Date: Mon, 28 May 2001
Subject: NEW FORMALIST LANGUAGE POETRY

Here's one that's handy,just because it's conveniently on disk, etc. (I
generally would avoid posting unpublished poetry directly to the EPC,--- but in
this case I'm not doing well at figuring out how to illustrate this point,
otherwise. ...Totally buried in over-kill, having done scansions on Susan
Howe's entire Pierce Arrow, sifting verse meters for rewarding commonalities.
Pages upon pages of empirical data.)

How "Language"-ish/asyntactical this example is is of course a presumptuousness
for hardcore Language victors to curl a lip at. (I now consider myself in
general a would-be but FAILED experimentalist, an experimentalist maudit.
Never quite had what it took, got it right.) (For the most part, I consider
parallel lines to have converged and two roads to have met, if the texture of a
reconditely complex thought, over-intricately phrased, is as equivalently
impassable as a Language line constructed purely for non-representational
opacity without such beneath-the-surface intraconnectivity. I.e., Wallace
Stevens: "A great order is a disorder."/"A great disorder is an order.")
Sufficiently asyntac', though, for a very aghast reply from a classicist
neighbor I know from church, who I hopefully sent this mania to, once--- Hope
to dredge his sputtering bewilderment out of my papers soon, as postscript.
("...and these lines here: they don't even make sense!") Comical, too, that he
sent it on blank greeting card paper with Blessed Virgin Mary sticker on the
rose-colored envelope, assumed into heaven. (Spontaneous Post Office civil
servant conversions.)

The writing is what it claims to be: excerpts from Greek drama "WRIT IN ITS
ORIGINAL METER FOR THE FIRST TIME." I didn't quite understand how amphitheater acoustics work, at the time (since then, I've learned that there are "natural" amphitheaters and, from first-hand Middle East tourist's report, that the voice of one standing at the epicenter of amphitheater can be heard perfectly all
around in "bleachers"), so I assumed that most of the Greek would be hard to
hear, anyway. I figured that the parsing might be muffled, but that the word
order would come through distinct,--- so I followed word order scrupulously as
a main "rule."

-----------------------------------------------------

from THE WELL-WISHERS (Aeschylus' THE EUMENIDES)
WRIT IN ITS ORIGINAL METER FOR THE FIRST TIME

I. PYTHIA

divine, the goddess primal named within my prayer
prognosticator, Mother Earth, and Justice next
she who, where Earth once ex cathedra sat enthroned
and prophesied, say stories. Then the third descent
by destiny consented; no one had compelled--
a Titan, chthonian child took her chair the throne

II PARODOS

alas sisters how alas O we writhe
so much to suffer all for nothing selfish me

III APOLLO

I'll never leave you. Till the end, your bodyguard
oath sworn to stay nearby and faraway, aloof
.............................................................
right now unwashed madwomen crowd all sides - you look -
asleep. Aghast, what spat upon and drooling girls,
one eye among them childish hags, untouched, unloved:
no gods impregnate, men avoid, no beast will mount
born for the hell of evil, deaf to wrong and right
the shadows homey Tartarus below the ground
miasmas foul both men and holy mountain. So,
likewise, escape if possible. Faint-hearted, no.
They'll stalk your lone footsteps, remote mainlands, beyond
astride for all time over printmarks stamped in soil
across the open sea and city walls of sea
But do not weary, despite the neverending day's
travail. Depart: Athena's city lies ahead
Be seated there, embrace her ancient, carven form
Another world: ours, jurymen, and sorcery,
................................................................
to bring about your manumission, freed from flight . . .

IV CHORAL ODE

high up, blue sky, other's opinions of us, grand,
dissipate under the earth and diminish, no value,
counter-attack in our blacknesses, widow's crêpe,
we dance, green with envy, feet en point