FOUR POEMS FOR THE BERKELEY POETRY CONFERENCE

RED HEARTS, WHITE ROCK
        for Kimberly


You believe it all.
I believe none of it.

We hear thunder in The Bohemian Grove.
They're making war, you say.

You believe it all.
I believe none of it.

The reason you are here
is to help us in the flesh with the flesh.

I watch you dance a dance as old as space
while the world goes to the fat cats.

You believe it all.
I believe none of it.

COMMENT

ROBERTA SOLTEA'S RAMBLING ROSE

Flesh of Fire by Roberta Soltea. Paperwaster Press, 2003.

  In 1824, Shelly hazarded the opinion that all poems were parts of one immense poem written by all the poets, past, present and future. One hundred twenty years later, Jorge Luis Borges extended this idea, feeling that the almost infinite world of literature was in one person—he was Walt Whitman, he was Thomas De Quincey, David Bromige, Roberta Soltea.
  In her plagiarist novel, Flesh of Fire, Soltea's heroine, Annabelle Rose, travels through time to have conversations with famous authors, giving them plots and dropping metaphors. Annabelle has dinner with Emily Dickinson, and they discuss how "nerves sit ceremonious like tombs." She visits Shih Huang Ti, the first Emperor of China, and encourages him to burn all the books that had been written so far. Although the works of Confucius and Lao Tzu have since resurfaced, those of Kuc Xing and Laun Dri are lost to the world. She visits Adam and interviews him as the greatest author of his day, seeing monotheism as a stimulus to art and proclaiming Genesis morphological to all future literature. It is her idea that, in the beginning, the earth was without form and void.
  Midway through the novel, Annabelle Rose transports Thuragania, a pre-Socratic philospher, into the near past and introduces her incognito to Jack Kerouac. Their conversation is witty and intimate, full of wisdom and insight, and the gullible Jack, in a fit of infatuation, decides to follow her across America. Suddenly, out on Irving near 19th Avenue bound for the coast, Jack, seeing a yoga studio where there was a class in Qigong going on and our lady doing the exercise bird that flies with conscious intent, said "Hey, dude, you understand poetry is all one poem," and Jack made a tremendous soaring wobbling pass at the chick, and she caught the ball, saying "further, further," and out they went into the star-speeding night laughing and teetering in joy of their artistic power.
  Near the end of Flesh of Fire, Whitman's dog gives a yawp when he hears Jack proclaim that the grass that liberates itself is the same grass which grows wherever the land is and the water is. This Whitman also lived in previous poets. His secret autobiography reveals that he was a cavalry officer in the nearly mythical wars of Charles XII—wars that turned Votaire, a mechanical engineer, into an epic poet, completely against common sense. But, then, it was Voltaire who said that humans consider common sense so common that no one needs more of it.
  All poems are one poem. All poets, one poet. And history, as revealed in Flesh of Fire, is a preamble in the third person telling the story of a heroine who is writing a faux autobiography. Nothing really exists, yet we derive pleasure from the play of lights and winds.

BOUVARD PÉCUCHET

A SWEET PROSE SEQUENCE

While You Were Watching by Monica Peck. dPress, 2002.

  This is a sweet prose sequence of great phenomenal clarity. "Come here," Peck writes. "Come out of that inkwell. This is the face I want to show you. Forget the others you have seen of me. Forget how I look as I am just stepping out of my door first thing in the morning, dragging my bicycle onto the stoop, helmet unclasped, pantlegs rolled above the knee." A beautiful little book of loss and desire in urban landscapes. And the language is rich, never missing. The motion is in the cadence.