Ark: The Foundations, 1-33

This long, complex poem, modeled on the Watts Tower, a Los Angeles folk architecture masterpiece, is the first Living Batch Press "drive, he said" booka series honoring Robert Creeley's "I Know a Man." The title alludes to Noah's ark; to the rainbow ("arc-en-ciel" in French); and by extension to Arkansas and hence to Kansas, where the poet was born. "A work of singular beauty and resolution. It takes its legitimate place with the great works of the century of like kind, Ezra Pound's "Cantos," Louis Zukofsky's "A," Charles Olson's "Maximus," and Robert Duncan's "Passages." Its own specific character is, however, brilliantly singular."Robert Creeley "A late harvest of seeds sown by Blake, L. Frank Baum, the Bible, and Zukofsky, all in a new architecture, a wholly new voice, and even a new chemistry of words and images. It is for those who can see visions, and for those who know how to look well and be taught that they can see them.