 100 journals and magazines and is the creator of Hinge Theory, a poetics that posits that words and ideas “hinge” on intrinsic associations that propel a poem forward once they are activated. “Language as a living organism is continuously interactive with other organisms breeding extensively & engendering complementarity…. It seeks to restore Language’s Original Primal Fire. To ignite the word, Hinge employs the module which is a word or a configuration of words that serves to spring (to unleash, to unmoor) the subject into a climate of free fall & unpredictability.”
parking the dog the meter bloated apoplexy
it was just another morning blather news oriole the statuettes demonstrative
with intrigue & garland who
would have put the shot the move that got the
canisters trippy tremulous too you grooved you got you craved you saved
a crust a gust a cuss
holidays are spent in assay reimbursement dont you say a way pay play toda(y?) say
i do i do i do i’ll say plse screw plse screw plse screw renew renew
you say i do i do i renew i do
the ticket discarded as a malfunction
the necessity for overload
is abbreviation abortive
constituencies threaten to cavil
the landlocked suffer lockdown
the challenges for formalism are
all inclusive