Introduction to Bread of Wolves

As you shall see, I am recycling some very old material here. As I recall, this was Dana's first chapbook (privately published by the Dromedary Syndicate), and he asked me to write the introduction. So far as I know, Dana never published a copy of the chapbook with my introduction.

It's been my observation, that a poet writing about another poet's work will reveal more about his or her own poetics than s/he does about the referenced poet. So, this entry will give you a sense of where my poetics stood about ten years ago. Note that I admire Dana's "Dionysian" art, which may suggest that I was "Apollonian", but wished I were less "formal". Hard to imagine the guy who wrote "4 am" as being formal, huh?

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Bread of Wolves

Dana, on “performance art” poets: “Most of them are bad actors who have, unfortunately, written their own lines.”

To play the devil’s advocate, one could argue that these poets are drawing on poetry’s oral origins. They are recalling the tradition of Homer and the troubadour tradition.

Or not.

We cannot hear Dana read his poetry. Like most poetry written after the 15th century, Dana’s work was written as much for print as for performance.

I would inebriate you with words!

Dana and I met in about 1975. I was a senior in high school, and Dana was a year behind me. At the time, I was one of a group of recognized poets. I had been published in the high school literary anthology, and had won an award from the Oklahoma Poetry Society. I suppose Dana looked up to me, both because I was an upper-classman, and because Dana was an aspiring poet.

Now, he has surpassed me.

Most of the poems in this book are addressed to women, or are about women. These women may be actual living women whom Dana has known, or they may be images of the Goddess — or what Jung called the anima.

A comedian once said that the main reason men write poetry is to get women into bed. There is an element of truth in that. On the other hand, it is also true that a writer — regardless of gender — writes to wrestle with whatever spirit drives him or her to create.

Leonard Cohen once said that the bedroom would be the final battlefield. Truthfully, the erotic wrestling match between a man and a woman is similar to the wrestling match between a creator and his/her creation. It is the wrestling match between the creator and whatever spirit drives him/her to create. But remember also that when we say one is “inspired,” we are also saying s/he is ‘filled with the spirit.’

There are those who are willing to be possessed by that spirit, and others who see that spirit as a force to be manipulated, codified, and controlled. Nietsche called the former Dionysian and the latter Apollonian. For the latter, a work is not a poem unless it obeys certain rules. The Dionysian creator is willing to take the risk of allowing the work to define itself. The Apollonian is rules-oriented; the Dionysian is more interested in relationship with the spirit. There is the same tension between the priestly and the prophetic tradition in Judeo-Christian theology.

Is it surprising that I turn so quickly from the sexual imagery of Dana’s poetry to spiritual concerns? I know Dana won’t be surprised (not that he would necessarily agree with my analysis). Of course, it’s a truism that a sexual climax is the same sort of ecstatic experience which is sought in religion, as well as from other sources. Such experiences connect us with the universe, the Collective Unconcious, the Godhead, or Fill In the Blank. These experiences liberate us from our prison of perceived reality, our bodies, and our normally self-obsessed egos.

Mark well my words! They are more than New Age psychobabble!

Furthermore, poetry also has its origins in the Greek mystery religions. These were the chants to invoke and/or please the gods. Homer was not writing confessional poetry; he was recording the deeds of the gods and their heroes, to do them proper homage. If the “performance art” poets would claim the oral tradition, then they must also acknowledge the religious tradition as well. I wonder: do they serve their own self-obsessed egos or the universal creative spirit?

Dana does not worry about this. He writes. He becomes vulnerable to his creative spirit and allows the work to find its form. In so doing, he invites us to share the ecstatic experience. This seems to me to be the poet’s duty: to create that bit of mystery, to offer that element of myth, which blows the back of our heads off (to paraphrase Emily Dickinson).

To speak mythically, Dana becomes drunk on words in the Dionysian rite, and invites us to the dance of ecstasy.

When a friend offers us a creation, the most honorable response is to offer another creation in return. As we enter into the creative process, we partake of the bread of wolves even as the children of Israel partook of the food of angels. We bring to these poems the memories and fantasies of our own loves; the memories of our own wrestling matches; and we bring our wounds. As with myth, we find in these poems whatever we need to heal these wounds; whatever strikes a sympathetic chord in our own experience of the spirit; whatever blows the back of our heads off and liberates us from the narrow confines of our perceived reality.

Give thanks for these things, and enter into the dance.
October 1993. Norman, OK.