Remembrances & Writings: Again Boxing Backwards

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It is an indication, I guess, that I’ve never thought much about my own posterity that I’ve almost never bothered to date any of my poems or other writings—much less try to get them published. On the other hand, though, I have kept them all; in boxes, in folders, one of which I unearthed the other day.

Within, I found a clutch of poems from long ago. Several of these have pleased me more now than they did back then. I have, therefore, been posting them at a couple of writers’ groups that I’ve joined on Facebook, or as notes on my FB profile page.

But this one I’ve decided to post here instead. It is almost unique in being dated. Adding to this distinction is the fact that the source of its inspiration is documented. Its writing was provoked by an article in Time magazine about a German actress and chanteuse named Hildegard Knef (or, in America, sometimes, “Neff.”)

Being neither much of a cinema buff, nor a fan of European saloon tunes, sung in languages I can’t understand, I’m sure that I’d never heard of her, although she was apparently quite a phenom in Europe. A quick googling of her name just now, disclosed that she was in the United States around the time of the Time magazine article, promoting a movie and/or a book. But I was not able to uncover anything that really clued me in on the nature of her celebrity, such that it gave rise to the kind of frenzy indicated by the excerpt from Time that serves as the poem’s epigram.

This poem is finally distinguished from all others in being adorned by two photographs (as shown above)—the one on the left being the portrait of Kneff from the Time article. The one on the right was meant, I’m quite sure, to illustrate the poem’s line “among the undertaken clowns.” So, the poem:


For Hildegard Knef

In a crazed crowd a young man opened his trench coat and implored: “Please touch it just once. It’s my birthday. ~ Time Magazine, Vol.98, No.1; July 5, 1971

1.
gathered in light
that roars along
cinematic-circus strobe
rocking on the subway walls
among the undertaken clowns
behold the one vague, pale face
that locks the frame
in space and time
by lifting four reflected eyes
passing to the mirror’s plane
(…there once were some passed through the glass.)

2.
and yet they come
through time and space
electric flesh of mirrored light
to say that lust
is the only gender
to crawl the past
down gasping halls
up darkened stairs
whose final step seems always near
ending now before a window or a door
(…she lost her strength, it filled her mouthing ass.)

3.
across the aisle
a gate of thighs
silver stare of mirrored
one-way shades
every window hides a lie
and all these doors
are subtle violations of
the virgin future’s willing past
beneath the red-fringed fright-wig glare
a static greasepaint line
(…despite the sweat and spume, dawn laughed through the pane.)

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- 4 August '71
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Remembrances: Once Again, Boxing Backwards

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Back in my bedroom closet, once again boxing backwards, I pulled out of my files an early collection of poems which I had given the title Grassfires. I've been posting some of the poems from this collection on Facebook and elsewhere, but for some reason, I felt it appropriate to also post this one here. I probably should wait a few years, until it would be an even four decades old. But who knows if I'll make it to that juncture? So I post it now:

Song for Rimbaud (on my 29th birthday)


Rimbaud! you exiled your art, your world a crystal
phrase which you banished to a coolie’s share of
blood-sweat, bland rice, a hermitage of dark women,
strange money – a slave trader’s greed – your Abyssinian
revenge knew no charity but the charity of death, a
pitiless bourgeois vengeance: cancerous malediction.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*** ***
Rimbaud! you were righteous – I drank your words
and my fingers hemorrhaged, coiling into claws of
silver, clutching the olive sprig, grasping white
lightning – and my pen froze, searing a runic brand
onto my retinal affectations: my wooden chair became
Merlin’s tower of stone.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*** ***
Rimbaud! I mouthed your incantations of desire, and
there came hopping, one-legged, a hairy demon, howling
into the corners of my dark cell evil abuses in a dozen
foreign tongues, words that fell on my soul like the
firebrands of an inquisitional Pentecost: writing in the
mercy of the flames I found a tender courage.

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Rimbaud! I have reached my thirtieth year and have
fouled myself with imagined sufferings – yet in my
vision I saw you aflame and dying into an age that I
have yet to imagine – consumed, almost human, grinning
with the dogs that wait amongst lepers, beyond the
gates of the steel-bound metropolis: impatient already.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*** ***
Rimbaud! the years behind me are a single day, all
memories one – dozens of women with but one flavor –
the colors are with me now, not yet more brilliant –
history but a dog-eared tome studied in preparation for
examination to gain entrance to a monstrous bureaucracy:
all true souls fail, condemned to springtime visions.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*** ***
Rimbaud! conquerors glare in two-dimensional facsimile
of plaster, marble, bronze – only the sainted dead spring
moist from the pits to dance your deadly dance of dream –
the portrait you drew of Christ: sneering hipster, blue
eyes of pure acid guarded behind Italian shades, double-
sexed, against the temple pillars slouched: triumphant!

