PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

One of the greatest of my personal delights, on postpoems, is exploring the poetry of Patriciajj---and the study of her poems not only gives me a sense of wonder that I have only rarely experienced since my undergrad years (back in the days of the dinosaurs); it also allows me to anticipate, and even "get there" ahead of, the efforts of those graduate students who will, in a future I will not live to see, be studying her poems the way people now study Pop Stevens' poetry.

  Speaking of Stevens, the title of his poem, "Mountains Covered With Cats" resonated in my mind when I saw this title, in my present, and as yet too few, visits to her earlier poems.  Like Stevens, Patriciajj writes her individual poems with a consistency and internal control that places them within the overall structure, or edifice, of her Poetry---on which she is at work, and always will be, until the final poem posts.  Poets of that sort---Pop Stevens, Vergil, Calimachus, and the inimitable Patriciajj---are compelled by their own greatness to write that way, constructing a structure, an architecture, a consistency.  Go out underneath a cloudless, summery night sky and look at the sky-structure of the stellar Poetry placed there by the Divine Poet---Whose cosmic edifice sets an example that the great poets I have mentioned, and all others like them, strive to emulate; and it is there to be emulated; not duplicated, but emulated.

    In any of Patricia's poems, a center of gravity anchors the entire poem, to itself, and to the great structure to which it belongs.  In this poem, that center is the final stanza.  Like Pop Stevens, she is often coy with her readers by locating the gravitational centers of her poems away from their first lines, or first stanzas; not always, but very often.  In this poem, the Cat partakes of a cosmic relationship and significance that is far more than, say, Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats.  In this Cat she describes, she also finds the great span of history---both her personal relationship to the feline, as well as what it signified to our ancient brethren who have gone ahead of us.  (I once heard a joke, and I do not know to whom to attribute it, that the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats as gods; and, since then, no cat has every forgotten this.)  The Cat of this poem seems to be well aware of its own significance:  the night (which is not void darkness but full of stars and cosmic vision) follows the Cat, and even flpats its stars on the Cat's back.  Lesser poets might write about that day, back in "nineteen oh three" when Uncle Crescupular hauled all those posies, in the back of his Model T, to the rural cemetery in which most of the stones have toppled over:an anecdote more appropriate to the scrapbook than an artistically skilled poem.  Bur a major poet, and Patriciajj is one, cam describe a Cat in terms that are effected by, and affected by, the Cosmos itself.  This elevated perspective elevates her Poetry from the mundane, always.  To future graduate students:  your disstertations will verify and validate my words here; but just remember the words of that old Scottish song:  I got here "afore ya." 

  (I believe I have gotten all the typos out of this, but I apologize for any I have missed.)

patjj,

A comment of yours followed mine at Baroque Poetry and prompted me to follow your link here.

I liked the two poems I read ("Crystal Eden" was the other). The titles sparked my interest. The ability to pick good ones is valuable.

"Midnight" has three stanzas of similar length. It used creative methods of description and pleasant sound qualities.

The first half of the first stanza was excellent. I liked the reference of cats as gods.

The theory I follow is to use modifiers (adverbs and adjectives) only as needed, as they detract from verbs and nouns. I found it difficult to do and keep it in mind always.

Let me invite you to my site, much more primitive as I'm learning slowly how to set them up. I would welcome all comments. They can be sent to rjnmag@lycos.com.

Let me also invite you to submit to the QuietPoly Writer's magazine poetry contest. There are no fees and all entries are displayed in the ezine. Visit http://www.quietpoly.com for more information.

I'll bookmark your site and look for you and more of your poems whereever you place them.

Best,
rjn