Editors’ Note: Readers may take an interest in the particular manner these poems were composed. The poet says: “The formal process of the poem is perhaps more straightforward than it initially appears. I open a random book to a random page, select either a word or sequence of words, then move onto a new source. Rinse, wash, repeat. While writing it, I was fascinated with how multiple voices and, frankly, some almost Confessional sequences arose from such a seemingly mechanical and sterile process.”
31.
▫The heathen had no constant belief
or confession;▫▫this was not
due to political hypocrisy,
but to bourgeois vanity.▫▫This isn’t at all
strange in New York,▫ [ ]
▫I must ask you▫▫Jonathan, have you forgotten▫
▫America’s character?▫ [ ]
▫It is a wretched thing to confess.▫
▫The first lesson
a revolutionary must learn
is that he is a doomed man.▫
▫One should be wary
of solidarity,▫▫that tedious and worrisome project,
and▫▫run for office.▫
▫POLICY and ASPIRATIONS▫
▫Nothing to laugh about!▫
▫Be consistently inconsistent!▫
▫Nothing stands firm.▫
▫The Beasts-head finally thrust itself out from the mass,▫ [ ]
~
▫[depraved in mind and heart.]▫
32.
▫Dissolver of Flesh
who overcomes the reason▫
▫the right of citizens▫
▫Conquering
Commodifying▫
▫Establishing the rising rhythm▫▫of immolation to the will of▫▫the rentier economy▫
▫Shattering those who answer innocently
is the tyrant’s way▫
~
▫Justice comes knocking
daily at his door▫▫but
nobody gets a penny▫
▫a big grin▫
▫his upturned lip▫
▫sure destruction.▫
~
▫This historical epoch was devastating.▫
▫Still▫▫is.▫
33.
▫Afghanistan:
▫at once becomes hazy again▫
▫with blood▫——
▫unreal.▫
▫HONOR,
SACRIFICE
& DVTY▫
▫(This will help you remember.)▫
~
▫By night▫▫alarms were ringing.▫
▫We were warned
by the sound of the beating of the air
above:▫▫cowered
——waiting
for the crash▫——▫drunk
with reality.▫
▫For a while nothing happens.▫
▫Broken ground.▫
▫Destitute of all sense,▫
▫a self-defeating &
catastrophic enterprise.▫
▫This is written in the same hand.▫
~
▫Imperialists will never lay down
their butcher knives.▫
35.
▫Muscular▫▫Death▫▫writhing about▫
▫as an act of flattery,▫▫trumped
all other▫▫meaning, making machines▫——▫stark
white▫▫completely legal▫▫already fascist▫——▫that changed▫
▫peace-unity-love▫
~
▫into▫
~
▫conquest & exploitation,▫▫cheering at every shot.▫
▫Space & Time were dragged away;
they dragged after them light.▫
40.
▫in quest of the truth▫
▫We end up▫▫frothing at the mouth,▫▫smothered
beneath the monstrous discourse▫▫of
the imperialists and capitalists:▫
▫“you must accept Them and not complain.”▫
▫“VOTE!”▫
▫if another war broke out▫
▫We▫▫could let them have their way▫——
▫with excellent profit,▫▫with
no noise at all;▫
▫Or▫
43.
▫Lover,▫
▫Friend,▫
▫Comrade—
don’t flinch.▫
▫You need to study
guerilla warfare.
Get every book you can find
on guerilla warfare.▫
▫Discuss Marxist theory.▫
▫Let us go on▫—
[ ]▫Chicago,
[ ] Detroit,
[ ] Philadelphia,
[ ] Cleveland,
[ ] Pittsburgh,
[ ] San Francisco,
[ ] Minneapolis,
[ ] Denver, &
[ ] Boston.
We’re very close.▫
44.
