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Jacket 15 — December 2001   |   # 15  Contents   |   Homepage   |   Catalog   |


Paul Hoover

But Kenneth


But were these the words, like amps and ohms
In heaven, otherwise enraptured since for instance?
But Industrial Revolutions? But what can one say?

But nothing. But even realism stirs like a woman.
But dew on skin. But resemblance in the parlor
(As lunch is to urge), the gogo dancer’s cage

Ablaze in history. But swell like Kenneth
And Sparkle Plenty. But this will be our secret.
But at the cusp of seasons and reasons for cement.

But never say hammer to a boy of rose.
But the woman in my shoes, who when
She walks is active, and the men say what?

But the animals’ shadows were not as we imagined.
But standing contemplation on its very edge
And chopping down summer even in the cold,

Which the art of poetry blesses, a feather in its mouth.
But the ‘constitution of the inner nation.’
But casing the joint for history in ottava rima

And bang for inspiration if you go for that.
But a peculiar feeling between fear and pleasure
That moves Ko to speech and urges the duplications

Swiftly out through space. But genius. But Apollo
Dionysian and Zeus remote control giving birth
To children and repairing all the rest. But you

And again you, seeking the undreamed. But it
Is not whatever; necessity must live for the silliest
Sarajevan: tongue muscle, blood fire, all continents

And evenings. But history ‘lives sideways,’
Results in obligations that only poetry captures
In the sense of a sequence. But measure me this.

But the ease of your style is evident to all,
Placing elaboration on a plain for all to see.
But not plain. But Kenneth standing in paint

Reading a book for Fairfield Porter, his type-
Writer gleaming, smudges of light around
His eyes and the back of his hand a fiery white

Like the page his mouth is reading. But the curtains
Are domestic like interiors in Vuillard. But the pale
House in the window suggests another realm though

Not the transcendent. But the actual dancing and
Even possible minds. But the metaphysical sweater
Dark at your center from which the seer’s eye,

Tranquil and domestic, can never quite depart,
In swart declension with the cover of the book.
But you in silence reading, alive for an instant.







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