After I’s (1964)

 

Daruma

27 Oct. 1961/ The Nation (3 Feb. 1962)

 

Title            Daruma: LZ wrote Niedecker in 1962 that this refers to the Dharma of Zen Buddhism (Penberthy 301). Daruma would be the transliterated Japanese form of the Sanskrit dharma, a key Buddhist term that has a range of meanings: “the natural condition of things or beings, the law of their existence, truth, religious truth, the Buddhist Doctrine, the law (Law), the ethical code of righteousness” (from Wisdom of India and China, ed. Lin Yutang, which was in the LZ library).

221.2    found object: in 1964 LZ would publish 12 short poems from throughout his career under the title, Found Objects; see brief preface to that selection in Prep+ 168.

221.5    Peter’s sen / Ami / Ren / Will: Will Petersen (1928-1994), American artist and poet best-known for his lithographs, associated with the Beats in the late 1950s. It may be relevant that Petersen appears as Rol Sturlason in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1958), but in any case he was a serious student of Zen Buddhism and Noh drama, and wrote a well-known essay, “Stone Garden” (Evergreen Review 1.4, 1957) on the Zen garden of Ryoanji, at the time not nearly so world renowned as it would soon become. At the time this poem was written, Petersen was living in Japan and working closely with Cid Corman on Origin, whose second series (April 1961-July 1964) featured LZ; both were corresponding frequently with LZ. Ami was Petersen’s Japanese wife at the time and Ren their son.

 

The Old Poet Moves to a New Apartment 14 Times

25 Nov. 1960-22 Feb. 1962/ Poetry (March 1963)

 

Commentary

In his interview with L.S. Dembo, LZ reads and offers scattered comments on the first four poems of this sequence (Prep+ 232-235).

 

Title: In Feb. 1962 the Zukofskys moved to a new apartment at 160 Columbia Heights on the 10th and 11th floors.

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222.2    surd: not having the sense of hearing, deaf; in mathematics, not capable of being expressed in rational numbers: as a surd expression, quantity or number (see below); in phonetics, uttered with breath and not with voice, devoid of vocality, not sonant, toneless, specifically applied to the breathed or non-vocal consonants of the alphabet; meaningless, senseless. In mathematics, a quantity not expressible as the ratio of two whole numbers, as √2, or the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter (CD). Absurd from L. absurdus, harsh-sounding, inharmonious, absurd: either ab, away, from + surdus, sounding; or ab- (intensive) + surdus, indistinct, dull, deaf (CD).

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223.14  jingle poet as he says it: LZ also used this phrase in his interview with L.S. Dembo (Prep+ 235). It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who made the dismissive quip that Edgar Allan Poe was a “jingle man” in conversation with William Dean Howells; often this remark gets transmuted into “jingle poet.”

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224.2            Achilles shield: at the behest of Achilles’ mother, Thetis, Hephaestus constructed and intricatedly designed a shield for Achilles, which is detailed in Homer, Iliad XVIII. See Bottom 386.

225.9            Xanthus and Balius: immortal horses given as a wedding present by Poseidon to Peleus; in the Trojan War they draw the chariot of Achilles, Peleus’ son. Their names mean Bay and Dapple respectively. LZ quotes a passage from Homer, Iliad XIX in which Xanthus speaks to Achilles in Bottom 388.

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225.1    Tiny sarah golden: Sarah Golden was the girlfriend of poet Paul Blackburn (1926-1971) and later second wife from 1963-1967 (Scroggins Bio 349).

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226.2    Willow Street: the Zukofskys lived on Willow Street in Brooklyn at two different addresses from 1946-1962.

226.6    Shall we not see / these daughters…: from Shakespeare, King Lear V.iii, when Cordelia and Lear are brought in as prisoners after the initial triumph of Goneril and Regan’s forces:
Cordelia: We are not the first
Who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst.  
For thee, oppressed king, I am cast down;
Myself could else out-frown false Fortune’s frown.
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
Lear: No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon ’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sects 2 of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.

227.11  danced the twist: the twist was popularized with Chubby Checkers recording “The Twist” in 1960 and became a national craze for the next few years; the dance is often considered the first rock and roll dance style.

10

227.12  as in a newspaper neared / human ashes icy roads / Auschwitz crematories’…: as LZ indicates, he is mostly quoting from the New York Times for 8 June 1961: “Survivors Tell Eichmann Court of Days of Agony at Auschwitz.” The trial of the former Nazi commander Adolf Eichmann took place in April-Aug. 1961, during which testimony about Auschwitz and the Nazi program to exterminate Jews preoccupied the world media: “[…] witnesses against Eichmann, charged by Israel with the murder of millions of Jews, told how human ashes from the Auschwitz crematories were scattered on icy roads from a cart pulled by twenty children. They told how a sadistic Nazi doctor, Joseph Mengele, who was in charge of selection for the gas chambers, became known as the Angel of Death and how he rode around the vast camp on bicycle whistling tunes by Mozart.”

