24 June 2014

Trying to understand

the grand confusion,

cathedral of inadvertencies

our vast kultur.

Everything is in it

“but not near the door.”

Immure yourself in circumstance

and let lust’s will win a window out

and a new door.  New doors are all we need.

Robert Kelly reads from his and Susan Quasha's new book, Winter Music, at T Space in Rhinebeck NY, 31 May 2014
http://youtu.be/vtvLSFOKA7Q

RK reads at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY, 22 April 2014

Tribute to Pierre Joris

RK interviews Anne Gorrick on Perfume & Poetry

RK: Blake clamored for us to enjoy "enlarg'd and numerous senses."  Curious that when back in the Psychedelic Era people quoted that, it was mostly to foster drug experiences--trans-sensual as they are.  What of enlarging the senses we already have (or are)? 


AG: Perfume is invisible.  Many people roll their eyes at it, as if you’re asking them to believe in ghosts.  There is a flaky, new age, intellectually negligent perception that surrounds scent.  But it’s an entire realm that is completely Proustian, sometimes plangent, dimensional, symphonic.  The first oudh (or agarwood) that I ever smelled gave me the impression that I had walked into a new room.  It created a space that I could now inhabit.  I think it’s funny that we can all agree on what we see, what we hear, what we taste and feel.  But not necessarily on what we smell.  It’s as if we don’t have the language yet for the sense of smell, but we’re working on it.

Robert, why do you think the sense of smell reverberates for us, as shimmering as memory?  Our other senses are more straightforward.  It’s as if every scent has the potential to sepia at the edges.  It’s as if time imprints scent more readily and hauntingly than our other senses.

http://galatearesurrection21.blogspot.com/2013/12/interview-anne-gorrick.html?m=1

Reading at Bard Hall, 22 November 2013

section 83 of Fire Exit

Carve silence, churl, carve

absence into aroma

you don’t miss their faces you miss their sheen

ælfscin or aura, the light around one

that makes her who or him she is,

elf-shine the preter-human shown,

faërie folk are what we must become,

elves are not some belated ancient lingerers

they are our future selves

keen wise dangerous and rife with pleasures

we catch a glimpse of them sometimes

when the moon or noon be right

and the shadow falls

they are we will be

and till then be quiet, read your tree.