i am not
certain it begins at all Frederick
Hoyle, in an effort to prove
the existence of gawd suggests
that a collection of
airplane parts falling
to the ground will not
assemble themselves into a
plane he
thinks there's something divine
about creation so i
don't know all i
know is i am restless more
comfortable with who and
what are wild so maybe
a poem no maybe
the poem because
I'm not sure i write
individual poems i think
possibly i am always just
writing if
writing is me constantly ruminating
and meandering maybe
the poem never begins because
it never ends ouroboros nautilus
chamber echo of soundings inside
and out does it
assemble somehow into a
flying machine, small or
large, of words maybe i only
want to draw us closer to
doodle us closer you and
me kindred
weird wild and
close maybe a
poem begins with birth but i
don't believe it ends recently
two great loves died if i
keep talking about their lives maybe
they never end maybe a
poem is a
perpetual motion machine fill the
bird's cup with water soak its
beak see the
red food colouring rise watch
the bird dip its beak over and
over into the water maybe a
poem begins with a
parched beak
Amanda Earl
(she/her) [photo credit: Susan Johnston from Jane's Walk - Ottawa in Verse on Sunday, May 4, 2025] is a polyamorous pansexual intersectional feminist who writes, edits,
reviews, publishes, does poetry and visual poetry workshops, and organizes
literary events on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples.
Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca and editor of Judith: Women
Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset Editions, 2021). Her latest poetry book is Beast
Body Epic, a long-poem collection provoked by her near-death health crisis.
Subscribe to Amanda Thru the Looking Glass, her Substack for quotes of the week,
recipes and tips on saving money on food, and miscellaneous whimsy.
Student: Do you get in arguments,
Gregory, with Ginsberg about anything that goes down at Naropa?
Corso: No I don’t bother with that one.
That’s his choice. Fucking consideration. Whatever people want let ‘em take the
shot man, they’re not going to live very long. What is it, a hundred years? or
some shit.
- THE BALLGAME’S OVER the dialogues of
Gregory Corso and Tom Clark on The Great Naropa Poetry Wars, unpublished
transcript once held in New College of California’s library, edited by Poetics
student Allen Ensign
…
Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea
The above lines serve as epitaph upon
Corso’s grave in Rome’s non-Catholic cemetery. His ashes are buried just across
the way from Shelley’s own. There’s footage “out there” of Corso at the site in
his later years, hanging out, taking notes, while the feral cemetery cats
wander about. Keats is buried in the far corner of the same cemetery and there’s
a photo of Ed Dorn in his last years standing by that grave similarly with
notebook out and feline nearby. While Pound is laid up to the north on Venice’s
San Michele Cemetery Island with lizards by the dozens crawling in and out of
the tombs there.
Italy is a poet-pilgrimage well worth
making and Rome a fine locale for hosting Corso’s remains. As he puts it in “Is
Love Instinctive” one of a number of late poems gathered in The Golden Dot: Last Poems, 1997-2000 (Lithic
Press, 2022):
I
loved things romantic
most
things I loved
seemed
lifeless
I
loved beautiful Greek statues
I
loved young dead great poets
And so how fitting he now lies amongst
them.
Throughout The Dot he also frequently imagines entering into eternity via The
Mermaid Tavern, that infamous poet’s watering hole of Old England frequented by
the likes of Donne, Marvell, Herrick, etc.
say
when my time is up
will
I be welcomed at The Mermaid Tavern?
There’s
Joyce standing at the bar
with
a booted foot on the brass rail
It
looks like [with] a haughty eye he’s on me
It
doesn’t look good
there’s
Keats seated alone
looking
dejectedly down upon his death mask
The
bartender was standing at the far end
It
was Andrew Marvell and he was conversing with Milton
There
was Auden; him I knew
I
acknowledge him
he
smiled…or was it a grimace?
I
moved away from the door
and
began looking at the Blakes on the walls
These lines show how truly “in process”
the writing in The Dot remains. I’ve
added “with” to attempt smooth out the haughty eye line, it only sort of helps
out. Corso abruptly shifts perspective, moving from imagining being at the
scene inside the Mermaid to as if describing an actual past visit within those
walls, perhaps recalling a literal dream experience? While his wondering
whether Auden smiles or grimaces at him offers a rather touching glimpse of
self-judgement and regret over his well-documented abrasive social antics over
the years, which—from the references he makes to them in The Dot—appear to have plagued his conscience.
The Mermaid also appears in “I feel
like writing a beautiful poem…” (many entries in The Dot are untitled, the editors thankfully supply an index of
titles and first lines):
The
Mermaid Tavern sign creaks
like
a mouse caught in a windy creaky door
each
squeak lets go a dot of blood on the hinge
within
the velvet suits have a boot up on the bar rail
“Brightness
falls from the air” was your best
And
“Fat as butter; cheap as egg” yours
back
and forth it went
Each
poet reciting the other’s best line
Once again, he is back to imagining the
visit. An exercise he repeats yet another time in “When the year 1 arrived for
the descendants…”
the
labor is in dwindling the redundancy;
the
finite-infinite thing can make it in a line or two—
To
tailor the brown velvet suit when I enter the Mermaid Tavern
with
Joyce and Allen seated at a table; and the Immortal Bard
a
booted foot on the brass rail; I’ll order a stout and vow
my
soul to keep my mouth shut the entire stay—
It’s rather impossible to imagine Corso
ever managing keep such a vow…yet there’s no doubt he’s now at The Mermaid
Tavern, in velvet suit with booted foot on brass rail as he wags about and
swaggers his way through the endless night of elevated bombast and ridicule
challenging everybody and anybody as outside rain falls and the poets inside
warmly cheer him on.
for Tate Swindell from notes presented on 9/21/2022 at The Golden Dot release reading Bird and Beckett Books, San Francisco
Patrick James Dunagan recently edited David Meltzer's Rock Tao and Roots and Routes: Poetics at New
College of California (eds. Dunagan Lazzara & Whittington). His new
book of poems, After the Banished, variations off of ancient
Chinese poets Li Bai&co, is dedicated to Tom Clark.
Gary Barwinis
a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist and the author of 27 books
including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the
Cowboy which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and Bird Arsonist (with
Tom Prime). His latest book is the poetry collection, The Most Charming
Creatures (ECW Press, 2022. Born in Northern Ireland to South African
parents of Lithuanian Ashkenazi descent, he lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
