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Tiny Square Heaven
Folder:
Nature Multitudes are born here
in halls of suckling bounty
where weeds are not scorned,
but adopted,
where a thousand shades of green
make a pact with the sun,
and below, passionless root crops
are as forgotten as the snows
on the other side of the world
and roses in a cold sweat,
feverish by day and
dripping moonlight in darkness,
remember their ancestor, Eden.
I stare past the toy jungle
and snatch a dream as it
giggles on its way to oblivion
and delight that snippets of Saturdays
and packets of bargain seeds
could send roots into my soul.
Cares dissolve in sweat and
plants that feel needed inject
our cells with sparkling air
till frost sets the well-bred creatures
on fire and leaves them to die
outrageously.
Here I breathe like an infant
and the earth holds my spirit
like a prayer.
by Patricia Joan Jones
my pleasure
my pleasure
ron parrish
the birth of life and nature
the birth of life and nature through poetic eyes
ron parrish
Thank you for reading and
Thank you for reading and leaving such a beautiful interpretation.
I went to this poem for
I went to this poem for several reasons: first and foremost, it is one of Patricia's, which automatically defines it as remarkable. My other two criteria was that it had no comments on it yet, and that it has been posted here for years, and I wanted to see an example of her early work. With real Poets, who have greatness in their work, one can usually see the tree within the acorn, so to speak. Vergil's Aeneid is prefigured by his Eclogues; Dante's Divine Comedy has its beginning in The New Life. And, as a Great Poet herself, Patriciajj's cosmic theme and perspective are already functional here. Though an early poem, this is not a sophomore poem; not a practice poem; not a workshop poem. It does not grope its way through the material; it strides through its material, with confidence and verve. The roses in this poem arefeverish by day and drip moonlight by night, with an ancestral sense of Eden: that is classic Patrucuajj.
I think of Dvorak's New World Symphony, numbered his ninth: in which themes from each movement are repeated with variation in the successive movement, until they are all present in the fourth movement. Patricia's themes, her imagery, and that wonderful cosmic perspective are like Dvorak's symphonic variations: they are presented in this early poem, and will be developed, recombined, and represented as her collection of poems expands through time and the space of this website.
During my freshman undergad year, I began to study The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot. Being a naive freshman, whose previous poetic reading had been mostly limited to John Milton's poetry (and that, mostly to his late poems), I was amazed, even fascinated, by the nascences of The Waste Land that were contained in the earlier Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, and the hauntingly eerie poems he entitled, "Preludes." But Eliot's canon had been closed by is death, years before; I could not watch the poems develop. The next year, I studied Vergil in the same way; and Vergil had been dead for nearly two millenia. In my Junior year, October, 1978, I first began to read Wallace Stevens, and have never really stopped. But his canon, also, was closed; no new poems would be forthcoming.
Now, in what I consider the last part of my life's course, I have the thrill of watching Patriciajj expand her Poetry, poem by poem. I write long comments about them because they inspire and require the respect of a close and in-depth reading. Just saying,"Great write!" (which is patently ungrammatical) and moving on to some other poet's stuff is not the right way to approach her Poems. One must look at the components of her Poetry; the internal functions; the lines like the balanced gears and rods of a clockwork or of a steam locomotive---everything perfectly synchronized and moving the poem forward. And this I can see---not looking back through time (I will not live long enough to look back at her through time), but watching it before my always delighted, and ever astounded, eyes.
Starward
I can't tell you how
I can't tell you how surprised and delighted I am that you took a look back at this phase of my writing. At that time Post Poems was basically just a backup for my work. I didn't interact much with other poets on this site, but that has certainly changed in the past year.
What a trove of happiness I found here today! You analyze, dissect, savor, illuminate, reflect, compare and reveal in a way that is above and beyond any response I ever expected, and it means more to me than you'll ever know, because in a significant way, you've kept me reaching higher.
Thank you for getting it. Thank you for expressing it so magnificently.
You're welcome, but it is I
You're welcome, but it is I who should be thanking you for the privilege of reading such beautiful Poetry. An ancient, poetic Greek metaphor suggested that Athena sprung, full form, from the forehead of Zeus. While I receive that only as a poetic metaphor, it serves here to illustrate how I think you emerged on to postpoems fully formed, fully in command of your Poetic powers. The ancient, Alexandrian Poet, Callimachus, felt that the Homeric epic form was overdone and clumsy; but he gave us an epic in a different forms---many poems, some quite brief, that still charted his journey through the existence he knew, as Homer had charted Odysseus' journey through the existence he (Homer) imagined that he knew. Within Poets of the Callimachean tradition, there is a certain internal control that unites the poems into a single statement: Stevens accomplishes this with great finesse, while, in my opnion, Eliot fails at it. Although Vergil did succumb to the Homeric epic form, he limited it, and he related it back to his previous to poetry collections---again exercizing that sense, internally within the poems, that they are somethng more than mere occasional dash-offs, like written by those who write for fun only and not for the fun that is art. You take your seat in the same "front row" as Callimachus, Vergil, and Pop Stevens; your poems, early and more recent, share a center og gravity that orbits them all around the same sun. Earth and Saturn are both entirely different, and yet equally beautiful---sharing a similar elliptical orbit that is a function of the sun's mass and gravity, and even exerting some kind of gravitationl power between each other. This is how your poems work.
Starward
What an exquisite,
What an exquisite, metaphorical review. You made my day! (Like many others) Peace and blessings.