eureka! (ill,i,nois) will reopen the ronald reagan museum that, as chicago tribune informs me, was the site of a "mysterious arson." this news-bit, skimmed at the unicorn café in evanston (ill.) while waiting for a table to empty, brought to mind a recent peter streckfus reading at the chicago poetry center (february 2). {read his journey to the west, one of the poems in which r.r. appears, and the one which i liked best this monday}. after the reading, one of the listeners asked p.s. about r.r. surfacings. a fatherfigure? methinks an easy answer. perhaps the truth is even simpler: there's something thunderrolling in this name, like, ronaldreaganrailroad, roundgirldedgroundriddle; and then there's something ridiculous, like stuffing a mickeymouse into a poem, and then some, next to bicycle merchants & hsuan tsang sleeping under a truck king pin!
here's a fragment:
Tai-tsung, emperor, as nescient to the blossom of our
story
as Lyndon Baines, who in the great land of Texas dreams of a man
gazing east so long
he finally discerns a still figure--the back of his own head. While
Hsüan-tsang,
like actor governor Ronald Reagan, wakened from sleep, continued
on his way,
"wary to the mind's distinctions, senses guarded."
*
you might also say, "weary of mind's distinctions," playing with historical mirrors, where, not unlike in a magritte painting, one might see the back of one's head.
