Grab Your Edition The Toad And The No Tour Articulated By Eddie Watkins Disseminated As Volume
little over a month ago, I had the pleasure of reading one of this Philadelphia poet's early works, This book was published in, and most of the material dates back to around that time, This is Eddie at his most elemental, most raw, most melancholic, The playfulness and dexterity that's displayed in the majority of his more recent poems is present even at this early stage.
Both The Toad and The No Tour are formative works, certainly, but they are by no means the work of a novice.
Already the poet's hand is sure, his vision clear, The Toad is a revelation, How it interacts with language is truly something to behold, It questions, it aggravates, it repeats, it reprimands, it consumes, it's violent in places, gentle in others in a sense, it inverts the very idea of what a poem should be.
In the opening lines, we see a language simultaneously mauled and yet held at a distance as though the poet did not want to lose himself in his selfgenerated chaos:
There an answer not this
Or this in opposition to double up to rediscover
That an instance of neglect now positioned
This is it or what is wanting
This is that or what's done wanting
What in wanting weaves a want
This a want
That a wanted
Web of pressure wants
Of lessening or activating debts
The cave to carve to spread the soiled coverage
The Toad is a poem that demands to be read several times before it starts to open up enough for the reader to grasp all of the primordial buried matter locked behind its twisted, stochastic syntax.
Elements begin to appear: boy, she, toad, debt, waiting, hole, dust, circles/circling, etc.
A theme of lost youth or childhood runs through the text, incorporating these disparate elements into something cohesive and beautiful, while at the same time providing a feeling of tragedy that never quite enters the poem entirely, but lurks around the edges:
To fascinate calls up lost pleasures of lost
Tooth window desert
Violent rise of disguise
Lent revisions operate on practice
Like the hot dogs on the table mommy mommy give me more O give
me more then cough and out comes one all chewed on
The next several lines introduce something strange, something sexual, animalistic, or forbidden that contrasts with/against the ostensible purity of childhood:
Piled holes
Lost or led to lost or dealt a call
Burglarized migrations of desire
Back behind the shrubs
A rub or dog a tumbling of fur
A press into drubbing
Birdbath weedy algae slime
Gravel arc of going
Ground departure crunch
Ring a round of roses missing tooth look look a missing tooth
where is home O where is home in spinning
The poem continues along, asserting itself, aware of its raw power, equally confident in its heavy stomp and downy touch.
The blast of feeling comes toward the end, This is experimental poetry at its finest:
Day done dropped
Into spread of flatness black to grey
He to steer and he and she and he in there
Shrunken bundle snug in back of roofed combustion move
From silent to fisted dimpled point to mouth making moon
Vague of under in changeable first
Peekaboo inside of clouds of cow stomp bursting milk.
Field aflame. Field aflame all over all a flame, What's the matter little girl, I don't think I like this, Fiddle crab fiddle crab which way is the pot, In Easter town where he lost his crown and eggshells Rhode Island Red brown, Milk and cheese for me please please I like my toasteds crisp, With sparkle water a bee at his feet and a sweet to wash it down, Come on mommy play with me, I can't I am too frightened, The termites are loose the boards are chewed and the house is falling apart,
The poem concludes with the continued search for it the
same it that's haunted the entirety of the texta culmination of longing and questioning, and at last, perhaps, finding a place where he the poet belongs:
Ring around a ring of round a ring of strawberries singing
Plane of going plain gone
Circle circling circle circling circle
He and she and he in he and she and he
No plane circling luggage node of no noters
He in a rescue
She in a rescue
He aware of no need
He sees she and he in bare circles
Dance of briefly moon of midnight unaware
Thin lights up there bridged by no notion
No takers of notes there
Just a stare into there
Stairs into hair
Here hair circling eat in puzzle tub of nuzzle
Circle circling circle circling circle
What in wanting weaves a want
He and she and he in he and she and he
Dance of gone in dance of gone
There stare a stair to here of future noter
Knot in air
Not there
Note here to there to hear
Knot in there to knot in here
No way to unknot
To note a pleasure to unknot or not
To note in dance of here
Of here
Of here
Of here
The poet listened to John Fahey's Womblife on repeat in order to access a certain state of mind that allowed him to once more to see the world through hisyearold eyes, to feel the presence of hisyearold self.
