how love begins*

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You know, the drunkenness of things being various – it’s happening all the time. No wonder I’m always tired. At 5am today I discovered a new poet – well, not new exactly, but new to me – in whom I am now intensely interested. He’s even well represented in the anthology Legitimate Dangers, which I bought last year on a lightning dash in the West Village on my way to have a cheeseburger with Maud Newton – ah, those heady days! (Two of them, if I recall. Like everything else, not nearly enough.) Where was I? Ah yes, so DA Powell’s poems have been in my home this whole time – a few of them, anyway – and I had somehow not noticed them! Sitting there quietly, stuffed with plastic flamingoes, in the corner. Secretly explosive.

It went like this. I woke up at 5am. I resorted to the laptop. On Don Share’s blog I found a link to an article on the Objectivists, on the Poetry website, and when I was looking at that I saw a picture of the current issue. So I clicked on it, and there I saw a crop of the above picture of DA Powell, with the legend “featured poet.” Naturally, it caught my eye. I wasn’t even sure if he could really be real.** So I clicked on it, and there I read a wonderful poem, with difficult formatting:

“you want me to tell you the marvels of invention? that we persevere

that the time of flourishing is at hand? I should like to think it

meanwhile, where have I put the notebook on which I was scribbling

it began like:

“the smell of droppings and that narrow country road . . .”

So I googled him. It turns out he’s been around all along, writing books with titles like Tea, and Cocktails. In this, and in the spareness of his language – and in nothing else at all – he can be said to remind me of Henry Green, always a plus. And the hat! Straight out of Damon Runyon’s Broadway.

And his poems, they are so beautiful, and so rude! He’s nothing like Green or even Runyon – his first three books are regarded as a sort of AIDS trilogy. He couldn’t be more gay if he – well – he just couldn’t.

Here is part of [my riches I have squandered. spread with honey] (all his titles are in brackets):

“my riches I have squandered. spread with honey
the arval bread in my pocket and nary a farthing

lived for a spell among roaches in a rickety squat
between the alcohol detox and the catholic church

peeled my plump white bottom. a sauvignon grape
[now exsiccated: the wizened sultana makes no golden cake]

crouched in the gulleys.”

This seems to be one of the winning poems of the Boston Review Poetry Contest in, I think, 2001? And the one above it on their site is called [dogs and boys can treat you like trash. and dogs do love trash]. It’s fabulously rude, and has a killer final rhyme. He’s done something I really love with the rhyme, he’s chosen a really unlikely sound and made it fix the poem – as in fixative. He is much ruder than James Merrill, but his use of language is every bit as precise and elegant. Marvellous.

Anyway, DA Powell. I’ll be ordering his books, I feel.

There were other various other things today too, but what were they? Daisy Fried’s poetry exercises, on Amy King’s blog. That’s all I’ve read.

Yesterday there was a video on the BBC or somewhere of a piglet in wellies – apparently it was so scared of the mud that the little girl of the house, whose name was Fern Arable, gave it some toy wellies to wear on its front paws ans it is now happy as a pig in – well – mud. The father of the house says, “This pig is more of a family pet now, I think she’s destined to live a long and happy life!” I believe they’ll be calling it Wilbur.

The soundtrack to this post has been: An American in Paris; the Carnegie Hall recording of Benny Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing; Wichita Sutra Vortex – a work for piano by Philip Glass; Bess, You is My Woman Now, from Porgy and Bess; and Mad Rush, another of Philip Glass’ later piano works.

I did get back to sleep, a bit, but it was the kind of sleep where everybody seems to be talking at once. Basically, I’m exhausted and more than a bit wrung out. And now I must get ready and leave the house, taking with me Legitimate Dangers and a printout of a long article on figurative language, by DA Powell.

* I am getting the impression, as per below, that this will be a love which dare not speak its name; but then, I already have a little bit of a reputation as regards Merrill…

**Young Mlle B sees this picture and goes: “Oh my god, he is SO creepy-looking, no I mean it, really, that is terrifying.”

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