"(and back and back and back again)"
--Spicer, "Awkward Bridge," p. 261, and (also) "Coda," p. 270 (Gizzi/Killian, Collected Poems).
Below, I quote what is possibly Jack Spicer's most famous poem (as Graham Foust suggested a bit ago in a lovely essay in "Jacket"), but with one line break that I'm adding:
the penultimate pulled from the final line--
the final line becoming its "own" stanza to the ear and eye. I do not present it as the original.
This is an ear argument I've made elsewhere (Queer Lyrics). But it is a most difficult and gorgeously closed poem (in its original and I hope here too), as well as, frankly, the best with which I can think of closing my own time on the blog. It seems apt to end with listening against (against: both agonistically and companionably) seeing.
---
THING LANGUAGE
This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.
---
---again, the original poem has only one stanza.
What we hear is what we see "(and back and back and back again)"... ... ...
cheers,
john
