“No harm resulted from this.” There’s
something to be said for that!
I might be wrong, but I think
this is the first time a plant of any kind has been mentioned in The Dream Songs. I can’t think of a
flower, a blade of grass—something rainy or jungly in the ones about India? I
don’t think so. I could page through the volume and find an exception, perhaps,
but I’ve given these poems as much attention over the last two and a half
months as anyone ever has. If I say I can’t think of a mention of plants, then
that’s something!
The book grew as a tree. Not
necessarily a brand new metaphor, but it’s striking to get it in the midst of
all this urbane craziness and lust and despair, so that there’s something
comforting and even wonderful about that flashing & bursting tree. It’s a
good feeling. I haven’t published a book yet, but I’ve written a couple. There’ll
be more to come, too. I think it would be a nice moment when you hold your book
in your hand for the first time, and look at the words on the pages, knowing
that there is flashing & bursting in there to be released, as if a reader,
by reading, is holding a match to an otherwise gray and boring sparkler. We
know something’s latent in there, and it took a crapload of work to make it
such. As messed up as he was, B. knew accomplishment and pride too. If dogs and
others pee on it, doesn’t matter. He did it. And as a result, eventually, this
remarkable thing begins to “strike the passers from despair”. I think this
means it strikes them out of their
despair, not because of it. Books can
do that. Even the darkest stuff—Elie Weisel’s Night, Upton Sinclair’s The
Jungle, Francisco Goya’s The
Disasters of War—redeem through witness; they work to transform darkness and
madness and cruelty by exposing it. Place 77
Dream Songs in that company.
There's a tree in DS 1!
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