Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy

boundary manic” gives the word mark a number of paragrammatic possi-
bilities. “mark mar ha”: stutter is followed by exclamation, an inability, per-
haps, to “mark” the boundary in question. Or again, “mar ha” may be parts
of the name Martha, the t missing in the imagined source manuscript here
and throughout the text, “boundary manic” is central to the poet’s thought;
she is mesmerized by questions of “secret” divisions, borders, boundaries,
fault lines. Then, too, Mark refers both to Howe’s father (Mark DeWolfe
Howe) and to her son, Mark Von Schlegell, as the italicized line on the third
page of the poem, “for Mark my father; and Mark my son” tells us (91). In-
deed, the frontispiece informs us that Mark DeWolfe Howe’s Touched with
Fire: The Civil War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes is one of the
poem’s sources.^32
On the second page of Secret History of the Dividing Line, we ¤nd the fol-
lowing passage:

Close at hand the ocean

until before

hidden from our vision

mark

border

bulwark, an object set up to indicate a boundary or position

hence a sign or token

impression or trace

The Horizon

I am of another generation

when next I looked he was gone.

The ¤nal line is repeated three times on this page and relates the colonial
expedition of William Byrd to the “mark” who is the poet’s father.
How does this allusive visual poem relate to Howe’s so-called preface,
which interweaves autobiography, visual poetry, and the founding and early
history of Buffalo? For example:

I was never sure what my father was doing in the army. Then I

was never sure of any thing what with his rushing away or changing

cities and World War banging at windows the boundless phenomena

of madness. I remember him coming back to Buffalo from basic train-

ing by snapshot once or twice in a uniform. Absence is always present

Silliman’s Albany, Howe’s Buffalo 145