THOSE POOR DEAR ABSTRACT LINES...

CAESURA

Waters purl, silky over smooth stones. A far flung echo curves out among undiscovered inlets. Contours of round sound flow out of mouth, forming a long bubble that snaps off and floats away on the wind. Dandelion gone to seed, seeds leaping from the porous sphere. Landscape of a horse’s back and haunches. Moon setting over dunes. Wisps of air through lips of a monk as he opens the shrine, breath humid round the folded slip of paper in his mouth. Stillness of plants. Through a microscope, tines and barbs of a feather: but still a feather, floating, arcing, tipping in air.



This is one of mine, published here in the second issue of Dusie. Actually, though, when it was first posted there it had an additional sentence. It was this:

A restraint that is not because the idea doesn’t enter.

This was between the "Wisps of air ..." and "Stillness of plants", so the last part read

Wisps of air through lips of a monk as he opens the shrine, breath humid round the folded slip of paper in his mouth. A restraint that is not because the idea doesn’t enter. Stillness of plants. Through a microscope, tines and barbs of a feather: but still a feather, floating, arcing, tipping in air.

Funny, originally I was attached to that line. Like, very attached.

The whole poem had come as a stream of consciousness writing one morning -- I was writing upon stillness and pools, riffing on words, as Charles has put it, to suit the mood of the morning.

(Here, although unbidden except by some emotional agency of my own, I'll proceed with a kind of Introspections reminiscence about the poem -- but I'll get around to my main point eventually. Introspections: American Poets on One of Their Own Poems is a book I highly recommend, fascinating and very instructive about process behind the writing of some good & excellent poems. Another book well worth ordering of a similar nature is Ecstatic Occasions: Expedient Forms, edited by David Lehman.)

A childhood memory came to mind, of blowing on a dandelion gone to seed and seeing the seeds floating off over a field, and it so happens there was a magazine open on the kitchen table -- a certain issue of The Sun, I don't know which one -- which showed a large black and white photo of haunches of a horse with the moon setting or rising over it, which looked like dunes, so that got in the poem too. Then I came upon another memory of opening a Buddhist shrine at our cultural centre when I had volunteered there as "Gajokai" (receptionist and, more traditionally, "guard of the shrine"), and amazed at how quiet it was there, how there was such a natural restraint that the very idea of restraint doesn't even enter the mind (until of course it did, in my case, but doesn't usually).* This was the idea that clinched the poem, it seemed, the still point around which the whole poem moved. As for stillness of plants -- well, our kitchen table is surrounded by plants -- and I was thinking "stillness" with that abstract realization. That image of the feather beneath the microscope came from childhood -- at around twelve I had owned a microscope, more of a toy than a serious microsope, and there were slides with feathers and spores and moth wings and blood samples that revealed themselves as shingled and spiky and crystal worlds... this whole sense of the infinite being found within the infinitely small has always fascinated me, and may date back to my hours of peering through that microscope at sugar, at salt, later, through a much more powerful microscope at high school, at a the tail of a live goldfish, the glossy, transparent tubes of arteries with their charge of corpuscles and platelets hurtling by...

Anyway, reading the poem out to my poetry group a month after it was taken by Dusie, a friend of mine, an honest and sensitive critic, said he loved the poem but was stopped by that sentence. It seemed rather obscure to him, and on the face of it, didn't even make sense ... what idea? enter where? Even the effort to figure it out disrupted the poem. I (and the others there with me) tried a number of alternatives to clarify it -- I really wanted something there, a suggestion of mental reaching, as it were, which approximated my original experience of the poem -- but then suddenly realized the line really didn't contribute, that it actually distracted, absorbed energy away. Reading it out without the line, the poem was freed. What I had attempted to make explicit was implicit in the images as they were, which expressed so many other things besides.

So often it is the case that commentary or summarizing within a poem actually distracts. I think it often comes out in drafts because in poems we are trying to come literally to terms with our experience, and language is also used for commentary and analysis to the exact same end.

In this case it was one of those pieces of scaffolding that could be knocked down now that the house was built. And so I did. On the publication of Issue 2 the editor of Dusie had invited even those who had published in Issue 1 to make any editorial changes they wanted -- so I wrote her saying I was taking her up on her offer. Though she took a while to get around to it, eventually the sentence was removed.

