Some notes

Frank Samperi’s notes on poetry and poetics

8/29/69

Handwritten original from “Marginalia” included in Quadrifariam.

For Dolores

These poems may seem to be just occasions; (but) nevertheless there is a desire to place

Them more substantially: the spiritual world a light coming thru. (Gathering up or better)

Revealing the domestic worthy of the metaphor: the family aware of the fall of light,

Darkness no longer something to be eradicated.

9/24/69

-There should be no indenting – also, the lines should fall without spacing.

Anti-Hero

What is known the world over business makes men brutal.

Still feel that the deeping of The Triune depends upon my getting complete rest – no other

way to the spirit except thru a purity of disposition.

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 if their sense of (poetry) it is competitive.

They seek judgments 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 age wants no part of a teaching that

Has God as end, the audience in no sense identifying with a work, release necessarily telic.

Here it comes clear: the teaching of poetry says just that we might 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 is false (propagandistic)?

The artist must seek the truth doubly.

You waste away for want of companions – those who insist you only wait upon a verification that

is referable to themselves rather than the common that makes companions participants in the greater

life.

What comes upon one that makes him (you) feel that everything has reached its peak, and that

Anything more to do is over and above! There is separation, and the terrible sorrow of the day reflects

It, makes me inwardly dual.

Wait! Don’t work on the major poem until there is time – but suppose the time never comes? Wait! If…

Only those writers whose possibilities are granted can expect honor, those ignored can only know

isolation, the act of writing (more) akin to the (criminal action)non-professional, even tho sense of craft

better than those whose positions are granted. The ignored one must take upon himself every insult,

humiliation – the superiorly of his art makes him take it – compromise foreign to him.

The country art is suspect because it’s there for the sake of the tired peoples of the cities – after awhile

people can only take so much concrete – but we can’t be sentimental over this.

We are now into the days (now) when to expect words from another can cause collapse if the words

don’t come.  Some poets stay amidst nature because they feel – I guess – that to stay in the city is to be

abstract: they – unknowingly, of course – falsify: in the country does not guaranty poetry; on the

contrary, it is possible to tip one’s hat  (to pay lip service) to the natural sciences under such conditions,

that is, the poetic actively there is referable to the position here in the sense that it is there in order to

ease the city of its severity.

So many hours to job – so little now for reading. Was it not once almost 12 hours a day?

The Union of both Church & State has the same meaning as Church Total State Total: total eradication of

differences.

The new Christian the Spiritual man living the Eternal Life.