Page 23 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

Moment of truth

Towards "the urge to killowatts,"

On June 25, 1974 I was utterly depressed about my writing. I had just brought our car in
for servicing -never a happy obligation -and taken the bus back home. I was extremely
tired and believed at that moment I would never produce anything of any value. My life

as a poet seemed to have ended. Glancing at a collection of Charles Olson's essays -
particularly at "Human Universe"- I noticed a sentence which began, "If there is any
truth at all to the idea that...." Certain that nothing would come of it, I typed on a piece
of paper, "If there is any truth at all" and added, as if in commentary, "(there is)". I went
on to appropriate others of Olson's phrases, changing them if I felt like it. (Olson
actually wrote, "It is not the Greeks I blame.")

if there is any truth at all (there is)
it is the greeks I blame
the lines in which
speech takes place
& Melville did....

Next I took a recent passage from my journal,

a waking dream.
Someone (me, not me) on a rooftop. Being chased?
Crowds. The man's friends below, holding a
net which looks like an awning, urge him.
Tremendous distance!
The man jumps! -he misses the awning.
I remark (it is remarked to me): he didn't check
which way the wind was blowing,

and retyped it, moving my fingers slightly so I would hit some of the wrong keys and
leaving out some of it, revising as I went along:

a wajubg dreanL
sineibe OOne.bitg neOOib a riiftioOObeubg cgased.
Criwds the man's friends bekiw
gikdubg a bet kiijs kuje ab wawbubg 'greeb
tremendous distance
yrge
urge him

to killowatts

23