Ephemeris by Norm Sibum
Received: Heaven and Earth, An Anthology of Myth Poetry, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2015. It is a rather slim book for a subject as grand as the mythopoeic, but it contains good poems; and I appreciate the re-introduction to the verses of Jay Macpherson, one of the first Canadian poets I read when I came to these parts a long time ago. She seems startlingly sentient in contrast to – enough.
Received: one Greek statue, bronze. Of a veiled, dancing figure.
Third to second century B.C. Ravishing. Absolutely. No, we do not have it in our actual possession—
Received: bubašvabe. Which it is a word, Serb; which it is a construction meant to be read as ‘cockroach’, one of German mien, and intended to allude to a certain wartime occupation while bestowing opprobrium on the occupiers, as it were. It is an indication, too, of the fact that not all linguistic necessity, not all trash talk, is entirely the brainchild of the theoretical—
Morning. Nikas. Alexandra is pounding on the counter where she makes the toast. The Greek debt crisis? The news, this morning, of the Charleston shooting?* Some 60 million displaced people wandering about this world? Or is she just sick and tired of waitressing? Now this stands to reason. Yes, sick and tired of Irish Harpy and retinue. Sick of me her most loyal customer. Of the heavy-haunched guy from the apartment above who has much commentary to broach on satellite TV sports patter though he cannot do the kalamatiano. Then again Eddie the cook cracks a joke. And Alexandra, ah, she laughs. Now we have a brand new day on hand, even if our waitress has no desire to cancel history and start from scratch with ideological purity, with Snow White’s serenity, all the dwarves in permanent quarantine. But did Wittgenstein really mean what he said when he said there is no private meaning, just jungle drums and a hot line to the prez in the event of a misunderstanding? Well, the PM has been catting about of late, the world stage his back alley, and if he is Puss in Boots the trickster, perhaps he has a view of Wittgenstein more professional than mine. Perhaps, because of the better polling data at his disposal, his inside track to what really boots it is more inside than my inside track—
I have recently cured myself of an unaccountable urge to revisit The New American Poetics, which was a 60s anthology primarily devoted to the so-called Black Mountain school of poetry, some of which I probably still have affection for, most of which I bet I would now find unreadable. And then along came Po-Mo, and all was superseded or forgotten. Sent packing to some gulag where all the superannuated gene pools of literature are sent to grow vegetable gardens and count the waves coming in off the sea. They will have been rendered beside the point, as it is now: beside the point. As there is no point. Never has been, apparently. The greatest literary shell game to have ever come down the turnpike – Po-Mo and the Chantays.
And further discussion at the Moesian’s of what makes for dated prose yielded no more insight than it did two weeks prior at the Benelux amidst girls with issues and date rapists in cargo pants. But the cure of which I was speaking consisted of me recalling that I once quit the Black Mountain habit cold turkey, and why go through all that again? Why continue to agonize as to whether the anti-imperial pitch was truly anti-imperial or a mirage situated in the lysergically-rinsed imaginations of free-versers? Still, their heavy-lifters, their theorists, and with gusto, ragged on poets like E.A. Robinson from a generation or two previous who just happened to see Moloch beginning to round into shape. Such poets were barred from the Poetry Hall of Fame as, in the Black Mountain scheme of things, they had had recourse to steroids and reactionary rhyme—
And then, one evening, we searched for Sugar Man, and found him in what few crumbs of humble pie are left to us, were we to speak of – what? the Greek debt crisis? So then, was Sixto Rodriguez, folk musician, possible rival to Dylan, at last vindicated when South Africans flew him over from Detroit and gave him carte blanche, provided him with a series of sold-out concerts, as this bard was, in their minds, a force to bring against apartheid and prudery? Or was he a slut at bottom for the buzz, no matter its provenance? Or was he halfway to being a holy man in the sense that his feet were firmly on the ground and he was good-humoured and good-natured, with or without a sound-system, with or without a cause, with or without a publicity agent?
Illusions, however much they may be weakened or exposed by reason, nevertheless still exist in the world and play the greatest role in our lives….
And then:
Man can only live by religion or by illusions. This is a clear and incontestable fact. If you drastically curtail his religion or his illusions, anyone, even a child at the first stage of reasoning (since children live mostly only off their illusions), would almost definitely kill himself, and our species would of inborn and material necessity be doomed at birth….
And then:
It is no more possible for man to live completely cut off from nature, which we are constantly drawing farther away from, than it is for a tree cut off at the root to bear flowers and fruit—
From Zibaldone, Giacomo Leopardi. And I am afraid the man, for all I admire his capacity for thought, who may have had the best of the argument in his time, is dead wrong at this juncture. We do live without illusions (or else we have gone the illusions one better with our fondness for fantasy and techno-know); we do live separate from nature or in an altered, re-tooled nature; we value religion not much more than we value poetry, which ain’t all that much, and there does not seem to be any piper to pay for this state of affairs, except a bevy of corporatist wizards by whose grace we are permitted to consume goods and think up more illustrious ways of saying the author of any given book is only a cultural construct.
Well then, gas ovens and a bonfire for all those vanities seem to be in order: it amounts to the same sort of dismissal. And who would have figured that spiritual suicide could generate so much profit (for some, to be sure), so much warm and fuzzy collegiality among drinkers of Bud, and get so many pretenders their interviews? Religion aside (the health or unwholesomeness of the thing), what illusion is more pernicious to logic than to believe that your world is inherently stable and always amenable to rationality? Indeed, you are privileged. Your life is sweet. Certainly, your life could be a lot worse. Tomorrow, who knows? And noon, and Alexandra still pounds on that counter, and men want soup and women their due.
Note: I have been alerted to the existence of a blogsite out of Houston in which literature is daily discussed in a more intelligent and tidy fashion than is the case here. Those interested in this phenomenon can, as it were, google Patrick Kulp and Anecdotal Evidence. Recent commentary seems to centre on Zbigniew Herbert, Eric Ormsby, Dr. Johnson, and even London Lunar is reportedly due for treatment.
* Ed: This post dates to June 17th.
Contributor Norm Sibum writes the column Ephemeris. He has been writing and publishing poetry for over thirty years. Born in Oberammergau in 1947, he grew up in Germany, Alaska, Utah, and Washington before moving to Vancouver in 1968. He has published several volumes of poetry in Canada and England. A Canadian citizen, Sibum currently lives and works in Montreal, Quebec.