▫Shudder and quake,▫▫Prophetic▫▫Young Writer!▫
▫Society is deteriorating; it has become overrun
with immorality,▫
▫with lengthwise gashes.▫
▫(It may be profitable▫
▫that it is not as pure as the preceding▫▫system).▫
▫One will see, in any case:
merely a satyr play,
merely an epilogue farce▫
——▫droning gnats and mosquitoes.▫
▫The three at the extreme-Right appear
somewhat indifferent to what is happening,
and are reminiscent in their poses—standing
with legs crossed and embracing one another
—of sculptural groups from antiquity: the Three Graces,
or the San Ildefonso group of Orestes and Pylades.
Alongside these appears a further devil,
viewed from the back, who
with his own billhook
again forces down
the soul of the resurfacing▫
▫wisp of moon.▫
~
▫die-suffer-&die▫
Postscript.
▫Our three travellers however had a great mind to join themselves▫▫in nights of insomnia, so as not to lose all reason. I struggled to flesh out various outlines of my past life, to imagine how it went on,▫▫to remember ‘blood-red-blood’.▫▫(Go into the details.)▫▫I hope to be able to at a future period: to concentrate whatever powers I may possess on the construction of some tribute to those high speculative endowments and comprehensive sympathies which I ever loved to contemplate; but at present—though somewhat ashamed at my own weakness—I find the object yet is too near to me to permit of any very accurate delineation.▫▫Considered in this light some of the poem’s notorious oddities clarify themselves; for example: the unnamed,▫▫their relation with▫▫the world▫—▫altered since the war, and the consequences of this alteration.▫▫Let me refer to the whole▫▫which these disjointed fragments present:▫▫I saw before me an object standing upon a hill. I could not clearly make out its head, but already I was aware that it was of no ordinary shape, without nevertheless being able to distinguish—precisely—the exact proportion of its contours. I dared not draw near,▫▫became enamoured of solitude,▫▫composed this verse.▫
▫All this has been and is.▫
▫There was beauty.▫
▫I give it to you.▫
Sources
31.
▫Advancement of Learning, Francis Bacon▫
▫Cousin Bette, Honoré de Balzac▫
▫Letter to His Parents, Federico García Lorca▫
▫The Queen of Spades, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin▫
▫Saul, André Gide▫
▫Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver▫
▫Letter to Richard Woodhouse: 27 October 1818, John Keats▫
▫Revolutionary Suicide, Huey Newton▫
▫Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard▫
▫Life of Michelangelo Buonarotti, Giorgio Vasari▫
▫The Storm before the Storm, Mike Duncan▫
▫The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Edward Hallett Carr▫
▫Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman▫
▫Poetics, Aristotle▫
▫Treatise on Law, Thomas Aquinas▫
▫War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy▫
▫God and the State, Mikhail Bakunin▫
32.
▫Theogony, Hesiod▫
▫The Constitution of the United States of America▫
▫A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel & Jason W. Moore▫
▫A Little Book on Form, Robert Hass▫
▫The Philosophy of Atheism, Emma Goldman▫
▫Revolutionary Iran, Michael Axworthy▫
▫Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe▫
▫De Profundis, Oscar Wilde▫
▫Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen▫
▫Jo-Eb’s Quest, Raymond Schmidt▫
▫Valperga, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley▫
▫The Jewish War, Josephus▫
▫The Half has Never been Told, Edward E. Baptist▫
▫Le Morte d’Arthur, Thomas Malory▫
▫Growth of the Soil, Knut Hamsun▫
33.
▫Imperialism, J.A. Hobson▫
▫The Accumulation of Capital, Rosa Luxembourg▫
▫A Discourse on Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau▫
▫Anarchism is Not Enough, Laura Riding▫
▫The Content of the Form, Hayden White▫
▫Guitar Player Repair Guide, Dan Erlewine▫
▫Guerilla Warfare, Ernesto Che Guevara▫
▫The Autobiography of Mother Jones, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones▫
▫Grasmere Journals: 30 April 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth▫ ▫Homage ▫
▫to Catalonia, George Orwell▫
▫Anarchism is Not Enough, Laura Riding▫
▫Normal People, Sally Rooney▫
▫On War, Karl von Clausewitz▫
▫A Defence of the People of England, John Milton▫
▫Socialism for a Skeptical Age, Ralph Miliband▫
▫A Monster’s Notes, Laurie Sheck▫
▫Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle, Mao Zedong▫
35.
