D.H. Robinson
I know the quartersof the weather, where it comes from,where it goes. But the stem of me,this I took from their welcome,or their rejection, of meAnd my arrogancewas neither diminishednor increased,by the communicationIt is undone businessI speak of, this morning,with the seastretching outfrom my feet
—Charles Olson, “Maximus, to Himself” (1963)
YET AGAIN, ITof waves, and it’s hard to tell the ebb from the flow. The neologism of the time was “clusterfuck”, a word the English language managed to do without for a thousand years until George Osborne got his mitts on the exchequer. Looking at these books spread across the desk, it’s hard to resist the thought that the verb is more pregnant than the noun: that some people are cosmically cluster-fucked; that there really is a tide in the affairs of men, and sometimes it’s hurricane season.
