Gerrit Lansing (February 25, 1928-February 11, 2018)

Portrait of Gerrit Lansing by Jane Freilicher

Gerrit Lansing, poet, scholar, friend, passed away peacefully this past night. A man of wider & deeper knowledge than almost anyone I have known, Gerrit was as familiar with, and brought as much care to contemporary poetry & poetics than to older literatures, to the traditionary sciences than to modern science, to the making of music than to the preparing of food. A conversationalist sans pareil, he moved with grace, enthusiasm & profound savoir & savoir-faire from, say, a poet such as Henry Vaughn to his friend Charles Olson, or from the likes of John Dee to the likes of Harry Smith, or from Roland Barthes to Stephen Jonas — and knew the traceries that connected all of them.

“a writ is a route” he wrote in his great alchemical sequence “The Soluble Forest,” and he traced his route in one book, one gathering of poems, added to over time, re-published in time, and that started out in 1966 with the first immanentisation of The Heavenly Tree Grows Downward by Robert & Joby Kelly’s matter books. Jane Freilicher’s portrait of Lansing reproduced above was the frontispiece of that book. Here, two poems of Gerrit’s:

THE HEAVENLY TREE GROWS DOWNWARD

Who bury the dead

must from the grave

establish a habit

 

Who bury the dead

lead forth the bride

stainless in dress

 

the morning-

glory creeps

stone

lizard

 

Who bury the dead

in fetal position

knees pulled up to chin

 

Who bury the dead

to rise again

*

from THE SOLUBLE FOREST:

IV.

 

              A WRIT is a route, a way and the map of a way. It figures and we make it our figure, you make of it your figure, I make it of mine. It is mind, and no mind, inner and dinner and outer and doubter.

             Doubtless these figures are crystal.

             From the center something spreads out, that then there now. From zero jumps two, two being how something is apprehended. Only a stone’s throw from writing to root. The rite of winter is the root of spring.

             The house stands on its cellar and grows up: Also grows down from its garrett invisibly, as the crown of a tree flourishes the idea of its root.

             Shine, heaven, darken and shine, that the process may stir as things emerge from the void of no-thing. It is plenty. All around us the letters are cast, to be spelt, to be sown like spelt, grain of the garment unseen as green as it makes it.

             Do you, do I?

*

Time now to go read Gerrit again. For those new to his work, here is a link to the poetry gathered in Heavenly Tree, Northern Earth, & here a link to A February Sheaf, essays, reviews, proses.

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