Taliesin Guide — The Suit of Hearts
The Suit of Hearts represents emotional openness, joy and dreams, and is an obvious analog to the Suit of Cups in the Tarot
I am doing a book by book analysis of all the poems in The Mixtape of Taliesin to give a full critical view. Each poem is analyzed in the context of its own particular book, but also in relation to poems in other books, overarching themes, and what I feel are the best passages of the Poem.
For my overview of the Utah Quartets I did a series of articles, one on each poem with IG Agent 19, because of his musical knowledge made analyzing the poems somewhat easier, but also his knowledge of Utah helped me catch things that would otherwise be opaque.
That partnership worked out really well, so I have asked Agent 19 to join me for the rest of the analysis, just to see if he has anything to add.
I believe this is probably the best book of the outer books, surrounding the Utah Quartets, perhaps fitting given that it’s the Suit of Hearts, and the epic as a whole was supposedly also a love poem.
All that said, let’s start with the poems.
TALIESIN ERRANT
The first poem of the first book after the Central Utah quartets in The Mixtape of Taliesin is a sleep and dream poem, set in winter. It starts
Sleep is the Courting Bird
That droops its brilliant tail
Onto your cloudy brain
Then twirling thrice its regal neck
Pecks bronze & furious beak
Through your nascent thought
& settles in to guide the night.
Just as the first poem of the first book of The Mixtape of Taliesin is a sleep and dream poem, most probably set in Summer (or at least a warm and drowsy sunny day). And it starts
A pen of mottled green
rolls on the table-top
rolls along the patterned wood
A Dog-Rose withers in the window
& sunbeams burnish up my hands
I rest my forehead on my elbow
as gold filters thru my eyes to fall
in showers on a wilder land
The first poem of the first book, the Suit of Spades, has themes of wood, brambles, thorns, roses, falcons, goblins, summer, writing, sleep and daydreams.
If we accept the idea that The Mixtape of Taliesin functions as two interlocking quartets, the outer quartet of the The Suit of Spades, The Suit of Clubs, The Suit of Hearts and The Suit of Diamonds then the first poem of the third outer book, has as themes Wizards, Dragons, Stags, dreams, a bird (I have asked Agent 18 and he says it was a Peacock), but then writing (when the narrator cuts a fresh sigil of their passing on the back of an old wooden chair set at a fantastic table in a snow covered meadow), and finally a falcon as well
Above, a falcon stoops beneath a cloud
The wind divides round upraised fist
Various poems of The Mixtape of Taliesin, being long narratives in their own right, are like various miniature stories in their own right that also echo preoccupations of the book they are in.
The Emperor from the Suit of Clubs a classic end of Arthur story, Prophetia Taliesin from the same book a dystopian war and collapse of society narrative; this poem is very connected to tropes of High Fantasy.
It also does a lot of bragging about poetic skill that many of the other poems in previous books have done, and being part of a tradition of poetry and prophecy, but from the standpoint of fantasy fiction, where the poet is a form of wizard.
The poem feels to me somewhat like being immersed in an Arthur Rackham illustration.
THE WORLD
From Fantasy and idyllic dreams we move to reality, and something of a Science Fiction futuristic and dystopian vision of our reality at that.
Sunlight reveals webs round squinting eyes
breath wheels frost onto cold air
cop cars circle, predators
on the weak & disorganized
stars splinter ice
to chart a shape for chaos
The title The World does seem to convey also a purpose, to bring the whole world in. Generally whole world poems by ambitious poets are not necessarily the most focused or slow, they dance around between subjects trying to take everything in, and this is no exception.
To see the whole world is, for much of the history of the world, a fantasy, a story element dependent on supernatural power. The province of Warlocks and acolytes of the Devil.
Nowadays it is the puerile dreams of billionaires with access to massive data processing pipelines.
In the old wizard times perhaps you saw the world in a crystal ball
In
a Globe
of patterned marble
this structure repeats itself throughout the poem — also as
In a Globe
of Gypsy Crystal
and
In a Globe of Cornea & Iris
And still others. There are all sorts of mystical and technical globes that come back to us as we examine “The World”
Agent 19: This part strikes me also as a musical motif. It has a sort of cool jazzy feel to it, and then after almost all of the globes that are brought out the verse builds up to a point of release.
