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PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
The Golden Chain / Lyrical Poems 1964-1969 by Peter Russell. Venice, 1970. 48 pp. $5. Although it is not our practice to review contemporary poetry in the Blake Newsletter, Peter Russell’s book should be noted as being of unusual interest to our readers because of the impact of Blake on some of the poems published here. The title poem has as its epigraph five lines from the Fairy’s speech in the introductory lines to Europe; a section called “Manuela’s Poems” is arranged in nine short “Nights” and is also evidently indebted to Blake’s idea of the Emanation. The book, published privately by the begin page 69 | ↑ back to top author, may be obtained from him at Castello 3611 / 30122 Venice / Italy. (Among Mr. Russell’s works in preparation is Paysages Légendaires, Enitharmon Press, London).
The Golgonooza Organ #1 by Aethelred Eldridge. R. R. #1, Millfield, Ohio, 1970. 16 pp. + 2 inserts. “Published . . . no fewer than four times during the limitary course that makes of substance by the use of birdlime an adhesive year. . . . Five dollars divested brings, in so many words, The deterged ear out of Golgonooza.”
As Mr. Eldridge kindly invites us to quote from the pamphlet, we reproduce below the opening of Golgonooza Organ:
GOLGONOOZA ORGAN
Drilling, no eye hath prepared this thing; no heart in learning
Hath drily inclined; no hands hath taken up the measure of
The doing — and none but new creatures need apply.
Citizenry-citizens of Golgonooza, Spiritual Fourfold London!
Latchet string espousers round the shaky walls of Blake’s
Betrothal! Bowlahoola surrounds us: the law stercorous. I vie
Reduced within the time it takes a single archer kneeled to
Strike through generations along the worm of Merlin. I am the
Utmost droning phonetic hid by the space of a Fool’s uncertain
Days; and hid in lengthening night’s conjecture over mis-read
Jars. There is no new dust in which sinners may perform. Nor
Blindly shall the sentry when the tree shall be uprooted fall
To American heroes.
People obtaining discomfiture from air beneath their hats
Have pointed me out. You! And yours; by courtesy of bodily
Sickened eye appalled by one so lustrous small of flesh.
How in woven jaws of periled, hardening cradle grass the cock
Holds back the rose of fecund breathing clods; in this, blending
Attar of brass to rose and patina of place, I anticipate you in
Whom the wake of presumed men confuses historicity with tarnish
On the dawn. And, I have gone hovered in resplendents off the
True circulating men, further, by the flour of northern altering
Light.
Assyriologue, lard faded thaumaturgist, works his white, exquisite
Dot everywhere. Gods and dwellings, goddesses, art built unpolished
Of the noble, life exerting ilk; stamped, as it might appear, by
Wearied intellect from building downward driven daughters; whose
Doors are unbolted by sensories recruited, brooded by the best
Wild-parrot, clanish cog advisement.
Draw near, last mentioned Londoners. First, the voice filled human
Whirpool; then, the crack of some immense contrivance falling; then,
Surrounded features silenced on the Man resuming; then, three lines
Are lopped, pregnate stem solidities, sub teeming very-molecules.
Then, tears wiped, delight repeats in limbs that follow out beyond
The reach within the riven skull.
The bitter thing that loveth thee is dumbness beckoning all blades,
Straining the capaciousness of the beetle within the blade that
Wanders as it bends. Mothers are filling with oil; the doing of
The heart’s repose on gentle, silent teeth.
As for the stunt of weakened goddesses, since when has poetry,
Since once it was revealed, or shone, brought barbed the child’s
Swift diffusion? Or brought evoked upon a quantity of food
The loudness of the rose mid-drifted, rarefied within the dragon?
Nor has it been made visible that latitudes of consciousness,
Inept around the heart spelled forth, are edible.
A warning: No god, of those remains shown on the dagger turning
Simple wrath within the worm, should be sniffed from the flint.
Funerary table past acquaintance is no cause for parsimony’s
Being held the helpmeet turning hawk in blue and ripening
Fruit that boundaries the sun. Send miners. Yourself to send,
Digging in the groin of a moth, is, by solemn, yellowed, nibbled
Feast of day, needless. To a canary’s poppy laboured sleep of
Wandered field belongs the thick, aurific sag of elephant costiveness.
Risk not in me, teetotum teaspoon pictograph, your toxic body
Snatch technique; about which dew-knit gripping clothes are bound.
Excepting Anglicized exempting paraphrasts revolving wax in sound,
The pathetic human dragon is a pig impersonating loins tripartite.
And further, is a prodigal of gaggles, and a brooder to a poke of
Hens- excepting naked beauty on the Angle who solitary synonymic
Translates rustling into solar second joyous gear.
Hear Ye, Londoners! The groan that voices abscess, death, and the
Transport of angels as the carriage of germs is a breach of
Etiquette.
Puissant in the crouch of one demeanor was the word that walked
In likeness of a Man. Send the sped speed dorsal waters of His
Word, imbricated safe corrosive, to the raven’s tedium tor. Unstruggle
Mountain maladjustments from the sister epicene retreat. Tedium.
Tedium, tedium. We praise Thee scattered, O remotely middened God.
Te Deum. Te Deum grass remembered men re-told. Te fibered Deum
Cherished victim. Invincible Te levelled laboured Deum.