PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Just gorgeous! the collective 'we' the extension of life and creation... boredom.... is so underrated as an inspiration... the all spark exploring itself in countless ways for countless aeons and still, nothing prepares for the glorious lines so simple yet profoundly beautiful -

"every stalk of marsh grass 

and every pearl of rain 

and every maple, twisted 

into a visual song, is the 

same Love creating

and loving Itself."

An incredible exploration of beauty, metaphors and the great question what we are doing here...

And then In the soft insanity of awe, 

in music heard with the eyes,

in the universe that shifts with 

one slow step of the crane...

I so get this its a vernacular vein running through my poetry  the soft insanity of awe... just brilliant I wish I wrote it! There really is no higher compliment. I loved this comparison of endles moments in even a crane going about its days all of it relevant like a butterfly flapping its wings a ripple that grows in the creation of creation. Just gorgeous. Expertly done, drops of brilliance in a profoundly beautiful rendition of the meaning of life and its exploration. Bravo. 

As always, I stand in awe, with a smile, and a thank you for sharing. Simply beautiful.

I need and want to make a second comment on this magnificent Poem.  I must admit I was a little daunted by the Poem, and thus my comment was briefly delayed (my normal habit is to try to comment on Patricia's Poems as they are posted).  I was daunted by the awesome grandeur of this Poem, and by my sense of my words' inadequacy in the face of this grandeur.  But then the metaphor of Astronomy came to my mind, and I had to remind myself that no Astronomer can fully account for, much less completely study, the entire stellar array.  And that does not disqualify the Astronomer; it simply means the cosmic scope is vaster than one human being, or a hundred of them, can take in and express.  And Patricia's Poems share the same nature.  So, although my comments may prove to be inadequate to the grandeur they attempt to describe, I shall not cease from the attempts.  I now realize that my interest in Astronomy, which preceded my interest in literature or poetry (and which caused me to resent the circumstances which prevented me from pursuing that initial interest), was not meant to bring me to an observatory, but to give me an additional metaphor with which to organize my thoughts about Patricia's Poetry.  I just wanted to add that as a footnote to my previous comment.

This is the first of Patricia's Poems that have daunted me sufficiently that I am two days late in assembling my comment on it.  I attribute this to what she describes (in words better than I can offer) as "soft insanity of awe."  Yes, after reading this, I felt that soft insanity in which awe becomes so overwhelming that, however brief or long, one forgets one's surroundings, feels unmoored from those mooring connections that keep us grounded, and gets a feeling of exultation as powerful as a panic attack (and, having been recently afflicted with clusters of them, I can speak with some experience to that).  This Poem, as a reading experience, brings me very close to the remembrance of that night, at college in Spring, 1979, that I sat at the eyepiece of the University telescope and viewed Saturn---that looked to be so close that I could almost reach out and touch me.  I was an inexperienced undergrad then, as immature as I was ambitious to understand Poetry, and this Poem that Patricia has blessed us with, has made me feel like an inexperienced undergrad again, because I fear my words---no matter how I can muster them---will be woefully inadequate before the awe with which this Poem surrounds itself.  And yes, it surrounds itself with awe the way, say, that a mountain (which, in her words, is "cut from legendary blue") is surrounded by glistening mist lit with shafts of sunlight.  

In the Prologue to one of my favorite films (and no, don't laught at me)---The Bride Of Frankenstein (Universal, 1935)---the character of Lord Byron tells Mary Shelley that he rolls her words over his tongue, and, to borrow that metaphor, I roll Patricia's words and phrases through my mind, as I eagerly remind myself that she is, in Dante's words, Il Miglior Fabbro, the better maker---the phrase with which T. S. Eliot acknowledged Ezra Pound's editing of The Waste Land.  I have been reading Poetry for sixty years, as of last month.  I never, ever met a living Poet who, in my opinion, fit that title of Il Miglior Fabbro (though a few deceased Poets fit) until I began to read Patricia's Poetry.  Her Cosmic vision, and her humane inclusiveness (of all creation, inanimate, animate, earthly, stellar, cosmic) constitutes an epic poem, although she does not write in the epic form (although I am very, very grateful for that).  Fifty years before the Christian era began, the Roman Poet Lucretius attempted to express a Cosmology in his long poem, De Rerum Natura---which, when compared to Patricia's---falls flat.  

This Poem contains a multitude of memorable, artistic, perfectly deployed phrases.  I leave it to the reader to comb through this Poem (perhaps on your second or third reading, because your first reading will overwhelm you so much you may not be able to gather in the individual beauty of the phrases; but, this poem is worth a hundred, a thousand, readings at very least).  I will repeat here the phrase that strikes me, as an individual reader, as the supreme one, and it deserves the boldened type face:  "secret star-veils spinning on looms of lifetimes . . ."  T. S. Eliot (whom I paraphrase here) said that real Poetry can communicate before it is fully understood.  This phrase communicates to me before I fully understand it, because I am still searching my reading experience (which is, after all, six decades long) for all of the items that this phrase not only touches but summarizes and gathers to itself.  And this phrase helps me to regather, and savor, all of those reading experiences, from my past, that conform to it.

I am going to revise a phrase I have used in previous comments on Patricia's Poetry---when I have called some of her Poems, centerpieces.  I think of her Poems as stars; and all of them can be called centerpieces.  But, in declaring some to be centerpieces, I inadvertently deny the word to her other Poems---for which I now apologize---because each and every one of them proceed from the same exponential quality of artistic skill.  What I now realize---having looked at those secret star-veils spinning on looms of lifetimes---is that the centerpiece of Patricia's Poetry is her soul; a soul as attuned to the Cosmic resonance and melody as Eliot's, Steven's. or the superlative Vergil's.  The Poems orbit this center, her soul, as stars orbit the iridescent centers of their galaxies.  During my four undergrad years, I read more Poetry than History (in which I, "officially," majored); and I realize that reading had a twofold purpose:  to prepare me for my own few poems (most of which are posted here), and to appreciate---within the full spectrum of four thousand years of Western Poetry---the experience of reading Patricia's Poetry.  I will again paraphrase the Old Possum, who said that one can begin to read Dante, but one never really finishes reading Dante.  You can begin to read Patricia's Poetry, but you will never finish reading her Poetry because it will always be relevant to human, and humane, existence.  You could make a list of every existing star in all of the galaxies---and, when you have completed the list, you will find additional relevances in her Poetry.  Her Poetry is like her soul---which is like every other soul that God has designed and given to human beings:  there is always more exultation available.  And whether you are looking at stars or souls, and the eternity which contains them, you will find that Patricia's Poetry, all of her Poems, and especially Earth Cry, is a reliable guide to prepare us for that Cosmic existence in Eternity.