It makes sense that a record that blends the dirt and sawdust of Americana with the futuristic sounds of drone/ragaminimalism would provide the necessary conditions for the creation of such a piece.
The Toad, too, fluctuates between traditional lyricism and avantgarde abstraction based more on sound the layering/textures of certain words and their relation to others/the rest of the poem.
Eddie's description of his early childhood years provides all the information needed to understand The Toad, so I should direct you to his review instead of my own.
No matter, The Toad is one of the finest, most inspiring poems I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
It's rather frustrating that I'm unable to put into words just how important this poem is/was to me, Maybe I need to listen to Womblife, . .
The No Tour is much more methodical it adheres to a very specific formula, which makes it more or less constrained.
Built upon a layer of typewriter "improvisations", the raw poetic material was then refined and ordered using numerological methods, etc.
The poet utilizes quotes from jazz musicians, collage techniques, and serialization in order to construct a poetic body at once rigid and fabulously free.
Occasionally, bits of a more conventional verse shine throughfor example, the first two lines of the third poem:
Without direction, like the restless wind
the bottle wants to take us somewhere.
The rest of the poem stirs the initial clarity into a more abstract though still direct wash of imagistic language:
Waiting for spectacles in somebody else's world
pointing out to otherness the early instructions,
nourished by the great mother the winged
secret flame and the stooping starlight.
You who shine in your disk: pleasant twilight
ounce of wing dew, Great rolling roughage
of these outer centuries taps tension
fishing for begin, Silent One
who dwells in Her place,
Space is the place,
Taking its name from the dedication prefacing a lengthy Clark Coolidge poem, The No Tour represents a voida space of no plans or deadlines or forced meaning a place where individual egos/minds do not influence direct experience.
A place of mental and spiritual purity, The poet refers to this idea/place as a permanent vacation state of the mind, and really, I think that's the only way to approach it.
Arranged in a cycle, the seemingly disparate poems contain many recurring themes and images, The connections between each one there are fourteen in all become more apparent with each reading, Leafing through the book I find myself at poem nine, which so happens to be one of the most beautiful in the series:
Here no her there inviting no here now
or her where won somewhere there.
This darker
though it's simple, pouring a tandem clue
of a few glasses mazed and flew giving birth
to nourish poor theaters of eyeless
plush.
A pure collision of mistaken
consequence, the teaspoon of try stirred in
a swoon, The one who is in it does not
fear, dark amid a myriad bright ones
heeding estranged decals, Once in front now
relying on detained blades of whirr to
trace pages of a gone tune black, the song
of the sparer, sponge among labels to
float packages zeroing in on gone.
A wonderful summation of the book and its purpose can be found in the poet's own review: The thrust of the book is the achievement of a state of mind that embodies so many contradictory elements that a kind of vibratory neutrality is achieved, which in my mind was the proper state of mind to engage in a No Tour.
A marvelous, inspirational book of poetry, I look forward to reading Down Here, the last part of the trilogy, John Faheys album Womblife greatly influenced The Toad as the author wrote in his review for more information about the two poems origins, I would suggest reading it another experimental artist that I thought of when reading this poem is filmmaker Peter Kubelka what Kubelka does with images, or what Fahey does with sounds, Eddie Watkins does with words.
Just as images and sounds in the other two artists works are the basic building blocks of reality that can be arranged in almost any manner to form a completely new and original work to transcend reality, in a certain way, Eddie Watkins uses words to create a long poem not divided into stanzas per se, but alternating free verse with prose poetry, using alliterations in a sort of nearendless stream of consciousness, trying to express that inexpressible boundary between memories, feelings, thoughts, and dreams.
