Poems can come from all kinds of things even books.
This is bad in general, I think.
One kind of poem one doesn't much like to see is too arty
a poem.
Now I know great poems have been written
about pictures and symphonies.
But in general, maybe young writers,
especially, ought to be warned not
to try to create art about art.
It's sort of incestuous to write a poem to a picture.
As a lot of people do.
And some are great, yes.
But it's dangerous.
And I don't suppose poems ought to come out of books.
One thing that embarrasses me now about this book
is it has many quotations from foreign languages,
not often in the body of the poem, which is worse but as
epic epigraphs and so on.
I don't think one ought have to use another language in writing
poetry.
Well one poem, I guess we don't have this mimeographed,
it's simple, though, it came out of a book on anthropology.
And it's about the way the Eskimos kill wolves.
One method, and this is to stick a dagger upright in the ice,
to freeze it there.
And the wolves are attracted by this shiny object,
and they gather around it, and curiously, they
begin to lick it.
It's razor sharp.
They, well, when the scent of blood gets in the air,
they sort of start killing each other.
It is said.
Or it is said they bleed to death.
Various awful things happen, but this takes care
of the wolves in the vicinity.
The book on anthropology said anyway.
Well now, this is an interesting symbol.
Of what?
What does this stand for, the shiny dagger in the ice?
It's a symbol of something, I hope one feels.
Is one just supposed to think, that's life for you or what?
I don't think you ought to say too specifically what
the dagger is, but a poem called "A Pretty
Device of the Fathers" dealt with this.
A dagger whose bone haft the iceberg locks Prime diamond
in the nights of polar cold: Sharpened by shamans haloed
in white fox, Their faces bland obols of scythian gold Butt
fused in ice: the uncanny tool upstanding Whetted so fine it
sang in the least wind, A glamor the grey lopers took
to haunting, Each eye a prickle of fire:
wolves winter-thinned Pad furry-eyed,
tongues hankering for that bangle Bobbing like censers
to the illustrious vault; One runs a tongue along the edge:
a tingle Teases him, warm and sticky, thrilling of salt.
Delirious attar of life!
The ecstatic glare Glues them in furry carnage,
sweet fangs bare.
That's what the Eskimos do.
What we all do to each other, somebody might want to say.