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Friends,
So excited to share what is one of my very favorite episodes of AEWCH with you, discussing poetry, the esoteric, the strange, and the occult with poet D.A. Powell (AKA Doug)!
Doug is the author of multiple books of poetry, and is best know for his Repast trilogy, including the books Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails, which have all be described as potent AIDS-era poetry. But what makes Doug such a profound thinker and poet (aside from his incredible poetry, of course!), is that he refuses to have his poems reduced to political polemic, even as they evince politics. Instead, Doug’s poems and Doug himself insist on the myriad of meanings each poem presents, and in that way, transmutes poetry into an alchemical act.
In addition to talking, Doug reads many of his poems, starting with the excellent “The Kiwi Comes To Gridley, CA” which is in his (also excellent) collection, Useless Landscape: A Guide For Boys. He also reads “Why We Have No Future,” “Mass For Pentecost: Canitcle for Birds & Waters”, “[strange flower in my hands. porphory shell. clipped wool.]”, “Don’t Touch My Junk”, and “Slut”.
We talk about
- how poetry can’t be reduced to its contents or our current political situation
- why plants are tops (really!)
- those plaintive sighs at poetry readings
- how the political overtakes and consumes all other meanings
- loving and hating what you write
- why poetry is not metaphor
- how poems destroy the focus on a single point and expand the cosmos
- how are relates to the Holy Ghost and the angels
- the problem with the lack in psychoanalysis
- how to hex people and cure people with words
- what rhymes are
- The secret poetry of the 1960s Batman and Robin TV series
- Christ’s foreskin (really!)
- poem-ography
XO
CH
Conner Habib 