Let me present you a mix of words from the poem:
“The west and slippery to digging
The pit of toad and coil cringe to cringing
Arid trailer treeless yard to field of flame lean laundry pole and skunks
The gravel and the dust and strawberries singing”
“Amphibious transposition metamorphosing humidity of those checkered events”
“He reconciled things with strange ways.
That long ago lodged and exited piece by lengthening piece through pumps that issued and stored, He translated from wordless to wordless, The preternatural weight of vegetable infinity manifested in the corner games, The lip link inventory concealment, He progressed to recorded package stashed in closets of forget, The tyranny of expectation. The simple of a silence, The purity of moon. ”
“Welling of or willing to or minding of the thrill
Of wildernesses of needle hedge”
“Peekaboo inside of clouds of cow stomp bursting milk.
Field aflame. Field aflame all over all a flame, Whats the matter little girl, I dont think I like this, Fiddle crab fiddle crab which way is the pot, In Easter town where he lost his crown and eggshells Rhode Island Red brown, Milk and cheese for me please please I like my toasteds crisp, With sparkle water a bee at his feet and a sweet to wash it down, Come on mommy play with me, I cant I am too frightened, The termites are loose the boards are chewed and the house is falling apart, ”
Its hard to rate and review such a poetry, Poetry is subjective for the poet and for the reader, in the sense that the reader is asked to witness the poets extreme subjectivity/inner self.
That is why this kind of poetry and perhaps poetry in general is probably beyond any type of rating system, I went with the authors own rating, as to me it seemed the most appropriate, Ive read it while listening to Faheys Womblife, trying to get in the same mindscape as the author, I think it did help, in a way, so I would recommend the same eerie experience, as I came to enjoy more how the author plays with language.
For the much longer poem The No Tour Ive applied the same method as for The Toad, this time listening to Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, and Albert Aylers music while reading it those were the main influences, among others, mentioned by the author.
The No Tour doesnt feel as freestyle and freeflowing as The Toad, but only because The Toad seemingly did not have any rules.
The No Tour, organized in ten parts of several free verse stanzas, is showing its experimental jazz roots according to the author, being playfully improvisational, but somehow with a strong technical background:
“Unscroll the nods for gone quest
morning hoist the mulched got dream
dial point of vibration for everlasting emerge
pump breath stowed in shaken distortion
rubbed to lick butter smoulder blow blow toad
stirred to mate a sand grave lid
opening reply to westerly transplantations”
“Without direction, like the restless wind
the bottle wants to take us somewhere.
Waiting for spectacles in somebody elses world
Pointing out to otherness the early instructions,
nourished by the great mother the winged
secret flame and the stooping starlight.
You who shine in your disk: pleasant twilight
ounce of wing dew, Great rolling roughage
of these outer centuries taps tension
fishing for begin, Silent One
who dwells in Her place,
Space is the place, ”
“Heavy machines with dials and levers
Muffled pilots steer through reckless terrain
Milling in the grid to insert a finger
Mulched guesses zero in on the poke point
Atlantis”
“Consciousness
of the continuity of existence equals
glassedin flash in the attic.
”
“Where the wind
speaks the now
of things are ended
are never beginning are ever
being where the
winged secret flame pulls
on wet white forces where
porous extensions spinning
around ebb to mute
volumes to feed mini orphanages.
”
In the end, these poems might not be for everyone, I cant pretend to have fully understood them, But if you like challenging modern poetry in the sense of modern art, you might enjoy them, I did. This kind of experimental poetry is like abstract art it makes you realize a simple truth, in a way a child would instinctively get it, that you dont have to understand everything to enjoy something.
If a piece of art stirs something in you, if it makes you feel something, you dont necessarily have to understand it rationally to enjoy it.
This book reminded me of what Jack Spicer wrote, in one of his false letters to Lorca in After Lorca: “When I translate one of your poems and I come across words I do not understand, I always guess at their meanings.
I am inevitably right. A really perfect poem no one yet has written one could be perfectly translated by a person who did not know one word of the language it was written in.
”.