9820. RUDIMENTS pt.37

RUDIMENTS, pt. 37

Making Cars

I never knew what it felt like to

be human; this is true. My entire

life, every little part of it, from the

very beginning, always felt as if

it were someplace else, an 'other',

all about. As if it weren't happening

to me, or only me; that there were

various levels of me to which

everything was being addressed.

There were harmonious things,

and there were dis-harmonious

things to. That was the real rub.

I've always had people around me  -

in later life anyway  -  the schooled

and the eggheads, who'd say high

and mighty things about 'simplicity,'

a paucity of words, about being succinct.

Their point was and always has been ,

that I go on too much, about too much.

That always seemed disharmonious to

me, and who did they think they were

anyway. There's the moon high above,

a million years of light, and story lines,

and they want me to limit myself to five

or eleven words about it? Everyone's

always reining themselves into so as

to fit some silly structure  -  only so

many words, and some spaces, and

then a couplet to summarize and pull

it together; an and all of that hoo-daddle.

I like silence as much as the next person,

but silence doesn't need to be revered.

It doesn't just automatically make you

right or holy or blessed-great. Not a

fan of the rules anyway.

-

When I was a youngster, one of my aunts

lived in quite nearby to William Carlos

Williams, famous blah-blah poet with a

big, reserved house on River Road, East

Rutherford or whatever that was. He was

also a baby-slapping pediatrician, with

births and care, mothers and babies, and

all that. Poor chump; I could never get the

two things together in one sentence, but

talk about noise and pandemonium. No

peace there. I never much cared about it

and just viewed him as a overly-busy adult

doctor doing his stuff; all that poetry and

writing notwithstanding. In later life, I

dug and read and studied him much

more carefully, and wish back then  -

if I hadn't been just a stupid, little kid

of 12 or whatever  -  I'd just walked

up to his front door and banged.

What the heck. His big-deal claim to

fame was a volume called 'Paterson.'

Another great book by him, probably

even more favored by me, was something

he wrote called 'In the American Grain.'

That one really got me. However, back

to Paterson, his great 'poetic' work, (by

contrast, 'In the American Grain' is prose),

it dragged me in, screaming, and probably

helped make me what I am today, whatever

that is. Run-on over-writer that I am.

-

The opening of 'Paterson' - a verse form

poem, by whatever definition  -  opens

at the Great Falls. It does and it doesn't

actually (lots of words here, you 'succinct'

people), because he calls the Great Falls

a 'he' and has it lying "on its right side with

its head near the thunder of the waters filling

his dreams. Eternally asleep, his dreams walk

about the city where he persists incognito..."

That right there just about slayed me  -  an

eye opener. I'd remember it wherever I was

walking in New York City, and once or twice

I even dragged myself over to Paterson, in

those years, to see. The place was filled with

references  -  Ginsberg, locomotives, Colt

firearms, even Abbot and Costello, huge 

machine shops and foundries. Alas, like 

so much else, by the end of the 1960's the 

place was a dead heap, abandoned and 

crumbling already, with most of those 

mighty business just plain gone. But, for 

me, as a 'writer' just learning what I

wanted to do, what a rich minefield 

that opening was  -  how masterful to 

portray that, to personify the grand city 

and falls as a lying down man of

dreams walking!

-

He then goes on, and this is where his 

most famous 'William Carlos Williams' 

Imagist-School dictate is taken from; 

yes, the dolts took this and named a 

school of poetic form after him - 

'Imagism.' [Imagism is a type of 

poetry that describes images with 

simple language and great focus. It 

came out of the  Modernist movement 

in poetry.] Can you, really, believe 

that crap? Here, William Carlos

Williams goes on : "Say it, no ideas

but in things / nothing but the blank

faces of the houses and the cylindrical 

trees bent, forked by preconception and

accident  -  split, furrowed, creased,

mottled, stained secretly into the body

of the light!" (The catchphrase of his

with which they founded their 'new'

school of poetry was 'no ideas but 

in things.' Frankly, I never thought

much of that line in and of itself.)

-

Point being, here, this fellow goes on

and on, and making perfect poetry and

poetic sense too, about Paterson, the

city, the locus, chosen by him to be

stroked and cascade with probably 

over 100,000 words. So, take that all

you formulaic succincters. No, I said

succincters, not sphincters. See, see,

what a wise ass I can be.