Dreadful Quietude: A Confused Saturation of Pre-9/11 America and Supermen

by Geoffrey Gatza

In 1955, Charles Olson wrote two letters to the young poet Ed Dorn, later revised as A Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn. I read this compilation in the late 1960s. At one point, Olson argued: PRIMARY DOCUMENTS. And to hook on here is a lifetime of assiduity. Best thing to do is to dig one thing or place or man until you yourself know more abt that than is possible to any other man. It doesn?t matter whether it?s Barbed Wire or Pemmican or Paterson or Iowa. But exhaust it. Saturate it. Beat it. And then U KNOW everything else very fast: one saturation job (it might take 14 years). And you?re in, forever. His admonition is to Dorn as a novice, and rings with a certainty that I can only partially share. But it planted a seed in me for the writing of this book. My aim is not to know more than ?is possible to any other man,? but to make use of a pluralistic approach that may result in a fuller ?reading? of comic book imaginations might yield. I don?t want to engage the comics in an ahistorical void or to strip mine them for ?poetic? materials. Among other things, I want to incorporate their imagery into poetry as a primary antecedent dimension, in effect opening a trap door in poetry?s floor onto these unbounded but evocative gestures. As a poet?s book, Superman is an attempt to reclaim the poem merged with drawing of Blake and the phanopoeia of Pound as imagistic-mythical memory in which early intimations of what we call ?muse? may be experienced. Poetry itself is questioned throughout this book: how can one make use of its strategies to engage materials that have no historical significance or penetrating language?

248 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2007