This was the first part of a three part (unplanned) email to Stephen "outside"
the group messages in the emailed, plain-text "digest". The most important
thing for you to pick up on here is how to handle replies to messages that
become the "pages" (actually, scrolls) in a set like this. My email is at
the top and it is a scroll in this set. But not even the Subject line makes
sense if you haven't read Stephen's message from the digest. So, both have
priority. We have a "folded up" dimension....
Hyperlinking is our way of handling
this. At the top of my letter, above the salutation, is a link. Click on
it and you are "beamed" down the page to Stephen's prior message. You have
only to click the link and read the two letters on the scroll in reverse
order. The "page thumber" above, and on each scroll in the set, extends your
ability to "move around" as you read. This, of course, is why
Waking is online and in a downloadable .zip file. In your personal
library, you can "web" your books—highlighting and marginalia
included.
I take Stephen's tour around that book,
the outside of it, and then on in.... The Subject line would have been
simply "Book". You can see why I went beyond what was given.
Stephen will guide you in looking over a
book and give you some useful advice on looking into this book, what to
expect and what not to expect. I'll talk about why I built this
book the way I did and how all of that is a sort of cosmic typesetting. I end
each part of the letter with a poem. It's not added on, it's not
demonstration or illustration. I finish my "argument" in the poem. Other
poems in the letter are ...well, "pre-fab" paragraphs, of a sort. Just read
all this as any other "correspondence" and don't get trapped in any question
that intrudes. Muse over a question if it's interesting. Otherwise, throw it
into the back of your head (there's room there). At unexpected moments your
cognitive innards may throw up answers to questions you've forgotten
asking.
----- Page thumber:
Message offering the free book: a "kickoff" essay.
Message asking for responses, rewrite of the first essay....
Response to another message on "defining poetry" (relevant)...
Email to Stephen with his message ("Book") that I "answer" outside group messages.
Email to Stephen, part 2 of my "answer", weaving Waking into my poems.
Email to Stephen, part 3 of my "answer".
Phonemic instrument - a ship in a bottle? An "exploratory" essay...
Endpiece
Waking
section on Archive page.
----- Original Message -----
From: Gene Fowler
To: Stephen Morse
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 7:15 PM
Subject: Re: bookstore browser from ...heaven!
Stephen's message to the Group: Book.
Stephen,
Your description of how to look over, and
see, a book (or anything else) ought to be labeled a "lesson"....
And that, of course, is only your opening....
>
>
Thank you, Gene.
>
> Best,
> Stephen
>
And thank you, Stephen, for something that
transcends "good" and "bad" reviews, or reviews, period, and becomes a useful
instrument....
Just some shotgun bits and pieces here. I assume
[your message]'ll show up in the digest and I might play there, with some of it ...to draw a
few more in, maybe, not frighten anybody off, but set traps to waken
thinking, imagining.
Seminar in a book. That meant, I had to build a
book to contain the seminar.... That was 1979 and we didn't have all this
Web, eBooks and hBooks (hyperperfect-bound books) and talking books for kids....
It had to be more a book than any book had to be. But a box, too. And it had to
"unsettle" the browser, who unlike you, slides over books on the bookstore
shelves and tables, being hooked, maybe, by a title, a name, a coffee-table
thick-and-polish. That square-peg vortex.... The rabbit hole practically
unnoticed except by the bookstore browser from ...heaven. But I had to have
those promises on the cover, obvious hyperbole ...except, of course, I also had
to be totally truthful.... An impossible definition. Talent as crafts? Hearing
as a craft? But, just maybe.... I can't lie. Poets don't. Even when they
try....
Of course, blurbs on the back. Crazy blurbs by my
crazy friends...?
I use that quote from Bucky in the preface of each
of six essays on Bucky's Cosmography, a book length essay on
the current "dark ages". I've added an asterisk that pops up this bit of
marginalia...
Ahhh, those "juvenile" and "connate" waters, under
pressure.... He was being very generous about the nature and potential of my
intuition (since I didn't have much education to draw on) and, in the process,
of course ...confusing people who see only the opaque surface of the "hidden"
image....
