Mormon Cataclysms and The Utah Quartets
These poems were written by IG Agent 18 evidently at the end of the writing of the The Mixtape of Taliesin obviously they hit some of the same notes as the Utah Quartets in that book so there was no room for them in there, but they were also dropped from the Mercuric Distillations book ( to be released 2023) because it was felt that they did not fit there (fitting more with the Utah Quartets from the Mixtape of Taliesin) but also that they were not as powerful and as fully realized as The Utah Quartets, after some discussion among various members of Illuminati Ganga it has been okayed to release these poems as an essential insight to the creative process of IG Agent 18 at the time of writing The Mixtape of Taliesin and its centering masterpiece The Utah Quartets.
Mormon Cataclysms I
O ridged & poignant Avenues
Cerulean and Paint-
Brush cobalt which brushed the waves
To weave Atlantean Fabulae
That wove over untrammeled brow
Where swam azure opiate fantasies
O as if a mass of dreadlocked curls
Greasily swirled a stainless comb
Then shook, & fell, & falling broke
Fine strands of bleached out summer light
In weightless latter days which drift
Streams of mountain bikes & microblades
& brush the clean from unclean
& cool from uncool
O brush dirt-specks off jacket collars
In airy rooms where clavichords
Are strung by wholesome women
While on the partytide one sifts
The glister of a compliment
From troubled flow of anecdotes
Combing talk even back
Then parts that on each side
Till less than the sand is left
& that sand brushed clean of grain
O brush the brain of limpid thought
Set words in bubbled soap to float
Between our scoured ears
Till this insipid babbling pops
O cleanse the brain of every thought
Let sea sure come glomming on
In gleam of algae blue & green
Drown square yards of Bishop’s pawns
Rex yaps about the sprinkled lawn
Where soon Mermaids in play may undulate
Yes! Neptune’s favored odalisques
Clattering combs of pearl & ivory
Tangled true in tangled hair
While boys with lightblue anchors
Tattooed upon their scrawny arms
Beat tambourines with salted palms
& shout Hosanna, Hosanna in the salty street
Where soon saintless Mermaids snakily swim
While enthralled, enslaved Missionaries
Shall blow the conch between their thighs
Singing verse & chapter in chantey rhymes
& sighing on a bed of undone oyster shell
When ding-dong of rusty antique bells
Clefs a tinny ear awake
Netted by the floating detritus
Of your yawning prattle
We can see why this poem was dropped, it has a number of similarities to The Hierophant, an early poem in The Suit of Spades, for example this part
Unknown, among the deep cafes
young maidens delicately scaled
silver & ultramarine
read DADA without expression
as pink bubbles are blown
from their slightly parted lips
& I hear their sensual nonsense
within a Nautilus trumpet.
Aside from that I think all of the Mormon Cataclysms have a very bad mood to them, a feeling of cynicism and contempt for the world, which might very well be fitting to the concept of Cataclysms or perhaps even Mormonism itself. The Mixtape of Taliesin can at times be bleak or wild or despairing, but even when it sort of tries for it at the end of the Book of Diamonds it is not ever really mean-spirited. These poems are somewhat cold and mean-spirited, even though full of interesting word choices and having a nice rhythmic sense (as makes sense given the time frame in which they were written), and this is why I have to agree that Agent 18’s decision to leave them out of both The Mixtape of Taliesin and Mercuric Distillations was a sound one.
Mormon Cataclysms II
Vanity of compact vanities
& chrome-shine European compact
On sunnyday in minor drizzle
That beads the beads of dirty windows
& Fizzled on the tarry roofs
Like a jeweler’s bag of polished stones
Dropt on a muddy puddle-top
In this frame, appearance
Of a length of mirrored glass
Across which, as it moved
Slid a peopled flow
Stopping at a soft, young man
Whose softness mirrored soft young women
Of Solomon’s vainglorious court
So full & reflective his lips
That the reveals a pair
Of hidden pinking shears
To cut unfrayed image from its frame
& all the views that mirror held
Bled dumbly down the street; O
Polyhedral mirrors drip-drop
Into blinking convex mirrors
& every million rainbowed image
An image of millennium -
Down a distension of sugared mirror
runs & on the rounded tip
Of mirror a Mandala of Sun -
Paned mirrors, oil-stained, cover
Blue of sun-strained constrained mirrors
Might the furor of some Occulist
Blight the fitness of our vision?
