in some first literary glances…

I came to notice
that actually knowing
where a poet came from,
and with whom he/she associated with
was of vital importance,
if one did in fact,
want to understand the poet's writing.

personally,
my first glance
was in the beats.
I have long since pronounced
that word as if it were
permanently in italics.

knowing who was writing what,
(and when, and in what city,
at what time,
when which rebellion
of conformity
was being fantasized/actualized,
which numbing tick
was currently
on the face
of civilization’s sickly clock),
is almost, if not of equal significance,
to the poems themselves.

I learned that this knowledge,
(not found in their writings but in their existence in time),
coincides with profound necessity, to
the reading of the writer in question.

When I eventually
came to read Blake,
he was spewing Milton, and Isaiah
and giving the former devilish identification,
that of which,
I failed to identify with.

It was then that I read
Harold Bloom telling me
that, “to first understand Blake,
one must first understand how
Blake read the Bible and Milton.”

How did it feel?

Well I guess it felt
something like throwing
a rucksack on my back,
and watching the
lengthy skies
fade to orange over the badlands,
and like ejecting my thumb
from hand,
and seeing who wants
to help me get
to where I’m going.