The American Poetry Antiques Road Show

What I mean is that, while "the stones hold secrets," they don't narrate those secrets. Like on the Antiques Road Show - the people don't know the history of the objects they bring in. It's the appraisers who are the storytellers.

But that begs the question of who cares. Well, the owners of the objects care - usually b/c they think they're worth more than they are, sometimes for sentimental (family) reasons. If history is written by the victors, or by the losers writing against the victors (which is part of the same story), then it's ideology - we're all always already interpellated, etc. - so what's the point? And what difference does it make, even if you feel like you're telling the Truth, if you're not willing to do anything about it - or think that you can't?

I guess that's what I'm sensing at the present moment. Virgil was the child of the empire ascendant - he may have just been kissing ass, but odds are he really believed in Augustus. Catullus, by contrast, was watching the decadence of the Republic. (See, this is what history gets you - cornpone analogies between US and Roman history).

But, like I say, it's a compulsion - a necromantic fascination with past people (personages) - a feeling that somebody ought to write it - a desire that someone will write about us, after our demise(s). It has to break down or break up, too. As in that beautiful, final lyrical section of "Book of the Dead" (the Rukeyser, not the Ani) - we've left the stock reports and committee minutes behind, but the paean or whatever it is would seem unmotivated without it - and, I think, vice versa.

From the sublime to the absurd: i'm off to Memphis . . .