227.17  Angel Head Doctor…: the infamous head doctor at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Josef Mengele (1917-1979); see preceding note. 

228.1    La Paz, Bolivia…: La Paz is the capital of Bolivia and means Peace in Spanish. LZ is mostly quoting from a New York Times article for 16 June 1961: “Stevenson Lands in Tense Bolivia.” Adlai Stevenson, then chief U.S. delegate to the U.N. was touring South American on behalf of President Kennedy, and when he arrived in Bolivia there were violent riots taking place between government troops and striking workers and leftist students.

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229.17            Friendship / rocket thrust…: on 20 Feb. 1962 John Glenn was the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the earth, launched on the booster rocket Friendship 7. He was in orbit for four hours and 56 minutes.

230.16  sweet fat friend…: the poet Robert Kelly (b. 1935) (Scroggins Bio 350).

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231.1    She brings me all things / the caryatid of the 10th floor / holding the 11th…: CZ who in an architectural image is seen as supporting the other two members of the family; in their Columbia Heights apartment, the living room and kitchen were on the 10th floor, while LZ and PZ had their work rooms on the 11th floor (Scroggins Bio 347).

231.9    the water bringing all of the continents…: the Columbia Heights apartment had a view out over the mouth of the NYC harbor looking towards Staten Island and the ocean. This also echoes LZ’s opening remarks in the “Continents” section of Bottom: “ All He [Shakespeare] saw there flowed from and out to three continents, a fourth, or a fourth and a fifth, coming up, out of—“ (101) (Scroggins Bio 350).

 

“Atque in Perpetuum A.W.”

21 June 1962/ Poetry (Oct.-Nov. 1962)

 

Title      Atque in Perpetuum: from the final line of Catullus’ elegy on his brother (Carmina 101): atque in perpetuum, frater, aue atque uale (and for ever, O my brother, hail and farewell). LZ included Catullus’ poem in TP, in the prose translation of F.W. Cornish (114).
A.W.: = Alan Wand, husband of LZ’s older sister Fanny, died 3 June 1962; he appears as Count Murda-Wonda in Chapter 8 of Little. CZ mentions his cheerful personality (see Terrell, “Eccentric Profile” 40).

231.8    sedum: any low, succulent plant of the genus Sedum, stonecrop family, with broad-toothed leaves and clusters of small flowers (< L. houseleek). See “A”-13.271.1.

231.13  privet: any of various Old World shrubs having smooth entire leaves and terminal panicles of small white flowers followed by small black berries; often used for hedges.

 

The

21 June 1962/ Poor Old.Tired.Horse (May 1963)

 

Original title in manuscript, “The Desire” (Booth 154). According to Quartermain, when LZ sent this poem to Ian Hamilton Finlay for his journal, the latter doubted its seriousness, but LZ pointed out that he had in mind tugboats and that none of the vowels repeat themselves, although Quartermain says this does not sound the case when LZ actually read the poem (“Thinking with the Poem”).

 

Pretty

25 June 1962/ Burning Deck (Fall 1962)

 

Manuscript notes indicate that this was written from the 11th floor terrace of the Zukofskys’ then current home at 160 Columbia Heights, in Brooklyn Heights (Booth 136).

 

232.4            Hesperides: in Greek mythology, both the garden as well as the group of nymphs (daughters to Hesperus or Night) who guard the garden that produces the golden apples, which Gaea or Earth gave to Hera as a wedding gift. The Hesperides was also an earlier name for the constellation Ursa Minor (Small Bear).

 

The Ways

2 July 1962/ Burning Deck (Fall 1962)

 

After Reading

15 Dec. 1963/ Joglars (Spring 1964)

 

Title      LZ read at Adams House, Harvard on 14 Dec. 1963 at the invitation of the poet Michael Palmer, then a student at the university. LZ notes that the poem was written while on the train back to NYC (Booth 61). Joglars was edited by Palmer with Clark Coolidge (1963-1966). 

 

The Translation

1 Feb. 1964

 

This poem is essentially written out of dictionaries pursuing meanings, etymologies and homophonic associations of the word mulier, which in L. means woman or wife. LZ consults three standard dictionaries: an English one, Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary, and Liddell and Scott’s An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. LZ also brings in French, in the pronunciation of mulier, to get the homonym in English mulley (235.5f), and Italian at 238.26f via moglie = It. wife. The precise English dictionary LZ uses is uncertain, although Webster’s is a good bet, and in any case is not CD, which explicitly rejects the etymology of mulier from mollis. Below are copied out the relevant entries, from which the reader can trace LZ’s lines of association.

