dust magazine, dustBOOKs, El Cerrito, California
Winter 1966-7 Vol 2. No. 3
THE WORK OF SAN FRANCISCO POET MORTON GRINKER
DISCUSSED . . . .
THE STRUCTURE OF POETRY
periplum, not as land looks on a map
but as sea bord seen by men sailing.
Ezra Pound, Canto LIX
I can't help feeling that my writing an introduction to Morton
Grinker's poems is a presumptuous act. He has been writing poems
five times as many years as I have, his ten to my two. He has read
closely many more poems than I have. He has, I think, spent a good
many more hours than I meditating on what a poem is. There is no
doubt in my mind that right now Morton Grinker is a better poet than
I am.
Morton Grinker has written carefully and deeply for ten years,
apparently not caring whether or not anyone knew about it. Recently,
David Sandberg found him and tried to jar two or three avant garde
editors into reading the work intelligently - so far as I know
without any success.
William Carlos Williams freed the poet from the poem. The current
situation is that should anyone point out to a poet that he has
written a clumsy poem or even an awkward phrase, he can reply,
"That's the way I speak; that's my natural voice shining there." The
few not content with this sort of thing have crawled sheepishly back
to the sonnet, the pentameter quatrain and other 'safe' forms.
Morton Grinker's main interest for me, aside from his very deep and
warm sense of being alive, is his willingness, even need, to grapple
with the problems of structure, to go into chaos and make
form.
Robert Creeley wrote that "Form is never more than an extension of
content." That can be interpreted variously and some of the possible
interpretations are useful insights. But the popular interpretation
seems to be that the subject matter and conversational convention
will somehow shape a poem. Actually, form is something that happens
to content, tho in the end one can't say, "Here is where content
leaves off and form begins." Making a poem is an act of reformation.
And that brings us back to Pound's, "Make it new." (The italics are
mine.) Allow me an overly colorful metaphor: after an atomic blast,
the earth in the pit is no longer earth. It is something else; it's
basic constituents have been changed. The poet should have a not
similar but equivalent effect upon the earth with which he or she
works.
The problem facing us now is finding, for our time, the forms we
will use. But these forms, I think, will be described in terms other
than 'foot' and 'rhyme-position'. I do not yet know what the terms
will be. We will find them. We will find them at the center of the
perceptual apparatus, where the inner and outer worlds meet, are
formed, resolved, dissolved, reformed.
*
You will see in this collection of poems, taken from his soon to be
released book Periplum, that Morton Grinker already senses a good
deal about the new forms.
--Gene Fowler
SELECTED POEMS BY MORTON GRINKER
8
the command to act lovingly
kindles
smouldering stones of the Temple
into luminous eyes
not yet
congealing
safe from harm
God is not only
He who breathes
but the Breath Himself
which the Valley
always feminine
gathers
9
the rain tumbles in slow motion
through the curves of prevailing wind
pieces of the broken pitcher
shine
as the handle curves
through an infinite series
tiny arrows
on the window into
infinitesimal loves
13
"thass my brother
an hes a
SONOFABITCH"
flickering
the drunk's hammer swung
surely with untwisted roots
a
great bird of
SKY
rain: the time for the worm-hunt
brother stepped nimbly
dancing with a grace
no anger could touch
the sun's tent shining
rain bloody
memory lives
in nucleic acids
& flows
hovering winds coalesced
as dark waters closed
over the meaningless face
of the dragon-worm
& blew the flickering shimmer
of the first rain
into gusts
policemen came
(as they should)
took away Drunk Brother
(who argued)
& left Faithless
in the road
shaking his head easily
"if I hadn't
somebody else woulduv
damn fool
oughta thank me"
the sun's tent collapses
folds of dark radiance
one might almost say
the bushes are burning
26
a slow opening
as I scratched boom-bristles
across your reflection
on wet oilcloth
attempting to lean
into the bend
of the flow
rain will pull you
into a million
flesh-colored drops
while your sea-paled hair
floats lifting
old men moan in traction
using you without labor
30
mosaics on the floor
imitate the movements
of Time
toward light
let me see
a hovering wind
shifted apart primordial waters
and the Earth's belly
emerged
stand at the navel
at the gate
of the well
lean over against the ridge-pole
of heaven
mosaics glow
patters intricate but
discoverable
dance
the sky opening
35
Untwining
through the
bewildering complex
of animal in-
sect nature-
al procedures
by a slow accumulation
of knowledges
* [use BACK to return to text]
"We will find [our terms, images, models] at the center of
the perceptual apparatus, where the inner and outer worlds meet, are
formed, resolved, dissolved, reformed."
A long time after writing this sentence, I worked up the models
you'll find in my book Waking The Poet,
which you can read online. It's a tough way in for even the
non-casual reader. A gentler introduction to the underlying concepts
can be found (on this site) in The
Mystery of Place, a magazine article I have put up here.
Since writing annotations for my poems (in the books online), I've
come to articulate again and again a fundamental sense in handling
metric: It's always the phrasing and the entity is the
phrase, the partial phrase, the implied phrase –
together with a felt beat, marked (sometimes) in various ways.
Instead of feet, with their footprints and sequencing, think
of the phrase, whole, partial or partial with a known whole
implied, as the structural member you're fitting into place. That's
just a shimmering idea to take back with you on returning to the
text and poems above...
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