From: "Robert
E. McGowan" bob@smith-winchester.com
Your Mississippi project
fascinates me. I wonder why the Mississippi River, dividing and joining
the nation, a symbol of everything that's not the east or west coast
about this country, hasn't been treated before. Have folks been intimidated
by Twain? Will you become the Ken Burns of the Great Muddy?
Your idea has gotten
under my skin and is heading toward my bones. I'm enlarging the scenario
I passed along to you, about an angry Moby Dick swimming up the Mississippi,
my own apocalyptic vision, into an epic, or at least a long narrative.
Noah Webster, in the
introduction to one of his dictionaries, compared American English to
the Mississippi. A great quote. I'll send it along if you don't already
have it.
Yrs for madness and
muddiness
*
Finished the script
for your Mississippi TV project,
albeit in condensed format
similar to a stuffed computer file.
So unstuff this,
and there you have it.
Bob McGowan
Big Comeback Tour
Here comes Moby Dick
heading up the Mississippi
from the delta
past poisoned mussel
beds
ghosts of freshwater pearls
tumorous sturgeon
great sperm bent
on sirin liberty
conceive a new nation
flat forehead wrinkled
like a flag
pushing parabolic crest
turning heartland
inside
out like a ball
new womb altogether
flukes roil cleanse
sand bars batter bridges
overwhelming dikes
sounds like a grand
guignole
tragedy moves upstream
revenge on kids and all
cows balloon by
snag on corn crib
scene by bosch
ol Huck an
Jim
stick out thumbs
to slow him down
he swallows ëem
up
among his ribs they greet
their personal gepetto
heres the truth
big whitey upchucks ëem
on the levee
prophets of the flood
plain
proclaim new jerusalemic
suburbs of atlantis
share their dream
few victims understand
but somebodys going to get it
Bob McGowan