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PARTISAN REVIEW
things - in his case, taut and nuanced, androgynous , socially dar–
ing, that are perhaps
secondary
in the affairs of the spirit.
The movement of his thought in the backyard part of his mind
where sacredness erupts, grew limited and then was hidden from
sight except as temperament - he was the mouth of a peculiar, local ,
harassed god . This was the last year in which his poetry had any
quality of freshness but it was the middle of his fecund period. His
poetry was good in a final sense for a while longer, harshly technical
and pre-set in its failures and its successes.
His mind was pressed forward toward the world in the manner
of The Retort.
The animal peculiarity of intelligence in him is a nervous com–
mandingness and courage - the courage is as it was in school. To
speak, to be bullied for speech, to persist and
dare.
Much of his style was taken from his reading.
It
was stolen but
thefts of things devised by others are relationships to others, so that
his manner was a scrapbook of affections and invasions. But his sen–
sitivity was suspect as being essentially thievish . That part of his in–
telligence once devoted to the sacred had long ago become an evolv–
ing self-conscious devotion to art at this historical moment - to a
now. Around him spreads a horizon of him living and working as he
does and of his publicizing himself and others (painters, never
writers) and of his particular aspirations, sexual and social, among
them to be notable at the party and to impress me.
I have been something of a sexual icon since puberty.
Johnno moves on the floor of the loft to the table which is the
bar, above the mocking skuhh and squeak of his sneakers on the
wooden floor. The hard-willed and densely armored and pained
elegance his eyes have suggest the natural state of the predator.
Then the defenseless squeak of his sneakers suggests he is a victim ,
that he is in himself, an ecological niche alone.
I hear the words, "Macaw, Madam,"- but it is J ohnno's pro–
nunciation of
macadam
in the noise of the party .
It
is the flutter of his
lips, a faintly interpolated extra syllable, a pressure: remembering
how he talked helps me in reading his poetry sometimes.
His preternatural posture causes his sweater to hang
neatly
from
his shoulders. The schooleyness of that - the secular version of a
sacerdotal alb quality - is parochial school papal. He consciously felt
his youth had been a formal moment subject to being pillaged ,
violated, sinned against because he had been
beautiful and good:
therefore, to be demeaned. He is of a consequently conscious and
