Plume

Mantle plumes are the spires extruded from the earth by volcanic pressure. There are hundreds of them on the slopes of the Beartooth Mountains near Tippet Rise in Montana. Geologists call such obelisks palisades, long dikes which rain erodes over time into separate spires. They then become the teeth of the Beartooth range, a rare phenomenon in which hills seem to have jaws.

Such extrusions can be mapped and explained. They are creatures of seismic thrust faults. There is no manual, though, for the equally alembic whims that create a poem, a painting, or a sculpture, although I’ve tried to suggest some raw materials in Tippet Rise Beginnings.

It’s reductive to think that such aleatory confections are the product of any rational instinct. In order to flesh out a dream, more dreams are needed. Not blueprints. You can’t reverse engineer the ethereal. Promoters I meet are always trying to design a Calder. George Martin initially rejected “Love Me Do,” because he felt the Beatles needed a hit song for their album.

Adventurers out to brand themselves have schemes in their eyes, not dreams. A poet’s eyes should be dazed, slightly befuddled. I don’t trust committees who think art can be formed by hierarchy, who think art is something to be reined in, roped off. Art for me is always random, unintentional, uncalculated. Poems don’t come out of adding machines; or if they soon will, I wouldn’t trust a chip that can’t tell a beech from an aspen.