Christopher Middleton: 101 Letters
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Read an excerpt from 101 Letters below:
To Marius Kociejowski
[Handwritten, 2pp]
1112 West 11th St, #201
Austin, Texas 78703
6 March 1992
Dear Marius Kociejowski,
Your splendid poem in PNR 84 impels me to write to you, if only to say hallo.¹ –In any case, considering the isolation of truly singular voices, thank you for making sure that such isolation means anything but retreat from the phenomenal powers of (or inherent in) the English language.– Which probably sounds a bit pompous. I wish I could put it less so. Your poem strikes simultaneously so many nerves, so many registers of imagination, I can only marvel at the polyphony of it.
Yet ask myself: Who speaks? Which clues predominate? (Does that matter so much?) “Kings whose Chronicles I pushed in rhyme”–? Is this the voice of Homer addressing Achilles–no, otherwise he’d not “rhyme”. Of Chiron addressing Achilles–likewise yes & no. Of Rimbaud’s patriarchal Satan addressing Lilith Verlaine?–or vice versa? Or–well, other poetico–theological possibilities–but, so I caught a glimpse of Essenin, and several other sliding signifiers, while feeling assailed by an orchestral voice traversing, quite acrobatically, I mean magisterially, an entire spectrum of cultures and epochs. [The identity of any voice–meanwhile–becomes, as that poem unfolds, more and more an enigma: what unknown, but undeniable & urgent–voices have you fused?]
What an extraordinary poem to appear in PNR!
It just happens that for the umpteenth time I’ve been reading Rimbaud, who remains unfathomable, & maybe I’m only “Projecting”, when I venture to say that your poem accomplishes some dream I’ve stuck together out of him, & Seferis, & Eliot, & (sometimes) Zbigniew Herbert, but which also rushes out from all the niches, crevices in between their creations, to establish itself in a sovereign independence that makes heart & mind take their hats off to each other in an entirely unforeseeable yet conclusive gesture. What an apocalypse! What a beautiful Sumerian text!–But I must not go on so. You did heap “a world” on the table.
Maybe there are books of yours I should know of? No need for you to answer–but I’m now curious & would not wish to look down from such a peak as ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’ upon an empty continent, or ocean.
All the best, Yours, Christopher Middleton
¹ ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’.
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