Peter Gizzi and Michael Palmer
Posted in 2014-2015 Readings and Talks
March 17, 2015
Seminar 5:30 PM | Lannan Center (New North 408)
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
From Apocrypha
— Peter Gizzi
Wisdom is a kindly spirit but does it love me? And righteousness? There’s nothing in it.
1. To poetry I leave my senses, my deregulation, custodial duties, and to be a janitor is a great consolation.
2. It gave me my mother back through all her years.
3. To love these children, so full of neurons and consciousness. What joy to clean up and put a shine on their mess.
4. To my mother I leave my veil, my wing, the window and time. I, artifact. In this age the hand is a voice.
5. I leave the voice, the wonder, the mirror, and my lens, bent and beholden to the worm, leaf-work in wrought iron, eerie illuminations and deep-sea vision.
6. I’ve seen the Eurostar, the drunken boat, and Davy Jones’ Locker. I’ve seen Spanish galleons and the H.S. Mauberley covered in brine.
7. There is this line from cloud dander to the solo bulb of mourning, a string through common prayer.
8. I like it when the gray-green shadows suddenly dayglo over the rushes. The wind in my head.
9. To write is an equal and opposite reaction my comrade, communard, my friendo.
–
Continue reading at “Apocrypha” on The Poetry Foundation’s website.
Read more about Peter Gizzi
Prose 22
— Michael Palmer
Plan of the City of O. The great square
curves down toward the cathedral. The
water runs out into night where the patron
saint still maintains his loft. He enters
from the lower level and pulls up the ladder
after him. The woman and children and
most of the old men spend their time painting
pictures of the ladder. The rest lay the
three kinds of stone or type the performance
for the eastern quarter. There the first
colony left its box-shaped mark. But
the sun always goes down in several places,
so the clocks serve as maps. And at the
end of the nearest mountain stands the
larger and less perfect box.
—
From The Paris Review (Fall 1970)
Read more about Michael Palmer