trumps the small “anew,” as if to question the very possibility of life “anew”
—renewal. At the same time, a triangle is formed out of the words “AN / a
new,” thus preparing the ground for the antiphon in which the four-letter
“ANEW” is repeated four times, thus making a new square that takes prece-
dence over the prior waning.
After the “world / wind” of “anew,” the bell sounds of “be ll to” of poem
#3 come back in the seemingly conventional “fa la la la la” refrain of #10:
f a l l a l l a l l a
l l a l l a l l a l l
a l l a l l a l l a l
l a l l a l l a l l a
l l a l l a l l a l lBy careful spacing and italicizing, Johnson ¤nds the “fall,” “all” and parallel
l’s that recapitulate earlier elements in the sequence. “Fall” follows “wane”
in #8, “all” follows “world” in #9, and both “all” and the earlier “anew” are
also sly allusions to Johnson’s poet-mentor Louis Zukofsky’s lyric sequence
“A n e w ” a n d t o h i s All (Collected Shorter Poems). Indeed, it was probably from
Zukofsky that Johnson ¤rst got the idea that one could make poetry from the
smallest and least conspicuous words in the vocabulary—words like “all” and
“anew.”
After the “fall,” again an ascent:
and ascend
and ascend
and ascendto the endst air st air st air
st air st air st air
st air st air st air
st air st air st air
st air st air st air
st air st air st airThe staircase shape here is one of the most iconic elements in the sequence,
but the splitting of the word “stair” into “st air” brings in the notion of the
saint (he who ascends the stair to heaven), but a saint that has no proper
202 Chapter 10