Revision after publication -- that's one thing you can't do in a print review!

*"The folded slip of paper in his mouth" -- in an ancient Japanese tradition continued in the Soka Gakkai, at enshrinements or re-hanging of the Gohonzon scroll or mandala the senior leader (once the senior monk, but now, in SGI, it's a senior lay person) puts a small, folded piece of rice paper in his mouth to prevent the moisture from his breath from accidentally staining the scroll. My own friend and mentor Sekai, a senior leader in this organization, did this at the enshrinement of my Gohonzon, in front of which I chant most days...

CUEVA DE PLATON

Just learned that ADT has closed up his portal and has decided to bolt the virtual doors. He's one I'll miss. ADT, when you run outside, may you be greeted by actual grass, trees, clouds. And by people with skins and flesh, skins and flesh you can actually TOUCH! May you smile at them. May you kiss them, embrace them, shake their hands. And say hello to them, for me, for us all, trapped here in the NETHER DEPTHS of our html-enshrouded CAVE!!

NO DIRECTION HOME, OR RATHER NO DIRECTION TO BOB DYLAN

I'm not going to say much about this. Or maybe I will. My mind is numbed, I'm semi-coherent because I just finished watching Martin Scorsese's 3-and-a-half-hour Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, which could be called No Direction to Bob Dylan, or even more simply No Direction, because it was a very typically scattered mishmash musicdoc, quite similar to one I saw on Jimi Hendrix quite a few years ago only four times longer, where whenever the concert footage got gripping we were torn away to hear some old fart of a manager or bar owner or lover giving his or her take on how great the man was, how nothing like this had been heard before, etc. Here the dough was leavened by some interesting bits with Allen Ginsburg and Joan Baez and Dave Van Ronk . Dylan himself in his artistic career went in so many different directions I can see how it would be hard to put it all together in a coherent package.... to an extent. In fact though I think I heard three splices of "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"about ten minutes apart, because the editor probably forgot he had spliced that in before, and then decided, hey man, this is cool, sort of. Or that guy Scorcese? Whoever. Then there was that awkward scene shift to "three years earlier." Pretty shoddy, really.

One thing that struck me in the watching was how times have a-changed since "back then", how in the early to mid-sixties (even mid-seventies) in parts of NYC (not to mention London and Paris and Madrid and Santiago) there were folk clubs & coffeehouses on every block (I'm exaggerating, but there were a lot) and audiences of hundreds hung on to the edge of every word of what one lone person scratching the strings of one lone guitar was singing. I mean I felt like I was looking through a hole in the fence at vaudville in the 1890's.

It's interesting that Bob Dylan's first record didn't sell. That it sold like 2,500 copies. Today he would be dropped like a stone if ever picked up -- ibid for Bruce Springsteen and a dozen others whose first record didn't take off like a rocket. But this was before the artistic development departments were replaced by marketing departments run by MBA's. (Anyone who reads music mags has heard this rant before.) Now everybody's in a recording studio, a musician can get access to a million sampled sounds and even more effects on those sounds and beautiful mikes and reverbs, but tough it is to get regular access to an attentive audience or simply jam in a club to see what will come about and how it pans out with a crowd.

Yes, I could say great footage was to be had here -- obviously you're bound to get some great footage if your name is Martin Scorsese, and you can get access to any interview or interview subject you want. Some of the best footage came from a better earlier film, D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Don't Look Back. Perhaps the most intriguing bit was an interview with Allen Ginsburg, who described a very exciting scene where Dylan was down the hall with the Beatles, and a message came that he was supposed to go in there, and he went into the room and everyone was sitting "cold stone silent", defensive, even tongue-tied -- and he suddenly realized how young and naive they were. "It struck me," Ginsburg went on to say, "that so many of these guys at the summit of power, spiritual power, musical power, world fame, spiritual leadership -- it was June, '65 -- were so unsure of themselves in their minds and speech."

Nevertheless... I frankly found myself getting bored with the whole rehash, and Bob Dylan himself is anything but boring. In this film, we never got to know the man, nor how he came to write any of those amazing songs. The whole focus was on who he met to rise to the top in the music biz, and the famous change from acoustic to electric. What else is new? But expecting more may have been expecting too much. Dylan himself was famously unforthcoming. Considering how far beneath his intelligence so many of his interviewers have been, I can actually sympathize on that count. In his words, talking about his self-imposed absence from the stage for nearly 8 years, "I'd had it with the whole scene. Whether I knew it or didn't know it, I was looking to quit for a while.... people like you (nodding toward the interviewer), just being pressed and hammered and expected to answer questions... it's enough to make anybody sick, really."

ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND WE GO...

In a 1919 essay called "The Sociology of Imperialisms", the Austrian economist Joseph Schrumpeter wrote:

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not those of Rome, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest--why, then it was the national honour that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.

Substitute Washington for Rome... As things change, so they stay the same.

As for our elections here... well, I'm sure George Bush is very pleased (that's him on the phone with Stephen Harper yesterday, reputedly). If Harper actually governs well -- which I have a fair hunch he is capable of doing, despite his party platform and the wacky Christian Right elements in that party -- we could be in for a long legacy of Conservative government, with their accompanying systematic neglect of social programs, the public medical system, arts funding, etc. Hence I find myself actually hoping (against hope, since our collective burden of cynicism is already heavy enough) that his will be another scandal- and blunder-ridden government like so many Conservative governments in the past, and they'll get turfed out of there.

Anybody willing to take bets?

"Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips."

-- Osip Mandelstam

"'I compare, therefore I am,' so Dante might have put it. He was the Descartes of metaphor. Because matter is revealed to our consciousness (and how could we experience someone else's?) through metaphor alone, because there is no existence outside comparison, because existence itself is comparison."

-- Osip Mandelstam, in Conversations about Dante

KEEP THE FAITH

Funny, almost five months ago I posted a pretty substantial review of Deepak Chopra's "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind" that went, as many of my more substantial posts do, without comment. Well, what did I get today?

1 Comments:

tjkterrific said...

Thank you for your insightful evaluation of Dr. Chopra's writings. We have to wonder how many books would he sell if his book were titled something like, "Aging Body, Timeless Soul." Your critique was wonderful. You did not "slam dunk" him but acknowledge the obvious good in his book, which he himself didn't discover but only regurgitated with slick marketing.

That was gratifying. And insightful. Terrific, I might add. For those of you who slave away at substantial posts -- believe me, it took at least five or six hours to write that one -- don't get discouraged if they seem to elicit no response (while trivial ones, written on the fly, often do). Your posts are available to internet users indefinitely, eventually someone will take notice, give it the thorough read it deserves, maybe even respond with interesting feedback or equally well-deserved words of appreciation. For me the exercise -- like all writing -- has intrinsic value. But it is nice to get that proverbial "pat on the back" once in a while. The moral of the story for you bloggers out there: rig your Comments Settings so that you get email notification every time you get a comment. I would never have seen this one had I not done so.

Irving Layton Reconsidered (II)

It’s odd that Silliman’s announcement of Layton’s death elicited only two comments – mine, where I posted the poem below, and some one else saying how shocking it was that the announcement of the death of Canada’s “most famous poet” only prompted one comment.

My first reaction was: What a bunch of ignorant egg-heads!

I give Ron credit, tho, for being generally up on Canadian poetry– he’s reviewed at least a couple about anthologies of our verse before I became aware of them, and he knows many of our poets, at least by name, probably better than I do -- but it’s telling he didn’t have anything more to say on Layton than splash his photo as if he were some rock star. Of course the “spatial and cognitive” gains more space and commentary than anything so traditional (yet wild) as this most Unquiet UnBritish Poet of So-Called Quietude… but I’m sure Ron would argue, and rightfully so, where else in blogland is “spatial and cognitive” poetry given such unlimited space? That’s his focus; it is his blog. But it would be nice for him to transcend his own self-imposed limitations once in a while. (Wouldn’t it be nice for us all…)

Back to Layton:

At this point, almost two weeks after his death, so much has been said on him elsewhere that it seems redundant to make yet another eulogy for this fighter, firebrand, and lion-like champion of poetry (there, that’s my eulogy). My only contribution to the discussion may be to point out that Enneagram-wise, Layton was an exemplar of an 8 with a 7-wing (which Don Richard Riso labels “The Maverick”… interesting that a Globe and Mail headline proclaimed him recently as “Canada’s Maverick Poet”)… an unusual number for a poet. To enthusiasts of both the Enneagram and Layton, this may be obvious (but how many of us are there? maybe one or two).

