Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Jim Leftwich - Sonnets

21st century American sonnet

content is only an extension of form.
metaphysics aspires to divested spirit.
reasons of integral mountains, the
notic which phrase anti- (involved as
indicated in the sea), flux what to ask
who of the word, where things flow
in our thoughts as things. in search
of the piano around which floats the

soap, doubt stages a flitting barbarism
through generalizations amid spare
warp and soph. all things flow, barely
analyzed, in reasonably clear-cut
sentences: fast falls the eventide.
the basic unit of the sonnet is the line.


***
Any Other Thursday

The patterns of the rhythms take shape
on either side of the volta. Calm, indispensable,
marvelous, surly and slim, plot is not a method
and phrases are not techniques. Nothing in
this drawer either. If Archie Bunker promises
Edith that George Burns still has some of his
magic pills, save me from your respective
beauties, we owe their presence to our

sleeping hands. Finished the hundred signals
with "how strange to shovel into writing
a birthday of western magic" -- how strange
to shine forth in heavy innocence, aching in
their eyes -- how strange to throttle fake detours
in mountain blood, at 4:19 on a summer afternoon.


***
We have an idea of it in our minds

Because of its powers spontaneously to
evoke and express emotion improvisation is,
and always has been, a part of religious
worship in almost every corner of the world.

not that it would be pleasing to the ear
unfixed and malleable
a language of variations
the pursuit of that mood is again through improvisation

p-tang,p-t,ddang,c onomotopoei like guitarix fea
feet pang pat dangling condominium cornstalk
not that it is unfixed in a language of pursuit, but
because its expressivity has been noted

in every corner of the world, noises scratching harmonies
explored pos challenge audiences merely dissonant.


***
like a day or another day

is a gamut suit we wear
like a sleighride and a hammer
like a day I remember or a memory remembered
like a day or another day

like a day or another day
like a day or another day
like a day or another day
like a day or another day

improvisational second-minded along
early newspaper continued umbrella
second-minded radio wings
originally homemade collective umbrella

is a gamut suit and a sleighride
like a day or another day


***
Down the dice and hide the hole down the dice

Improvisation is like duende. It's a state of mind.
There are a hundred ways of doing this.
This is a cow moving slowly. This is a deer.
Down the dice and hide the hole down the dice.

Down the dice and hide the hole down the dice.
Do you tiger tiger tiger tiger diamond meat?
Do you tiger tiger tiger tiger diamond meat?
Down the dice and hide the hole down the dice.

Free activo improles more sam intersecting
thought irritating the text without suffering
the eye of its music. Experience argues
for the disturbing. Improvisation is its duende.

Down the dice and hide the hole down the dice.
Down the dice and hide the hole down the dice.


***
Child of Gysin, Unite!

Writing is fifty years behind itself. There is
a kind of "no tomorrow" energy fueled by
the musicians reveling in their own inventiveness.
Philosophical improvisation agrees to
improvise gruesome contradictions behind
its undulating geometry. Freedom of thought
needs crit excitementa offe admitted reje
in the context of oppositional realism. Heard

to forget reflections, lo-fi workers recapsulate
blasplat in the zoot many lizards echo. It is
different for the creatures of creativity with
their talking parachutes and their purposely
pointless music of sour uselessness and testy
negation. Writing is 50 years ahead of that.

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