PARTISAN ItEVI.EW
271
Now the language 'moves into "Bitter' BlaCk Bitterness" and "Nigger /
can you: kiD t :carr: you : kill.". Hunianity ·is transformed to ' "Niggers,"
"Bla:cks," "Honkies," etC. There are iristructions: on making Molotov
cocktails, iand ' the' insistence that "All honkies and some' negroes will
have to die / This is unfortunate but necessary." What
Black Feeling;
Black Thought, Black Judgment
records, in fact, is a classical struggle
between Love and Duty. Here, as
of
old, Duty means "to kill."
One thinks of LeRoi Jones; ' qf course, but" a better comparison
is
a
poet neither black nor American.
10'
.:~
tjrne
as
ill
as our own, Bertolt
Brecht wrote a poem to posterity, ,apologizing for having been brutalized
in
the struggle against brutality. Giovanni declares of her wOl'k, "Some folk
wilt say
lhat:·th~
prienl! are
anti-white but that's .not where rm coming
from. You can be pro without being anti," and "I do not want you to
call ine a :militant·under ·any·circumstances." Some of the poems would
belie this. But,"I .try. to write about black love.".' That she does so; suc–
cessfully and joyously, throughout this
book
and sometimes in despite of
ideology; means radical progress•
... Cid Corman has long ·been a poet's poet: a writer neither very
profuse -'- 'all his books are "slender" ones - nor
very _.
aggressive, but
central. To read Corman is to become eonscious of one's breathing, how
slightly it .separates uS 'from things like -stones. ·The ·pure language, in
minimal lines like those · of Williams' or Creeley, makes one think of
other arts' in their purity: a dean tone of harpsichord music, or flute,
or lute, :or Matisse 'colors, or
sumi'
painting or the.Zen archer, shooting
well. In miles per minute, ·the two-line inscription 'which closes
Living–
dying
moves astonishingly far.
"Where 'l kneel.! arock ·stands."
In
'.'The World at Santo' 'Spirito,'" Corman ' writes:,
i ', " .
'I '
see
..
~0t.hing .
is
.but trembles
divine, ·more
more ·sea
.
doom
there ' .
. .
where , the ' . .
.
~ar4~~
halts.. .
..
ana the sands
smooth out.
::
....
-
Like ' Creeley?<s
-."The
Rhythm/' -
this, ·poem
Jirst ,
opens, then· closes-
begins
in
·sunshine.;:ends
in
dal1k. :·and
~s
to ·see
l}11
the world: we
will
ever know; '.
