PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Reminds me of the poetry of: Reminds me of the poetry of Robert Browning.  If I recall correctly, Browning was described as a ventriloquist because he could enact the voice of so many characters in his poetic monologues.  

Hypnotically beautiful: so: Hypnotically beautiful: so much dazzling imagery flowing quickly through a delightful monorhyme. Really adored:   "Dusk's berry tea bag  into sky seeps In Eve's  skybowl purple steeps."   Also "peeps" doing double duty. So charming.  

It's a privilege to witness: It's a privilege to witness the evolution of this elevating and inspiring collection that has all the hallmarks of Starward: devotion, hope, triumph and rare artistry. Your love for Christ and His special gift to you, Cerulean, was palpable and dynamic as you defied intolerance and decreed that Love is the first and the last purpose of your eternal existence. Powerful stuff!   All this truth and adoration was delivered in a choral voice that sounded, to me, like a Gregorian chant or an Orthodox hymn. So majestic and very impressive that this jewel showed up unbidden and ready to post.    Thank you kindly for the dedication.     

  in my opinion you are an:   in my opinion you are an old soul who has had many lives and become more compassionate in each one.. Are you a 50's gemini?

they cut you so good: they cut you so good

It's all worship, / all: It's all worship, / all sacrament, / all God . . . is quite obviously this poem's gravitational center, but it is also the summary of all her poems, and the center from which, as a collection, they proceed (graduate students, take note of this).  Just as the vastness of the cosmos is, metaphysically, contained in an atom invisible to the eye, so she points out that mercy, which I take to be the Divine Mercy, can be found in a cat's unquestioning love, wherein is found Grace's wild clarity.  She writes of bits of happiness chiselled on stillness; and then asks the one of the questions of the ages---how can this be known, and how can knowing be sure?  The answer comes to her from God in a swarm of stars.  What the answer is becomes the subject of this poem and is, I now believe, the subject of all her poetry.    A criticism once leveled at Wallace Stevens, first pejoratively and then in a celebratorily positive way, is that he really writes about only one theme, and all his poems are variations on it.  I think this is the case for his poetry, and, in its positive aspect, I think it also describes Patricia's.  Like Stevens, she appears to write about occasional subjects randomly.  Viewed from the perspective of any one of her poems, this may appear to be true.  Her poems are individually self-contained, each a fully functional unit.  But between them, there is a unity---a connection---a cooperation that is both spiritual and theological; and it is so vast that it must be viewed from a vaster perspective, to see all of the poems as an array, or a constellation.'     In July of 1974, when I was an awkward, clumsy, adolescent, I was fast asleep on a Friday night that was becoming Saturday morning.  I believe---I am convinced---that the voice I heard was God's, and that voice commanded me to come outside and look at the stars.  I walked out of the house and stood in my parents' driveway, staring up at the stars---and that particular night sky provided a view that was beyond and above anything I have viewed before or since.  I have never forgotten that experience, or that view; and it becomes, for my purposes here, a metaphor of what Patricia's poems are doing.  Motivated by the Divine Voice, they bring us descriptions, sightings of and from, and cartographies of the spiritual side of the cosmos we inhabit.  She shows us that our placement in the galaxy is not insignificant:  we are not looking at the center so that we must look out and away from it---we are at the edge so that we can look into the center and, eventually (and with practice), learn to take it all in.  Patricia's poems tell us how to do so, and how to do it with the finesse and appreciation such a subject deserves.      I will close with a description I have borrowed from the Poet, John Milton, found in Book I of his epic, Paradise Lost:  " . . . advent'rous song, / That with no middle flight intends to soar /  Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues / Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."  Patricia's total poetry is an adventurous song, and each of her poems is a vital part of that song.  And it soars---leaving the middle below it, and soaring to the height at which she shows us a vision that, prior to her work, has not been attempted in prose or rhyme.  The altitude of her cosmology is like Milton's; the attitude of her poetry's elegance is like Stevens'; but the voice---the spirit, and candor, the invocation and evocation, in that voice---is entirely, uniquely, and powerfully Patricia's.  I have only scratched the surface here.  Others will come after me to do more, in the short term as well as the long term.  Those in the long term will understand more about her because they will see the entire work.  

now is all:   Now is all. All is now. Nothing further exists.