And even an imprimatur! How book-like can this
...well, whatever it is... get? Here, the calm of the three circles. A
three-ring circus? Uh uh! Earth. Chinese rings that the magus (Earthian) links
and unlinks mysteriously.... When linked the audience member can't get them
apart. When not linked, the audience member can't get
them together.The magician seems to wave them in the air. Actually, they're
Great Circles and e (he or she) is moving them around the planet. When
linked, they're two meridians angled at 90-degrees and an equator.... Two
intersect in six places and the chords make an octahedron, two pyramids, base to
base.... So, what's the magus? An "intelligent designer"? Nah, just anybody
armed with a mind, able to see things into place.
What's re-geniusing? Bucky used to say we were born
geniuses and, then, with the best of intentions and with great love everybody
around us went about de-geniusing us.... We can normalize our terms and say we
are born geniusing, that it's a way of functioning or operating, and then
there's the de-geniusing pushing the geniusing off course.... So, course
corrections to end up where we might've would be re-geniusing.... Maybe. Just
word play....
Gotta knock this off and do other things. Here's
some word play....
PSYCHEDELOS
i
silver
backing flakes from the mirror,
falls
bright
snow
from the direction of the
Pleiades
each platinum faceted
pellet
coming
down
fast as
light
i catch
them
with the grace and shout
of a riveter
in a molecule thick membrane of
hand
a
hand filling the evening
sky
at my equator
-
ii
outside my room a
darkness
the trick
there is always a
trick
is in keeping an equalized
pressure
change it just a
bit
the skin of the
room waves like flags
joined
along their
edges
shape a
floor
to the texture of a
lovely girl
lie on
her
if you
can-can
if you
can-can
iii
Moon-woman
laughs
a
harmonium at play
her breasts are cones
ice cream spilling
over
sticky
threads lacing stars
together
O,
Moon-woman
turn from the
window
only a
darkness
lies beyond my
room
there is nothing to
await
and i am the great riveter
how much, in
gold
coin, so i may carry your child
her nipples were gold
coins
swollen to suns
in her quick
pregnancy
from across the raging
room
was our only way to love
i threw out
my love
and when i missed, great
furrows
were cleaved in her
flesh
but when those silver pellets
struck
she would throb and swell
and 300 things
would
come to be in my
room
iv
Sun-man, armed with
the compleat angle
-er
explores in
my room
the room is
rectangular
by
measure
a block of
oleomargarine
sliced into thin
sheets
it is a Holy
Book
the light-globe
people
are writing in
it
their dazzling
heads
melting the pages
together
bright
hieroglyphs
lost in chunks of
hardened
Greece
Sun-man rocks on fat
buttocks
popping globes
with silver rocks
i collect fragments
trying to read
over exploding
shoulders
v
the
crone
read my palm,
scraping away calluses
saving
them
in a stone jar
your
life-line
is hollow-stump peculiar
dark-kitten irregular
however i
rede
wherever i pick it up
it leads to the four corners
of the
room
you must, my dear
pulling my hips from me, jarring
them with
the calluses
;you musk, my
dear
flared
nostrils bat-flying
thru the
strands of room
feel a
map
lest you forget this
room
when the magic
physic
is
done
and you shrink to
solid-state
uncallused fingers
sorebright from cracked
safes
weave life-lines
thru points of light
with a quick
stitch
and a soaking up of
colors
vi
Sun-man is lecturing upon
litters and
scions
advancing
into awlcomy
the equator is one who
equates
the equated an
equature
in the beginning
was....
