PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The Poets, T. S. Eliot and: The Poets, T. S. Eliot and Paul Valery, suggested that the purest poetry aspires to music; and that they derived this observation from the poems of Stephane Mallarme.  This was a very popular reading stratefy in the seventies during my undergrad years, so I was exposed to it quite frequently.  Also, more than one commentator compared John Milton's blank verse, especially in Paradise Lost, to the music of a massive pipe organ.  I was reminded of the musical analogies associated with these four poets while reading this latest entry in Patriciajj's vast, and always forward moving, epic of cosmology.  This paricular poem, The First Iris, is as highly structured and as eminently satisfying as a Fugue.  The theme is stated in the fourth through sixth lines---"a / symphony in one note":  just like a fugue has one theme, around which it weaves all of its variations.  In the fifth and sixth lines, she has given us not only a statement of her theme, but also told us how it will sound.  This poem . . . like a fugue . . . like the iris itself . . . is an unfolding.  This unfolding is demonstrated in subsequent lines:  "the same note / unwrapping the first  / blue iris . . ."  This is also what they call Metapoetry---or poetry about itself, a concept first heralded by Wallace Stevens and given, according to some commentators, its fullest expression by John Ashberry in the Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror.       Many classical fugues are allusive to earlier fugues (and, it seems, all of them hearken back to Bach); and this poem, like so many of Patricia's, is allusive to the other poets I have mentioned above.  This is because Poetry is a conversation---not only between the poet and reader, but between the poet and the Great Poets who preceeded her in time.  Patricia's poetic ancestry does not just go back to Vergil---which would certainly be a very respectable lineage; it goes back to the Great Poet of Israel, David himself---David who brought the cosmology of his time into the Psalms.  David would recognize Patricia as a kindred spirit; and, when they meet in Heaven, I do believe he will tell her so.        Ok, back to the poem.  It concludes by doubling back to its beginning (echo of T. S. Eliot, in East Coker?), back to the original theme to which it has brought the final variation---where she contains the vast inclusiveness of her cosmological perspective in an epic catalogue, greater even then Homer's and Vergil's because it asserts that "we are the iris, / the stars and / the universe" and that we are in the exciting moment of "just beginning."    When one looks up at the constellated sky, one can be discouraged by the vastness, or one can embrace it.  Patricia's poetry embraces it, claims it as a received gift and a venue, and then invites us to join her there.  I also believe that, whether intentional or not, she has, in this poem, given us a supreme reading strategy for our approach to the entire body of her poetry.  Her epic cosmology is, in its entirety, a vast and perpetually unfolding fugue, as this specific poem is.  Her cosmology is also a meta-poem---as much about itself as it is about her chosen subject matter.  In the sixth book of The Aeneid, Vergil gives us the myth of the Golden Bough, by which Aeneas enters the Underworld (which is, paradoxically, a kind of Overworld in which present meets past and future) to glimpse Glories that are reserved to the view of the Chosen Few.  In The First Iris, Patricia has given us her own Golden Bough and has disclosed to us the strategy for reading her entire epic, for receiving the glimpses it provides of great Cosmic Glories, and this initiates us into that rare company of the Chosen Few who, by reading (and, then, continually reading and remembering) her Poetry enter into its Cosmological perspective---which, through her words, is no longer distant (as in Ed Hubble's view of receding galaxies) but as close as the next breath, and as comforting as a long and dear friendship.

Good One: Self control or care not - both work for me. ~A~. 

I like your writing too. : I like your writing too.  Thank you

Fragility: . Reminds of the heat range we must retain around us to live. Pressure is another range, like blood sugar and oxygen levels. Control those and matter falls in lock-step beside mind conditioning. We all do what nature demands, humans know power lies in owning access to nature. (Did Putin miscalc?) I referenced Beckett earlier today; faith, the only thing that over-answers everything, even imminent death, even the self-preserving instinct to run. Can't argue it, best to acknowledge and relegate the greatest questions to something writers embrace: imagination. I pray to the universe, humans play it tight to earth and lifeforms on it. Why so limited? Religion is a stairway to belief and ultimately understanding. Imagine a world where faith was banned and religion firbidden. Unholy wars would outnumber the Crusades, dwarf Genghis's billion, and be responsible for every lifeform that ever died on Sol's third born. I like a good story. If good enough, and accompanied by a pyramid, the writer will be remembered long. Heard any good Ramses or Isis jokes lately? (The other Isis):D . Live long and in health prosper! . Lady A .  

A Reply: To georgeschaefer's cook-limerick. It tackled the edge of an aesthetic nerve and shook. Lims are fun. ~A~ 

I'm beyond gratified to read: I'm beyond gratified to read this astronomical wonder and deeply humbled that you dedicated such a treasure to me. I'll tell you honestly, that even if I wasn't attached to it in any way, I would be spellbound by this poem of the highest order with its vastness of thought, its profound significance to "our stellar souls" and its deep dive into realms most poets never dare to go.    Now here's something strange: I'm getting ready to post a new poem and, as always, I'm hung up on one or two words, but when I do post it you'll notice a similarity between a concept I tried (all I can do is try) to tackle and the eleventh line of your poem. I assure you this was entirely coincidental.    Thank you again and again for a gift that will be remembered through this life and, most likely, into the next. May God bring you every blessing.