Alfred Kreymborg - Clay (1916)

Forgotten Poems #12

  
       I wish
       there were thirteen
       gods in the sky.
       One blessing won't do.

       Or even
       one god
       in me.

       I can't
       shape this thing
       alone.
  

Alfred Kreymborg (1883-1966)

P: Others (1915+), Poetry (1916+), The Poetry Journal (1916+), Broom (1922), The Chapbook (1923), The Dial (1923), Rhythmus (1923), Transition (1927); A: Catholic Anthology (1914-15), Anthology of Magazine Verse (1916), The New Poetry (1917), Others: An Anthology (1916+), The Masque of Poets (1918), The Melody of Earth (1918), The Second Book of Modern Verse (1919), New Voices (1920), American Poetry: A Miscellany (1922+), American Poets (1923), This Singing World (1923), The Home Book of Modern Verse (1925), Selections from American Literature (1926), Contemporary Poetry (1927); C: Love & Life, & Other Studies (1908), Apostrophes: A Book of Tributes to Masters of Music (1910), Mushrooms: 16 Rhythms (1915), Mushrooms: A Book of Free Forms (1916), Blood of Things: A Second Book of Free Forms (1920), Less Lonely (1923), Scarlet & Mellow (1926); novels, plays, articles, etc.

“Born in New York City in 1883 and was educated there by life and experience. He became an expert chess player, and earned a living by teaching the game and playing exhibition games. Worked for a time as a bookkeeper. After working hours his passion was music. He became the organizer and leader of a group of whimsical, radical poets who called themselves 'Others'.” (Contemporary Poetry, 1927) Was also a member of Alfred Stieglitz's 291 artists’ group, and co-edited the literary magazine The Glebe with May Ray (1913-14; they would go on to publish the first Imagist anthology). The following year founded and edited Others: A Magazine of the New Verse (1915-1919; publishing early work by Amy Lowell, Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, et al.). In 1921 went to Europe, and co-edited the poetry magazine Broom, with Harold Loeb.

Illustration by Boris Artzybasheff, from Kreymborg’s Funnybone Alley (1927).

This version of ‘Clay’ first appeared in Others magazine in 1916, and is extremely dear to my heart. Later, he published a significantly different version in his book Blood of Things (1920), which for me entirely lacks the depth and impact of the original. There’s no accounting for taste, huh . . .

I wish . . .

Alfred Kreymborg: “The old expressions are with us always, and there are always others.” (Others, 1915) Rather than opposing “new verse” (informal, free, unrhymed) with “old verse” (formal, metered, rhymed), an opening: the more the merrier, always! The logics of “both/and” rather than “either/or.” Riverine thought: the “old expressions” are the banks of the river, guiding its twists and turns; the “others” are the river itself, slowly reshaping and smoothing the banks. An interdependent multiplicity, producing connections and combinations; rather than individual unity, oppositions, and binaries.

Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari: “There is indeed such a thing as measured, cadenced rhythm, relating to the coursing of a river between its banks or to the form of a striated space; but there is also a rhythm without measure, which relates to the upswell of a flow, in other words, to the manner in which a fluid occupies a smooth space.” (A Thousand Plateaus, 1980)

I can’t shape this thing alone . . .

Judith Butler: “My sense is that what’s at stake here is really rethinking the human as a site of interdependency… posing the question, do we or do we not live in a world in which we assist each other? Do we or do we not help each other with basic needs? And are basic needs there to be decided on as a social issue and not just my personal, individual issue or your personal, individual issue? So there’s a challenge to individualism… And hopefully, people will take it up and say, ‘Yes, I too, live in that world in which I understand that we need each other in order to address our basic needs. And I want to organize a social, political world on the basis of that recognition’.” (Examined Life, 2008)

One blessing won’t do . . .

Here’s three haiku I wrote back in 2021 not long after reading ‘Clay’ for the first time, which can be read both as stand-alone poems, and as interdependent linked-stanzas (as in renga) . . .

      new sky . . .
      involuntarily
      i grunt

      clouds:
      buried in the belly
      of a river

      making
      a leaf out of words . . .
      new gods

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