Ouija poetics

“the actual spirit text
of one of the ouija
sessions. Usually his
communications were
gloomy and macabre,
tho not without wit.”
—Ted Hughes, Notes,
The Collected Poems
of Sylvia Plath

Otherworldly spirit-texts—
Speaking thru séances, trance
Mediumships, the Tarot cards
Madame Sosostris deals out for
Miss Eliot in The Waste Land

Such visionary discourse—
Serving at once as a display &
Abdication of literary, spiritual
Authority, does it not favor its
Medium poets rather coyly?

The very act of authorship—
Known as automatic writing
With its verbal pronouncements
And vatic images, such ghostly
Elaborate cosmologies, my dear!

W. B. Yeats with his practice—
Otherworldly gyres & geometries
With Biblical & classical revelations.
Written out rather nicely in English
Like some low-life Modernist scribbler.

Rainier Maria Rilke experimenting—
Briefly with a pencil planchette or
H.D. conversing on a tapping table
With a group of slain RAF pilots who
Spell out for her disaster predictions?

Ouija poetics with its occult imagery—
Drawing on classical Western mythology,
Learned alchemists, magus & mystics,
Such tropes of “high culture” mixed with
Carnivàle, Mardi Gras, popular parades?