Beanie
Weenie
Introduction by E.
W. Wilder
At times during the course of human events, or in the life of Bean
Newton, the collective spleen must be voided. Some may argue that it
was Newton’s modus operandi to vent, but some of his work evinces
this tendency more than others.
The first poem of this series represents more of an angry tone than
the typical Bean Newton visionary linguistics. Though some of what is
found in “Anti-Money” can be seen as manifesto, one must consider
the times. The poem was written circa 1996, when neo-formalist forces
first began to achieve their current hegemony. This poem, above all,
is invective.
What follows that is another in his series of thematically and aesthetically
linked numbered-title poems (as opposed to the numbered poems themselves,
in which each line is given its own number). No critic or archivist
has yet been able to discern a system for Newton’s numbering.
****
This Poem is Anti-Money
by Bean
Newton
Take it and suck on it:
it will sustain you like oatmeal.
Wad it up and step on it, feel
it shooting power up through your heel.
Drop it down a well and listen
to its splash. Fire it voidward;
witness its cosmic lightshow.
Here there is green and crimson and orange.
Here there is willingness and sex and yes;
here are the monkeys that move thoughts
into inconvenient locomotions. Love
this white-hot inkwad; anchor
yourself here and listen to the vibration
of your cells.
***
18.2
by Bean Newton
Self-cleaning (k)night
of dirt and neuralgia,
lighted with a green, algal
luster, de-mystify my like-
ness to the people
who are no me. Facsimile
sameness, roses in throats,
the last true warrior
of an age that never was,
(I) creak in jade armor,
rusted, strangely stone.
So this is growing old,
