[Xavier_Spinner_Wheels]

LIFE-THREATENING POISON ...Poetry of the type that's been found with a increasing number of contemporary authors, the composition of self which exceeds hype and revolutionizes it....you don't therefore much understand relationships as knowledge them....I am forever grateful for having to become a poet...without that process of escape from self I'd never have known that there is another world...my value for the work of imagination increased. -Karl Shapiro, To Abolish Kiddies and Other Essays, Quadrangle Books, 1968, Chicago, p.237, p.267 and p.271. Composition ought to be crazy. Perhaps not only should it frolic, as Camus states, it should cavort, fall, journey, drop flat on its face, get-up, slither, travel, rise, charm, gloom, lash out and those other activities we do in life. -With because of Karl Shapiro, To Abolish Kiddies and Other Essays, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968, p.79. That dangerous tendency to despair and sulk, pomposity, dreariness in previous and these times of frequently indestinguishable poetry and prose, Where the earth is in flight from beliefs, Battle over not exactly anarchic turmoil and beliefs and anybody, artist, public individual, gets examined by-the pawnbroker as near-saint, failed st, Shylock, Small o-r major: the curator's got his amount, his position, the goose and the fantastic egg.... this dangerous habit is gradually coming to contend with a composition, A genuine people-in-situ, immediately, here, it, available, taking a look at it, receiving inside it, around it, in as numerous measurements as you may, 'cause we're all inside it now and where you're Influences what we call reality and how it's. The sounds and syllables, The air we breath, The greatest sensitivity to speech, its crystal waters and its scary, Life-threatening poison. The truly amazing flourishing of every thing, every artwork, every science: In order to consume, seize some part of everything, existence, with profundity, pervasively, without prolixity, flavoured with the holy, To provide satisfaction, Is not any mean task as you putters around, Activity, full-time, we're only talking 'coterie' here-- perhaps not everybody grabs composition For their hearts-- until one identifies it broadly: and we do, we do! Ralph Cost 1-2 October 1995