Alcuin at Aa[X]en: Part V

V.

Before the elephant: All war is terrorism,

Alcuin thinks, understanding also

that Charlemagne mastered it. And it explains

horses. Majestic form, yes— the musculature of shoulders,

the ligature to sleep standing up. Speed, size,

these, too, for the war machines. But a history

of war, and therefore a history of man, is the history

of vision. (This is true, also, for primitive

infantry, U Boats, and IEDs.) See, monocularly,

the horse is afforded nearly the circle. 350 degrees.

The full set, of course, is itself nothing short of terror:

to see everything that surrounds you at once,

the burden of sight never pardoned, never lightened,

with some tranche of blindness. Which is why

we witness the damnation of the hammerhead shark,

cursed cephalofoil to school in the day, as the light

of the sun, even filtered in the reaches of the deep sea,

is humiliating, not in the exposure of its grotesquerie,

but in the illumination of the oceanic void. God

gave it no gift of mercy with the night: to hunt alone

in 360 degrees of dark. Void of voids.

Alcuin, in all likelihood, knew nothing

of Sphyrnidae sphyrna, but he was versed

in voids and leviathans, and perhaps could concede

some validity in the proposition that the beasts of

aqua incognita coexisted with God prior to

creatio ex nihilo. Such is to see all.

Charlemagne knew, though, that terror,

like power and faith, and well, most things,

is a continuum. There is the terror of knowing all,

and there is the terror of not knowing some.

The terror of the limited: this is the terror of the horse.

Vision denies the horse a narrow band behind him—

perhaps 3 degrees or so at most, a moderate

occlusion of the past. And vision denies

a thicker band before him—10 minus 3 degrees

or so, a greater obstruction of the future.

Charlemagne so computed, and his elephant—

a gift from the Abbasid caliphate Harun al-Rashid

in Baghdad during some nebulous negotiations

in pursuit in vain of an even more nebulous alliance—

accompanied him on marches. Not its size,

but its sudden size before the eyes of the horse:

they would buck, flee, flail, collapse, and not a few

would die of heart failure, so incomprehensible

the unexpected mass of an elephant striking the retina.

No optic nerve can handle such data overload.

We egregiously underestimate Charlemagne's

understanding of horses, which is to say

of man, if we deem his elephant a secret weapon

against horses, which is to say against men.

Man cannot see most of what flanks him,

which explains inconsistencies in empathy

and the consideration of alternate perspectives.

And can see none of what falls behind him.

This explains his knotted relationship with the past:

the prevailing notion of linear temporality,

the high incidence of OCD (there is no need

for diagnosis; this too is a continuum), the inflated sense

of invincibility, and the universality of complex ritualism.

His stereoscopic vision, further, rendered him expert

of swinging from tree to tree, which gave rise

to his thumb, which in turn pushed forth the advent

of his advanced cortex and, to make a long story short,

his fear of death: the core of his consciousness.

Thusly are horses and men attracted—

the one to run, the other to think of it.

and both to dance in terror and knowing,

Alcuin, before Charlemagne and his elephant.

Man's vulnerable cranium, the horses vulnerable legs.

Charlemagne: elephant, vulnerable eye.

John K., 11/3-12/1/2009

Viaduct (Eclogue 6)

for Jon G.

There is a man

who walks across

the viaduct.

His shadow cast,

another self,

from the street lamps

at this time

when it is late enough—

but not too late.

In the distance,

church bells,

trains. While below,

the cars,

much in the way

of the river:

different, but not

different enough.

In this light enough,

his shadow

now extends

onto the highway

past the point

we can no longer

see. Listen to

the bells,

the trains,

the cars,

but hear most

the footsteps.

It is brave to be afoot.

John K., 11/9/2009, 10:06-10:18 PM

Alcuin at Aa[X]en: Part IV

IV.

The scientific method as formulated by Descartes

has its origins, obviously, in orthopraxy

and has everything to do with God.

Charlemagne's prescribed sequence of motion

makes the fact quite plain: arriving at truth

is a ritual. Charlemagne would unsheathe his sword,

which heavy-hilted blade he was never without,

consider the reflection of the lambent flames

on the metal for awhile, and gently lay it across

his bureau on top of his loosely organized stack

of memos, invoices, and manuscripts.

The emptied sheath still girded to his hip,

Charlemagne would then pace in silence for,

as Alcuin determined, exactly 51 steps.