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Rimbaud! have peace: the Rose will open – She will conceive
and bear prodigies into the future – I see your new incarnation,
a generation that lifts Her gaudy skirts - the apocalyptic underbelly –
but the stars in Her pupils, the pulsing planets
of Her estrous tears are singing harmonies
known to Pythagoras: genies are sewing the banners!
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Reflections: Dreamtime

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In 1991, the year we moved from New York City to Ohio, I kept a daily journal for only the second time in my life (the previous period had been my senior year of high school.) In 1991, I was functioning as a househusband. I had two toddlers to watch, and otherwise plenty of time to read and write.
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Yesterday, I skimmed through the two spiral notebooks comprising the 1991 journal, looking for any mention of the rather strange drawing that you see below:

In addition to keeping a journal that year, I had become interested in my dreams. This interest was due in large part to my readings of the oeuvre of Swiss psychiatrist/philosopher, Carl G. Jung. Many of the pages of the journal log contemporary dreams. Others refer to remembered dreams, some going back to my early childhood.

It is a phenomenon, which you can profitably investigate in yourself, that if your conscious mind begins to take an active interest in your dream life, your dream life will reciprocate. You will begin to have more vivid and more meaningful dreams. It will also become increasingly easier for you to remember your dreams, once you have trained your conscious mind to hold onto them by writing them down immediately upon waking.

When I found this strange picture (while boxing backwards), I remembered that it was the visual record of a dream. But I had retained no psychological context for it. I was hoping that I’d written about it in 1991, but this proved not to have been the case.

Last night, some hours after going fruitlessly through my journal, it came to me suddenly that the strange style of the drawing—it doesn’t look like something that I would draw—is due to the circumstance that in the dream this picture was itself an illustration in a book. When I remembered this, I simultaneously remembered that the image was, for some reason, terrifying at the time. The dream had been a nightmare. The effect upon me of this image was so strong that I had been compelled afterward to try to reproduce it.

Looking at it now, I can’t say what it means, or why it was so horrifying. Neither do I remember when I had the dream. The drawing isn’t dated.

I tell this tale in order to encourage anyone who has never done so to spend some time exploring the strange world through which he travels in dreamtime. It can be a most rewarding undertaking.

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Reminiscences: TV in the '70s

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Among the treasures uncovered while boxing backwards was an issue of TV Guide from the 1970’s that had been used as packing in a box of breakables. In flipping through its pages, the thought occurred that any of my readers old enough to remember those days-gone-by might enjoy reminiscing over the listings for some of the shows then current:

TV Guide listings: 1975

Apple’s Way xxxApple is upset when Paul and Kathy confide to him that incest is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Kojack xxxRumors abound at NYPD when Kojak swears off sucking Tootsie Roll Pops and applies for transfer to the vice squad.

Ironside xxxIronside faces a crisis when a corrupt politician tells him to give up his investigation into graft in city hall or go back to walking a beat.

Medical Center xxxDr. Gannon comes under slanderous attack from an envious colleague after inventory disappears from the morgue and strange lights are seen flashing in his attic window.

Little House on the Prairie xxxCharles is kicked in the head by a mule and becomes convinced that an oddly-shaped buffalo chip is a gold nugget.

The WaltonsxxxJohn-Boy fears for his sanity when the mole on his cheek starts to whisper into his ear at night.

Movin’ On xxWill and Sonny come to blows when both call “shotgun” and neither will back down.

Mannix xxxIn solving a difficult case, Mannix survives more vicious blows to the head than any man since the first Ali-Frazier fight.

Tomorrow xxxTom Snyder hosts a discussion of peculiar practices among Turkistani goatherds. Also: Judge Crater makes a rare personal appearance.

Monday Night Football xxxCossell, Gifford and Mongo host an all-star line-up including John Wayne, Billy Graham, Former President Richard M. Nixon, the Jackson Five, and Dr. Irwin J. Stillman. Coverage of Rams-Steelers game, time permitting.

Petrocelli xxxPetrocelli corrects the sheriff’s pronunciation of his name once too often. Final show of series.

