Out of the rectitude and narrow care of those who
teach in the public schools,—
a mother
who would not let her son watch cartoons of
Porky Pig because we must
not laugh at someone who stutters,—
… the mystery, your brilliant
appetite for the moment.
*
For Herbert, the aesthetic desideratum is
unpremeditated art, not as “natural” or “spontaneous”
but a speaking of the Spirit as it becomes
conscious, a fidelity to
the moment itself. The only
appropriate gift is discovered to be
inseparable from
the giver, for man can only give himself.
In 1975, the magazine that printed your great essay
announced: He is writing a book on Herbert.
*
You lived in the realm where coin of the realm
is a book,
and despite the fact that by the end of
graduate school you
already had published twenty thousand articles
you never published a book.
Against the background of this bitter
mysterious lapse your brilliant
appetite for the moment.