Yes, Alcuin was a compulsive hoarder of

figures, and is said to have first discovered

(for himself, not for all mankind, to be sure)

that 51, despite its looks, is not a prime number.

Alcuin could easily discern Charlemagne's affinity

for the number 3...but 17? This would cause

Alcuin to lose some sleep.

To have a knack for numbers, as we now know,

is to have a knack for God, which knacks

Alcuin had. He kept precise, nay, fastidious

tallies of the local sports teams:

wins, losses, ties, of course, but many other

hieroglyphic statistics such as arrow-to-target ratios

and lance/visor averages. In this, Alcuin anticipated

two of the most important inventions since the death of Christ:

baseball record-keeping and algebra.

Muslim scholars, not so incidentally, were way ahead

of the Europeans on the latter with al-jabr—

"the mending of broken bones," and thus "reunion,"

which allowed for the synthesis

of the rational and the irrational. Through numbers,

surely, but more profoundly, in some great theophanic

insight, through a way of seeing God.

At this point, Charlemagne: Let us retire to the stable.

The King re-sheathed his sword; Alcuin tucked parchments

under his arm. And both were the same gestures.

On their way, the pair picked up a chaliced cocktail to-go,

and, for the sake of the good form, would humor

a servant to escort them through a labyrinthine route,

a different servant and thus a different route each time,

up newel stairs through the curtain walls to the allure,

under which gemmed firmament all men

must disrobe the various fashions and accessories

of disagreement to stand, wonderstruck, as one

to pledge their allegiance to the stars.

Here, Charlemagne would place his drink

in an ope of the crenellations and remove his sword

once more. Then to enact an intricate and elegant

folk dance of swordwork.

There was a Northumbrian rhythm to it, which warmed

Alcuin with nostalgia, though he couldn't fathom

where Charlemagne picked it up so fluently:

accents, as they say, are the greatest

challenge in acquired multilingualism.

So Alcuin watched and could only speculate what

Charlemagne thought each time he swung

the blade in arcs that doubled the man's height;

according to his face, Alcuin concluded,

widows and orphans.

After some time, enough time for some star

to travel some distance larger than any man

could ever hope to count, a heavy-breathed

Charlemagne returned his broadsword

and, no louder than in his voice of conversation,

called for a servant. A different one, of course, quickly

arrived to lead the two down the far curtain

to the stable at the end of the stables,

whose rafters the King had his court architect

adjust to accommodate Abu l'-Abbas:

the Emperor's beloved elephant,

in whose presence Charlemagne would begin

the dance of the tongue, to utter

the language of the puzzle.

Alcuin at Aa[X]en: Part III

III.

Puzzles. Contradictions.

Here we have this churl:

Rex Francorum, Rex Langobardoum, Imperator Romanorum—

for the love of God—who grudgingly slipped into

the chlamys only at the entreaty of Hadrian the Pope.

Never even went back to Rome after the coronation realpolitik.

This man, given to otter skins and tireless activism for

Liberal Arts education. Measuring up to, as disinterment

by the Victorian scientists evaluated, 6.2416 repeating

feet. This man, downright draconian when it came to

the conquest and conversion of the polytheists,

not to mention all the credal manipulations with the

Filoque, the spleenfulness over iconoclasm and the like.

We're discussing some serious standardization:

yes, there were the stable systems of manufacture

along with, for the times, impressive quality control.

But in his dim, hand-cramped scriptoria

we have the birth of the miniscule. And punctuation.

Finally a readable Benedictine rule.

This man who chafes at imperial coronation fancies

himself an administrator. Of all things. In the age

of high Christology, Alcuin settles into

Charlemagne's crude wooden throne.

There was the dance. More like orthopraxy,

if we are to do our due diligence in the matter.

Alcuin did his best to remain modest about it, though,

and I think we can comfortably say he was

successful—even gracious—in his humility.

And had he lived to see Middle English

and Old French he would have been broadly pleased

with the etymology of the word. Humilis,

"on the ground," from humus, "earth." Primary

meanings indicate semantic exactitude with

terra, but, of course, Alcuin understood

(the quickest glance at his palimpsests will assuage

your doubts on this one) that words do not work

this way. Charlemagne right around this time

would take the first steps of his dance,

the dance given to respectful observance of

the holy mysteries of the puzzle.

