Bernadette Mayer laughs to herself as she reads. & she reads as if she stumbled on these poems for the first time. "I think I got the pages out of order. No matter!," & on, her poem on sleep, on falling asleep, including the capitalist and entrepreneurial method. Poems about war & maple syrup, both at once. "Addendum to maple syrup sonnet": she reads it & decides it's no good, "Sometimes you have to know when to discard," crumples the paper and throws it on the floor.
Bernadette Mayer lives in Massachussetts and doesn't use a computer. Two creeks, that I nicknamed tigris&euphrates, fork at the back of her house which I am sure flows with words and syrup as Mesopotamia. She takes walks and writes her poems on stationary using a typewriter. "Addendum" was typed on ivory page with a dragonfly, center top.
Philip Good seemed shy about his poems, too. I found this very touching. As touching as Robert Creeley saying that sometimes he feels like an imposter in poetry: this attitude of amazement at being faced with one's own poetry...
Or, is there?
I mean, there are only poems.
*
The walls in Bridge space were lined with love-letters to "My Matthew" that I don't know what to do with. I find such things as "would you marry me on impulse" written on "journal" stationary with a red rose, center bottom, distasteful, even as anti-art. Bernadette Mayer misread, "My Mother." I like that better & it teaches me: sometimes one must keep a safe distance.
*
The rejected poem made its way from the floor to my pocket and rested alongside "Charles Shaw" wine cork:
ADDENDUM TO MAPLE SYRUP SONNET
the workshop at the spencertown academy
THE BOYS ARE PLAYING FRISBEE the boys s are playing frisbee
and the females (sophie & me) are
climbing the tree of my trunks, sorting
letters, non-letters, garbage, poems, etc
in an attempt to find papers i need for the workshop at the spencertown academy
p.s. reflection of the sun going down
in the porch window reminds me of rage, ok?
you have gots any trouble with that?
