Another Piece of the Puzzle

Plottie was going to blog this morning about the play he saw Saturday night with Ducknik, that the Witt loved so much in this morning's Bird Wrap, and that Plottie thought was almost insufferably awful in the first act...but all that can wait.

The Great WantzANewName-Nik's blog this morning featured a poem by Jack Wiler, a poet who was a long time friend of SParker, who brought him to World Headquarters for a TIAPOS meeting at -- get this -- the end of the last century. Jack stood up next to the fireplace and read several of his poems and we were all awestruck. WantzANewName spent some time with Jack in New Jersey after that -- you can read about that visit and also please read the Jack Wiler poem "The Poem Where I Say Thank You" that Wantza published there this morning.

You can also link over to Dance-Nik's blog and read more.

Jack died a few weeks ago, and while the way he had once lived does not make dying young seem quite so improbable, it certainly stops Plotnik in his tracks to consider how convoluted the puzzle is.

For example, if Jack had lived, Plottie wouldn't have been thinking about him at all today. He just went through his library in the attic trying to find the book of poems that Jack sold him that night, but he can't find it. Jack remained friends with Sparker, and with Dance-Nik, but the sad truth is you just about have to die for people to remember to stop and think about your beautiful words and thoughts.

Jack had something else too: a mesmerizing style as a reader.

Jack read his poetry like he was selling juicers at Costco. His poems were, still are, timeless and often heartbreaking, but the poems were just the raw ingredients. His delivery turned on their power. You ran to the checkstand to buy the juicer, even though you knew that before too long it would most likely find its way to the attic and you'd forget where you put it.

All writers, painters, dancers, sculptors, all of us, live and work in the world Jack describes in "The Poem Where I Say Thank You."

These lines, where he's talking about farming as well as painting, where the artist does what he does for the pleasure of doing it:

"What about the crisp smell of turpentine and oil?
What about the rasp of knife on canvas?
What about the question of white?
What about the happy rush of pigs to the trough,
the satisfying turn of plow through earth?
The deep smell of things long buried?
Who else knows and who else cares and still
you take up brush and knife and cleaver and plow.
Dig deep in the earth and work and work
and think this is it.
This is it?"

Plotnik would add what about when you go to sleep churning about that last melody phrase and you wake up and go to the piano and the solution is the first thing that rolls off your fingers? What about re-writing the same song with five different feels and chord patterns, even though you know all this effort doesn't mean a thing to anyone but you? This is it?

This is part of it. Plotnik loves this poem.

But there are other parts too, the other places in our lives that also bring us pleasure. In his heart, Plotnik long ago came to grips with realizing he doesn't want to be Kerouac, he wants to stay alive. He has never wanted to starve to death in a Parisian garret and have them discover his masterpiece written in blood on his last scrap of paper. He'd rather be The Great Plotnik than Jim Morrison.