I have been much absorbed in David Cope's poetry as necessary continuation of tradition of lucid grounded sane objectivism in poetry following the visually solid practice of Charles Reznikoff & William Carlos Williams. Though the notions of 'objectivism' were common for many decades among U. S. poets, there is not a great body of direct-sighted "close to the nose" examples of poems that hit a certain ideal objectivist mark-"No ideas but in things" consisting of "minute particulars" in which "the natural object is always the adequate symbol", works of language wherein "the mind is clamped down on objects", and where these "Things are symbols of themselves. " The poets I named above specialized in this refined experiment, and Pound touched on the subject as did Zukofsky and Bunting, and lesser but inter esting figures such as Marsden Hartley in his little known poetry , and more romantic writers such as D. H. Lawrence. In this area of phanopoeiac "focus," the sketching of particulars by which a motif is recognizably significant, David Cope has made, by the beginning of his third decade, the largest body of such work that I know of among poets of his own generation. Allen Ginsberg Table of Contents Foreword, Allen Ginsberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v THE STARS The Line-up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . Empty Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The River. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Down on the Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Storm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 American Dream. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . Baseball. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . Crash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . Lunch Hour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winter Camp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Circle of Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 . . . . . . . . . . GO Labor Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 . . . . . . . . . . . Peace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Inhalt

The Stars.- The Line-up.- Empty Street.- The River.- Down on the Farm.- The Storm.- American Dream.- Baseball.- Crash.- Lunch Hour.- Winter Camp.- A Circle of Lights.- Go.- Labor Day.- Peace.- Birth.- The Field.- The Rose.- The Beating.- Daffodils.- The Workman.- The Waiting Room.- At the Rest Home.- Chinese Calligraphy.- Circus Performers.- End of the Shift.- Grand Haven.- Daffodils.- Coquina Beach.- Walking.- What's Yours from Heaven.- Burning Babies.- The Life of the Party.- The Odor of Death.- Tears.- On an Iron Grate at Sunset.- May.- Walking.- Further News from Nicaragua.- Six Eclogues.- Quiet Lives.- A Quiet Life.- The Welfare Office.- Evening & Morning.- A Reduction in Rent.- Two.- The Landlady.- Slagboom Tool & Die.- CETA Office.- Abandoned Hotel.- Paint Work.- The Silent Afternoon.- A Million Mute Corpses Speak.- A View from the Road.- The Shotgun.- The Silent Afternoon.- The First Death.- Steve.- Sweeping.- Bob.- Coffee.- The Plumber.- Strafing in El Salvador.- Sweeping.- Carpenters.- Two Doors Down from the Limelight.- Jackson.- Jackson.- Take-over in Poland.- The End.- A Suite for Antler.- February Snow, Dreams of New York.- Rexroth Gone.- Turning.- The Hard Truth.- March Wind.- Thanks.