As much as I defiantly celebrate poems about nothing and never tire of pointing to the basic futility of attempting to communicate anything of importance whatsoever to anyone, there's still something desperately beautiful about a poet who tries to say a few true personal things and risks sounding pathetic and bathetic by doing so. These poems sound like they were scribbled with a cheap hotel pen in a small sodden notebook by an author curled naked on an unmade bed for the last three days in a Super 8 located just off the Interstate, the curtains drawn, vodka and prescription bottles crowded on the nightstand, and the Gideon Bible fallen to the floor, opened to Ecclesiastes.
And that's a good thing.
Two excerpts:
I focused
on another's face, no need to describe it,
there is only one
underneath
these scary and extremely
realistic rubber masks
and there is as I also know now
by your grace one
and only one person
beneath a certain depth
the terror and the love
are one, like hunger, same
in everyone…
no matter who I looked at
for maybe five minutes long enough
long enough
this secret trinity
I saw, the others
will say I am making it up
as if that mattered
Lord,
I make up nothing
not one word.
* * *
Listen to what I am saying
but listen especially
to what I'm not saying—
of all the powers of love,
this: it is possible
to die; which means
it's possible to live.
Now it is possible to die
without being mad or afraid.
* * *
and one complete poem:
Nothingsville, MN
The sole tavern there, empty
and filled
with cigarette smoke;
the smell of beer, urine, and the infinite
sadness you dread
and need so much of
for some reason
—Franz Wright
No comments:
Post a Comment