Author Information
LUST IS USELESS AT THIS POINT
Folder:
CANNIBALIZED HAIBUN
Lust is useless at this point. I have truly been abandoned along the way. The poet’s eye does not obscenely see the landscapes of bland suburbia. It instead casts a yearnful eye towards the untamed wilderness. Back to the basics is the battle cry. The trees and creatures are all calling for me. There’s enough brandy for the week-end and the stars are still there in spite of the rain. The poet’s eye will close for a moment to rest. When it opens a new light will be shining.
quick moment of lust
catching a glance of your eyes
lighting up my soul
Although short, this is
Although short, this is profoundly deep in its realization of a poetic process. As I read it, I was immediately reminded (which is always proof of a true poem) of Dante's experience of adolescent desire for Beatrice, which her marriage to Banker Portinari, and her early death obstructed from full expression. But the stars were still there through the rain of his tears, and when his eyes had rested sufficiently, a new light let him to begin the long, arduous (but, I suspect, always satisfying) task of constructing the Divine Comedy. The Argentinian poet, Borges, once suggested that the whole purpose of the Comedy was not theological speculation but simply so Dante could spend a little more time with her; and another commentator, whose name I have forgottenm called her the most famous girl friend in literature. To my mind, she is even more powerful a presence than Juliet, Marina or Miranda in Shakespeare's plays. Your poem, like every real poem, is both educative and artistic, and it evoked these recollected thoughts in my mind, as I read it.
Please . . . please .. . DON'T EVER remove or revise this brilliant essay. It is one of the most splendid pieces that I have ever seen you post; but, far more than that, it is, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant observations published on postpoems. Today, it made me feel as I did back in the spring of 1976, when I had been reading poetry for its own sake, for the excitement of it, and not just because a class or a workshop compelled me to do so.
And you have not really been abandoned, not by your Poetic acumen, without which no real poet can function. You have demonstrated the abundance of its presence in the few, but perfectly deployed, words of your prose essay; and you have given postpoems a quiet, but profound, event. And if I speak, here, in superlatives, or extravagantly, I can only attribute that to the inspiration that your words, above, cpnveyed to me as I read through them; and re-read; and re-read again. Thank you for posting this dynamo of an essay.
Starward
thank you, kindly
thank you, kindly