Layton’s inner “mantra” which he constantly reformulated to himself and broadcast to the world: The world is an unjust place, and I defend the innocent. Of course, “the innocent” was all too often himself, who he defended with his fists (as he says, in childhood) and (in adulthood, probably childhood too) all the powers of his impressive vocabulary. But when that innocent was a suffering prisoner or poet or bird or cat or bull calf, he could call forth a compassion that was truly breathtaking in its depth and largeness of spirit. If you turn to pp. 332-334 of Don Richard Riso’s Personality Types, you’ll see the dynamic of Layton's persona described practically to a tee. An extract that could describe him at his best:

The healthy Eight’s charisma combines with the healthy Seven’s capacity to enjoy life, producing an extraordinarily outgoing personality, often attracting many people and involving them in their hopes and plans. They create opportunities for others and enjoy challenging people to make something of themselves. There is a joyful enthusiasm for living life and sharing their experience and fortitude. Their inner strength and vitality may be so outstanding as to allow Eights with a Seven-wing to have a public, and possibly historical, impact. Their magnanimity will have a practical focus in the concern they show for the material well-being of others.

And at his worst:

Unhealthy persons of this subtype are ruthless and impulsive: they can say or do things that will later be regarded as either a stroke of genius or a fatal mistake. They can be offensive and tyrannical, verbally and physically brutish to others, lashing out at whoever has frustrated them or dared resist their wills. They have explosively violent tempers and quickly get into a rage. They easily feel betrayed and resist any restraints upon their behaviour. Their manic tendencies reinforce their delusions of omnipotence: they may spend vast amounts of money to feed their to feed their inflated notions of themselves. (I don’t know how far he went in this regard…) They tend to get out of control when they are anxious or feel threatened. Since they are susceptible to anxiety, they defend themselves against it by acting out, impulsively striking first, attempting to destroy before they are destroyed.

In all…

… robust, earthy, materialistic… feet firmly planted on the ground, but… not beyond seeking attention and regaling people with stories and “straight talk”. Even if … of limited financial means, Eights with a Seven-wing like to throw money around and have “nights on the town”. The Seven-wing also adds a degree of hyperbole, so they tend to make big promises and exaggerate situations in an effort to recruit others into their schemes.

Sounds like him? Those who are interested in exploring the Enneagram – a complex, enigmatic personality typology that can lead to literally clairvoyant insight into oneself and others -- should read Helen Palmer’s The Enneagram, and Don Richard Riso's and Ross Hudson’s Personality Types and Wisdom and the Enneagram. The Riso/Hudson Enneagram Institute site probably provides the completest information on the net.

But enough typecasting for the moment.

Layton did write a lot of dreck, all of it, however, a lively sort of dreck. Much of his work is a mixed bag of true inspiration and excess -- a source of fascination in itself, how a man could be so brilliant and yet at times aesthetically blind. Below though is one of Layton's stellar poems, that although much celebrated and anthologized, I’ve been unable to find up to now in its entirety on the net.

KEINE LAZAROVITCH 1870-1959

When I saw my mother’s head on the cold pillow,
Her white waterfalling hair in the cheeks’ hollows,
I thought, quietly circling my grief, of how
She loved God but cursed extravagantly his creatures.

For her final mouth was not water but a curse,
A small black hole, a black rent in the universe,
Which damned the green earth, stars and trees in its stillness
And the inescapable lousiness of growing old.

And I record she was comfortless, vituperative,
Ignorant, glad, and much else besides; I believe
She endlessly praised her black eyebrows, their thick weave,
Till plagiarizing Death leaned down and took them for his mould

And spoiled a dignity I shall not again find,
And the fury of her stubborn limited mind;
Now none will shake her amber beads and call God blind,
Or wear them on a breast so radiantly.

O fierce she was, mean and unaccommodating;
But I think now of the toss of her gold earrings,
Their proud carnal assertion, and her youngest sings
While all the rivers of her red veins move into the sea.

-- Irving Layton

Back...

