So, in the end, I realized that this was not simply
a contemporary phenomenon, that this
is something that really goes back
to the beginnings of modern poetry,
and to writers like Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound,
in particular, who drew a lot of their poetics
from their understandings of Asian art, Asian literature,
and what Chinese and Japanese poetry were like.
So, in the end, I really did have
to go back to quote unquote "the source"
and take on the much scarier task of rewriting
the works of some classic modernist poets.
So this was my attempt at rewriting a very famous poem
by Marianne Moore, called "Nine Nectarines."
So this is Chinese science number 82.
Unchanged by time as Asians are, like intervals
between our words--
8 is their lucky number, twigged to what wasn't there before.
They're all unobtrusive nerds.
Although every now and then, a speaking role is seen--
a pigeon grunt or ninja scream.
Fuzzless, their slender bodies curve
in calligraphic style, that Chinese acrobatic, half
modest lotus pose converts the wrinkled wisdom of the East
to pure American Beauty.
Pink blush applied to our gray visage,
as a pungent yeast makes a flaccid white dough rise.
The grouchy poet-used self-righteous songs cannot
send the shelf of Chinese condiments spilling to the arid
ground--
above the grave of Ezra Pound.
Secluded homegrown Chinatown, the hothouse fruit
we said we found in China first--
was it ever theirs?
Old Fenollosa would not say.
One can hear no sound, from that enigmatic group of Chinese--
their sallow, unrequited voices shallow, as an ink
smudged fingerprint on this much whitened page.
Or in the disregarded rage of the gelded horse,
beneath the ass asleep in the saddle,
whose chin drips with the juice of the low hanging fruit
of the imperial tree in bloom.
A Chinese understands that 100 kinds
of silence made by that mother loving Collins
are only appearance--
the long-tailed queue of violence
swings blood brown behind our backs.
Black haired historian with feet bound by your orientally
enameled artifacts.
It's on a Chinese that you inscribed this masterpiece.