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Hank Lazer: Quick Prognostications
flip witness
hip gnosis
diminished homage
flesh museDays “23” — Hank Lazer* (with nods to M. Mann and the Gnostics)
flip witness
flick ’da switch & trick
some wisdom sayings
—ok, your first heresy
hip gnosis
so…blinded by the light
cut loose like a deuce
another runner in the night
diminished homage
like tapinosis, anti
bodies negative vibe
in material world
flesh muse
valentines, signor Valentinus
’dat spark in the dark
so…hypo thetical
Barry McKinnon: Deep Throat Local Radio Time Signalling
you’ve got 55 seconds
to come out & see what
you’ve
won.Bayday (from The the.) — Barry McKinnon
you’ve got 55 seconds
to hoover the goods
to flash your Rob’t Coover maid•en•hoods
to gnaw down on your groover maneuver
to come out & see what
your gag reflex hooks like
your deep throat cooks like
your consummate consumer schnooks like
you’ve
got 10 ’til The the then, zen
got 5 & an official verse culture dime
got zero left for fun with slime
won.
(zilch) nothing.
at.
all.
bpNichol: these are my words
i look at you this way
noun then verb
these are my words
I sing to yousong for saint ein — bpNichol (with nods to Stein, of course, and to Zukofsky; with back nods to Davey and Scobie; and an enterprising nod to Nota Bene: A Journey**)
i look at you this way
her voice in my head al-
most 50 years, infectious
…like yesterday
noun then verb
St. Able deferring…if he
told her would she like it,
what history teaches
these are my words
“Joe in the old coach house on Walmer”
that v. same one, Hey Joe! where you goin’
down Kendal that ol’ map in your hand***
i sing to you
“a song / entirely in my head”****
comme l’amour
in its moment*****
Frank O’Hara: I love Reverdy for saying yes
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
. . .
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.Why I Am Not a Painter — Frank O’Hara (with nods to “Lucy Kent XIX,”****** Schuyler, Ashbery and Don Allen)
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
I do this I do that, I would rather be a jazzer
play Tord G., Colin V.*******…while she whispered
along the keyboard and everyone stopped breathing********
Why? I think I would rather be
Abstract Express’ist, Post-Painterly Abs’ist
intimate yeller at New York a.k.a. 10th St. School
I suspect he is making a distinction / well who isn’t
a painter, but I am not. Well,
so French, & puzzling (never v. sanguine abt pub’ing)
so Camp Urbane, ah such personistic insouciance
you just go on your nerve (all the way fr. Yugen)
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES
habits of actual speech… the measure of
a continuous attention*********…I love Reverdy
for saying yes, though I don’t believe it
Charles Olson: Ate Down to Baby Letters
colored pictures
of all things to eat: dirty / postcards
And words, words, words
. . .
No eyes or ears leftThe Songs of Maximus — Charles Olson (with nods to D.G. Jones glosa, Dylan, Ginsberg, and Phil Spector)
colored pictures
read forward/back, dizzy mu-sick
dis fury ’n gurry,********** gutted
sick muse*********** oceanside us
of all things to eat: dirty / postcards
dat capital obs-kenity************: Mad Ave shrinkage*************
what is said,************** like Big O Tyres ate down
to baby letters (ad-verbs galore
And words, words, words
all dis palaver (don’tcha, Mr. Jones?
bomb bard-bard-bard-ment
invaded, appropriated, outraged
…starving hysterical naked (too
No eyes or ears left
even dose crude instruments***************
even muzak long gone fr. ma’ town
even dat spector, lulled, no wall
of sound left, eez all pop’d
***
* Yrs truly referred to (by Susan M. Schultz) as the “Canadian Hank Lazer”; hence a signed book from Hank: for Stephen—from the American Hank Lazer to the Canadian Hank Lazer—in poetry, in friendship (HL, the real deal, and then some, south of the border).
** Stephen Bett, Nota Bene: A Journey.
*** This very coach house sat right smack in the back between Walmer Rd. and our old 83A Kendal Ave, in “the Annex” (Toronto). I was too young for McCaffery and nichol’s TRG, but old enough for a few nichol dinners at the Miki’s a few years later.
**** Zukofsky, “To my wash-stand.”
***** These last two lines from Nota Bene: A Journey, p. 37.
****** Stephen Bett, Cruise Control.
******* Tord Gustavsen, Colin Vallon.
******** Each buoyant, joyfully insouciant (and acerbic) stanza-ending line here, from O’H, is a personal favourite. Plenty of faves to go around, though: at least one for every conceivable reader of O’H, and the inconceivable and unconceivable ones too.
********* Quoting William Navero’s bang on definition of “Personism” re: Creeley’s voice, from Navero’s essay in the Creeley issue of Boundary 2, spring/fall, 1978, p. 351.
********** Bett, “Lift Off 10: bite size (after Olson): Was it gurry/or offal//A bird at sea,/surely.”
*********** “[M]u-sick, the sick music and muse”: Sherman Paul, Olson’s Push, p. 126.
************ “[A]dvertising men are the worst kind of obscenity”: Frank Davey, PhD thesis: Theory and Practise in the Black Mountain Poets, p. 240.
************* The vast majority of Madison Ave. payroll, evidently, is taken up by outsourced psychologists (not copy-writers, etc.). So much for advertising as “informational.”
************** Chas Olson, of course, on the unfortunate shift from muthos (mouth) to logos (reason), courtesy dose Greeks; mu-sick and muzak: “what is said is sick, a sick story from a sick mouth”: Robert von Hallberg, Charles Olson: The Scholar’s Art, p. 58.
*************** “[T]he mu-sick of the juke box has made the ear a crude instrument”: Paul Christensen, Charles Olson: Call Him Ishmael, p. 123.
***
These poems are an excerpt from Stephen Bett’s new poetry volume in progress, Broken Glosa: An Alphabet of Post-Avant Glosa.
Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 24 books in print. His personal papers are archived in the Contemporary Literature Collection at Simon Fraser University. His website is here.