THE COSMOLOGY OF FINDING YOUR SPOT
By Ed Dorn, 1969, Lawrence, Kansas
The Resistantism of all other places
On the floor among filters and the spillings
The cosmology of the floor of the Nation
The cosmology of finding your place
The cosmology of smelling and feeling your Natural place
inside the place, feeling the filters
feeling the rock, felling the roll
feeling the social spray at that level
low down, with the filters and the feet
feeling the place you can fold all four legs
and be man's best friend to the End, among the filters
and the feet, in the rock, and in the roll
in the clock and in the roll, in the hole
of the social bilge The Great White Dog
of the Rockchalk, seeks his place Seeks
The place for Him there, tries every scrap of Space
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
moves under the Social seeking his own Place
in the constant present snap of eternity
listening with the german dislocated castanet
His Nose Is under the great pin ball rolling in heaven above
thru the barren terrain of feet
He moves from place to place seeking his place
The resisters the dogs seek their place
WAYNE KIMBALL told me all this
WAYNE KIMBALL sits in the booths,
WAYNE KIMBALLknows about the The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk doesn't
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk has been there
Western Civilization is Beer
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
went thru the door of Western Civilization
Which is north of the Barbershop
and north of the sailor pants incense shop
The Great White Dog went between all that
and the Gaslight, The Great White Rockchalk Dog
shakes hands with both paws indiscriminately
For he Seeks his own true place on the floor
He disregards the social He seeks the Place
he seeks The Space his soul can occupy
In His restless search he looks only for the Place
Where he can come to rest in his own true Place
and that might be on the floor of the rockchalk
The great White Dog is not Interdicted by opinion
He accepts the floor of the Rock Chalk as an Area,
like any other, he will test that space
He is preoccupied only with the Search
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk is not social
WAYNE KIMBALL told me all this,
WAYNE KIMBALL
is social, he knows only persons, he doesn't
give a shit for the floor of the Rockchalk
WAYNE KIMBALL is neurotic like us, he wants
to smoke Grass,
WAYNE KIMBALL sits in the booths
WAYNE KIMBALL drinks beer, has a part time job
pretending to be literate,
WAYNE KIMBALL uses
the telephone and all other public Utilities
including Cocaine, The Great White Dog
of The Rockchalk is full of shit and can't shit
until he finds his place,
WAYNE KIMBALL has diarrhea
WAYNE KIMBALL hasn't got a driver's license
WAYNE KIMBALL is thin and knows everything that happens
He has ears, He is a corrupt little mongrel like us
turned on to everything hopeless and bullshit
The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk is dumb
and doesn't know anything but his instinct for the search
for his place somewhere in the litter
of the filters and the literally dropped dreams
of the Great Rock Chalk, he smells the dreams
on the floor dropped from between the legs
of young English majors, ejected from between the
Dual Spraycans of the fraternizers
He seeks his place on top of this matter
among the feet of the privileged nation on the floor
of the Great shit, Rock Chalk Rock Chalk White Rock
Calk Dog, And
WAYNE KIMBALL Smokes cigarettes
and Thoreaus them ontoOntoOntoOnto the floor
already predicated by cancer, the slow movement of Cancer
And I love these dogs because they are us and more us
than we are and they seek their places as do the true
whether they are Resisters or just scared or both
They are the twin dogs of creation in our image
and I give them both the floor as I give the Resisters
This Poem from the throne of Belief as the Egyptians
Gave and took from the Dogs Their access to Heaven
That we may all be Gods and seek our Place.
-ED DORN
i figured nobody else will download an ed dorn poem tonite so maybe i should
i am liking his poems more and more
i find myself returning to read them again
i feel close to this poem in that i've read it now twice
and i did some impromptu line editing
which may in fact be undermined as soon as i attempt
to publish the thing
any way
here goes
7 comments:
i want to apologize to ed dorn
post mortem
and say i like your overall design of the poem better than what i could do for it here
i must live with the injustice
of some destruction of the original order of your words
and i advise anyone who reads this poem to find the web site
http://www.vlib.us/beats/dorn.html
to live is to fly
both low and high
so sweep the dust out of your hair
and the sleep out of your eye
or something like that
i really like this poem i have read it over and over now about 6 times i like the drone tone dorn gets it reads like a drone in reciting this poem one would not want vey much by way of vocal affectaton at all
almost monotone
i adjusted the sense on thsi format by lining up all the allusions to wayne kimball
for when all is said and done the poem is about wayne kimball
and rock chalk
it's senseless to try to discuss anything else about this poem
so i won't
i first caught wind of dorn on silliman's blog
ve(r)y
affectat(i)on
Ed Dorn could scribble a bit but as with your example, much subjective mysticism in his verse. Did he enjoy brunch at La Misa too? I doubt it. Would he have been palsie with K-O? Nyet.
Have you ever perused that section of Pound's Cantos where he waxes Dantean, and envisions financiers, anglo-aristos, Calvin, and Winnie Churchill hisself resting in Hades? Quite bodacious (TS Eliot also included,methinx). That's poesy: not the narcissistic visions of the Greeleyans
curtis faville wrote a two part overview of dorn's early lyrics
i've re read it a few times
august 2009 on his blog
curtis knows how to aim the hammer and hit the nail on the head
just a suggestion read it
never heard of pound as a catholic he went to a baptist college wabash state or something like that
his love for dante for all things medieval is obvious in his verse
he was a man lost in his own research
that he settled in italy suggests his love for the ancient culture of catholicism but i don't know that he converted...that he may have visited churches and taken solace in the liturgy does not surprise me at all (wallace stevens used to stop and sit in churches and think...he converted at the end of his life)
many people did it long ago
many people would stop in and be mesmerized by the drama by the poetry even if they could
not understand
now everyone understands and it's not so interesting to just stop in
in the big cities liturgies would go on all day and they were open to the public
some churches like in NYC still practice the on going on the hour liturgy
i may at times sound a bit selfrighteously catholic but i try to live out the ecumenical spirit of openness to all christians to all peoples
what you wrote on kirbyz blog was not satire...kirby can take satire from anyone...your words sounded more like out and out attacks..and i dare say much of it was senseless...perhaps you don't write what you think...i can't say
i don't know if things like apologies happen on the blogosphere but were i coaching things i would say one is very much in order
pax romanum dude
jh
hey i was in lawrence kansas
not too long ago
i probably saw some
rock chalk there
i do remember white rocks
never heard of
wayne kimball though
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