teacher, tell us of the
equinox
tell us again
of the lovely
equinox
equinox is the coroner
stone
the
frowndation
of awl
dumbocracy
a contraction of 'equal
knocks'
- for awl
awl is an only bard of murdern
kratosism
vii
WARNING
all mining must be confined to
the interior
the skin of
the room
may be pushed back, arranged
variously
but must not be
torn
or darkness will spill
in
reductive mining is
recommended
the miners are brawny fellows
cyclopian
corneal
lamp peering deep in
to dig what is
kneaded
without cutting threads of the
map
there are many bits of
pellet-element
all held apart by chunks of
rock
the task of the miner, to
ask
the bits to move inward
from the rock shell
and form an arrangement one might enter
the
miners expose their veins
i wear the bright
colors
viii
mirror,
mirror
on the
wall
who
is
billowing clouds of cotton candy
must
be packed into tiny ore-cars
for
delivery
the skin of the room
hides
behind
thickness, a
sickness
builds in my hope
Sun-man is gone, out the
window
Moon-woman is dead
the old crone in her lace of
answers
retreats to a
corner
of the ceiling
silver
comets fly to the
mirror
and strangers entering
the room
are opaque
Gene
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 9:02
AM
Subject: book
> I received my copy of Gene Fowler's book, "Waking the
Poet"
> yesterday. The old folk wisdom, " you can't judge a book by
its cover"
> notwithstanding, I always tiptoe around a new book,
examining the front
> and back covers; taking in the design, the
look and feel of the book,
> the tone of the book as it presents itself
to me, what it choses to
> reveal of itself in the endorsements, who the
endorsers are.
>
> I get a sense of what I
am looking at by exploring those external
> coverings. In a
bookstore, those externals guide my choices. If the
>
externals intrigue me enough, I page around inside, reading snatches of
>
the book, getting a sense of the structure of the book. I even read
> from the ending if it's not a "fiction" book.
>
>
A trip around the covers of "Waking the Poet" was
interesting. I
> found the design of the book somewhat unsettling,
as it reminded me of
> some those spiritual books designed to "show
you the light."
>
> The front cover
itself, dark blue with white text and a series of
> squares turning
within squares contributed to that sense. That and
> the fact
the cover almost seemed like an ad for the book: "No book on
> the
crafts of the poet you've ever seen even touches on the crafts this
>
book presents in clear, readable 'how-to' text!". This sort of claim
> is often hyperbole that leads to disappointment. It brings my
cynical
> side to the surface.
>
> The
back cover had excerpts and quotes from others, and those were
> much
more impressive, particularly when I read positive remarks from
>
Buckminster Fuller (including one intriguingly incoherent quote from
> Fuller, "one in ages connate poet") and E.J. Applewhite about both the
> book and the author.
>
> I became
genuinely interested in the contents of the book and began
> to read
randomly,end, beginning, middle. Just as I would have done if
>
looking at the book in a bookstore. Fowler's been around the poetry
> scene for decades, and even if I hadn't been corresponding with him
> recently, his name would have gotten me inside anyway.
>
>
I committed. I began to read from the beginning and
entered his
> seminars, for that's how the book is organized, as if each
chapter were
> an hour session with Gene as lecturer, teacher. A
fascinating
> structure as he began telling the students how to listen,
how to hear
> what he was presenting. I won't presume to summarize
his lectures at
> this point. There is a flow and progression to
them that would be
> damaged by my summaries. I would be
manipulating the reader into a
> perception that is uniquely mine, and
that would not be of any benefit
> to the reader or fair to the content
of Gene's lectures.
>
> I have only read
"3 hours" of the 10 hours so far. I can't believe
> how well Gene
articulates and leads the reader to what I "know" about
> being a
poet/artist. It is not an easy read, but if a reader persists
> in
reading with whatever understanding they can muster along the way,
> what
at first is confusing somehow comes together at the end of each
> hour in
a way that I recognize to be true.
>
>
The book originally was priced at $13.50 which in
1981 may have
> seemed a little steep, but I can tell you that as
a poet and teacher
> I would have considered it a bargain because
as Gary Elder says, "the
> damn thing works." I would
have happily "borrowed" from his
> "course".
>
>
Just a word to those looking for a "formula"
or some "plug and
> play " method for writing good
poetry. This book doesn't presume to
> negate the need
for learning craft, but it will help the poet
> assimilate the craft in
useful ways. Thank you, Gene.
>
> Best,
>
Stephen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
