MARGINALIA - 1970

If one denies most of the tenets of modern literature, then he's in no position to teach. How can I gather myself up? write of the deadness of my movements? I go to work - my return leaves me with no desire to write of a world that can be of no help to Humanity; and yet, my present movement says I must do just that.
It is true that my withdrawal from the literary world is complete,but withdrawal can only mean desire of fame (vanity) - writing is not pride: to write for Humanity God the Subject alters every sense of the writer as personality: therefore, it is not the writer's job to seek art the latest innovations of the day - the principles of the craft are perennial; he has ancient teachers, and with them he silently converses.
If they consider your cold remarks, the perennial rights your; near warm. Not every man should love your speech, nor is it just that such a unanimily exist, but there is Hod Who insights the vision - more enough for any man. A wandering seeking new speech entia mon sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. It is best that my work remain unknown - the age continues the work of the last 600 years; who's the poet, then?
I'd like to write of friendship, but that's more memorial than actual fact; nevertheless, the memory of it mollifies walks otherwise hapless. Not much time for walks these days - the job tyrannical. It is not possible to teach the young poetry of their sense of (poetry) it is competitive. They seek judgements that have nothing to do with the art, that is, a man gains nothing from being told that his work is stronger than another's: but again, the eye wants no part of a teaching that has God as end, the audience is no sense identifying with a work, release necessarily telic. Here it comes clear: the teaching of poetry says just that we much be heirs of a view that impedes no sense - second that the wholeness of a work is equally given up: from these the audience is fulfilled, the sense the wholeness unimpeded. What happens when the age of false (propagandistic)? the artist must seek the truth doubly. You waste away for want of companions - those who visit you only wail upon a verification that is referable to themselves rather than the common that makes companions participants in the greater life. The rage is gone, but the ambiance remains the same.
What comes upon one that makes him (you) feel that everything has reached its peak, and that everything more to do is over and above! There is separation, and the terrible sorrow of the day reflects it makes us inwardly dual. Maybe this is the way it should be: the life empty for all purposes except the poetry that says God the vision everything lived thru not so bad after all: but this is true at the moment of writing; it has no meaning at the moment of living. Such a conflict can't be real; it must be imposed - from where? - the outside. Does (that this state not) exonerate the sufferer? Wait! don't work on the major poem until there is time - but suppose the time never comes? wait! if.....

(To be continued - one of my father's notebooks - hand-written)