Jeffrey Schultz

V. Stevens

 

…never to destroy / The earth again by flood, nor let the sea /
       Surpass his bounds…
                —Paradise Lost, XI 892-894

Milton’s problem was puritanical
But in the best parts he overcame it,
Let it all work out according to itself.
None of it adds up to much anything,
Though it’s safe to say it’s bad for Evekind.
Stevens tried to solve it all with the sun,
But imagined his way out of the problem
Of intent, and besides hadn’t a fucking clue
What it would all come to but Hartford CT.
Milton built in intent, allowed himself
To consider the sort of vermin he must be
In order that he might be justly eradicated.
Adam liked this idea; it cheered him up
As long as there would be a survivor or two.
Adam liked the whole epic thing, the idea
That all this loss is somehow gain.
And that’s certainly not the intent either,
And even if one ignores Adam’s stupidity,
It gets one no further than Kafka again and vermin.
Donne must be worked in to line it all up right,
But Milton, god bless’m, terror though he be,
Milton’s done the work of it already.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Jeffrey Schultz

IV. Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell

 

a light summer dress when the body has gone
           —Levis, maybe roughly

In the fullness of itself,
The acronym opens
Upon a woods, upon
What, within woods, lurks.
Such quiet makes its own plans.
This is one explanation
For all the noise of things.
Within the quiet wood,
The most frightful labors:
A group of what had been women,
Before the word for women
And with it what women’d known
Was disappeared, whisper
The spell under breath so low
It never makes a sound.
It is not, the spell, a matter of revenge.
That would be a misunderstanding.
It is godlike and brutal
And beyond signification.
Beyond the woods,
Everyone is still talking
About signification all these years later
As if signification meant
Any god damn thing at all.
But the world is still real. The terrors
It imagines are real terrors.
None of it represents anything.
There are no more women.
No rent garments. No gnashed teeth.
There is no one to stop it.
It is not a matter of revenge.
The woods are their ear to the ground.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Jeffrey Schultz

III. So death blows his little fucking trumpet

 

Never so noble as music,
Poetry was never so noble
As before music recognized
Its own noble distinction,
And, nobly packing up itself
And its whole equipment,
Abandoned poetry for something
More splendid, some splendid
Career. So many resources!
The hair of the horse and catgut
From a sheep and the brazen horns’
Brazenness, the bones of trees hollowed,
And a whole phalanx of men,
Selected and trained from birth
In the discipline of its movements
And, having been dressed appropriately
So as to distract from the beasts they be,
Arranged in seats opposite the seats
Of their noble patrons, who gaze
Upon them as if upon their own pleasure
Objectified, dominated, trained.
That’s guilt, right there. It’s structural.
The difference now isn’t the guilt,
But the music, which is no longer music,
But, so far as I’m able to understand it,
Pills. I know it sounds like
It could almost be music,
But I’m pretty sure what it is is pills.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.