In the middle of a busy day at Meikai University, I stopped at the mail box and found a small reason to rejoice: David Axelrod’s Another Way; Poems Derived from the Tao Te Ching (Karma Dog Editions, 58 pages. Paper back. $18.00) Axelrod has spent a good part of his intellectual life studying Taoist texts, in addition he spent a year as the first Fullbright Poet in Residence in China lecturing on the healing power of poetry, so this gives him some authority with which to speak. The real charm of this book lies in Axelrod’s ability to inject real practical advice into the form of one of the slipperiest of texts. The voice is not that of a mysterious sage with pack on back and staff in hand on the way to the mountains, but of the sage suddenly turned into a modern American (a teacher no less) who’s been around the block and back and knows whereof he speaks. For purists this might prove to be a problem, because sometimes this voice seems to drown out the original message, like number 16 given partially below in translation from Robert G. Henricks’ Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching; A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts (Ballantine Books, 1989) and followed by Axelrod’s version:

Take emptiness to the limit;
Maintain tranquility in the center.

The ten thousand things–side-by-side they arise;
And by this I see their return.
Things come forth in great numbers;
Each one returns to its root.
This is called tranquility.
“Tranquility”–This means to return to your fate.
To return to your fate is to be constant;
To know the constant is to be wise.
* * *

Now here’s Axelrod:

Okay, it was Confucius not Lao Tsu
who said “The secret to a happy life
is in a good bowel movement.”
Try going without and you won’t
think clearly. There’s no end
to suffering when it comes to one’s
body.
* * *

The themes appear to be totally different. Axelrod’s project is dead-on however, in his up-dating of 31:

As for weapons–they are instruments of ill omen.
And among things there are those who hate them.
Therefore, the one who has the Way, with them does not dwell.
When the gentleman is at home, he honors the left;
When at war, he honors the right.
* * *
(Henricks)

I’d like to think that I could
kill even as I never want to.
Left-wing liberals, Right-wingers,
the NRA know killing sucks–don’t
like to. Ah, but killing for good
reason, some say (I do) it’s okay.
I don’t think I’d laugh over it.
* * *
(Axelrod)

Is David Axelrod a sage? I think so. Just like Lao Tsu, he lays sound-bites of memorable language upon us, like number 40:

Aging is like leaving
the pull of gravity:
time speeds faster
as the earth
falls away.

The real proof however, lies in the perfect summary Axelrod offers us of one of the longest, and most prolix of Lao Tsu’s chapters, number 52:

The womb is a door to the universe.
Enjoy turning the knob.

Wit, humor, and a human-centered vision seem to be coming back into focus in experimental writing with Eileen R. Tabios’ I Take Thee, English, a massive pleasure to read at 502 pages from Marsh Hawk Press. Tabios shows an impressive mastery of forms and genres as she rings the changes on the confessionalists, the feminists, the gothic bodice rippers from harlequin romances, sound poetry, visual poetry, haiku, prose poetry, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and almost every other modern and post-modern form invented, while providing running commentary on the politics of marginalization in America. Yet at the center of it all is the story of a love between two members of two ethnic groups and ultimately a marriage. In this sense Tabios’ book is akin to the grand pageants held for the entertainment of guests in which the literary and the metaphysical dimensions of the union that is about to happen are schematized for the edification and the joy of the participants. Think Comus. Think the Chymical Wedding of Hermes Trismegestos. In fine, the real magic of this long poem is that it is enacted on the level of myth and paradigm (albeit deconstructed), as well as being a keep-sake (complete with wonderful pictures) of an actual event. Since so much experimental writing works on the level of cold intellect, where language is laid out on the operating table and worked over with scalpel, trocar and bone saw, it’s wonderful to come across these fine poems that take us over the same ground–maybe even further–without losing human warmth in the process. In addition there is a generosity in the writing–a cornucopia of interesting textures of language that calls one back to explore the many dimensions of it, and to perform this vow with literature again and again.