Nagualli: R.H. Barlow, "Mythological Episode"

Saturday, January 28, 2012

R.H. Barlow, "Mythological Episode"

O that frog or flower that stealthily
Snipped from the bone Black Tezcatlipoca's foot!

Trapped with his hands full of magic, what could he do
But wither a projected sun,
Drop two or three eternities into his purse unwrought,
And leave us to make sacrifices forever?

1 comment:

Edgar GarciaFebruary 2, 2012 at 3:12 PM
Denise Levertov, "An Admonition," The Poet in the World:

Form exists only *in* the content and language. The visual shape of a poem is not its form but a result of the notation of its form. Oh, not to quibble, it is true that the set forms exists abstractly, too; sonnet, sestina, etc., have their rules, and one can invent rules for new "forms" in this sense ad infinitum. But this is a rudimentary view. In fact--and not only in organic poetry and "free verse"--form is the total interactive functioning of content and language, including every contributing element. The form of a man is not that he has two legs, two arms, a head and body and no tail, but the sum of his anatomical, physiological, mental, textural, moral, motor, etc., structure. And the form of a poem comprises all the equivalent components you can think of.

"Form is never more than the extension of content." At the Vancouver poetry conference this summer ('63) I proposed to Robert Creeley, the originator of this now famous formula, that it should be changed to read: "Form is never more than the *revelation* of content"--to which he agreed). . .

We need a poetry not of *direct statement* but of *direct evocation*: a poetry of hieroglyphics, of embodiment, incarnation; in which the personages may be of myth or of Monday, no matter, if they are of the living imagination.
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about | co-curators

Here uncoils a collective psychogeography of the Americas—a personal exploration of indigenous poetics and epistemes. With a specific focus on Nagualism, the native American practice of self-splitting and metamorphosis, this collective project (executed as a continuous exchange between its collaborators) confirms that metamorphosis is a rapid, ongoing process without beginning or end, an antinomous exchange of excess in limitless operation. So while we post here, a chattering seed grows suddenly to a green stalk while a stone or mountain teems with personhood and animacy; and we match that overflow with overflow. Thus do we redistribute cosmic energy. Its first transfer long preceded our arrival; but we continue the exchange, the extension which is likewise our rootedness. To a great extent, this is simply a record of the personal reading habits of its co-curators, Jose-Luis Moctezuma and Edgar Garcia.

Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a californiano and a current doctoral student at the University of Chicago. His studies focus on technologies of the image in poetry, cinema, and literature. His work has been/will be published by Berkeley Poetry Review, PALABRA, Cerise Press, and MAKE Magazine. He is an editor and writer at Hydra Magazine.

Edgar Garcia's poetry, translations, and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including Antioch Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Big Bridge, Damn the Caesars, Exit 9, Jacket2, Los Angeles Review of Books, MAKE Magazine, Mandorla, Sous les Pavés, and Those That This: Arts Journal. Author of Mayan Texts: A Galactic Birth Canal (Burnt Water Booklets, 2010) and Boundary Loot (Punch Press, 2012), he was also formerly a writer and editor at Hydra Magazine. An anthology that he has co-edited titled American Literature in the World is forthcoming from Columbia UP. In 2015 he completed a Ph.D. in American Literature at Yale University and began as Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.