[to patriciajj, IL MIGLIO FABBRO]
The metaphysics of poetry
is exceptional, extraordinarily,
in most poets' poems. Yet we read and see
in your verses the awesome verity
of those metaphysics ---customarily.
Author's Notes/Comments:
Reading her poetry is an experience no poetry lover or visitor should miss. I have been reading poetry for forty-seven years as of this month---and I have never had, in that timeframe, an experience like I have reading her poems. And they are consistent---never a missed word, a failed phrase, or a misrepresented truth. Her poems soar into the cosmos like stars emerging from nebulae.
I will return to this
I will return to this whenever I'm tearing up pages of unworthy verse and cursing a muse I feel has abandoned me. I'll return to this when I wonder why I even take time from my harrowing days to take dictation from a universe I could never understand anyway. I'll return to this in my moments of crushing despair when poems are just a sprinkle of glitter in the vast darkness. How do you thank someone for such a gift?
My endless gratitude.
This is graceful and impressive work, as always.
Forgive my second attempt to
Forgive my second attempt to reply, but I have more to say. First, your Muse will never abandon you, because your Muse is the Cosmos itself. It may feel far away, sometimes, the way a storm makes the night sky's stars seem to disappear, but it is still there. As for understanding the universe, you have ne of the finest metaphysical understandings that I have ever encountered. You understand the universe instinctively, like Vergil did' and, like his poetry, yours is both cosmic and earthy without ever losing touch with either. In 1978, I first encountered Vergil and did two similtaneous papers on him for two different classes. I can remember how I wished, so much, that I could have met him, or experienced his poems as they were published, Forty-two years later, your poems and our friendship have compensated me a thousand gazilion times over with an even better poetic experience.
J-Called
Thank you for your reply, but
Thank you for your reply, but I could never have written this poem without the inspiration of your poems that created my response. I read a lot of poetic analysis of poetry in college, and did not know, then, that I would have ny greatest reading experience with your poems; which make me that much more grateful for postpoems, and for the internet. I now understand how William Carlos Williams divided his poetry-reading history to Before and After 1922---the year Eliot published The Waste Land. My readimg is now Before and After patriciajj. But while Williams was bitter toward Eliot's brilliant poem, I am sincerely and excitedly grateful for your poetry. Basil Bunting compared Pound's Cantos to the Swiss Alps: sturdy, towering, and not likely to crumble during a thousand lifetimes. Your poems are better than Pound's, but Bunting's metaphor is just as applicable. As I read each of your poems for the first time, I feel like a freshman literature major making personal discoveries in the library. Then when I revisit them, I feel like an astronomer who knows where the best views of the most exciting stars can be found.
J-Called
I'm almost in tears reading
I'm almost in tears reading such beautiful words of understanding and appreciation for a huge aspect of myself that I had almost forgotten until recently. There were many personal reasons why I abandoned poetry, but now one reason why I should continue. My gratitude has become as vast as the cosmos we explore.