What hides behind a mirror’s sparkled skin -
mirrored polish of a skull
Image of a puzzle,
The scarlet flow of mirrors pulled
Into wire of liquid twizzler
Silver of a million mirrors
All reflecting on themselves.
I quite hate this poem actually, it reminds me sort of the third quartet in The Utah Quartets, with its images of a lovely, sunny day apocalypse
THE WORLD ENDS ENDS
Partitioned like an orange
some Dunce might serve
Sundays hot afternoon on the back porch
flies buzzing bout the slice -
only not as well done. Here it makes me think a major work has been finished — The Utah Quartets — and now the poet does not know exactly what to do with themselves, so they go back trying to hit that same nail again from a different angle, but he didn’t need to hit it.
Aside from that the imagery is not as nice, not as precise, not as cold as ice while describing a world on fire as the third quartet — compare this section
A flash of fire & flowers
on swishing skirts
round dancer’s legs -
An apparition of Natural Sense
Consumes the crowd by her confidence.
THE WORLD ENDS
ENDS
Christmassied by flares & smoke
or 4th of July-ed with whirry sparks
Beneath the dark unfolding plan
A vision of Universal Beauty
Becomes Supreme
& Utterly Evil
I feel everything is better in the third quartet, and again Agent 18 was correct to shelve this poem, even though it has some interest in regards to the creative process.
Mormon Cataclysms III
Let us go,
Let us go now before engagements overtake us
To the cold homes of concentric Aunts
Whose bowed hair cusped by snow
Makes us regret what we do not
Oh, Lemonade on porch-swings
Is bitter, & the ice of blue unswerving -
Unseeing eyes which follow
The things unseeing eyes must follow
Are like the squeaking of an unoiled chain
Or thin squeaking of encyclical complaints
When the wind blows through pursed lips
Back & forward on the old chair
Fanning body against air
As Mind will fan memory
Or tapwater hold arthritic fingers
Illusory as forgotten name, unnameable experience
As the transitory thought
That something was, or was not
Forgot.
I find this the only poem of the Mormon Cataclysms that can compete with any of the top or even medium rank poems in The Mixtape of Taliesin ( there are about 4 poems that are not up to the rest of the book that maybe should be dropped — personal opinion here though — perhaps I shall write about that later), the main drawback here is the start with its strong callback to the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; aside from that I am also somewhat on the fence regarding the word ‘concentric’ — on the one hand it seems a silly malapropism/wordplay which Agent 18 is sometimes attracted to at the wrong moment, on the other hand it seems the perfect word in relation to the theme mental decay and senility — the Aunt is concentric because of her age; her mind and all its thoughts and memories has circled in on itself.
On later edit — and what is the meaning of the encyclical complaints. An encyclical is a letter from the Pope, but obviously not the case here. I suppose it has some implication of religious connection to this Aunt, a Mormon connection that is not made clear, but also the word encyclical implies recurrence and once again, circularity. So, some more wordplay that is not as clear or to the point as the wordplay one would be likely to find in his previously published works.
I think this poem is a really clear bridge between The Mixtape of Taliesin and the forthcoming Mercuric Distillations which I have had occasion to examine.
Mormon Cataclysms IV
Cherry-red of Oxygenated blood
Delights the jaded sense,
Airbrushed
In suspension of sunlight -
Mint-edition violence speeds by
& there are not enough shallow superlatives
To envision one’s own end:
The plastic apple’s red
Fuzzed by dust in cellophane
Cornucopia’s horn of molded plenty
Overflows coarse distillate
Of artificial plum and grape,
As juices enstale living rooms
Sprayed from aerosol cans -
Or hung on copper flower hooks.
We have lived through homiletic books;
Our thoughts proverbial, our joys
A prestidigitated psalmistry -
Desire a plea for the absence
Of desire
Hope only a procrastinated transcendence
Of this terrestrial fire
Burning in the pit of our own triviality.
Another attempt to hit that apocalypse button for the acerbic thrill it returns. But again, I prefer the apocalypses of The Mixtape of Taliesin because better described, more fully apocalyptic, and yet also somehow more hopeful.
This article was written by IG Agent 84, but the poems were written by IG Agent 18.
Note from IG Agent 84 -
An earlier version of this article was published with “Four Quartets” in the title instead of “Utah Quartets” obviously I was already thinking of T.S Elliott what with Mormon Cataclysms #3, but also because of course Quartets is such a strong reference it gets in your head. My apologies.
The Mixtape of Taliesin can be found here
You can read more about the Poetry of Illuminati Ganga here