Chico and the Man xxxEd Brown blows his stack when Chico wants a day off to go to Tijuana to do research on “emission control devices.”

Kung Fu xxxAngry townsfolk threaten to burn Caine at the stake after several medically-certified local virgins are found to be pregnant.

Wide World of Sports xxxChris Shenkle provides live coverage of the world championship Amateur Geek Competition from Krakow. Taped coverage of the pro-am invitational three-legged race competition from Pocatella, Idaho. Also: in an exclusive interview, Evel Knieval announces his intention to sell the Brooklyn Bridge on closed-circuit television.

Leave It to Beaver xxxBeaver learns some new slang terms from an older boy at school and decides that he would prefer to be called Theodore after all.

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Remembrances: O, the Payne of it all!

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The rewards of diligent boxing backwards! One comes across gems such as the following:

Fame

Who remembers poor John Payne

Who never made the stretch to Wayne

Who donned his Colts

And done his best

But sank like George Bush

In the West?

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Remembrances: Still Boxing Backwards

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I opened a copy paper box that was sitting on the floor of my closet the other day. This was a box full of stuff from my desk in a previous office. Amongst the stuff was a CD-RW with "R.D." scribbled on the index. I had no idea what might be on this particular disk, so I popped it into the computer to find out. In there with all the spreadsheets, drafts of correspondence, and other detritus of the daily grind at my former position, was a word document designated as "Hell." This turned out to be the draft of a poem that I must have created during a lull in a bad day at the office. I kind of like it--"unfinished" though it remains--so I thought I'd post it.

The drawing is another from my high school art class days. My daughter saw it as I was preparing to scan it into my computer and told me that it was certainly the Gollum. Apparently she saw a resemblance to this creature that I drew way back in the day and Gollum as created for the movie version of LOTR. Since I made the drawing at least a year before I read the Ring Triology as a college freshman, (and have never seen the movie), any resemblance between the drawing and the Gollum, is purely coincidental. I think that it does make a nice accompanyment to a poem entitled "Hell" though.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxHELL

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxthe smothering solitude of hell
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpunctuated only
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby the incessant dread
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxof an arrhythmic ringing--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxthe unwanted dead
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcalling up to mock--
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxphoning in the bad news--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbut those blessèd dead--
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxthose whose voice
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxone ceaselessly desires--

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxeternally silent

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxin an impossible future.

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Remembrances: Boxing Backwards

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“Boxing Backwards” is the title that I gave to a collection of my poems, mostly composed after my move from New York City to Ohio in the early 1990s. The words are taken from a line in a poem, (to which I link you here) which I ended up not including in the collection. It was not that I felt that the poem didn’t work. Its exclusion was based upon my decision that the tortured syntax and neologistic compounds used in the poem (originally titled “In Retrospect: 1994”) clashed with the style of the bulk of the works. Structurally, this poem is an example of an experimental form that I created and used in the composition of a dozen or so other poems which were included in the collection. Its form is based on a strict linear syllable count, repeated in two stanzas of twelve lines each. The syllable count forces word choice and presents the poet with interesting problems of creative composition.

The term “boxing backwards” functions for me on a couple of different levels of meaning. In a pugilistic sense, if one finds that life is landing a series of sharp jabs to one’s chin, while one flails ineffectively, unable either to counterpunch or to mount a defense, one is soon on the retreat—“boxing backwards” into the ropes. On a more immediate level, with reference to the afore-mentioned move from NYC to Ohio, “boxing backwards” suggests the unpacking of the corrugated cardboard boxes into which the treasures and detritus of the life one has left behind had been packed for the move. As one opens the boxes and digs down through layers of documents and other items, one travels “backwards” through time and the boxes, deluged by memories of things past.

As I stated at the conclusion of a recent post, having become increasingly dissatisfied with dissecting the present world, where very little that is good—and less that is worth discussing—is happening, I have instead turned to the past. I have been going through the physical boxes stored in my closet—boxing backwards—and building blog posts around the items found therein.

As some of my Facebook friends have already seen, one category of “treasures” found in a box of very old items was certain pages torn out of some of my college notebooks (1965-1969), the margins of which are adorned with pencil, felt-tip, or ballpoint pen doodles made while obviously paying less than rapt attention to the words of my teachers. I will, for awhile, be using some of these doodles to illuminate selected blog posts. The doodles will most likely have nothing at all to do with the content of the post of above which they appear (as the one on this post does not); they will be art for art’s sake.

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