DEMODULATING ANGEL

Richard Tagett

Selected Poems 1960-2010

Demodulating Angelselected poems 1960-2010

Richard Tagett

Ithuriel�’s SpearSan Francisco

To the best of my knowledge these poems are presented in the order in which they were conceived, received, or in a few cases published. Some were self-published in various folios, flyers, broadsides, and books under the Diogenes San Francisco imprint; and some first appeared in one form or another in the following publications.

Mirage v. 4, no. 8 (2000) for �“Aesthetic Judgment�”; Vector v. 4, no. 7 (1968) for �“As It Were and Yet Unborn�” and �“Poem�”; Ur Vox no. 4 (2006) for �“Coeur du noir�”; Chelsea no. 32 (1973) for �“d�’être�” and �“Without Necessity�”; Empty Elevator Shaft no. 1 (1974) for �“Dear Alfred Charles Kinsey�”; Ribot no. 6 (1998) for �“Karichimaka�”; Ur Vox no. 2 (2002) for �“Lakeshore Geology�”; The Sonoma County Stump v. 7, no. 14 (1978) for �“Numbers�”; The Male Muse (The Crossing Press, 1973) for �“Ragazzo�”; Manroot no. 4 (1971) for �“Pluralities�”; Angle, no. 1 (1997) for �“Scherzo for Jack�” (from �“5 Scherzi�”); Yen Agat (Bangkok, Thailand, 2004) for �“Triptych for Believers�”; Sebastian Quill no. 2 (1971) for �“White Angels.�”

Thanks to my teachers: Arnold Weinstein, Jack Spicer, Jack Gilbert, and Robert Duncan.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Tagett

Cover and book design by Plainfeather Printworks

Front cover painting by José Laffitte, courtesy of the Estate of José LaffittePhoto following page 143: the author sometime in the 1950sBack cover photo of the author by William Cloud, 2010

Authors�’s blog: http://diogenessf.blogspot.com/

ISBN 978-0-9793390-8-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010943196Ithuriel�’s Spear is a fiscally sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco

www.ithuriel.com

THE MUSIC ALL OVER AGAIN

for Patrick

Those rarifying skies blowAnd you ain�’t no kid anymore.With the creaking weight of your insect breathClouds well at the windowAnd you lose yourself among alien childrenYou resemble.Too old to suffer civilitiesYou embrace them.To think that you could talk through them.To think that you were a pronounWe could exchange between us in a mirror.It�’s only outrageous in the detailsNobody wants to listen to.The music all over againThat wasn�’t there to begin with.

56

OPEN SPACE

for Brian

You quiver too much alive to apprehendthe sun going down behind the mountains,the existential signs in every valley,evening�’s decision,billions of little deathsbringing their shadowshungrier for life, for you full of cool,with tiny ferns growing from your limbs,six-foot, long step, drunken boat.

I shiver too easily a delicate breezeI know is hers, Earth, her last facebehind the darkr-trees in the undermists,your bottomclouds, my hill prince,where owers grope ale in the twilight.

Side by side we are face to face with nothingbut she breathing her hedonism,and all desire turns to dreamingsweet sensuous ecstasy of living.

I stand here and waitleaning against Hotel Imminence, holstered hearts, boulders,ships of friends, res, achings, Indian hungers singing himson pathways of soft grasses, hot purple elds,

57

solid rock dissolved in clear watercolor of music opening gatesto naked comminglingups & downs in-toxicated world.

58

DREAM SPOT

On a warm spring night in the geography of desirewhere a bar called Shouts is the pin of allmemory marking . . . no, shoutinghow good it was: the y in its own maskwith its own meaning, its ownwinged shouts alightingthis incredibly smooth territory,insatiably lickingthe musk, the owing.

How good it was.For even in that place we dream up�—cherry, insect, ball, bell, a Samuel Adams�—

all melts into memory. So toohow good it�’s not a kingdom but its ownmusic, its own incestuous meaningunmasked for what it is:a quarter note of lustin soprano voices.

59

LAST MINUTES

Take the wordsfor what they are. We don�’t knowwhence they came. Or why.This dark struggle at rootswhere ants devour landscapes of columns of intellect.

The reader is divided in 2. Out of reach. Beware theobject bornblowing in the wind over your head. The microphoneis dead. But words return,reiterate like sick cows, their swarming iessucking off a yawn.The party�’s breaking up�—forevertomorrow.

Forever�—as in the nal minutes�—it ain�’t the jackknife of discoverybut the touch of your hand. Fuck the words.

60

KARICHIMAKA

Crooked desert cocktool shed, wolf�’s den,strange beds, metamucilnightmares, old manfaking itpretty damn well,gonna meet the oracle,pretty strong will.

Feels goodbeige blue sun, smallroar of cars behind me,too earlyto meet the man, alwaystoo early for esh& stuff, too late foressences, littleboys, burns,brandishings�—too many Bs.

Not enoughkeeps the engine running.

61

It’s easy to overlook consistently even a poet of great talent, but I, who have known Tagett for some time, didn’t realize how consistently great he is till I read his manuscript. Now I write this apologia through a red mist of shame aerated only by sheer delight. Fifty years at work in the field, he has been changing with the times, alert to the tiniest of human feelings as well as to the larger currents of shared social struggle. Like Jack Spicer, with whom he worked closely and on whom he coedited a volume of lasting value, Tagett knows when and how to lure the right words to his page, and how to insure they stick close to his branches. We have here a kind of Rorschach, a mirror in which reading will tell you as much about yourself as it will about the master Rich Tagett. I know of no other American poet whose very pages are as well filled out. What an accomplishment! — Kevin Killian

These seminal to septuagenarian poems walk cantankerous magnetic dogs along edges defined by the basic principle of oink. From youthful confusions to later hesitant embraces of the failure of language, all the while Eros in yogic contortion sits an onanist’s distance from its obscure object of desire. These are not cocoon tunes, but a narrative of the fox in the box who eats our rules and may offend by doing so. These angular angels wiggle like rectangles after having their feathers read. They pant likes ants under a reign of fog drowning in telephonic hum, but please do not tell anyone. You have to suffer, you have to fill up in order to implode, so fill up on these drowning peonies, nameless one. — Brian Lucas

In the book of changes, the first hexagram is Ch’ien—the creative. The 19th hexagram is Lin—the approach. This is work of the creative approach, the Indric web of desire, the primal procreative power of heaven burned down to the roots, coming “back, always back to the approach.” — Patrick Monnin

Ithuriel’s Spear San Francisco, California www.ithuriel.com

Demodulating Angel can be ordered online from Small Press Distribution in Berkeley:www.spdbooks.org