I know not what to do,
my mind is reft:
is song’s gift best?
is love’s gift loveliest?
I know not what to do,
now sleep has pressed
weight on your eyelids.

Shall I break your rest,
devouring, eager?
is love’s gift best?
nay, song’s the loveliest:
yet were you lost,
what rapture
could I take from song?
what song were left?

I know not what to do:
to turn and slake
the rage that burns,
with my breath burn
and trouble your cool breath?
so shall I turn and take
snow in my arms?
(is love’s gift best?)
yet flake on flake
of snow were comfortless,
did you lie wondering,
wakened yet unawake.

Shall I turn and take
comfortless snow within my arms?
press lips to lips
that answer not,
press lips to flesh
that shudders not nor breaks?

Is love’s gift best?
shall I turn and slake
all the wild longing?
O I am eager for you!
as the Pleiads shake
white light in whiter water
so shall I take you?

My mind is quite divided,
my minds hesitate,
so perfect matched,
I know not what to do:
each strives with each
as two white wrestlers
standing for a match,
ready to turn and clutch
yet never shake muscle nor nerve nor tendon;
so my mind waits
to grapple with my mind,
yet I lie quiet,
I would seem at rest.

I know not what to do:
strain upon strain,
sound surging upon sound
makes my brain blind;
as a wave-line may wait to fall
yet (waiting for its falling)
still the wind may take
from off its crest,
white flake on flake of foam,
that rises,
seeming to dart and pulse
and rend the light,
so my mind hesitates
above the passion
quivering yet to break,
so my mind hesitates
above my mind,
listening to song’s delight.

I know not what to do:
will the sound break,
rending the night
with rift on rift of rose
and scattered light?
will the sound break at last
as the wave hesitant,
or will the whole night pass
and I lie listening awake?

“What [C. P.] Snow and [May] Swenson are describing [in their blurbs for one of Charles Reznikoff’s book] is—a classic.

   It cannot be said that Rezi was as ‘important’ as Williams, Pound, Eliot, because he was not important in the development of modern poetry. Simple, almost none of the poets had read him. He could have been of great importance, it is even true that it would ahve been a very good thing if he had played in important role: he would have presented at least an alternative to the influence of Williams, the aridities derived from Eliot—We might have avoided a great many difficulties; Williams’ model has rather made fakery easy, Pound

    and the obfuscations of Ezra Pound

invite even easier imitation, and tho Auden and the Eliot school are perhaps not altogether easy to imitate, it is at least true that the manner apparently can be acquired with a certain amount of education even by those with no ^who possess no^ poetic intuition at all.

    but it is probable that nothing of
importance in Rezi can be imitated. And it is likely that
which explains the neglect of his work”

The point makes one wonder where contemporary poetry would be without Ashbery.

If I find in a poem written long before I was born a line that, in tone, cadence, and key words, is strikingly similar to a poem I wrote long before I ever began reading the poet who wrote the line, which of us is the anticipatory plagiarist?

“I find [the idea that a poet owns language] erroneous because, as I understand it, it still rests on an abusive identification of the interior with the exterior.

Poetry, external memory when you receive it, goes in your internal memory and becomes external memory again through recitation, through public readings, explanations, etc.

But poetry was not in your internal memory before it entered your internal memory. It is not in the internal memory of the poet before it becomes this fragment of external memory that a poem is, composed by him, [i.e.] before it becomes, manifestly, poetry.”

“In short, before he becomes his own reader.”

“What comes from your memory, poetry, goes into another memory, in an unforeseeable way.

In poetry, you do not command what you say, not because you do not know what you are saying, but because you cannot foresee what the memory effect of a poem will be in a memory of poetry. Once composed, a poem belongs to everybody. it no longer belongs exclusively to the poet/composer.”

—from Jacques Roubaud’s Poetry, etcetera: Cleaning House

Non-existence is singular. A thing cannot not exist in multiplicity, even if it is neither one nor several which exist and any of a variety would suffice to validate the search.