HD Day Book, Day Book For Sam

February 13, 2011 (32 Degrees)

These three - Pound, Williams, and HD - belonged in their youth to a still brilliant generation that (it should be who) began writing just before the first World War and publishing in 'The Egoist' in London, in "Poetry and Others' in America. They alone of their generation- and we must add DH Lawrence to their company - saw literature as a text of the soul in its search for fulfillment in life and took the imagination as a primary instinctual authority. [Here, I think, what does it mean to be utterly consumed by poetry? Not as an avenue to fame or getting girls or a tenure track job; but to be utterly consumed for the sake of bliss and human connection?] The generative imagination Pound called it. They took the full risk of seeking to fulfill their vision of the poet as seer and creator.

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I read these works aloud; dreamed about them; took my life in them; studied them as my anatomy of what Poetry must be.

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As in writing, deriving as I do, I burn the nets of my origins.

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I knew that I had found my book.