One of the great surprises of 2006 was the beginning of a correspondence with Sanada Maitreya, the great singer formerly known as Terence Trent D’arby, who is an inspired word-slinger.

Received on 12/23 of last year from Diane di Prima.

Here we are in the midst of an aural procession of recorded sounds, snippets of conversations in French and English and other languages, sounds that open up spaces into which we fit ourselves sometimes happily, sometimes with some trepidation. Vast stretches of precise, mechanical clatter in which a chime intrudes and melts away like a snow-flake on a windshield. CD 6–of course, the first I would listen to, since my poem is found there, ends with a solid drone, which comes as a bit of a shock, given the lightness of the sounds that come in the first track. If this drone is the “beach” that the keel of the ship comes to rest on, then it must be a beach of volcanic ash, with obsidian stratifications.

To know the end of the voyage might give me a compass when I return to CD 1 to begin a sequential listening. More messages soon.

Just yesterday I had the heady experience of rescuing an old, old fragment from the 1970’s by finding the right words for the right place.

On Burning A Copy of the Inferno

the paper curls
in the fire:
Dante tiptoes to
the lowest circle;
the paper blooms
like a sooty flower:
Dante blazes in
his greatest hour;
the paper crumbles
into cold ashes:
Dante’s words are
the Devil’s wishes.

The replaced line read:

“the paper flames/ like a blooming flower.” The substitution works enough to allow me to reclaim the poem, however slight, from the scrap heap. I had a quiet cup of coffee by myself in celebration, and I toasted my younger self: intense eyes, slim hips, unflagging self-confidence, and all.