Well, I finished reading "A" 18 today, and I listened to a bit of "A" 24. So far I noticed two mentions of Gracie Allen in the poem but no references to her husband George Burns. I love Burns and Allen, but I don't quite understand her importance to Zukofsky. It reminds me of the reference to "Disney against the metaphysicals" in The Cantos.
I must admit I don't know the point of much of the poetry in "A". The last time I read it I read Barry Ahern's guide at the same time, and that helped to give me some context for the poetry. Perhaps next December I will reread Ahearn while rereading "A".
I just looked: you posted on the Whaaa? of Gracie in Zukofsky and Ez's "Disney against the metaphysicals" 10 minutes before I wrote - in part - about William James's "Overall there is a smell of fried onions" and RAW's own belladonna trip about "The literary critics will all have to be shot because of the Kennedy administration in outer space of the Nuremburg pickle that exploded."
ReplyDeleteAnd Markoff Chaney's nitrous message: "Flossing is the answer - Ezra Pound."
William James also wrote this down on nitrous oxide: "There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference."
This just in: "American life bomb went authoritarian."
I once put a sign up in the bathroom, "Flossing is the answer," written in crayon.
ReplyDeleteDid you get "A" for Christmas? My wife got me CD's of the Bach cello suites and a book by Rumi.
I did not get _A_, so I'll need to do some quasi-finagling.
ReplyDeleteI read that Rumi sells more copies in Unistat than Billy Shakes.
People still buy so much Shakespeare for school. I find it interesting that none of my local libraries have any Rumi.
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