It is clearly relevant that at the time this poem was written LZ and CZ were deep in their work on Catullus together, which preoccupied them from 1958-1966, and LZ was in the habit of writing valentine poems in February. At about the same time, LZ worked on Catullus 70, Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle, which Francis Cornish translates: “The woman I love says that there is no one whom she would rather marry than me, not if Jupiter himself were to woo her. Says:—but what a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.” Corman notes that mulier also appears in Catullus 87 (“Poetry as Translation” 28).

            Another likely inspiration is the conclusion to Shakespeare, Cymbeline V.v, where Philarmonus the soothsayer interprets an oracle:
Thou, Leo-natus, art the lion's whelp;

The fit and apt construction of thy name,

Being Leonatus, doth import so much.

[To Cymbeline]

The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter,

Which we call ‘mollis aer’ [L. tender or soft air] and ‘mollis aer’

We term it ‘mulier’: which ‘mulier’ I divine

Is this most constant wife; who, even now,

Answering the letter of the oracle,

Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp’d about

With this most tender air.

 

234.7    mens: L. mind, intellect; understanding, reason. But here, as LZ indicates, punning on the English sense.

234.31  Lewis and / Short: Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1879], 1958). Following are the relevant entries LZ draws on:
mŭlĭer, ĕris, f. [mollior, comp. of mollis, q. v.],
I. a woman, a female, whether married or not.
mollis, e, adj. [Gr. malakos, amalos, môlus; cf. blêchros, perh. Lat. mulier (mollior)].
I. easily movable, pliant, flexible, supple; soft, tender, delicate, gentle, mild, pleasant (class.; syn.: tener, facilis, flexibilis, lentus).

235.6    mulley: following definition from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1996, 1998); LZ uses this word in the first line of Catullus 25:
mulley \Mul"ley\, Moolley \Mool"ley\, n. [CF. Gael. maolag a hornless cow, maol bald, hornless, blunt.]
1. A mulley or polled animal. [U.S.]
2. A cow. [Prov. Eng.; U.S., a child's word.]
Leave milking and dry up old mulley, thy cow. —Tusser.
mulley \Mul"ley\, Moolley \Mool"ley\, a. destitute of horns, although belonging to a species of animals most of which have horns; hornless; polled; as, mulley cattle; a mulley (or moolley) cow. [U. S.]

236.7    q. / v.: L. quod vide, which see (see 234.31).

237.21  Liddell / and / Scott: Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1889], 1953):
blêchros [cf. ablêchros] [blax]
weak, faint, slight, Plut.: cf. a-blêchros. Adv. -rôs slightly.
malakos
             I. Lat. mollis, soft, Hom., etc.; m. neios a fresh-ploughed fallow, Il.; m. leimôn a soft grassy meadow, Od.; m. pareiai Soph.; sômata Xen.: –adv., kathizou malakôs sit softly, i. e. on a cushion, Ar.
             II. of things not subject to touch, soft, gentle, thanatos, hupnos Hom.; malakôs heudein to sleep softly, Od.; malaka epea, m. logoi soft, fair words, Hom.; m. blemma tender, youthful looks, Ar.; light, mild, zêmia Thuc.
             III. in bad sense, of persons, soft, yielding, remiss, id=Thuc., Xen.: –adv., malakôterôs anthêpteto attacked him somewhat feebly, Thuc.: –also faint-hearted, effeminate, cowardly, id=Thuc., Xen.; malakon ouden endidonai not to give in from want of spirit, not to flag a whit, Hdt., Ar.
amalos [From Root !mal, malakos, with a_euphon.]
soft, weak, feeble, Hom., Eur.

238.26  “a / cura / della / moglie / del / poeta, / che / ha / tratto / poesie”: It. edited by the poet’s wife, who has drawn from the poetry (or as LZ suggests: who has picked poetry from). This refers to a note in an Italian anthology edited by Carlo Izzo, Poesia Americana del ‘900 (Parma, Italy: Ugo Guanda, 1963), which includes translations of four short poems and mentions that CZ made a small selection of LZ’s poems for 16 Once Published (Edinburgh: The Wild Hawthorn P, 1962).

 

Finally a Valentine

9 Feb. 1963

 

When this poem was published as a valentine card by the Piccolo Press dated Jan. 1965, LZ included a note: “’my last short poem for a long time’ this finally a valentine will close or now closes my collected short poems to be called ALL.” Although written well before J.F. Kennedy’s assassination on 22 Nov. 1963, this poem was first published in the volume, Of Poetry and Power, poems occasioned by the Presidency and by the Death of John F. Kennedy (NY: Basic Books, 1964).