Welcome to Heller Levinson!

Tonight I'd like to welcome the noted poet Heller Levinson to The Song Is...  and to thank Catfish for referring him as Heller's poems are part of Resurrection of a Sunflower.  Heller is the founder of Hinge Theory.  This theory is  " a revolutionary restructuring practice of poetic linguistics," as Howling Dog Press notes.  Jared Demick adds:"Through Hinge Theory's emphasis on language's cellular nature and each poem's associative leaps, Levinson reminds us that language is rooted in the body and that it ultimately represents that body in social discourse. Relentlessly questioning how we place our words side-by-side, Levinson is causing us to wonder about the way our relationships are structured. It's a sexy politic seeking to change the space we situate our lives in, one rarely pursued since the days of Arthur Rimbaud and Aime Cesaire."

Here are the poems!

Wolf Again

I am a wolf was a wolf

am a man to be a wolf

again

paw to foot to hand

on all fours the

whole unit body tight muscular

spine fluid

through the woods branch

to branch with leaf there

is no disguise it is all

the body

in movement

four legged wolf movement

there is breath to that

to be a wolf again

paw shack

flexion peel

sylvan bedlam jostle sprays of a tired vernacular

listen

ècoute

to restore the compromised latitudes

cindered habitat

the sacrificed

the slaughtered

the disavowed

cycling through glades of adamantine surreptitiousness to overcome the terms of a 

fossilized rebuke wherewithal chides the conniver

witticisms aside there is only placation

a gallimaufry compromised by lace

cancelled libertarianism

annulled voyeurism

resuscitant flame groove-tongues-comfort-loops the jawline

thrones of appetite

braided

heritage

inebriate

of plan

the

design

festers

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Blade/Hand(y)

forest fells wells ways                    to

par-take                          summon issue

flame flesh flush-throughs

cutting edge       to be on the . . .  cut-ting edge  [leader-ship]  blade

as bloom garden forth from hand

handi-work     

hand:  the hinge enabling man to transition from the arboreal to a 

bipedaling terrestrial creature

“The tool replaced the tree as man’s chief object of prehension:  he went from gripping one kind of thing to gripping another, both in the service of survival.”

in the spurl-juice of enduring adjacencies

rotational contours

fit formations mutual modifications

from hand this blade

in the blade this handiwork

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

in the thaw of a hibernating pugilism

ballistic snooze

pancreatic alert

munitions emptied of reload muster canister rebuke

the asylums overrun

my rook your pawn

stifling dance halls caterwaul darkness          

congenital fatigue aborts the mission             off

to the autumn trees shores of ivy imperil mere skin this sheen to bombard

rampage rune runnel boast balustrades sickly gangrene bandage void of popsicle sing your hymns you lonely you one-of-a-kind buckshot Annie bastard piety singed with ban breath smirch turpitude shutter-wraps a leprous callisthenic

::      

where in the

          throne

          is

           thralldom

                                                ::

I'm not sure if I've posted anything by Albert Ayler before, but here is his "Ghosts first variation" from Spiritual Unity, an album from 1964:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQzJsGAHsVM

This is "Ghosts second variation," also from Spiritual Unity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gYdekQUcUU

This next video is a live version of his "Spirits Rejoice" from 1965: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HShu-cIDwg
I'll conclude with his "Venus/Upper and Lower Egypt" from a 1968 performance with the Pharoah Sanders Ensemble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puncMmmdsnU