Stephen Rodefer (1940-2015)

Travel well, old friend.

 

& Charles Olson on SR: ”

“Youthful what? Where is Rodefer, he’ll know. That damn Lycidas. Whatever else England draws upon, it’s native talent will out. The damn Lycidas! Where did Rodefer go? Youthful what?”

rodefer

 

To the Barracks

to the list

Members, remember how I missed you when my aim was dead
and your quivers bulged with passionate intensity. That slide’s
not blue enough Maman. I cannot quiet you, though I try to
The composite vision compromises hindsight. I kant historisize
our changes. Nor can I  remember them. These our leaves hunt
among gisants, pant between love and desire. Yet they are ours—
and they will be yours. In an absent tete à tete, we lose them each
morning in time’s burnt breakfast. Banana-eating baboons in Chinese
flight, perfectly ungainly in unproven parachutes–like inperfect
cuckolds. Scooters to gaol, elections to fixation, appro priation to
foresight, pricks into the closet. The pistolettes of gondeliers,
hidden, will open on all dumb rap tures, for a tuppence. As we drift
downward to arks on distended stars, and their delayed deaths—
the wings or the oars of signifying oblivion, and the muscled
burning tires at the edge of the orchard

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3 Responses

  1. Andre Spears says:

    Very sorry to learn of this… Four Lectures was a landmark book in my life, and his self-exile & withdrawal into the margins remained a source of constant questioning for me.

  2. Ear up, or
    Get off

    —in memory of Stephen Rodefer (1940-2015)

    Temptations in sex, given

    up approximate location. Just to stand
    under the place holder your language cast
    across conclusion. No one’s right, everyone
    believes, more simply—one stop short

    less becoming. And to sidle up
    with a hoarse voice hushes

    the animal. Whenever we, too,
    put on those lovely gloves, over

    and out these findings
    a fingerling, adrift

    in consensual draft, Lincoln
    continental.

    Taken with particular errant
    accent, a likeness.
    Moreover,

    this may never, for once
    taste anything at all: like chicken. Fear not, now
    and again I say, ‘rejoice, rejoice.’ In Indiana
    Diana was a huntress. Note, how

    nude the word ‘tampon’ in pieces finds itself, broken
    beneath the shelf of the previous stanza.
    Chandelier, swing low
    the party zealots

    speak bakery French—
    chief loaf chef bus

    so sheer a kiss that parting scores, alive
    nor any longer a matter of desire. Let’s re-do
    in order to detour the book the outcome
    rent its plural detriment. As is today

    alacrity our country nonsense. He’s dead
    to me, to you, a mere

    dance, shadow step
    away,

    reflect, move over.

  3. Jeff Rogers says:

    Just learned, sadly, of Steve’s demise in 2015. He inspired many young aspiring poets teaching creative writing at the Univ. of New Mexico, including me. After hours drinking with him was memorable, for many reasons…

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