I should have forseen a week ago Sunday that I wouldn't be posting, as it was quite obvious that the coming week was going to be crazy. By day I was marking CEGEP English Exit exams at Dawson College, and by evening (at least Mon-Wed. evenings), doing my English Second Language teaching gig at a Board of Education Adult Centre in Montreal North. Will be resuming posting now that I've recovered, and the coast is (somewhat) clear.

_________________

Nore than 90% of the visits I get are from North America, but for the past month, just for the fun of it, I've kept track of hits on my site meter from "exotic" place names that set my imagination stirring. These include:

Lilyfield, New South Wales, Australia
Al Manamah, Bahrain
Nova Lima, Brazil
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Bogota, Colombia
Bagsvrd, Denmark
Byrudyvester, Kobenhavn (Copenhagen?), Denmark
San Salvador, El Salvador
Cuverville, Basse-Normandie, France
Budapest, Hungary
Reykjavk, Gullbringusysla, Iceland
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
Mumbai, India
Bhubaneshwar, India
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Monfalcone, Italy
Shahrak-e Qods, Tehran, Iran
Haifa, Israel
Asahi, Chiba, Japan
Abashiri, Hokkaido, Japan
Yamaguchi, Japan
Nairobi, Kenya
Seoul, Korea
Kuwait
Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
Guadalajara, Mexico
Chisinau, Moldova
Casablanca, Morocco
Neventer, Netherlands
Aukland, New Zealand
Managua, Nicaragua
Vre Rdal, Norway
Islamabad, Pakistan
Makati, Philippines
Manila, Philippines
Krakow, Malopolskie, Poland
Aguirre, Puerto Rico
Dakar, Singapore
Lima, Peru
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Stockholm, Sweden
Örebro, Sweden
Taipei, Taiwan
Ban Bang Phai, Nonthaburi, Thailand
Trk, Burdur, Turkey
Caracas, Venezuela

North American locations that struck my fancy include:

Brick, New Jersey
Opa Locka, Florida
Topeka, Kansas
Elk Mound, Wisconsin
Natchitoches, Louisiana
Alamosa, Colorado
Great Neck, New York
Thousand Oaks, California

I enjoy two-word place names. And Indian names. And names like "Brick". May I get more in from the likes of Doorknob, Texas, and Chatanooga, Choo Choo.

But my favourite of all has to be this one, which I've seen quite a few times:

? Unknown Country

That's the country where I'm from.

Some passing thoughts...

There must be a "surprise quotient" to poetry. A surprising juxtaposition, transition, metaphor -- would it be, as a minimum, every other line? Three lines? Yet-- apt. Apt. Gotta be apt. Apt, happily. Happily apt.

Here I am, trying to quantify the (perhaps) unquantifiable. What's behind this urge to quantify? Eliminate surprise? Why do that? Isn't surprise what I want to celebrate? Imagine reading -- or writing -- with a surprise meter! Measuring surprises.

How boring! How positively boring!!!

(Isn't that the same as... negatively interesting? Perhaps....)

BACK FROM NETHER

It seems Rock Salt Plum Review is back again. After over a month in limbo-land. Thanks for the head's up, Anne.

IRVING LAYTON RECONSIDERED

On the day of his death, I posted the poem Against this Death below as well as in the comments box of Silliman’s blog. It seemed a fitting epitaph for the man – and to counter (as far as my influence may extend, which seems pretty minimal, but actually hard to determine what with Google & all) the pat assessments already floating around dismissing his poetry as bombastic, misogynistic, etc.

Up in these parts, especially at about the time I started seriously reading and writing poetry around 1980 or so, Irving Layton was a force to be reckoned with. He was Canada’s best known, celebrated, awarded, most controversial poet – a true media star, the quintessence of literary lion. In my childhood I had watched him arguing vociferously with the likes of Nathan Cohen, Pierre Berton & Robert Fulford on CBC’s TV's weekly Fighting Words. He became the only Canadian to be nominated for the Nobel Prize. One of the first books of poetry I ever got was his Governer General's Award-winning Red Carpet for the Sun – which remains, in memory at least, a fabulous creation. Looking back on it now, I can’t help but admit he was – and probably still is – a huge & seminal influence. Returning to the national scene, I’m quite sure he’s the last poet I’ll ever see whose death will rate front page coverage and full-page testimonials in the all major newspapers up here… not to mention major spots on the television news, etc. (Leonard Cohen’s passing, I’m quite certain, will get still greater coverage, but he is far better known as a singer-songwriter than as a poet.)

