[to Patriciajj, the finest poet on postpoems]
"The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
". . . next in glory to enduring love."
---Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning, III
He thought the sky would be much friendlier in some time "then,"
not in his "now." But even he could not quite tell us when.
But in your time, Patricia---all throughout your poetry,
you bring us a much friendlier sort of cosmology,
to show us Cosmic fellowship to our humanity.
Starward
[*/+/^]
Author's Notes/Comments:
Four times in my lifetime, I have experienced the joy of a great poet's poetry becoming not just a reading event, but a part of the very fabric of my existence, Three of those times, between 1975 and 1978, the poets were John Milton, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens---in that order. I did not think this kind of personal admission to poetic mystery wpuld happen for me again, especially at my age. But Eliot said that old men ought to be explorers, and my explorations, in 2020, brought me to the fourth experience of mystery exemplied and explained (a former freemason, I think in terms of degrees given to the initiated) by the poetry of Patriciajj, whom I happen to believe is the finest, and most cosmically aware, of all the poets on PostPoems. If I had to be isolated on a desert island, or (to give it a science fiction aspect) some inhospitable planet, I would need three items to keep my spirit healthy: the HOLY BIBLE, the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, and as many of Patriciajj poems as I could find. But, rather than take up your time with further comments on her poetry, I will suggest that you hurry on to your poems. I will say of her what another poet said to me of Stevens, in October 1978: She makes you work (not a strenuous work, but you do have to pay attention; no superifical readings), but she pays you back for the effort.
Coming from someone whose
Coming from someone whose vast knowledge of poetry and poets surpasses even some professors I have known, and who is, every day, evolving into a master wordcrafter with a massive gallery of fine works, I am breathless. Frozen. Falling in bottomless appreciation. My humble and deepest gratitude.
Thank you for your
Thank you for your compliment, and if my smattering of knowledge has helped or entertained you in some way, then it was well worth the effort of acquisition. Dear Heavens, that sounds pompous for me to say, but it is meant in humble gratitude. I am excited to have realized, this morning, the how your poems have extended and expanded the vision that he was unable to continue; which, until you began to write, was simply confined to three lines in the poem, Sunday Morning. But you have not only staked your claim to that area of poetry, you have made it your own in a way that Stevens never did. I think of the several theoretical physicists and mathematicians, in the early 20th century, who predicted that the galaxies were shifting away from each other; but it was Ed Hubble and Milt Humason, astronomers who were practical observers not theoreticians, who proved those theories with real, and beautiful, photographs and spectra analyses. I have not expressed the metaphor well in this comment, but, in my opinion, your poems are the observations that trace and explain the Cosmic consistence and its effects on us. I hope some of this reply makes a smattering of sense.
Starward
Your reply was comfort,
Your reply was comfort, brilliance and joy to me. Could I ever thank you enough? Not in one lifetime.