Huuklyeand Cinquor on Poets Sounding Out Their Voice

No, no, you’re doing fine 
Mates, plumb no deeper— 

You’ll find that buoyant 
Voice you’re looking for bobbing 

Right here near the surface, not 
Sinking at the end 

Of one last desperate line. 


Moderator’s comments: Cinquor twitching like a catastomid on the end of a gaffe(sic)—this guy doesn’t know Trout Fishing in America from The Compleat Angler. Why he presumes to be such an authority on the murky current state of American poetry is anybody’s guess, but there’s a strong possibility it might have something to do with his piscine-sounding name.

Huuklyeand Cinquor's Take on Revisionist Poetics

All you visionaries hell-bent on taking 
Off after a vision, take this— 

A poem can take you anywhere 
You want but it won’t take you there 

If you put it down right from the start. 



Moderator’s comments: After some seven or eight months of silence on his part, I was beginning to think that Huuk was revising the soundness of his decision to send me his “poetry” at intermittent intervals, but it looks like I was a bit hasty with my assumption. So, after a long wait, let us revel once more in observing him at his short, didactic best (or worse, depending on how bad your myopia is) by focusing in on the poem’s intention to wit, what exactly is he trying to teach us here? That a poem cannot be “visionary” if it is written straightaway the first time without any revision whatsoever? Or is he assuming the role of the reader and admonishing us to give the poem the benefit of the doubt and not to dis it from the start? Maybe he’s trying to hook both poet and reader with his version of how to cast off all poetic illusions. Whatever the case, I certainly don’t want to prejudice any poets and/or readers out there by being picayune about his “effort” but I have to admit I’m having trouble following where he’s going with this, but then again, I’m not called “The Squint-eyed Kid” for nothing.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on the MO of Underground Poets

Surreptitiously 

Erase each step, better 

Still, don’t move at all. 

Moderator’s comment: The Apotheosis of the Absurd? At first glance, it might appear so to readers unfamiliar with Cinquor’s modus operandi and who might be thinking he’s being a bit facetious here; on the contrary, if we dig a bit deeper, we’ll see he’s earnestly but very carefully exploring new levels of meaning vis-à-vis the creative urge underlying the so-called school of Underground Poetry. 

Unlike his archaeologically pioneering European antipode Heinrich Schliemann—who, in his great haste to find Ancient Troy, dug right through it without realizing it—Cinquor here posits a daring New World approach in which he proposes that poets who wish to explore ancient subterranean passages leading to Hades, and who wish to do so without the fear of being detected and therefore ratted on by weasels or moles, should do nothing but stand perfectly still—a quintessential move on Cinquor’s part, if you ask me. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Biting the Bullet

Punk firebrand intellect with prophetic 

Corpus pregnant with bravado before firing 

Your virgin salvo into that illustrious 

But now defenseless body 

Of ancestors think twice 

And never after 

Drawing a blank. 

Moderator’s comments: Not having heard from Huuk for ages (so to speak), I thought he’d finally shot his wad. Just goes to show you shouldn’t count geezers out—not even after you think they’ve wheezed their pathetic last. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Bernstein’s Artifice of Absorption

So powerful was his gift

Of garb, you had to

Hang on to your shocks.



Moderator’s comments: Now we know where Cinquor has been hiding out these past two months: Checking out the new world naked emperor’s new clothes!

Huuklyeand Cinquor's First Published Poem?

"The Fascination of Difficult Questions"

Because I have spent my life

Struggling with insurmountable difficulties—

Women’s sexual hang-ups, straggling girdles,

My own rattling knock-knees—

Will I be able?

Because I have met riddles threatening to ruin me—

How to pour out ketchup or how to spell it,

The getting rid of prune pits and gum gracefully—

Will I succeed?

And because I have seen nightmares

Flying at me in daydreams—

Yeats riding sidesaddle,

Beating a dead and falling horse—

Shall I now say t. s. and eat another peach?

Moderator’s comments: A reader (whom I suspect is writing under a pseudonym) recently sent me the above poem together with the following note:

Dear Mr. Vazambam:

I have been following with great interest your posts dedicated to the so-called Apophthegmata of Huuklyeand Cinquor, not because I’m a fan of his work—far from it—deep down I’ve always had the gut feeling he’s a sham and fake and over the past three months I’ve been trying to dig up enough evidence to support these accusations. I think what I’ve unearthed so far is damning enough evidence to reveal him as purveyor of base metals and plagiarist par excellence. Take the above poem, for example. It claims to be his first published work, appearing in the early 70s in one of the most prestigious poetry magazines of its day—Poetry Northwest. Even a cursory examination shows that it has all the necessary conceits befitting a mainstream poem of its period—wit, irony, puns, overblown literary metaphors, a slight dose of male chauvinism, snide allusions to Yeats’ masculinity and Eliot’s bowel movements, rhetorical questions up the bung hole, etc.—in short, just the prescription needed to fit this particular editor’s bill. This is all fine and well but the riddle remains—is this poem really Cinquor’s?

The table of contents states that it is indeed written by one Huuklyeand Cinquor, but when the reader goes to the contributors’ notes, he is duly informed that Cinquor was a graduate student at the University of Washington when this particular poem was published; however, an extensive search of the files of the Registrar’s Office conducted by yours truly shows that there is no record of anybody named Huuklyeand Cinquor ever having attended the University of Washington!

I shall be presenting more evidence supporting my claims re Mr. Cinquor in due time. In the meanwhile, I remain

Yours truly,

I.M. Sully-Maculate Zaengmac

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Practical Criticism

If I remember correctly, the last poem

You wrote was about writing a poem;

Your next one should be about forgetting it.

Moderator’s comments: I suspect few people read I. A. Richards anymore but he was the latest rage in literary criticism throughout the first half of the previous century and it seems that Cinquor is paying homage to him with this little poem. Not to belittle Richards' many talents but I don’t think he possessed that rapier wit we see Cinquor wielding with so much admirable dispensation here, to wit and to the point: Did Richards ever say anything so downright good and practical?