Excepting the one about the Cornea and Iris, which ends a section. And it’s right after it ends that section it actually goes to talking about music
Crocuses horne from an Italian vase
with Jazz scent & rhythmic color -
Canvasses set among night-blues
track-lighted with cinematic audience
an old microphone blooms to the lips
of a Creole Archetype, she croons -
this tea sips sense from you
& its melodies are bitter
which goes into a stoned visionary segment.
Agent 13: Another way traditionally used to see the world.
Agent 19: Yeah it’s very 1970s trippy movie about tripping, like a movie made by someone who had done drugs and was trying to convey that information cinematically.
Agent 13: You think it’s a kind of parody of those movies?
Agent 19: I think it is just that the poem is very visual and so he assumes a visual narrative of being high. And it moves from an old timey archetype of being high, with jazz and a creole singer through trippy scenarios until coming out into a more modern post punk / pop / electronica vision.
THRUMMM communicate these streetlamps
snow upon the ampstands
candlewax melts on children’s hands
socially involved, flyers pass thru the crowd
dayglow flowers throb on instruments
loud sex, purple bombers & bondage gear
berets with blue black hair -
red tinted glasses hide
green-tinted eyes & somewhere
among the chemicals a rainbow-tinted
intelligence allows itself
to be hinted at -
And then the concert starts
a jangling begins, resonates
the drummer revolves his arms
the requisite psychedelic intro resolves
into a folk/blues structure
with sibylline vocals & Punk anti-culture
Agent 13: After which it ends with prophetic type questions, of the “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” kind that God uses to interrogate Job.
It seems sort of peremptory, but it also establishes all these ways of seeing all the world are inadequate, because you are not Taliesin and gifted with the poetic ability to achieve such a supernatural feat. Thus a boast that your poems on the world will not match this one in seeing it all.
THE LUSTS OF TALIESIN
Another one of those, “hey I like sex with the ladies poems” of Agent 18. Short and focused on oral.
To the chair & cauldron of Woman my thanks -
My tongue plays free in her enclosure
It’s a pretty weird and jarring switch from the previous poem. In a way it is like a transposed version of the first book — The Book of Spades, the first poem is a dream poem, the second poem is a sex poem and in fact also focused on oral sex like this one, and the third is a prophecy poem like this one.
In this book it is dream poem, prophecy poem, sex poem.
In the first it is the tarot poem that is the sex poem, and the Taliesin poem that is the prophecy, and here the tarot poem is the prophecy poem and the Taliesin poem the sex poem.
Agent 19: Maybe should ask him?
Agent 13: In my experience this is not the kind of question he deigns to answer, or if he does it will be just a yes / no.
THE SUN
Of course It becomes apparent, we will be going through the cosmos here in this book, with the cards in the Tarot deck that have a celestial meaning.
This poem is full of alliteration and assonance, it is another transformation poem
Coming across the cloud combed hills
in a coracle that bestirs the cirrus
into cumulonimbus
Our baby boy Taliesin is in a coracle, but not like the original story, this one is floating through the heavens. And Taliesin stands up to look down and falls out, falling
from the picturebook Fairy Tale
into reality
As he falls he changes into various birds: Kingfisher, Cormorant, Starling, and Curlew, all important in Welsh myth.
But he falls in the end into the sea
What matter, protean with inspiration
tugged by inner fiddle to fetch
into sea, you Fisher King
Angler Poet, Angel Bard
fashion feet to fins
doing a final transformation into a fish, fished up by his father on a hook he then
you shift boy-like into your body
TALIESIN’S TONGUE TWISTER
OK when I said the last poem does a lot of a alliteration and assonance, this poem demands the previous hold its beer.
Agent 19: I don’t think it’s reasonable I be the voice of reason to point out critics don’t usually anthropomorphize poems.
Agent 13: Good ones do.
Agent 19: Really!!?
Agent 13: I don’t really want to go into it right now, this article is already quite long. But I will probably write something on this in the next few weeks. Essentially I just realized something when you made your comment. So just trust me.
