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Sky Full of Legends
Another day shuts behind a
sheet of red madness—
this babbling sorrow—
but the real living is in
the flowering night,
the revolving temple,
vastness within vastness . . .
my other self on the other side
and the dark that lights the flame,
I am convinced,
we always were, though we
pretend to be blind
in this game of forgetting.
The only rules:
believe we are separate,
believe we are alone.
The owl cries for me, lover
of its billowing proverbs
and drops of eternity in
the wilderness of
deep living,
and I'm sure I heard:
Yes, this too is God
calling and loving,
Don't you remember?
Newly-minted stars spill out
of a well of legends
and lift me
to their place of
remembering—
I am tall as my fears
and microscopic as my fears
and something not quite
inside me swells
to a punishing joy:
too immaculate to stay,
too wild to be believed.
Don't you remember?
So how did infinity manage
to crawl inside my
one safe moment and become
so like a god,
so like all that lives
where the Truth
and the legends
are one?
Patricia Joan Jones
This poem tastes better than
This poem tastes better than bananas.
Your words guide my spirit home -- to the
eternally perfect presence and paradox
bananas are the perfect food
for prostitutes
Thank you for your beautiful
Thank you for your beautiful words that captured my vision with luminous accuracy. I enjoy your work as well.
RE: "Sky Full of Legends"
Exceptional, valuable and thoughtprovoking lines:
"... The owl cries for me, lover
of its billowing proverbs
and drops of eternity in
the wilderness of
deep living, and I'm sure
I heard: Yes, this too is
God calling and loving,
Don't you remember?... "
Abiding heavenly abundance to you, Patricia. Shalom. Ugonna: https://postpoems.org/authors/ugonna/portfolio
I'm overjoyed that you
I'm overjoyed that you stopped by and took the time to read and leave such a beautiful, inspiring comment. Every blessing to you.
and you my dear will be
and you my dear will be ledgend
ron parrish
Always an honor to have you
Always an honor to have you stop by. Thank you kindly for your incredibly encouraging feedback.
you`re welcome
you`re welcome
ron parrish
First, this poem demonstrates
First, this poem demonstrates that the Poet---postpoems' best Poet in my opinion---manages Paradox as well as she manages and demonstrates Cosmology. "Sheet of red madness" and "babbling sorrow" become "flowering nignt and revolving temple." If the poem stopped at that stanza, it would be magnificent. But that stanza is only the beginning of its grandeur. "Vastness within vastness": that is her Cosmology speaking again, and that phrase, too, offers a paradox. "Drops of eternity in the wilderness of deep living" describes an almost indescribable experience that some of us, not all but some, are privileged to experience: this is one of her most Eliotic lines, and alludes (whether that was her intention or not) to the sound of Eliot's great masterpiece, Four Quartets. "Newly minted-stars spill" from "a well of legends": the literalist would say, "No, they come out of nebulae," but she is speaking about the stars that the ancient Poets codified into constellations. And those stars not only admit her, but lift her up, to "their place of remembering": at this point, her Cosmology intersects with our culture's two processes of remembering---Poetry and History. And the rest of that stanza pours forth four (yes, count'em, four) paradoxes. This is her equivalent of the epic catalogue: only instead of the names of characters and ships, she names cosmic paradoxes---which are far more resonant than the names of characters and ships. And then that final stanza presents the poem's final paradox, and the reader feels---knows---that this poem has effected a personal change upon the reader. I am not exactly the same person that I was before I read this poem. I have had that experience, of feeling a palpable change, only rarely, and usually with Faith or with Poetry. And with the latter, three standout experience were what I call my October revolutions: in 1975, realizing I wanted to be a poet; in 1976, reading The Waste Land for the first time; in 1978, reading selections from Wallace Stevens' poetry for the first time. This poem's verbal power creates, for me, another October revolution, but in January (also a sigificant month for me). And, as also with the great classical Poets of whom she is one, Patriciajj's posting of a new poem is an Event; an excursion into Cosmology; and a demonstration of the finest, most resonant, most piercing poetic art I have ever encountered on postpoems. I have been reading poetry for almost forty-eight years. Sometimes I become weary of some of it, and some of it becomes tiresome. But the Poetry of Patriciajj transforms me back, and carries me back, to that joyous sense of those October revolutions, as I call them: those moments when the verve of Poetry rises before my reading eyes and reminds me that, despite the weariness caused by poseus, Poetry is still with us, still possible, still available. It is like watching a stormy night's clouds dissipate into clearness, and the stars shining right where they are supposed to be; always there, unchanged by a little local cloudiness. Reading this poem, in a month that has been very significant for me (both in 2021 and in years past), has been a vivifying event: in the midst of this medical affliction that seems determined to continue my physical deterioration, my soul has been uplifted into the realms of Pure Poetry by this magnificent Poem, composed and posted by postpoems' Greatest. Any one of her poems can "knock it out of the park," as the saying goes. But what I call her centerpiece poems (and I am convinced this poem is one of them) "knocks it into" the realms of Theology and Cosmology, where her verbal skill strolls not as a visitor or tourist, but as a long time resident. And I will close with this note to future grad students who are studying her poetry, and mining it for topics for their dissertations: these poems will demand an expansion of your analytical language; they will compel you to reach beyond your expectations; and when you face that final moment of your disseration process, the defense of it before your examining committee, you should know that, although the committee members may not admit it, they are as overwhelmed by the beauty of Patriciajj's Poetry as you are. And that will give you a useful advantage in your defense of your dissertation, the way her Poetry gives her readers a useful advantage in their defense against the vagaries and reverses that existence sometimes brings, as she shows us, through her Poetry and its Cosmology, that life means more than mere existence, and the Universe means more than a mere phenomenon of nature.
