Paul Blackburn - The Journals

I picked up Paul Blackburn's The Journals the other day at Cooks Hill Books and Records. The poems in this collection, Blackburn's last, span the years 1967-71. The last poem, dated July 28, 1971, was written shortly before the poet's death in September of the same year. The editor, Robert Kelly, states in his introduction that Blackurn had "tried to collect the pages together and did sense them as a continuous and ceherent whole". So far I've only read a few of the poems, though in the next weeks I'm going to keep a kind of journal of The Journals, quoting or commenting each day when/wherever something catches my eye.

How better to begin a book of poems than with these lines from

JOURNAL 5.XI.67

How is it I keep remembering

after all those/these facts,

this flack

keeps . coming?

It all drives back upon the brain .

After yesterday, two things were

plain-ly set against the mindfall

Liked this too in

CYCLE WORLD 1966

An-other/ terrible Sunday morning in the world,/ everybody juiced and coffeed

and then the opening lines of

UNCHARTED

SUN is that

rare in Paris, I

almost swim in it

The day accomplishes itself with its

small failures & annoyances

It's the little flashes of colour set amongst the quotidian that I like in these poems - Blackburn's attention to the everyday/the world.

More to come tomorrow.