Anyway there seems to be an evident desire to outdo what has been done before.
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The poem does another pass at the prime Taliesin myth. Here we have a young boy, whose birth seems transformative, he is born from animals as it were.
Boy, born & bonny;
brought — the best
between town & field -
tossed in that briar where anger is foaled,
where Cernunnos’ antlers are reared, the brown bear
felled, & the swarming ant fed.
He, however is not originally stupid and then changed by being gifted with poetic genius. He is both stupid and bright at the same time
Bright boy,
bit of a bray & mortar
you’ve ground the grains of murder
& burnt the bread -
and he too has a cooking accident in which the meal gets burnt.
But then he goes off the rails. This boy does not get gifted with poetic genius and uplifted beyond all others in the world.
If he is a poet, his model seems to be Rimbaud.
A callous bastard, busted
among your dead, past the wood
where they warred: turned
introvert, aging, & bad,
boy.
THE MOON
This is one of the best poems in the Epic, outside of the Utah Quartets and I believe totally able to hold itself up with those books. It’s also depressive and dark. Semi-paranoid.
The poem opens with a sort of to be or not to be, only it is am I or am I not, and it seems to think that the narrator of the poem is in fact not.
If Only It could Be… be that I be..
Also, in the book the IF is a large graphically ornate IF
Like a medieval word graffitied into the middle of the text.
The narrator considers that if they actually existed they might do something, like stand up from the bed and leave their room which seems to imprison them to walk out into society, leave the room where his only company is an omnipresent clock
Its luminescent eye, cyclopean
Observes between locked hands,
Unblinking. . .what is the clock thinking?
Its thoughts weave evenly back & forth
With the dull turning
Of a key in its lock
Or a warp on the loom
The Clock is big and white and has an impersonal face. Like the Moon. The narrator lies alone in the room, in a state of being that is very much like a living death, while
Outside, mourners in black-gray costume parade
Thru the foggy noonday
the poem is full of suicidal ideation and negativity, quite a triumph really.
In the idea that the Suit of Hearts mimics the Suit of Spades I feel this is the poem taking the place of The Magician, an inverted Magician.
In the Suit of Spades the Magician controls and acts upon things, people there come in parades as well, and there is a pun regarding time as well
These hours have descended
From their books
In sinuous processions thru ages
Page boys in mild blue Dalmatics
nice and sunny page boys, but here in the Suit of Hearts the narrator is acted upon and controlled by the Clock and The Moon, the parade is dark and gloomy.
THE FORTRESS OF TALIESIN
I don’t much care for this poem, although I have to admit it was constructed with quite a lot of skill.
This is a pretty straightforward match to an old medieval welsh poem, and as such has the weaknesses of medieval poetry to modern sensibilities.
A grand Tower stands on white wave
like a crystal on snow embankment
the years diminish our minds & mettle
young bodies yearning for battle
wither in the winter of their time
but no decrease does this Tower show
nor does age touch its inhabitants.
It enumerates the virtues of a tower and its brave and cultured inhabitants, it associates them with Arthur in his powerful and civilized and wealthy view, not the decayed view of The Emperor from the Suit of Clubs, I feel this poem calls back to the Hierophant which describes a land below the waves, something like Clychau Cantre’r Gwaelod but also to The Emperor — there a weak Arthur, here a dominant although not warlike Arthur — and also The Tower from the Suit of Clubs, there a decayed tower, destroyed, lifeless, here
A splendid Tower rises high on foam & tide
superb in knowledge, praised for wisdom
THE STARS
Agent 19: I quite like this one, even though I don’t understand any of it. Maybe it’s all the words and phrases I don’t know.
Agent 13: Right, this is from some points of view, mainly written for anyone who knows anything about Celtic myth and legend. But you could also just approach it as another form of fantasy, and let it transport you to a place that is outside of your normal world.
As far as the name, this is also something of an odd one out, because it is a Tarot poem in the order of the book, but it takes the name “The Stars” instead of The Star, which is what the card is traditionally called.