J-Called
Even if that was not written
Even if that was not written about my work, I can honestly say it was the most magnificent review of a poem I've ever read, and I've read many. Sometimes I think you know more about my outpourings than I do.
Now who's mentoring who? Thank you for being the best motivation I could ask for. God bless you.
I thank you humbly for your
I thank you humbly for your great compliment. I will tell you of something I suspected in high school---where the reading selections were quite rigidly fixed---and then found confirmation in college, where more latitude was provided. A great poem will inspire and elicit a good, detailed, and thoughtful response. A poem that is not to the reader's liking, or is not congenial, receives only a cursory response. When I took the epic course in January 1978 (there's that month again), I wrote very cursory and flat essays about The Iliad and The Hobbit; but I wrote very detailed, even verbose, responses to The Aeneid and Paradise Lost. I think that part of the comment process is to share, not only with the poet but with other readers, why and how the poem works. Your poems, for example, which contain a whole Cosmology which, like the Universe, seems to be ever expanding into further insights, elicits---even demands (in the best way)---an elaborate response. Your poems remind me of a play, The Satin Slipper, by the Poet and Ambassador, Paul Claudel. That play is so artistically elaborate, and so beautifully complex, that it requires a performance time of approximately twelve hours: and it contains all kinds of theological cosmology, vast horizons and vista, and yet the most exquisitely emotional conversations between pairs of characters. Consequently, the scholarly and critical response to it is much larger, and even more controversial, than to his much shorter other plays. Or, to use another metaphor, in the spring of 1979, I first saw the rings of Saturn through the observatory telescope on campus at my college. The telescope provided a closeness, and such detail, that it seemed like it was right overhead. That was almost forty-two years ago, and I am still excited by the experience; the profundity of the view just overwhelmed me and I am still being overwelmed. That is what this poem, and your entire collection, is like. The centerpiece poems---and different readers will choose different centerpieces---bring all the others together in the splendid grandeur of a constellation. Generations from now, you work is going to be delighting, challenging, and guiding scholars and grad students alike; and they will debate and discuss your place in the literary canon. Let's face it: I know I am not going to live long enough to see that, but I already have had the vision of it (not in a mystic way, but just plain common sense), and these comments allow me to participate in that process by anticipation. In some ways, and I say this gladly, your Poetry is the vindication of all the reading I have done since 1975---when I first began to wonder, what is it like to watch a classical Poetry form itself, and gather itself together, before my very eyes? What is it like to watch a star coalesce out of the swirls and bright colors of a nebula? So it is with reading your Poetry.
J-Called
Just when I think you can't
Just when I think you can't surprise me more with your sincere appreciation and understanding of my vision, you send another heartening gift my way. I can't express how valuable your perception and encouragement has been. May your gift return to you a hundredfold.
Poetry To Be Read Aloud
For some reason I read the last two verses aloud - miraculous sounds, rhythms lost when read silent. Afuture, I will read you out loud as poetry is meant to be heard. Fav line: "...though we/pretend to be blind/in this game of forgetting." Nice. ~S~
That means more to me than I
That means more to me than I can express. It's extremely validating, especially coming from such a talented wordcrafter and someone experienced in editing, that you feel I got the soundwork right. Experts say one should read a piece out loud when proofreading in order to catch more mistakes. It certainly creates a different reading experience. Thank you, humbly and deeply, for your attention and invaluable encouragement.