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Henri, Sophie, & The Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex

Henri, Sophie, & The Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex

Tom Holmes

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

Henri, Sophie, & The Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex by Tom Holmes Copyright 2009 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza First Edition ISBN: 9781935402565 Library of Congress Control Number 2009925637 Front cover photograph (Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound) by David Finn. Used with permission. Back cover photograph (Head of Ezra Pound) by Walter Benington. Used with permission. BlazeVOX [books] 14 Tremaine Ave Kenmore, NY 14217

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Introduction Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, the brilliant and energetic sculptor killed in World War I at the age of 23, was a main figure in the short-lived Vorticist movement, which included Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound. Henri carved a beautiful, marble, phallic statue of Ezra Pound, called The Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound, which appears on the front cover and the back cover. Henri also had a lover, kinda. She was Sophie Brzeska. They never had sex, and they behaved more like siblings, and, more often, as mother and son, as she was almost 20 years older than Henri. He adopted her last name so they could fool landlords into believing they were siblings so they could live together, and so the police would not break into their apartment again and accuse her of being a prostitute. So thats the non-fiction history. The rest of what follows is fiction, kinda. That is, all the people you will meet in the following pages were real/non-fictional, but what happens in the poems is mostly fiction. For instance, Charles Olson did meet with Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths, but, most likely, Ez didnt say to Olson what the poems here say he did. Or, Sophie did go crazy and Nina Hamnett did visit her, but what the poems have them write, speak, and do is fictional. Or, Sophie did give money to Henri for prostitutes, but maybe not in the way I describe. All in all, the poems remain speculations about the relationship between Henri and Sophie, Henri and Ez, and artists and art. Bless you reader, unless you are critic, whom I Blast. Viva the Vortex!

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In the corner of each sculpture, in the butt end of a rifle, the ghost of Madonna & the pain of Sophie.

Strike to Eternity

Henri Contemplates the First Strike This slab of marble, right now, for all I know, is the only marble to withhold a jaguars leap and the whisps of Ezra Pound, or their opposites, or a cube, or Sophies chin on a chair. When I sculpt for what I dont know the most in any moment, I stray from my ignorance and the firm knowledge of certainty, I cut well into the future todays rhythms and frustrations, I carve out tomorrows shadows where the living greet the unborn, I shall sharpen my chisel and with my mallet, strike to eternity.

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As with Energy, So with Form Henri Thinks Through His Sculpture The marbles tone has now begun with rectangular eyebrows, this triangular goatee, and the throbbing of the head between the realm of spheres and the family of planes. Ezs head will be a mountain upon this wobbly pedestal, but Ez will think, Henri should cease else I become an ornament. Ez should think again but from the head born from the vortex of my hands.

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The Enemy of Pleasure Henri in a Letter to Kitty Smith The deeper I go into the woods the more I distrust Art for I cannot smell the back-alley piss nor admire the cabinetry in display windows. If I were a lazy man, Id be a robber, a businessman, or a usurer. . . . The misery of commerce is the energy of the mountain, is the feelings of the middleclass hunched each night in the taverns. Sculpture, its energy, is the ability to define those feelings with heavy slants of light. So you see, I cannot go deeper into the woods else Ill find the devil Im trying to carve out.

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It Will Not Look Like Him When Henri coddled himself, he imagined Sophie twirling with umbrellas between the statues in his studio. He thought of Ezra Pounds head with jaguar rhythms and phallic curves. He said, It will look like him. We are only aware of life when it moves, and Ez is wholly kinetic. Hes a blue chalk line in the middle of a typhoon. Henri coddled a marble slab and began the circumcision.

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Henri Considers Sculpting for the Apocalypse When the end begins we will note no signs of its inception we will not notice the unfamiliar the last sunset or the uncurling sprouts to a singing tree when it does arrive like a stray bullet from the Madonnas blue lips we wont even know the impact until the end has ended when the familiar appears like a museum that no one will visit and if they do they wont understand

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Henri Thinks Through the Line


after Wyndham Lewis

If I carve her shoulder like its the horizon of an oncoming battalion of bees, or the prayer just before, then her shoulder will be brief and unable to lean into eternity. If I round her shoulder like its the end of day, shell swoop into the eternal plane and return my prayer before its unanswered like a protest to war or a plea to survive.

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