Counterpoint
to Gorsedd Arberth
Ar ddu’s hounds bay
a deathness of wild geese
to speckle black nightfall
So “ar ddu a gwyn” in Welsh means to write it down in black and white. Arddu is a god of death and darkness, he is also a famous hunter and often associated with the wild hunt.
Gorsedd Arberth is an important location in relation to Rhiannon.
Gwyn Ap Nudd of Annwfn is referenced in another verse, he and Arddu are generally considered distinct, but they share a lot of the same purposes and properties as mythical figures, so here evidently Agent 18 has decided to take them as different variations of the same figure.
Then later there is a reference to another hunter, Gwengwyngwyn, from triad 14 of the Welsh triads, his name is Gwyn’s name repeated three times and thus means the thrice-white one, his mother is Arianrhod. So he as the third mythic figure gets folded in with Gwyn Ap Nudd and Arddu.
Agent 19: Maybe it is The Stars because while there is only one figure, there are multiple renditions of it.
Agent 13: Hmm, I hadn’t thought of it, but maybe.
And this folded in mythic figure is then associated with the poet taking a country stroll
“I am coming along a country road,
dandy, twirling a birch rod”
there’s a few references to plant life that have ancient meanings.
And then
Drunk, I tumble down a starry embankment
the snow of crushed stars thick
around me, the women come
Arianrhod fierce, Blodeuwedd keening
Ceridwen all businesslike;
Arianrhod the fierce mother, Blodeuwedd an artificial woman created by magic, and Ceridwen, the ancient witch that caused Taliesin to become who he was instead of the stupid boy he was born to be.
After which there is another boast of being a great poet who Alliterates “all that I sing”.
In a way this calls back to The Birth of Taliesin in The Suit of Spades which has a lot of heavenly / spatial imagery, but also some obvious Celtic lore that is very much deepened here, but also I think to The Hanged Man of that book, in that he is eloquent about ancient Welsh myth of herbal lore and a bunch of things that nobody knows anything about and is absolutely meaningless unless you want to go get out a bunch of reference books and spend the time to hunt down what it all means and implies, which is what I had to do.
Essentially the poem, which I love, and find wonderful to read, does exactly that thing which The Hanged Man complains that “American poets” do. It takes the
the cold grim sleepless night
squirming in its unshaped morbid uniform
and then he sifts it like a bowl of Gods among the hidden Pentothal, to paraphrase.
I should note that this kind of ambivalence is very often to be found in Agent 18.
THE AGE OF TALIESIN
Agent 19: I like this because of course he there are some visual poetry like ways to represent the drums that are talked about in the poem a lot.
Agent 13: Unfortunately this analysis is going to be published on the Medium site, so we will not be representing the actual layout decisions. People can get the ebook — affiliate link
Anyway the poem has two interweaving themes, that of drums and drumming, and rain.
It starts with rain
Taliesin, Taliesin
taking
wide hurried steps across rain-stained
pavements,
drawing the waters from the levee
of forgetfulness,
This is another deluge poem, but in this case it is a joyful rain, almost Singing in the Rain level of enjoyment.
raindrops decorate brows
& uncovered throats
with torques & diadems, necklaces
that cry along smooth flesh
richly tanned.
This is a deluge that does not drown the world, but rejuvenates it, which to be fair, most storms do. The poet is walking through the rained upon world and everything keeps on like normal, people do not run inside to get away from the rain, they are in the park having a wonderful time at some sort of alternative festival
Hawkers of potpourried gimcracks
or Junkie Barkers of Sativa’s glories
various samples, shrooms,
homemade junk & vintage jewelry
iridescent glint of glass
& sundog tie-dye spiral patterns
And in the festival under the wonderful storm the community is also enriched with knowledge
Leaflets are flying between outstretched hands
like unread white crows
leaflets are being passed between people
like joints of information
inhale this, then process it, internally.
The rain cannot be constrained by man, so best to enjoy it, to bend to it.
I think the cops are totally stoned
at monitoring the transferal.
This article was written by Agent 13 and Agent 19, The epic poem The Mixtape of Taliesin is available in various editions, as a series or as one complete volume — affiliate link to series
Agent 13 is the Author of the book The One Drop Solution — affiliate link
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