The Drunken Silenius

The Drunken Silenius

Silenius

tutor to Dionysus -

buy that poet a port,

upend the apple cart of

hokum and decorum and

spill the wine spodee-odee

nowhere now to go

but round

and

round

while

your young

in the Fogg and

larger Forest.

Addenda 1 - I am a long way now from the portrait of the poet as a mystical drinker. But chance led me to the Fogg Museum, and more chance had me lingering, yesterday, while others came and went, in front of the painting, the painting by Francesco Fracanzano of a satyrists' symposium centered around young Silenius and his younger-yet student Dionysus (shown here idly peeing). Just like a songster soft-voiced  mountain singer who might have a special reverence for a bluesman like Skip James or Charlie Patton, I have learned to hold a regard for  the drunken poet - the one of less accomplishment but more traffic with the creative motherload because of his intoxicated immoderation. I think of Eric Burdon's Spill the Wine, and me knocking over a gallon of such to kick off a poetry reading with the DeMark's at the Farallonnes Institute in (Petaluma?) in 1977. I think of Gregory Corso as I saw him, his false teeth chattering, with some stumbling, but pursuing fitfully his vision - he like Silenius projected now into myth as a poet god. Never good to have a longer intro then poem, so I will put this as an addenda.

Addenda 2 - Nice and rare to get out - to go to the Fogg with old visiting Racine friend J. Steiner, and recharge the mental Duracells. Saw old Christs and Nayikas (Indian Heroines of Love). What I also saw was Bauhaus - Built House -- people and their fascinating embrace of new thought, living abstraction and golden concept all impressions restrained knowing the Bauhaus called out Hitler's loathing and had to run and in some cases die in the lethal showers. Made more morose as what I am looking at outside the museum going on today is but an ascendant hack Trump trying to undo all the good of the Boomers?- Jack Vaughan