Tony Tost
Introduction by the Lucifer Poetics Group
Opening Day, April 1969. President
Richard Milhous Nixon throws out the first pitch for the Washington Senators.
It is a warm and sunny day; a smile beams forth from those not-yet infamous
jowls; at the right hand of Nixon Ted Williams
looks on with a glint of awe. Everything is perfect in the easy rhythm of the
moment. And yet, as we all have experienced in the decades since, something is
not quite right. Tony Tost knows this in his bones; he has always been
dissatisfied with the easy frequencies of language. As a result, his lines
often suggest to me the sound of an orchestra tuning up, each sentence fragments
on torn Scottish pulse episodes, essentially minimalist, but still tick-tocking
its way towards a maximalist prelude: the story of a mind in retreat from
itself. This is just another symptom, what we call "the threshold
illusion" or "the ante", that haunts voice. Tost traces this,
showing signs of the migraine aura of thought that scrolls in the air like the
light from those who live behind the cathedral of our own inconsequence;
nonetheless: the basic material objects of an autobiography remain. The barn,
the trumpet, the rose, the chord, the astrolabe, the wound, the mountain, the
gelatin capsules, the gear, the mandible, the rabbit's head, the blood on the
eggs: all are equally important to his development and, like the sweet potato
pie his family is—inevitably—sharing at this instant, all are
equally out-of-place in his poetics. Like Nixon, like the Washington Senators,
like all of them smiling on a warm spring day, something lurks in the
misalignments, as an aria twisted into a Nixonian chorale of lust for doom.
Tony Tost's poetics are
quintessentially those of the post-Senators era; a poetics of accepting the
tension between the joy of baseball in an age where all icons have seemingly
fallen and are always in some way alienating. Like what one would expect if Don DeLillo were suddenly turned poet, the question of
influence is never answered, except in the depths of the work, where phrases
plunge into nothingness and return, like an echo that arrives a millennium
ahead of the whisper that can only be its origin, imbued with abstraction, and
yet, to weave it all together he makes a show of both the displacements of
lineage and the way they push through his work; this is the framework for the
"rude shelter of an ear" he is proposing. Many lie hidden behind the
usual Ted Williams of inhalation. Fetching, yet
remote, the lines bespeak another place, and call us towards it, somewhere
between the skepticism of Chris "tender vittles" Vitiello and the
gnosis of David "buddy dharma" Need, between the Celtic revival Tanya
Olson proposes and the ontological architecture of kathryn l. pringle, though
I, for one, cannot proceed much further and pretend I am oblivious to the
scandal of the life, ________________________________, nor to those breakaway
chairs that never break, nor the false boulders that always prove too heavy to
lift. Those who levitate are doomed to bloviate a sharply-lit concupiscence;
always pitting what is seen and said against the interrogative watchlight of
what might be known.
Signed,
the Lucifer Poetics Group
from Elephant and Obelisk
* /
New methods for anticipating the moment
I shake my head no for twenty years
the interior is announced
as accident
the ordering of words I am unable to bear
the poems cannot stand to be singular
soaked down to their very blood
in the guise of a drunken master
bright in the harness of angelhood
each of the five senses is a cloud
my mouth entered by song
a theory, a mashing of discourse
a sentence writing not only its words
the hands that torch them
are we among
a vision pierced as its own reward
* /
A suddenly declared form is extended
terms are altered and the extension remains
I have observed that one tends
to heights so rarely attained
please resist leaning across the table
upon which I assert the future is read
this fire is understood to be transferable
the spirit becomes ever more lucid
to articulate the terror of things
speaking each intuitive or repetitive virtue
my poetics is found
pulsating a few
pregnant with images my passage to the surface
these procedures and methods will not erase
entering
the reach of each becoming
* /
Brought up by poems
pauses bearing fruit
tinted with blood a stillness summons
itself
to pronounce the
emotions
into the mouth the taste of an absolute
appearance is an accomplishment
a scroll
to approach
an ancient arena regards
the inexplicably felt
spilling upward
each pause the song of a certain whole
with my poems I am purchased
tonight I believe this
vision rises like light to its wave
the exact moment a poem dies it takes root
as method
the way up is perfectly brute
to write out the possible we have to leave
pass through the other as a kiss
from OrpheusÕ Needle
Animals bring us joy, pouring
blood
as
angels bring joy, pouring order
a
surge of desire is anticipation of order
perhaps
the clarities of letters exist
the
clarities of gods, a lion would say
a
vow—break this open as sacrifice to spirit
clarity
is a letter leaking from an animal
in
the amoeba of mediation Orpheus sings
the
consequences line up their apes and angels
circuitry
of periphery and proximity, speculative tremors
angel
of the seen is mistaken for depth
angel
of the divisible passes for order
an
