So good to talk to you again! Much have I traveled in the realms of gold - though not overland, nor by sea. Just Brooklyn and the realms of gold. Still, many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
A coupla times I felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
So yeah, sorry I've been a little silent, was on the peak in Darien. I'm bragging and much ashamed for it, but I have been using thinking to thwart actual deaths, and am moved by it. Still broke, if anyone's counting, as I've bitched about here over many a hitch, but happy anyway.
Have a look at my new website and some fascinating, moving responses to my new book against suicide, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It. (Maybe peek at my new poetry book too: Who Said, Copper Canyon.)
Anyway, was reading a great newish poet, Anthony Madrid and felt like I had to rush to share some with you:
I TOO HAVE BEEN TO CANDYLAND
I TOO have been to Candyland, but I found myself missing the death cult.
I missed the spectacle of the wounded bones being opened and instrumented.
Bill Varner, when he was still just a boy, wrote a stunning line of Arabic verse.
He wrote: “The crescent moon is a scimitar; the sun, a severed head.”
¡Gran cantar! and this, when he still had to keep his books in a locker!
And he’d never even held hands with a girl—God! Penn State in the 1980s!
In those days, we all sat at the feet of a pig poet, deaf in one ear. One of these
Dreadful “white-haired lovers”—oh, but he knew how to touch fire to fuse!
That little stick of fire apt to launch a poetic career! But what is it now?
Merely a billowing cloud of humidity floating out of a tree.
Every turtle, snake, and bird is “born again”—oh, isn’t that so? The first time,
Out the fêted cloaca—and the next, through the top of the shell.
The “I” is Greek, the “it” Italian, and Dickinson is our Ghalib. But that
Ridiculous piece of dirt you’re kissing on can never be anything but.
Shut your eyes to what a worm he is, concentrate on his caress—but know
Every half-truth is bound to call up its suppressed synoptic double.
Close your eyes and moan softly, your head full of packed cotton—but know
Every hidden camera’s cockpit must one day be delivered of its black box.
This is from Anthony Madrid's 2012 first book, I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say. The whole book's great.
Love to you all, even the mean one. I can almost hear the thaw! Soon we will be miserable, but warmer! And perhaps intermittently delighted by the sun. Don't kill yourself and I shall return to encourage you again.
xoxJennifer
We missed you, too! Go, Keats!
Posted by: Barbara Major | February 23, 2014 at 11:41 AM