Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Charles Olson to Elaine Feinstein (1959)

Burroughs, I notice, is marvelously after the libidinal, and does exactly the opposite of Creeley: he makes his own body into a literal corpus (text), a precise physiology to the t of the bottom of his foot for a fix. Burroughs wants a post-libidinal like Creeley wants a post-speech. It’s terrific, both these drives. Clean.  

I would revive the old sense of a precise plurality of “forms” (zzz). Dose Muses. I’m sure each man has one as firm a shape as a locality. Forget the proper nouns of same Muses. Remember only their mother. They have nothing, I’m sure, to do with literary forms. They are, I our gab, archetypes.

Thus the psyche, and them, bound, vertically, and shot from the “side” (by habit or choice, Burroughs or Creeley, as instances) comes Morphe. Genes to speech, morphs to me and you, and yr chains, senors, will drop off, comes the strawberries mit cream.