"I was released from forms"

Corsons Inlet
A. R. Ammons (daqui)



I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

to the sea,

then turned right along

---the surf
--
---------------rounded a naked headland
--
---------------and returned



along the inlet shore:



it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,

crisp in the running sand,

------some breakthroughs of sun

--but after a bit



continuous overcast:



the walk liberating, I was released from forms,

from the perpendiculars,

-----straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

of thought

into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends

----------of sight:



----------------I allow myself eddies of meaning:

yield to a direction of significance

running

like a stream through the geography of my work:

----you can find

in my sayings

---------------swerves of action

---------------like the inlet's cutting edge:

--------there are dunes of motion,

organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance

in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:



but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

beyond the account:



in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of

primrose

-----more or less dispersed;

disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows

of dunes

irregular swamps of reeds

though not reeds alone, but grass bayberry, yarrow, all . . .

predominantly reeds:



I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,

shutting out and shutting in, separating inside

-------from outside: I have

-------drawn no lines:

-------as



manifold events of sand

change the dune's shape that will not be the same shape

tomorrow,



so I am willing to go along, to accept

the becoming

thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends establish

------no walls:



by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek

to undercreek: but there are no lines though

-----change in that transition is clear

-----as any sharpness: but "sharpness" spread out,

allowed to occur over a wider range

than mental lines can keep:



the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low:

black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk

of air

and, earlier, of sun,

waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,

caught always in the event of change:

----a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals

----and ate

to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,

picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy

turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits:



risk is full: every living thing in

siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small

white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears

---------the shallows, darts to shore

------------------to stab —- what? I couldn't

----see against the black mudflats—a frightened

----fiddler crab?



---------the news to my left over the dunes and

reeds and bayberry clumps was

---------fall: thousands of tree swallows

---------gathering for flight:

---------an order held

---------in constant change: a congregation

rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable

-------as one event,

---------------not chaos: preparations for

flight from winter,

cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps

beaks

at the bayberries

---a perception full of wind, flight, curve,

---sound:

---the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness:

the "field" of action

with moving, incalculable center:



in the smaller view, order tight with shape:

blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab:

snail shell:

--------pulsations of order

--------in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed,

broken down, transferred through membranes

to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no

lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together

--------and against, of millions of events: this,

-----------------so that I make

-----------------no form of

-----------------formlessness:



orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override

or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain

the top of a dune,

the swallows

could take flight—some other fields of bayberry

-------could enter fall

-------berryless) and there is serenity:



-------no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,

or thought:

no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:



terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities

of escape open: no route shut, except in

---the sudden loss of all routes:



-------I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will

not run to that easy victory:

------still around the looser, wider forces work:

-------I will try

-----to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening

scope, but enjoying the freedom that

Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,

that I have perceived nothing completely,

-------that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.


- - -
and on it.






lyrical articulation of small moments of experience.

Cascadilla Falls

-- .

Their Sex Life
A.R. Ammons


One failure on
Top of another

- - -

interview:

"PF: Right, and a lot of your poems seem to be concerned with their own procedures as they go along, they reflect back on themselves.


Ammons: Procedure could come to be the essential narrative, you see."

fall

Rapids
A.R. Ammons

Fall's leaves are redder than
spring's flowers, have no pollen,
and also sometimes fly, as the wind
schools them out or down in shoals
or droves: though I
have not been here long, I can
look up at the sky at night and tell
how things are likely to go for
the next hundred million years:
the universe will probably not find
a way to vanish nor I
in all that time reappear.

- -

Ammons, recente favorito. reavaliando razões frases fixações e entendendo -que rede fina. acabo embrulhada nessa inutilidade extrema que é o brooding de palavras sobre palavras. gostei do Nuno Marques na Trama, passe as limitações da ocasião, em pleno no trabalho de gastar ar de fôlego e tempo e mesmo espaço nessa actividade que raia a loucura paranóica. para além de nós, os evangelistas da tv e o abismo.

(pergunta- e não estamos nesse ponto impossível entre o vazio da linguagem e os silêncios e no outro lado um certo regresso aos sentidos, aí já não no fim mas nesse quase novo de expressar coisas do corpo por outros meios, tradutores, mostrar como é possível, e ainda -ponto terceiro- o início de outra coisa ainda de que sabemos todos muito pouco e que simplesmente acontece ainda, mudos e confusos pela avalanche.)


e, bom, achei que ficava bem

Constantly risking absurdity
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence