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To Max Douglas
53 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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June 8, 2021
Maxwell Douglas (1949-1970) was a poet friend of Irby's friend David Bromige, who introduced them. What they may have shared, even more than a poetry, was a region, Pangaeically the union of Platte Purchase land and the Asian Mongolian valley, on U.S. timelines, the grasslands from St. Joseph (Douglas' home) to Fort Scott, Kansas, whence Irby. When I read the word "Laurasian" I couldn't help but fix on Lawrence, KS sinologists. Ha ha. Whether Douglas shared with Irby Carl O. Sauer's Land and Life (1965), with its Pleistocene "Sketch of Early Man in America," the Sauer essay can dispel some of the arcane reference in Irby's poem. Here Irby recreates the conversation between Carl Jung and the Taos Pueblo Ochwiay Biano:
Ochwiay Biano told Jung
the whites are crazy, they think
they think with their heads
and only crazy people do that
how do you think, Jung asked him
with my heart, he said
do you believe white men
only think with their heads
Serrano asked Jung -- no
only with their tongues, he said
". . . which nonetheless
remains the bestower of praise"
Ochwiay Biano told Jung
the whites are crazy, they think
they think with their heads
and only crazy people do that
how do you think, Jung asked him
with my heart, he said
do you believe white men
only think with their heads
Serrano asked Jung -- no
only with their tongues, he said
". . . which nonetheless
remains the bestower of praise"
Displaying 1 of 1 review