Notes Toward a Diagram of Mystery Funk

A poem's potential to induce wow-ness* is not as oblivious to fumes as we think. We say the poem's there. Is it? In a far-beyond-the-dregs-of-old-Wow routine, hard work is the missing ingredient in my syllabic quiche baste. And no one has ever thought of trying to make one (or two) on the George Foreman grill. My poetics dictates that I physically feel the shudders lip-syncing an emotional duet with the next town, i.e. poem, i.e. howdy. This is not just retracing The Plasticity of Fools, or even Emotional Overlay. In the 1970's, some kind of poetic parlay was ALL THE RAGE!!! Game show contestants openly sipping mixed drinks etc. Ugh! Unguito!! Someone praticed pagan cookery in San Jose. And it was you.

(In Pound's THUNDER CANTOS, a specific roar surfaces. A light creamy light, with all the stresses turned off for several pages at a time. Pound asked Zukofsky not to breathe while reading THUNDER CANTOS, or so the legend has it. Pound would not return to this "ladlin' it out" tone until the posthumous FAR BEYOND DRIVEN)

* A criteria stretching back to the Middle Ages and ending somewhere in the Future. As if...