Michael Scharf, p.1
THE LECTURE
First
thoughts
afford
expectations,
not models
exactly (meaning
anger
on account of spurned beauty) but
errors of the once
much admired:
terrible burnt cork smell,
ephedrine dried.
I get a sense of your wisterity,
hyacinthocity, some rant
or
experience
I’m having
I can’t organize myself.
The merits of having something to work
out or address,
fluctuating grandiosity—
defensive,
elaborated,
sequenced.
Took it out on the Boesendorfer,
a sort of “An Die Musik” for newly
minted Adèsian interpreters.
Moved the lecture this year
from the month of the death to the fall,
a more
wonderfully
abstracted memorial,
fully elaborated material.
There were three caskets:
gold, white
gold, silver,
platinum, lead.
The first contained several Bronzino
reproductions.
The second, if confronted
with such a speech,
flushes out the false notes,
a brilliant detection of the pathetic,
asbestos mixed up in the plaster for green
ceiling burial. He chooses the leaden casket—
the star of youth,
“the Pole-star’s
eldest boy”
but let us be content with Cordelia,
Aphrodite,
Cinderella, and Psyche.
Anyone might make
a wider survey, could undoubtedly
discover other versions of the same theme,
preserving the same three
essential features, completely
inner-directed. If we
have the courage to proceed
in the same way,
the third’s certain peculiar qualities
might strike us as excellent:
a flurry of work about 19th century New York;
utopia in Frankfurt; and something Steve
said Mallarmé said (“Mes larmes, they’re arming!”)
might make the transference never beaver,
take us through the next renewal.
Comparisons between the work of figures
never known and Alan or Amy,
a nominal easiness that allows a tossing off,
a sort of fussy numbness,
a tincture shot under derma,
a blister puck risen to absorb rays.
The three princesses asked for a sound-
proofed room, three separate alcoves
off a common area.
Perfidy. The external factor
which may be described
in general terms as frustration, meaning
being
unmet, stethoscope trumpeting fate
in a flush of broken capillaries.
Substitution, a methadone
for the understanding,
a neo-vagina for the birth-cathected
Oedipus, the possibility of falling ill
arises within limitations imposed on the field,
despondent prize of accessible
satisfactions. Frustrated,
pathogenic, dammed
up and explosive,
lack of response transforms
physical tension into active energy
toward the external world,
eventually
exhorting a real satisfaction—
attainment of aims
no longer erotic,
realized in men’s lives.
This is the Zurich school, regression
along infantile lines
falling ill, fulfilling the demands
of reality.
Perfidy. An evidential dream.
Poems as screen
memories. My crumb my
mansion, my stanza
my stone; a visit of the partner’s,
a room for our privates.
Tantalus
in brown wood,
ceiling beams
glimpsed
through lathing, 130 years
of roasting and freezing,
a cryogenic
nursery, virulent pastures
probably
raising a bigger turkey
for trussing,
knowing what we know
about butchering
and salting.
Bird fussing.
Fertility
in
a mountebank.
First
thoughts
afford
expectations,
not models
exactly (meaning
anger
on account of spurned beauty) but
errors of the once
much admired:
terrible burnt cork smell,
ephedrine dried.
I get a sense of your wisterity,
hyacinthocity, some rant
or
experience
I’m having
I can’t organize myself.
The merits of having something to work
out or address,
fluctuating grandiosity—
defensive,
elaborated,
sequenced.
Took it out on the Boesendorfer,
a sort of “An Die Musik” for newly
minted Adèsian interpreters.
Moved the lecture this year
from the month of the death to the fall,
a more
wonderfully
abstracted memorial,
fully elaborated material.
There were three caskets:
gold, white
gold, silver,
platinum, lead.
The first contained several Bronzino
reproductions.
The second, if confronted
with such a speech,
flushes out the false notes,
a brilliant detection of the pathetic,
asbestos mixed up in the plaster for green
ceiling burial. He chooses the leaden casket—
the star of youth,
“the Pole-star’s
eldest boy”
but let us be content with Cordelia,
Aphrodite,
Cinderella, and Psyche.
Anyone might make
a wider survey, could undoubtedly
discover other versions of the same theme,
preserving the same three
essential features, completely
inner-directed. If we
have the courage to proceed
in the same way,
the third’s certain peculiar qualities
might strike us as excellent:
a flurry of work about 19th century New York;
utopia in Frankfurt; and something Steve
said Mallarmé said (“Mes larmes, they’re arming!”)
might make the transference never beaver,
take us through the next renewal.
Comparisons between the work of figures
never known and Alan or Amy,
a nominal easiness that allows a tossing off,
a sort of fussy numbness,
a tincture shot under derma,
a blister puck risen to absorb rays.
The three princesses asked for a sound-
proofed room, three separate alcoves
off a common area.
Perfidy. The external factor
which may be described
in general terms as frustration, meaning
being
unmet, stethoscope trumpeting fate
in a flush of broken capillaries.
Substitution, a methadone
for the understanding,
a neo-vagina for the birth-cathected
Oedipus, the possibility of falling ill
arises within limitations imposed on the field,
despondent prize of accessible
satisfactions. Frustrated,
pathogenic, dammed
up and explosive,
lack of response transforms
physical tension into active energy
toward the external world,
eventually
exhorting a real satisfaction—
attainment of aims
no longer erotic,
realized in men’s lives.
This is the Zurich school, regression
along infantile lines
falling ill, fulfilling the demands
of reality.
Perfidy. An evidential dream.
Poems as screen
memories. My crumb my
mansion, my stanza
my stone; a visit of the partner’s,
a room for our privates.
Tantalus
in brown wood,
ceiling beams
glimpsed
through lathing, 130 years
of roasting and freezing,
a cryogenic
nursery, virulent pastures
probably
raising a bigger turkey
for trussing,
knowing what we know
about butchering
and salting.
Bird fussing.
Fertility
in
a mountebank.