Yes, technically Alcuin had authored the puzzle:

as Charlemagne saw it was indeed the hand

of Alcuin that made the puzzle appear on the parchment,

but it was the mind of God that made the puzzle appear

in Alcuin's hand. Alcuin didn't disagree. In fact

couldn't, as there was not even available to him

in their day a theory of pure authorial intentionality,

and, if there was, it would have been impious

and therefore head-on heresy. But, in his characteristic

being-ahead-of-his-time, there was likely the smallest

mustard seed in his head about a theologically sound

framework for a trinity of God, man, and imagination

(with, and the etymology works beautifully here,

imagination serving as the Holy Ghost)

that wouldn't have toppled Aristotle's scaffolding

of the first mover, which, incidentally,

is the beginning of physics. Alcuin knew this,

even if he didn't have a word for it: that to be

a theologian is to be a scientist.

Alcuin at Aa[X]en: Parts I & II

While I normally balk at expounding my poems, my latest work is so unusual for me that I believe it warrants something of an introduction. Several days ago, while scanning a number of articles on the New York Times online, I came across mention of one, Alcuin, who served as Charlemagne's puzzlist—and, of course, leading court scholar, poet, teacher, and theologian. Struck by the magnificent oddness of this historical fact, I, without premeditation, started to write a poem about Alcuin and Charlemagne. With neither plan nor design, the poem simply started to pour out of me. The tone is informal and conversational; the diction is at once colloquial and specialized; the form, especially in terms of lineation and stanzaic length, is organic. The content, moreover, is most uncharacteristic of my poetry: I weave together prior knowledge of the time and figures, facts and images about the time and figures casually gleaned from the internet and passed off as assumed knowledge, and my own imaginings of the characters, thoughts, and actions of and about Alcuin and Charlemagne. There is, upon reflection, a level of the poetics of John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara in the poem, albeit subconsciously. I give you the first two parts:

Alcuin at Aa[X]en

I.

When he tired of the evening news

King Charlemagne would call for a digestif.

Not that he wouldn't get it for himself, in fact, would so

prefer, but his servants insisted on it.

There was always the concern of

good form. That didn't govern him, we need to be sure,

but it seemed to put everyone else at ease. Plus, with the mess

of layoffs and questions about the definition of monarchy

and the economy, it was...easier.

So he gave in, for their peace of mind, really,

as when he settled on donning that cumbersome diadem only

when the French ambassadors showed up at court.

A few sips in, well, a few sips into his second,

Charlemagne would call for a third (let's be honest)

and a fourth—no, this one's not for him—

which, his veteran servants knew, and the really sharp

ones remembered to include in the training of the new hires,

meant that the King was really putting in a call

for Alcuin. Charlemagne pretended he didn't know

(he's the father of Europe, after all)

but in the buttery and bottlery

the servants joked that Old King Carol must be constipated

again. Constipated, we take it, because Alcuin had stumped

him again with one of his puzzles. And thus the...digestif.

Well, Alcuin humored Charlemagne by pretending not to know,

which, it must go without saying, Charlemagne himself was

aware. What is it, my Lord? A hearty laugh would ensue

and with a manly smack on the back, Charlemagne:

You know, you always were my greatest acquisition.

More laughter, and some wisecracks about heresy.

In these moments Alcuin didn't miss

the winters of York as much. Maybe the warmth

of the digestif loosened him up a little more but

Master Flaccus felt the King took after his own heart

because they both understood that poetry and theology

were really no different from puzzles.

II.

Alcuin, was, shall we say, fond of subtleties and

contradictions. In the marginalia of his parchments

of Vergil's Eclogues—it was difficult, indeed, to decipher,

through the oat bran and milk residue,

given how worked over they are in palimpsests.

For example, he was obsessed for a time with

lines 37-41, Eclogue 8. The mala and malus, particularly,

although from what we can make of his annotations

this passage he believed key to the whole of the work:

Once with your mother, in our orchard hedge,

I saw you, a little girl, plucking dewy apples—

I was your guide—I scarcely had entered

my twelfth year, barely could I reach

the fragile boughs. I looked, and I was lost.

The pun, see, is mala (neuter plural, very important)

"apples" and malus (masculine singular, also important) "evil,"

though the best translation of the latter must have tortured

him. The garden scene, 12 years of age, apples and evil:

for a man who wrote, for God's sake, De fide Trinitas,

these things simply must leap out at you.

