Today’s show is the first half of an interview with poet Ivan Argüelles. Jack wrote this about Argüelles’ remarkable work:At the beginning of “Ilion—A Transcription,” Ivan Argüelles writes, “just so one world goes away / and another comes into being.” Like the best fiction/fantasy, these poems operate at the intersection points of “worlds”—which is to say at the intersection points of mental actions which have about as much in common as the umbrella and sewing machine on a dissecting table of Lautréamont’s famous formulation. But the “marvelous” of Argüelles’ poems ventures further than even Surrealism. Their vast reach and their vast reading include the Classics and the realm of Pound’s Cantos, where the dead and the living mingle. James Joyce’s “nighttown” is here as well, and we feel the constant presence of the author’s identical twin, the great New Age master, José (1939-2011). These poems are not for the faint of feeling or the faint of intellect, but they are for those who value poetry, literature, the world: “to hold in your hand / a distaff and by your side a harp to sing the lonely nights / in the labyrinth of sleep….”
In late February of 2018, Ivan’s son, Max, plagued for many years with encephalitis, died. Ivan wrote, “My wife Marilla and I did everything we could, since his original illness, encephalitis, on June 3, 1978 until yesterday Feb 28, 2018, not just to keep him alive, but to keep him happy, well and loved at home for what now seems a very brief 39 years. Max would have been 50 this Mar. 9.
“Max was the sweetest, most innocent human being I have ever known.
faciat quidlubet;
sumat consumat perdat, decretumst pati,
dum illum modo habeam mecum.
P. Terentius Afer”
[“Let him do what he likes, let him spend, squander, waste. I’m determined to put up with it so long as I have him with me.” Terence, from The Self-Tormentor.]
This is Ivan’s “Max: A Short Autobiography”:
taken from the womb what was the gift ?
I saw light and sparklers and heard
the boom of motor traffic out the window
cities came and cities went the biggest
where I lived knowing chalk and cement
bridges that seemed to fly and stores
filled with all the christmases in the world
glitter this and twinkle that basements
escalators subway trains and libraries
once I even went to see the Taj Mahal
and rode an elephant and slept in a bus
that zigzagged through the Himalayas
later on something happened a sore
in my mouth and fever and convulsions
what they call a coma a big red hiatus
between consciousness and chaos
as if an airplane had taken me and
swirling in a planet of clouds dropped
me down on a slope by a large water
where I lay for a long time suffering
little but a headache the size of ink
to walk again I learned a bit and
to ride a horse listening to the wind
people immersed me in warm pools
and set me on a blue three wheeled bike
what a wonder the world was streaming
frontwards and back at the same time
half of what I understood was a language
missing most of its meaning or echoes
frequent and distant in the kaleidoscope
of my hearing until the convulsions returned
reversing my ability to conjecture light
for years that were a matter of days
or maybe weeks I kept on shifting slow
and at times falling too into strange holes
dark and impressions of endless nights
often winding up in hospital beds and
the machines blinking or bonking bright
like sirens moaning and crying to sleep
why I couldn’t manage to get out of bed
without help to dress and wash and use
my left hand and so much else lopsided
to maintain my balance was good and to
actually stand and greet the new machine
music was wonderful to touch and sound
ringing like bells and to sing voicelessly
was my talent and I offered everyone
a handshake and joy even when I was
sliding off the cliff into a numerable abyss
into ways of consciousness that stuttered
OK it wasn’t easy coming into the new
century with tubes and things that fastened
my shadow to electrodes pegged in the wall
I forgot how food tasted and my breath
became relentlessly out of rhythm
the ones I loved remained steadfast
and put me to bed and woke me up
tirelessly whether light or dark whenever
sometimes and suddenly the ambulances
came and took me back to crowded rooms
blinking and bonking and unconscious
for long periods dreaming I was a micronaut
in my plastic toy sailing the galaxies
trying with less success to stay awake
to breathe to keep up the heart’s pace
until one day this day I ran into a wall
and all the noise and sparkling shimmer
stopped
03-02-18