It was my fate to know Ben Mazer,
a small, wiry, secular genius of a jew,
who led me to you.
You loved him, but what did I know?
My jealous intent had been sharpened by Poe,
and I was, by necessity, ignorant
of what the ambitious, in their hearts, want.
I had no lessons. A first-born, I muddled
responsibly. A long road in the corn.
My genius was passive. I let fruits,
as buds, tease and transform;
a long, long growing was my poetry,
understood as accidental pleasures, briefly.
I was annoyed, but managed to love. Of life
I was worried, but did it. Athens I owed.
I wanted the simple things. I smelled. I rowed.
Ben Mazer published his poems in books,
I, only online. I hated editors. Driven by Poe,
I became aggressive in what I wanted to know.
A curtain, I saw, between poems and prose
was proper, but modernity ripped it down,
even as Ransom knew it was wrong.
I appreciated something about Ben’s song—
though I sensed he was unconscious and a bit wrong,
but in a more steadfast manner than I.
Recently I said his poetry “had no ideas.”
We tend to equate “idea” with what’s original,
like— “I just got an idea!” But that’s not right.
The curtain. Poetry ought not to have
ideas—originality is not ideas—which belong to prose discourse;
ideas don’t belong in poems. Ben bucked the modern trend.
Like Eliot, Mazer was more Poe than he knew;
it’s sad. Confusion. Pride. Ego. Ben, what the hell can we do?