Contemporary scholars spill more ink on the issue of

the palimpsests, though. The prevailing theory goes

that some sacerdotal disapprobation convinced Alcuin

to scratch out the apple musings, as if he was onto too much,

though more likely it undermined some minor footnote

in a certain archbishopric press release

against the Saxon paganism, especially in the wake

of the Basques' obliteration of the troops

in the Pass of Roncesvalles. It does deserve mention,

however, that there is a fairly novel hypothesis gaining some

currency: that Alcuin, a man keen on forms, viewed

the palimpsest, as form, namely, as puzzle. Thus wittingly

tampered with his commentaries—a puzzle

for posterity to decode. Or at least tinker with. Either way,

it's a genius tactic to land some kind of immortality.

John K., 10/21-10/23/2009

Organ Music (Elegy 2)

The known world:

mother, thigh.

Overhead

the mystery of other

heads, strange

language of other voices.

Laughter. Shrieks.

Carnival is the organ music

that spins with

the green and white

wheels of light;

with the paper lanterns

in subtle swing on the strings

dangled between the yellow and blue

tented booths,

where the music smells of

roasted almonds, popcorn,

and hums

with the hiss of friers

and the fitful clack

of rings and buzzers,

mallets and bells;

past the games

and beyond the faces,

through this perimeter

the music

joins the swirling heart

of laughter and shrieks—

Child sees

there is another world

given

between the bodies,

opened

in the changing

direction of the laughter

and the shrieks.

Sees it is through the music

the light

spins and swings

the wheels and lanterns.

Sees a music

given to itself.

In this,

child has lost

mother, thigh,

but, given as breath,

must bear out

the absence:

to grasp at air

in which hover

the other heads,

the other voices,

thrust into

the other world

past the perimeter of bodies.

Child learns

to be lost, is—

the carousel of horses

with golden rods

through their hearts,

condemned to

the instant of terror.

If only there were saddles

for their savaged eyes,

if only there were bridles

for their mouths, pried

open in delirious

laughter and shrieks

that issue

in the quavering pitch

and unalterable

loudness

from the steaming calliopes

of their hearts.

Other Gardens, Other Nights (Eclogue 5)

As to better see a moon

we defer, as bodies, to the earth

in subtle and soft folds among the stalks

of luminescent hyacinth, and near enough to

the stone of our fallen figures for the warmth

of their newly flowering flesh.

In the garden,

at night. It is a garden of bodies. Of our bodies.

Pluck the moon that bends

the hyacinth to your lips, lift

its perfume to your nose. Take in its

light—it will bring sleep.

The bats are restless in their whorls, and must be.

They mark our heads with the number.

The number of all numbers. The wilderness of numbers:

Infinity. Sleep.

I will count the passing hours in your ribs,

the days in the phases of your lunar breast

as the moon travels through your body

into the bed of your womb.

Infinite womb. The garden of gardens.

I will not fall

asleep. Your body illuminated

fends off the bats from descending into my eyes,

and the city behind us—its ghosts as restless—

will not in tenebrous shudder pulse a pulse to match the truly

beating heart's. You are to dream,

dream past the edges of all sound, through

the face of the dark and the face of the water

at the other end of the infinitely-expanding

mind of God. There, you are to receive

a message.

Your hands sink into the earth,

your spine, your ribs. The last of your lunar

breast a crescent when, from your navel, emerges

the tree, the first and the last:

the tree of trees.

Your eyes two moons in the ground,

over which flash opalescent the myths

of the beginning, which are the myths of the

end. This myth of all myths.

And your mouth, another moon in the center

of the garden, speaks in the syllables of light

from the other end of the universe:

There are other gardens,

other nights; there are other trees—

a second tree of blossoming limbs

heavy with neglected pomegranates,

in a garden, beasts of earth

and birds of sky and fish of the threatening sea

restless in condemnation to

infinity, yoked to its burden.

A third tree. They were careful to split

the fruit to spill no juice on their fingers,

the seeds for planting, the seeds for an orchard

of trees, the orchard for a forest beyond the garden

for an earth of trees that block out the sun;

fourths and fifths, each a first and a last.

In the infinitely-expanding

mind of God there are infinite trees.

You wake in the terror

of the muteness of a tree. On your limbs,

pendent moons, and your branches,

heavy with marmoreal ribs.

And you cannot speak until the music

of the ribs ring with the direction of the wind—

it will come from the city behind us,

the city, real because we cannot see it,

and it will deliver the ghosts to scatter

the seeds of your moons. Some will fall to the earth

of the garden, some will fall

into the orbit of the bats. Some will rise

past the horizontal twilight into the womb

of the sky. And I will not sleep

until you speak with this music

of your ribs: the song of

salamanders and philomels,

of blood and ambrosia,

of thunder and first words.