It’s also indicative of Canadian attitudes that in all that coverage, precious little of his actual poetry got aired. Quips and barbs, yes. A few nice, sentimental lines on the front page of The Montreal Gazette. And this oft-quoted thing, on an inside page, flanked by two big pictures:

MISUNDERSTANDING
by Irving Layton

I placed
my hand
upon
her thigh.

By the way
she moved
away
I could see
her devotion
to literature
was not
perfect.


Ha ha. A poetic quip that still makes me smile. But… GG Award? Nobel Prize? What a goddamned joke!

This is (it pretty well goes without saying) a prose continent. The journalists and reviewers, if & when they cover it at all, actually manage to block access to poetry. I think they’re actually ashamed of it, afraid of admitting being moved enough by it to print it, afraid it will compromise their so-called professionalism. It’s a curious phenomenon. Compare with Latin America, where national dailies like Mexico City’s Excelsior or Managua’s La Prensa print whole poems – passionate, lengthy poems, not just jokey things -- in their weekly cultural section.

I’m having fun writing this. But it’s time to go to bed. To be continued....

P.S. Well, it's way past my bedtime. Just saw the Toronto Globe and Mail, which my partner had bought earlier in the day -- it seems to their credit they did far better than the Gazette or CBC. Two complete poems in the review section. A Canadian first, I think.

In Memoriam: Irving Layton 1912-2006

AGAINST THIS DEATH

I have seen respectable
death
served up like bread and wine
in stores and offices,
in club and hostel,
and from the streetcorner
church
that faces
two-ways;
I have seen death
served up
like ice.

Against this death,
slow, certain:
the body,
this burly sun,
the exhalations
of your breath,
your cheeks
rose and lovely,
and the secret
life
of the imagination
scheming freedom
from labour
and stone.

-- Irving Layton

ROETHKE'S "PRAISE TO THE END!"

What a great way to wing in the New Year! Whip-will of a fish strake strike! Hop skip over simple stones!

With a return to Roethke!

Last February I wrote quite an extensive appreciation of his first two books (sure, close to 60 years after they were published, but still freshly printed to my mind!), and resolved there to read the whole collected over the next few weeks, but eminently distractible as I am, left off that book and delved into other things, and didn’t pick it up again until today.

These are delving times. (Delphic too.)

I think though, the Collected is best to read this way – reading one or three of the books therein every year or so. (Perhaps this is true of all Collected)

Who knows. This evening, though, I read through all the poems of his third book in one sitting, and my mind was left a-wheelin’.

I’ve read (somewhere, somewhere) this stuff is difficult, impenetrable. I think it may be for those who are bent on nut-cracking – whose brains are critically-trained nut-crackers, who need to break through the shell of the poems to extract some Hidden Meaning. Whose minds are primed for a Literature Essay. Essayists be damned.

Here the thing is surface. No great need to penetrate, simply luxuriate in the music and images and dream- like turns of thought. Unlike the first poems, which are portraits and landscapes drawn by a master with a definite subject- thing-the-poem-is-about, these are abstract expressionism; splashed on paint; solid turned to liquid turned to air. All lively; at times childlike, nursery rhyme-like; at times, I swear, ecstatic as anything written.

A favourite passage (of many) -- from the poem Unfold! Unfold!:

By snails, by leaps of frog, I came here, spirit.
Tell me, body without skin, does a fish sweat?
I can’t crawl back through these veins,
I ache for another choice.
The cliffs! The cliffs! They fling me back.
Eternity howls in the last crags,
The field is no longer simple:
It’s a soul’s crossing time.
The dead speak noise.

Fantastic! (What I like, too, is the risk-taking. "Does a fish sweat?") Of course, themes reveal themselves, and at times abstract summations on images that drift like leaves, blow like a gale: theme statements that express the depths the man rides on, that, unlike most such summations in poems, do not distract or deflect, but enhance the reading experience – I think because they are so freshly phrased themselves:

The rings have gone with the pond.
The river’s alone with its water.
All risings
fall.

or

Sing, sing you symbols!

or

Begin with the rock;
End with water.

But for those who need to “interpret”, to paraphrase in prose what is fully alive in the poetry, I’ll leave Roethke with the last word:

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys!