A Word on Reynolds & Midway 1.

The name Reynolds popped into my head one day. I was writing a poem, the exact one I don't recall at this time, and it literally just popped into my head. At the moment it had no significance at all, it was just a name; but as I reflected on it (much later), I wondered if it had anything to do with the friend of Keats, John Hamilton Reynolds, to whom many of Keats' letters were addressed. Of course I had read many of the letters as a youth, as well as the poems, footnotes, etc, so the name is deeply impressed  in my brain. Keats was my first love as far as poetry is concerned. I fell in love with him without reading much of his poetry: just by opening a volume of his in the bookstore in fact. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I couldn't buy the book because I had no money, but I desired it so badly, words cannot express the feeling. It was similar to the feeling I had, a while before, perhaps years, when I opened the Fellowship of the Ring at a bookstore, but couldn't buy it. I remember the texture of the pages - it was a softcover, same as the Keats volume - the smell of the paper, the attractiveness of the words on the paper, the heft of the book, everything. Back to Reynolds: Reynolds was not only the friend of Keats but a poet himself, not a great poet but not a bad one either. Nowadays he is virtually forgotten as a poet and remembered as the friend of the great poet. To continue: as far as the poem Reynolds & Midway is concerned, Reynolds represents a friend, not any particular friend necessarily, although at specific parts of the poem I had a specific person in mind: Jim Walker, Mike Brown, Mike Canausa, Mario Zumbo, Tom Kennedy, at first; later it was my brother Kurt. Currently, it could be anyone: anyone who is not me, that is: my sons, people on the Internet, writers, authors, poets past & present: a biggy being Berryman, with whom I have not really engaged in a very focused way. He has fluttered around on the periphery, mainly because of his typography: the ampersand, dropping of 'e's: for example: stoppt or stoppd, pluckd or pluckt, etc, which I find appealing to the eye. Only recently (as in the last few days or weeks) have I discovered that he loved God at the end of his days. He was not the only modern poet to use this kind of typography (is this the correct usage?). Robert Duncan was another. I have yet to break bread with Duncan, though I have his Selected Poems. What I have read I have admired very much. Ginsberg also did those things, and him I have read more closely and been more intimate with, though we still have a future together. Blake, of course, used the ampersand and his own abbreviations, etc. I have read him closely, have "broken bread" with him, but have I understood him? I doubt it. Blake and I, if I am granted at least a few more years, will sit down together again. I never even finished reading the Four Zoas. I have not read Milton, or the other long works. I've never read Urizen all the way through. I've been a poser my whole life: taking Urizen as my username at PFFA for instance. Let me break here and explain Midway in the next post. 11.30.13