extended offer to puzzle our dust
a
needle through flesh, another hesitation
there
are eyes only an ear can open
so
each may swallow the sign
one
opens an ear to swell the vision
a
resplendent fire is there as dreamed
a
pulse has made a machinery a needle rises to measure
it
is April in the world and work has a place
an
amplifier resurrects us, idyllic syllables—o blank angels
the
projection of wind across a bright edifice of form
forever
blinking, aloft forever, and crowned
in
the crossing a face is forming
a
simplicity the eye must doubt to live with
Rilke
in his treetop whimpers my mind has swallowed the sun
The loamÕs continuum spins an axis
the
night swallows, choking on a name
no
public form for what it means to be digging
someone
simply crouching, drumming alone
imagining
the world as every moment
fanboy
of the familiar—catalytic mimesis
witness
a needle in the thick of the soup
letters
slipping from behind a blue-eyed lion
a
fire in the corner of his diaphanous brain
sketch
an alphabet for all these angels
Orphic,
a horizon fails—bruises written
a
utopia to be composed before or as the flood
instruments
form a felt circumference
the
book is an instrument and not a place in the world
blood
in the water, a book for a prophet
the
cry itself a specific locale
everything
forgotten miracles itself as revelation
my
load is eros—hands crawl like decades
the
years are chased across a page
a
kite is tied by twine to a snake
singing
is a kind of swallowing, swallowing a kind of singing
become
in one another an amplifier for the Lord
An angel sleeps inside a torch
a
touch of flame colors the page to vision
to
love miracles is not to be a miracle
to
see is neither to escape nor think
one
is introduced to a duration one becomes
not
an embrace but a diagnosis of being
bend
for us the familiar into an eternal bark
a
span of quiet interrogates all the speaking
study
of the prayer within a play
the
tease inside a prayer is shyness
a
needle exceeds Orpheus until the orphic alone
in
its failure may master—let static rise
a
babyÕs breath leaps into lightness
a
mind shakes a wildness into design
a
needle tonight my master and I are sharing
I
am pulled into distance so as to sing
a
torch to kiss, the beasting sky
inside
my mouth a flame arrests
the
great concealment has been a divination of love
split
into spirit a child rises to speak
grace
grants the mouth to stutter—a needle drops
all
those tremors on the tip of a tongue are a horror
meat
invented mind in an hour of doubt
the
sky pitches inward as perspective tonight
poised
like a lure within the mystery
the
heart grows anonymous raising its blade
To transfigure and to still not tremble
the
leash of the angel of answers releases
clothed
in the gospel by wanting the gospel
dripping
in wisdom my ancestors are cloaked
what
we call debt, doubt, or toil
of
this a leash knows something
tonight
I am infinity assembled
scratch
my name across my sword
a
needle composes the bottomless lake
Orpheus
pitched perfectly beneath it
Olson
thumbtacked with a knowledge
led
into the poplars, bled into lionhood
lifting
a trumpet so to swallow the sign
one
is wholly beast inside the sentence
touch
is mildness, a brightness of mind
the
incalculable came upon me as blankness
a
blanket thrown so to cover a cage
a
beak rips into fabric, a freak of its knowing
through
a thousand and one cuts the visions arrive
another
fathering of a conceptual practice
to
this recurrence my ancestors are wed
adorned
with leashes, thrilled to a height
invent
the image in which they at last may rest
out
of a lake a new sign rises—sound spent, beyond embryonic
the
ancestors re-leash a knowing to this production
their
donation to grace a story of blood
If an eye is visible its needle is proximate
Orpheus
as orphan, scripting his origins
make
this by ear he says swallowing my air
it
is midnight in heaven what is the passage
I
step into the substratum all my glory in rags
a
parasite of paradise, belling under being
the
Orphic sings so brightly how shameless and frail
mark
this error as entrance—all my gasping is rage
the
originary science of slipping out of your name
a
crack in the foundation prepares its epic
around
me a chorus gathers the totems of love
a
fist, a hawk, a decade of bad choices
a
child swallowing wonder in order to speak
listen
again to the stutter
echo
offers entrance always as delay
Orpheus
is ghostliest—guests descending in song
to
dwell in their skin without an address
a
vow, a cut, a melancholic descendant
in
a treetop with my harmonica and an old wallet picture
inside
a question with a thousand and one signs
an
object takes a farewell within every usage
a needle pulling an image of love from
under the skin
for Leigh & Simon
Sustain sublime
you who be trying
become the song that can
at last understand you
drone back
before your first experience
and act
as you understand song to be
tape-loop logos is into resistance
a note Xeroxed inexorably back to where this belongs
a song
why is there something
instead of everything
we were together as ghosts at first
thrust forward
each as the othersÕ longing
And you
who fall
back at night into your body
And you who break
as an experience of firstness
And you
who join hands learning to sleep
Fold into night
a depth of absolute incompleteness
composes
cupped
face to the other face, an unfinished vision—
( . . . what we be
be only what
only we can know . . .)
