[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.
Starward
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.
Starward
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.