Formally Speaking: Notes from the West Chester Poetry Conference [by Moira Egan]

Overheard at dinner:

"When reading Merrill, you just have to suspend your heterotextuality." 

"You are right there in the liminal zone." 

* * *

Tomorrow: sonnets on parade. A wee sampling:

From the inimitable Kathrine Varnes: 

The Fleshpot Sonnets (a crown)

1.

This moment's peach -- sometimes it's just enough

sweetness, despite the stone and bitter skin

or because of both, because. Because the thin

juices won't behave: soaking the white cuff

edges, filling, spilling from the palm's trough,

flesh of water, sugar gracing the chin,

tracing the neck like a contemplation of sin

we can wash away. We don't even have to bluff.

 

So what will I steal tonight as the toddler sleeps?

A husband lingers in the hallway's dark

and glances, settles his eye where he'd recruit,

I with the monitor's glow upon my cheeks

two hours a day. Leave now? I can't debark

while writing towards this bivalved, cleft-fleshed fruit.

 

* * *

7.

I gave up padded bras, certain offense.

I shunned the curve of underwire glam.

Let me be the woman that I am,

I said. Let infants find their milk, the tense

cry of hunger loosen. Impotence

inspired by well-fed babies? Sham.

Shame. Before the press of the mammogram,

let breasts be breasts, whatever audience.

 

Let breasts be breasts. Our season's brief as is.

It's hard enough to find a bra that fits.

(And those who asked the schoolyard, Does she stuff?

now look askance--filled with J. Alfred's fear

a thousand times repeating: Do I dare?)

Declare this moment and this peace enough.  

 

(With the permission of Kathrine Varnes. From Hot Sonnets, Entasis Press, 2011)

Pretty yummy, isn't it? 

 

Comments

[The Best American Poetry]

"Heterotextuality" is a pun JM would have savored. -- DL