PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I need to make a second comment on this poem.  For the past hour since I posted my previous comment, I have been studying this poem (and, lest an enemy raise the accusation, not out of prurient interest, but because of the artistry that makes this poem work).  I have been reading Poetry for fifty years as of this past April, so I think I have some credibility to authentically state that this poem demonstrates an artistic skill that functions at the very highest level of literary quality.

The simile I think of here (in addition to my previous references to clockwork and locomotive gearings) is the counterpoint of a fugue, or the theme and variations of Sibelius' Seventh Symphony which, although a single movement on paper (rather than the three or four movements of a classical symphony based on the sonata form), takes its theme adroitly, sometimes delicately, and sometimes dramatically through several variations---none of which work against each other and which, despite certain differences, form a complete unity.  Your poem does exactly this.

Prudes and haters might dismissively sneer at my comment because, "after all," they might say, "the poem takes, as its subject . . . sex!" while wringing their hands in self-righteous distress.  But this poem could have been as easily about anchovies, or warehouse inventories, or the city of Poughkeepsie, or the way Howard Carter excavared the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.  The theme, while important, is, in my opinion, not as important as the way it is developed through the structure of the poem.  (I think of a Poet who could have said, "Hey, I went on a tour of three different places and saw some mighty interesting things," but instead he wrote the three canticles of the Divine Comedy.)  Poets show us the real, or metaphysical, or cosmic meaning of things that most of us treat as mundane; consider T. S. Eliot's line from THe Waste Land---"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."  Unusual tours and handfuls of dust are not, of themselves, more or less significant than frozen dinners or tax returns---but a Poet can use them as bearers of significance far and above what the ordinary person might assign.  And that is what this poem demonstrates---so effectively and so elegantly, that one is almost disappointed when the Poem ends,  Over fifty years, now, I have been allowing a few Poems to enter my soul, while most are turned away at the door:  and this is one of those few poems that have not only entered, but has made a place for itself.  And all that happened in the hour or so since my first reading.

In the twenty or so years I have been on this site, I have really only seen one Poet whose Poetry operates with the subtle complexity that only the greatest Poets can command; and, overjoyed to find such a Poet, I did not think I would see another poem from another Poet with the same kind of quality.  Yet, here it is.  

I am going to recommend this poem to a friend of mine.  I rarely do that, but in this case, everything about this poem insists that I mention it to my friend.  Thank you for one of the finest reading experiences I have had here.

[A couple of hours later, I decided to amend this comment rather than post a third comment.  I just wanted to thank you for a side-effect of this poem.  I was facing a decision today, actually putting it off because I did not know which way to turn, but while writing these two comments, my mind was freed up and. just a few moments ago, the solution to the decision question just came rolling in.  I ascribe that to the effect of this magnificent poem on me.  And I thank you most sincerely.]