Your great memories of Bill’s Gyros..: Your great memories of Bill's Gyros got me thinking about when I was young. Anytime I would be hanging out in the Village with friends, we would always stop at Joes Pizza off Bleecker Street for a slice or two. It's still there, no place to sit, still one of the best slices in the city. Thanks for sharing.
The heart of it, for me:
In the heart of the forest, there is simplicity.
In the heart of the forest, there is glory and beauty and many lessons.
And among the chief lessons – is continuity, as we ourselves fold into the undergrowth, among the oily vowels of time… to nourish the shoots and sprigs of tomorrow.
This was the heart of it, for me…
In the cackling frenzy
of Autumn…
I clutch
every moment
with both hands.
Like us,
the forest
never received
the manual for dying,
but it turns out,
it was simple
enough all along.
When I read this, my first: When I read this, my first response was that I had dated someone just like your description in college; and then my second response, considering the poem as a poem, is that you have described a powerfully cataclysmic experience in such a few brief lines---which attests to your tremendous verbal skill and artistry. I think of a certain novelist who churns out endless pages of horror stories, without knowing when to stop or what to edit; and then I compared this poem, which achieves a supreme effect of horror with a handful of words in a few slender, but very agile, lines.
Thanks for looking at the: Thanks for looking at the poem and commenting. I just learned of this historical incident yesterday, I realize life was considered cheap, in those days, but even so . . . torturing a young man just to learn from his sufferings in order to depict a mythological figure's torments with accuracy? Horrific.
To have survived the: To have survived the labyrinth is often a mixed relief, there is scarring there that occasionally reminds one of the horrors. Thanks kindly for your kind response.
Thank you so very much for: Thank you so very much for that comment. Looking at the several failed relationships and missed opportunities in his past, Cavafy found a way to redeem them by bringing what was beautiful (or instructive) in them into a lasting poetry in which others could, in a way, commune in his fellowship even after his soar had gone on to the stars. In the last few days, I have been feeling my own massive list of failures and miss-outs very sharply. I should like to think that the poems that emerge from that chaos can, provides, as Cavafy said, "a perception of the beautiful" to those who read them.
Brilliant! The structure: Brilliant!
The structure sharply illustrates the nerve-jangling, dead-end process suffered by anyone who has ever had the experience of interacting with an irrational, slippery control freak. You even listed, in ascending order of aggravation, some of the verbal abuser's favorite infuriating, mind-numbing tactics used to keep one ensnared in their juvenile labyrinth.
Then realizing they just aren't worth our time and effort, you mock the lunacy with hilarious word play and bring the poem to an outrageously delightful, visual conclusion.
Spot on and thoroughly enjoyable.
You deliver one of life's: You deliver one of life's best kept secrets in a compact and cleverly simple package:
"Where else is boxed contentment?
But where it's found in a moment."
Everyday Zen. Love it!
As I read the pain-torn poem: As I read the pain-torn poem by Cavafy you referenced, I sensed shades of your own travail as expressed in many of your excellent poems. A worthy tribute to a legendary talent.
Thanks for your comment..: Thanks for your comment. I'm sure it signifies something, but I can't figure out what it is. One thing for sure, you're certainly not an idiot. I'll have to read it. Thanks for the suggestion!
you should check it out: your first quote, though incomplete lacking it's finishing 'full of sound and fury' was what Faulkner used as a title to his book, which is really good.