▫Greece and the Reinvention of Politics, Alain Badiou▫
▫The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System, Henryk Grossman▫
▫Suffering, Alphonse Daudet▫
▫Life of Gaius Marius, Plutarch▫
▫Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine▫
▫Conversation between Tishani Doshi and Timothy Green, 17 June 21 via Skype, Rattle: Fall ‘21▫
▫Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, Philip K. Dick▫
▫Equality & Revolution: Women’s Rights in the Russian Empire 1905-‘17, Rochelle G. Ruthchild▫
▫Fascism as a Mass Movement, Arthur Rosenberg▫
▫Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America & Produced Trump, Spencer Ackerman▫
▫Bomb the Suburbs, William Upksi Wimsatt▫
▫Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, James Carroll▫
▫Empire, Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri▫
▫Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant▫
▫The Crisis in Physics, Christopher Cauldwell▫
40.
▫Reform Our Study, Mao Zedong▫
▫Suite Vénitienne, Sophie Calle▫
▫D.V., Diana Vreeland▫
▫A Lover’s Discourse, Roland Barthes▫
▫Speech: 07 November 1919, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin▫
▫The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius▫
▫The Vampire Economy: Doing Business under Fascism, Günter Reimann▫
▫Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, Carlo D’este▫
▫Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, V.N. Vološinov▫
▫D.V., Diana Vreeland▫
▫March to the Montería, B. Traven▫
▫For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway▫
▫The Prince (chapter 6), Niccolò Machiavelli▫
43.
▫Maxim 312, François de La Rochefoucauld▫
▫I Love Dick, Chris Kraus▫
▫Letter to Thomas Morgan: 1911, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones▫
▫Speech: 15 February 1966 “There is a Worldwide Revolution”, Malcolm X▫
▫My Life, My Art, Diego Rivera▫
▫Laughter, Henri Bergson▫
44.
▫Strike!, Jeremy Brecher▫
▫The Beauty and Life of Materiality, Jodi Hauptman▫
▫Romantic Literary Families, Scott Krawczyk▫
▫Workshop of Empire: Stegner, Engle & American Creative Writing during the Cold War, Eric Bennett▫
▫The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X & Alex Haley▫
▫Encyclopedic Dictionary of Production and Production Control (1964), Prentice-Hall Editorial Staff▫
▫The Method of Marianne Moore, R.P. Blackmur▫
▫Birds of North America, Robbins, Bruun, Zin, & Singer▫
▫The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Max Weber▫
▫Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche▫
▫We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates▫
▫William Blake: Catalogue of the Drawings, Sebastian Schütze▫
▫Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul, Jeremiah Moss▫
▫The Friend, Sigrid Nunez▫
Postscript.
▫A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe▫
▫The Hieroglyphs of COVID-19; or Lockdown, Hubert Haddad▫
▫Speculum of the Other Woman, Luce Irigaray▫
▫Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, Peter Krapotkin▫
▫Letter to Henry Hallam: 14 February 1834, Alfred Tennyson▫
▫Dirt and Desire: Essay on the Phenomenology of Female Pollution in Antiquity, Anne Carson▫
▫The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, Lesley Gill▫
▫No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane F. McAlevey▫
▫Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism, Paul Mattick▫
▫Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge▫
▫The Giaour, Advertisement, George Gordon Byron▫
▫Maldoror, Comte de Lautrémont▫
▫A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft▫
▫The Tosa Diary, Ki no Tsurayuki▫
▫An Address to the People on the Death of Princess Charlotte, Percy Bysshe Shelley▫
▫The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe▫
▫ Letter to Paul Demeny: 28 August 1871, Arthur Rimbaud▫ ~
