". . . the vision that makes
All lights be torches in the mystery,
All speech be part of the soliloquy,
Or endless canticle, all holy, sung
by Him who is poet both of heaven and earth."
---A.E., "Time Spirits"
Thank you, Lord, Poet of Heaven and Earth
(the sites of our souls' and our bodies' birth)
for the grandeur of Patricia's Poetry,
who has given us a whole cosmology
in the lineage of Your great Poet, A.E.:
and no amount of haters' perfidy---
no hearts' envy, nor literary violence;
nor subtle, nor obvious devices---
will ever obstruct, obfuscate, or silence
her words that are part of the soliloquy,
described in the glowing verse of A.E.
as a "holy and endless canticle"
to which each Poet makes ever more whole,
founded on our Lord's own stare decisis.
Starward
[*/+/^]
Author's Notes/Comments:
A, E. was the name of George Russell, Irish Poet and an organizer of agrarian cooperatives in Ireland. He was the first Poet, and the second literary person (after Mary Shelley) of whom I had knowledge. I was very gratified to read his Poem, "Time Spirits" and to realize just how timeless is the kind of Poetry that A.E. wrote, and that Patriciajj shares with us on PostPoems. I have been reading Patricia's poems for a little more than two years---and I feel that my readings of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and, of course, A.E., during my undergrad years, have prepared me to appreciate Patricia's excellent poems. The great Soliloquy which A.E. mentioned in the lines I have used, here, as poem's epigraph is the same soliloquy to which Patricia's Poems add, and extend, and explicate for her many readers. For most of my life I have felt a connection to A.E., who also abandoned his mundane name when working in the poetic realm; and when I read "Time Spirits" today, I felt---and I do not require anyone's validation of this belief, but I believe---that he would have wanted me to propose a spiritual connection between his Poetry and Patricia's. While no living Poet has asked me to express this connection in verse. I do believe that A.E. (God rest his soul among the stars) has done so.
That you would use your time
That you would use your time and talent to sculpt such a resplendent, moving gift leaves me breathless with the deepest gratitude. Even if your sonnet wasn't ablaze with the greatest encouragement one could hope for and my name never mentioned, I would applaud the mastery of form and language and the graciousness of spirit that inspires you to uplift other poets.
Your appreciation of A.E. and his lofty vision tells me that you, yourself, share an artistic and spiritual connection to this poetic legend.
An eternity of humble "thank you"s for such a generous and stunning stamp of approval.
Blessings upon blessings.
Thank you for the kind
Thank you for the kind comment. The way the poem came to me was rather unusual---such that I believed the Cosmos was guiding my direction at that point. I felt a most unusual curiosity to find out if A. E.'s collection of poems, House Of The Titans, contained any more poems in blank verse other than his masterful analysis of a Shakesperian mystery (as yet unsolved) entitled "The Dark Lady." I found the "Time Spirits" poem and, reading it through, I realized that the final lines---which became my poem's epigraph---were about the kind of poetry at which both you, and A.E., excell. Because he was the first Poet of whom I had ever read (the summer I turned seven years old), I have always felt a connection to him. And his connection to you, and yours to him, takes place on that rarefied plane of the most mystic, and most cosmic, Poetry. This is a constellation of sorts, among poems rather than stars, and although your style and his are very different, your visions and your shared compassion for humanity, are too similar to be a coincidence in the grand, cosmic scheme of existence. Finding that those lines of A. E.'s were so descriptive of your poems that, for the past two or so years, I have loved and admired, I felt as if I was discovering an entirely new dimension of meaning.
And though I feel iunworthy of the high and lofty compliment that the second paragraph of your comment contains, I am very, very grateful (flat on my face on the floor and in humble silence . . . that kind of grateful) for your kind words.
Starward