stick not,
little tots

(pint error)
(lobed stump)

races expel
or insert rats

plat maps
to a cinder

expensive friends
latrine orchestra

hornets scrape

___________________


THE REDNESS EXPERT

sometimes it's messy
sometimes it's May [Mary?]

there is a curved [carved?] dark lie
where prisons have been won
in the "heart"

scrap, or
chin rattler
expenses

eat your inner orchestra
return to cinder

we advocate renown
via experiences in date race

cud hat seen in finest places
(crass resin expert love)

secret rat pulses
hated since 1957


Today's reading: Kenneth Koch's The Pleasures of Peace. What an antithesis to Robinson Jeffers, especially in the concluding title poem. Koch's poetry will never be a model for me, but his glee in writing, his energy--well, everyone who's read him knows about it. He is an inspiration as a writer. I love the moments in the list poems (like "Faces") where he seems to realize he can write anything he wants, and then does it--he can refer to anything as having a face, and say anything he can think of about it. And why not have a poem like "The Pleasures of Peace," which itself exemplifies one brilliant set of facets of the humanism we would like to have? His writing, which I've not been strongly attracted to for some time, keeps taking me by surprise in how far from shallow it can really be.