The song of songs.

Rouses the Ghost: A Fragment

Sirens announce

a ghost

the trees are rattles

shaking immovable

in the earth

wet from long-awaited rain

quickens and pulse

even the wind surrenders

to the heavy-handed grope

silence.

John K., 12/10/2007, selected and edited from "Rouses the Ghost," 10/11/2009

Two Etymologies: Poetry & Art

I have a number of pots on the stovetop. "Bed: The Essay, Part II" and "On Direct & Indirect Experience: The Work of Art in The Age of Digital Reproduction" I have placed on the back burner. These are still climbing to their boiling points. I have started "Meta-Crisis: Some Thoughts & Concerns about Art," but must let it simmer for now, as to synthesize better the ingredients. Then there is Bed: The Sequence, poems about the bed. This sequence, I am thinking, may organize itself around the 7 Valences I discussed in "Bed: The Essay, Part I." The number 7 is irresistible, but I don't want to script a recipe for it. And we also have my ongoing Eclogues and Elegies, which have no recipe, as I am striving to embody the precepts and principles of seriality. Plus, I feel a new poem emerging out of a conversation I had with a friend this weekend. I am not sure whether it will become an "Eclogue" or an "Elegy" or neither. But I'd hate for it to be a Spicerean "one-night stand" poem.

In the meantime, let's get back to the basics with a couple of etymologies. In this edition, I want to look at two cornerstone words in our creative lexicon: poetry and art.

Poetry

Poetry (along with its archaic cousin poesy and the suffix -poiesis, among other incarnations) first derive from, you guessed it, Latin, by way of French forms that are nearly identical to their English cognates. The Latin roots have three permutations. Poēsis is the "art of poetry"; poēma is a "poem" or "poetry" in the collective; poēta is a "poet," "playwright," a "person of great skill," or an "artist." Each has a Greek ancestral equivalent that ultimately originate from the Greek verb, poieo (ποιέω). The verb is flexible and polysemous, meaning "make," "do," "produce," "be the author or cause of," "prepare," "acquire," along with a slew of other variations. This word, in turn, comes from the Proto-Indo-European *k^u̯ei-, which means to "stow," "gather," or "pile up." The root is embodied in a handful of Indic languages, and means the same as the root, with a few delightfully rich variations: the Sanskrit, kāya, "body," and citrakāya, "tiger" (literally, "speckled-body," giving us the word cheetah.)

The etymology of poetry is wonderfully tangible and apropos to what I think poetry, in fact, is. Poetry is very much a made thing, a pile of sounds and images gathered and arranged, a heap of stowed meaning. The etymology reminds me of Frost's "The Wood-Pile," of Stevens' "Man on the Dump," of Lorine Niedecker's "condensery" in her "Poet's Work," of Duncan's "Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow." The etymology of poetry, I am sure, was not lost on Duncan.

Art

Art (with its kin artifice, article, and co.) derives from the Latin ars, artis—a feminine noun primarily meaning "skill," "craft," and "trade" used frequently to refer to the work of craftsmen, tradesmen, and, well, artisans. While the word does secondarily mean "a work of art," it also signifies such things as "invention," "trick," and "stratagem." But the meanings don't stop there, as ars diversely denotes "military tactic," "manner," "method," "means," "science," "theory," "profession," "occupation," and so on.

Artifice is a combination of ars and facere, "do" or "make," thus forming the sense of "a making by skill."

The Proto-Indo-European source is the simple *ar-, meaning to "fit," "suit," and to "join." The cognates in Indo-European are far too abundant to list, but here are few of the very many English ones:

adorn

arm (body part; weapons)

army

alarm

arithmetic

order

ratio

read

rhyme

rite

Math, science, reading, religion, war—all arts, all telling the story of man.

The etymology of art reminds us of art's physicality: of colors, sounds, shapes, rhythms, notes, motions, lines orderly ordered, suitably suited, fittingly fitted. But, more importantly, of colors, sounds, motions, etc. joined in novel, challenging, and unexpected ways. Art is not first of the intellect, but of the hands, of the body, of things, of the world.

Details are thanks to my Amsco Latin Dictionary (2nd ed.), www.etymonline.com, The University of Texas at Austin's Indo-European Lexicon available at http://bit.ly/2HDcgC.