Bright String
bright as a brand of fire.
to make luminous by light from without,
by dispelling gloom, obscurity, want of brightness.
in his bright radiance and collateral
light.
if he grow musical.
a wandering fire.
a monument with a cross upon it to
excite devotion, as were anciently set in market.
each passion.
as when Isaac was old, and his eyes were
dim.
a flood of light; great luster or
brightness; splendor; as the effulgence of divine glory.
to gild; to brighten.
consisting of fire; as the fiery gulf of
Etna.
the sword which is made fiery.
and fiery billows roll below.
fire in general.
rage; violence; as the flames of war.
a sudden burst of light; a flood of
light instantaneously appearing and disappearing; as a flash of lightning.
a sudden burst of flame and light; as
instantaneous blaze; as the flash of a gun.
as a warrior, glad with sight of hostile
blood—.
the cavern glares with new admitted
light.
to flash; to spread a flood of light.
the field yet glitters with the pomp of
war.
serene in glory.
like an immense arch or vault.
to disgorge filth, as a hawk.
the scorching fires that in entrails
glow.
to illuminate; to make splendid; to
adorn with luster.
to animate by heat or light.
light is a fluid, real matter.
shining; resplendent; as the sun's
lucent orb.
not easily understood; not obviously
intelligible; abstruse; as an obscure passage in a writing.
living in darkness; as the obscure bird.
a splendid place of residence; as the
sun's bright palace.
to excel in brightness; as the ancestral
delights.
a white speck of film growing on the
eye.
to issue in rays, as light; to dart, as
beams of brightness; to shine.
a degree beyond endurance; as a blaze
insufferably bright.
a flower with several semiflosculous
florets set round a disk in form of a radiant star.
of a bright color, resembling blood.
to put on a robe; or to dress with
magnificence; to array.
to invest, as with beauty or elegance;
as fields robed with green.
as a body as pellucid as crystal.
as it is found in the Persian seas and
in many parts of the ocean.
as it is distinguished from softness or
sweetness.
a small shining body or transient light.
we have here and there a little clear
light, and some sparks of bright knowledge.
a small portion.
radiated like a star; as starlike
flowers.
to resemble a star; to become stellated.
to break forth, as a sudden flood of
light.
to burst or open instantly on the sight,
as splendor.
holy-bright,
or bright-holy, eminent for sanctity.
as a dull
fire; as a dull light.
as it is
found in beds over the opals in Hungary, Silesia and Saxony.
as it is often used elliptically, for
heaven, or the celestial regions.
to shine with a white heat; to exhibit
incandescence.
as a dull knife or ax.
as a flower edged with gold.
as it is found in France and England,
where it is smeared by husbandmen onto vines.
as it is the mark of a cliff.
as it is no part of a secret meaning.
as it is one of the simple or primitive
colors.
a body of water driven by violence.
as it is opake or a little translucid,
especially at the edges.
as it is silent in some words.
as it is like bitumen.
as it is; to come to light, to be
detected; to be discovered or to be found.
as it is to be loaded as a burden.
as it is found in some names.