Memory of standing in line at G & W Carryout in Oxford, Ohio: Tom needs
razors. Then to the post-office to express mail Peter Green’s new
translation of Apollonius’s The Argonautika to Ed Dorn, who had just given
it to Tom in Denver: Ed, pushing against his illness, needs it back to
move ahead with work. Here at the house asked by Diane if any of the
knick-knacks caught his eye: the two glass bottles, he says, simple reds
and greens, late winter sun on them, a buck each at Odd Lots. The lamp
with five globes curving close to the ceiling: ‘I’ve always found it
difficult to get enough reading light overhead.’ A carved streetrat from
Bali, its defiant and comic pose. Later, listening to a CD of poetry and
music: ‘The music wins every time.’ No need much for words, whistling
maybe, or whistling along, a smile of recognition is four or five volumes.
Posture as given in the first poem of Tottering State: ‘Waiting.’ In
Cambridge a plate of cold cuts, olives, cheese, Val animated, skewering the
pretensions of many. Generosity to youth in too many locations to detail,
cigarettes under New Hampshire greenery staving off overkill readings at
Assembling Alternatives. Uncomfortable, shy to be asked to explain
collages at a party in Chicago: Tom turns to a few of us listening and
says ‘John Cage lives!’ Navigating complex turns to Bill Fuller’s house in
Winnetka after drinks on the north side that same night: just as soon as
I’m sure this can’t be right we’re there. A glass of water after reading
through Writing at the University of Chicago, back for another twenty-five
minutes from Meadow. More formal get-up on Tom new to me: makes me feel
better about having spent two hours talking about his work to Bob von
Hallberg’s seminar, saying things like ‘If this were another century Tom
would be our finest epigrammatist and miniaturist. But since it’s after
that time the work is necessarily more oblique, spun in deft turning, that
kind of observation, detail, and comment every bit as cut and cutting but
in pieces and rearranged.’ I left out the wonder of and in it, the anger
too. What’s ever said about the poetry that’s up to the poetry if the
poetry is up to anything at all? We must try. Another moment in Cambridge:
‘Nobody ever notices my rhyming.’
Time’s almost up: scratch again. What to offer Tom Raworth to match the
surprise of his poems? What to do to thank him for community delicately
threaded by his necessary — fated more than fêted — travels? Time to fetch
the Apollonius book from the library maybe. No way Tom got past Book I on
the jet. A few lines from Book III then: ‘Medeia could not remove her
thoughts to other matters / whatever games she might play: not a one that
she embarked on / caught her attention for long. She quickly found them
boring, / kept helplessly chopping and changing...’ I don’t know
anything about Medeia’s story, haven’t read the book. That’s what caught my
eye flipping through. It occurs to me that Tom might have a few lessons
for Medeia in the possibilities of boredom and distraction as modes of
attention. Or maybe not. Argonaut and Argot-naught both.
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