Posts tagged ‘John Berryman’

December 26, 2012

post holiday lego building

by jhon baker

Listening to The Black Keys and sitting with my son while he builds his Lego Teenage Mutant Turtle sets, earlier I built one of my own Lego sets. Big Ben. As an adult there is still the ever burning love for Lego.

The main concern after holidays is where to put all the new stuff – in my case it isn’t hard as I got clothes I needed, a few seasons of my favorite television show and a lot of books – but for the boy, more toys means a need to clear out space and think about donating things he has aged out of.

There is really nothing I have to say here. I am mostly out of the depression that lasted beyond my ability to handle – four months of complete darkness preceded by decent creative impulses and followed by a stiff climb out and a slight return to forms of creativity. I have started several poems and am thinking my way though the basic outline of a novel/memoir with embellishments and the ability to deny anything – This story is based on realish events and the people have altered names and are realish representations of the folks that they are modeled after – liberties will be taken where I do not want to relive certain things and where the truth is too strange to be believed. Nothing will be cranked up beyond reality because reality itself is often itself unbelievable. If I write it as fiction I can always deny that the hero of the tome is myself and as I’ve often said of poetry…

– never confuse the narrator of the poem with its author –

sound advice.

I think John Berryman said it first or best – I know it wasn’t my brain to come up with it and once I had heard the valuable teaching I was free then to really create. Some constraints are good and some work against you like good friends who never want us to become successful.

I was going to put a poem here but I think I’ll post twice instead.  – Jhon

February 26, 2012

A repost but I’ve been inspried to put this poem out there again today.

by jhon baker

a poem redacted, preface – JB

 

startled by impact

cumulative

a hunger for youth

 

he was fifty

J had seemed much older

as though

absorbed and consumed

in the very intensity

of his memory.

 

a matter of life

and death.

 

his ambition propelled

a

striking photograph in Life magazine

 

it would be eleven years.

his amours

turmoil

consumption of alcohol

alchemized

to represent the agon

essential attributes

syntax

tone

diction

cadenzas on carefully

tuned strings

allusion

meter

primal manifestations

to be difficult, “obscure”

obscene.

 

a besetting consideration

narrative accounts

or

the world seen through inebriation

dreams

a disjointed film

shapes

presences

identities

sometimes in mid sentence

often presumption

singular

voice and vision

effeminate

intimated, elusive

wild,

unbearably beautiful.

– Hoc Scripsi

 

and what the hell – here is another on the same subject…

 

 

October 25th

 

October 25th

and we celebrate the birth

of John Berryman.

heavy with the burden

of his smashed skull

and dream songs.

 

his final entry a comment

on the Washington Avenue bridge

in Minneapolis Minnesota.

 

– Hoc Scripsi