Zchenk Among Demons by David Schenck

Zchenk Among Demons blossomed out of hard and exciting work in esoteric philosophy and poetry during the years 1984-87, most of which study was guided by Elizabeth Sewell. Together we explored the “invisible” tradition running, in her reading, from Plotinus through to Yeats. The pulse of Demons? A multiplicity of indirections—voices, actors, masks; genres, styles, methods. Layer after layer of self-removal. And how to prosecute philosophy as a made thing, and thus as poetry? “An impossible book,” a reviewer might say, of “post-Wittgenstein neo-Platonism.” A book of aphorisms, poems, arguments, allegories, vignettes, that is itself finally a ficción. And then there was, and is, the aspiration “To Be a True Poem” (Milton, via Sewell) by writing oneself into it. By being written by one’s words, by what one has written, is writing. That much intimacy. A matter of voice. But more than voice—a matter of body. And thus as body, minded. A matter of eros, as Plotinus had taught. And so Demons is finally that—eros and its embodiment.