Life has a way of setting us: Life has a way of setting us into phases that feel unending. Our books, though, are many chapters, though I know it's hard to always feel or believe that from inside the story. It seems to me that you write with your heart on your sleeve, and with clarity. Those are two good paddles to have as help to get through rough waters in this part of the story. All the best to you.
Very lyrical, with rhymes: Very lyrical, with rhymes that work without feeling forced. Strong flow from end to end, and i can't help but agree, "the saddest truth in life is things slip away." Life is beautiful, but is reasonably the heaviest price we pay for such beauty.
How timely that at this: How timely that at this period of new month beginning we are grieving and reeling at the loss of lives in the still fresh railway tragedy in the modern city of the Thessalonians, Greece.
As am I for the very same: As am I for the very same implications and possibilities. But I realise that this gift of articulation can and has been utilised for centuries and find that it could be very 'easy' to join in the merry swill. With so many avenues and venues these days, any revisers or misquoters and flamers even will find themselves put to the task if they so much as deign to besmirch you. As it has been said, (paraphrase) sufficient to the day is the trouble it brings with it.
That can be, yes. I'm on the: That can be, yes. I'm on the fence about words living on, seeing as how often the dead are misquoted to support misdeeds of the living, and other times their words censored and replaced with a new voice that takes their old name ; )
Adored clocks in the younger: Adored clocks in the younger years, even had a grandfather clock and a working original cuckoo clock. But then came the time when the ticking was like the incessant dripping of a leaky tap that in the end saw the offending clock bundled up in a beach towel and exiled in the washing machine which was located in the furthest opposite corner of the house, just to get a night's sleep.
What a beautiful way to: What a beautiful way to expound on this poem through prose text! And for that I am thankful. Giving equal footing for both the inane and the suggestive does allow the reading mind to take the unspoken to its furthest extension. This 'terse' verse in its succinctness was produced almost in its entirety quite 'psychographically,' for an immediate lack of a better term; only checking to see how the poem 'sits on the page' and how it sounds being read through. Finally, embracing the term 'coy' which can and does carry an impactful negative connotation until context guides the reception and understanding of its particular utilisation as it is here such a strong and positive literary category.
Once again, we have one of: Once again, we have one of those key events at PostPoems: the posting of a new poem by Patricia. And, I am embarrassed to say, once again my keyboarding skills are not as I would wish them to be, but I will try to be careful about typos in this comment.
I normally like to locate the poem's center of gravity first, having learned to do this from reading the great scholar Helen Vendler's various analyses of Wallace Stevens' poems; and it is always very useful, to any comment, to do that first. However, from time to time, Patricia gives us not only a poem's center of gravity, but also one of her entire collection's centers; and she has done that here. I like to poiint these out so that, in decades to come, some enterprising grad student can create a grid of all those mega-centers---which will then become an aid to appreciating her entire collection. Her words, "strings / of spirit in the solid world / that holds me." This phrase is key---both to the poem that is before us now, and to her expanding collection. I am already particularly enamored of it because it so succinctly describes and designates the kind of cosmos that inhabits Patricia's poems. I am going to reiterate that phrase in bold print because I deem it so important, both to the poem and to the collection that contains the poem: "strings / of spirit in the solid world / that holds me." Patricia's poems are so artistically consistent that each of them presents a center of gravity---a line, or a couple of lines, or a stanza which, when the reader locates it, becomes a disclosure of the poem's spiritual genetics (if I may mis a metaphor). Those key phrases, embedded here and there in the texts (I think of the metaphor of Easter Eggs), provide insight into the poems interior mechanism.
Having located our key phrase, we can then move on to find out what is the poem's ultimate purpose as a poem: to what destination is it moving, and what are the circumstances of its arrival? This poem locates that information in the stanza that beings with "Mercy: / Just a taste . . ." And Mercy, which is one of God's foremost qualities, allows us to proceed to some very wondrous vantage points: the entrance to the Universe itself, the vast space that exists in and beyond the gaze of Polaris, and the blizzard of galaxies. (I do believe Patricia ought to write captions for the photographs transmitted from the James Webb telescope.) And then she gives us a process and a purpose that has inspired, even haunted, the ancient rituals of the mystery religions, and the more modern rituals of fraternal societies of our time: to become the cntained and the unbound glint of the Unknowable. To achieve that; to arrive at that; to participate in that---this is what the poem, not just inidividually but in concert with all her other poems, strives to convey. And because it is one of Patricia's poems, you are assured---even guaranteed---that its conveyance, its presentation of its contents, will be inimitably and splendidly successful.
I will close with this thought. I am not an admirer of Homer; and I happen to believe the theory (and I forget, at the moment, who first proprosed it) that Nausicaa (herself a character in the Odyssey) and not Homer actually wrote the epic, which is why her encounters with him, which do next to nothing to advance his story, are so prominent. Just hours ago, I was reading an essay that talked about how the author of the Odyssey (Homer? Nausicaa? or another poet like the later Trochaic Septinarius, of whom the scholar, Taphless Gibler has so eloquently written) composes a scene with all its contents in the foreground. Nothing is relegated to the background, nothing is left for the reader to search for in the background, or even outside the poem's narrative: eveything necessary to the presentation of each of the epic's episodes is provided up front and with immediacy. And I now realize that this poem of Patricia's, and her entire poetic accomplishment, functions in this same way: everything the reader needs to understand or, even better, to comprehend the cosmos she describes is provided
They tell me that the James Webb telescope is transmitting images from millions of light years of distance. And everything that swatch of outer space has to show us is presented right there in the collected image. Nothing is hidden or left to the viewer's fond hopes to be able to take it all in. And this is how those images resemble Patricia's poem, and Poems, and Nausicaa's epic---everything necessary is foregrounded; everything necessary is provided . This is how the cosmic aspect of Patricia's poem operates; this is her consistent approach to the construction of her poems; and this is why her poems have such a bright, iridescent future ahead of them.
It has been a privilege to write this response to the poem, and to try, in however a minor way, to offer a useful perspective on the literary art of Patriciajj. But to her readers (and I am fortunate enough to be among that chosen company), the greatest privilege of all is in the reading of the poems, and in their presentation of her cosmic vision.
Thank you for that comment. : Thank you for that comment. Cascade is one of the luminaries in what, to me, is the central constellation on PostPoems' sky; as you are (as I may have mentioned to you from time to time). Petrarchan sonnets are impossible for me; the Shakesperean is a little scary (as the Miltonic sonnet, which he created because he was not pleased with the other two forms) is easier, and may have spoiled me. But I want to try the more difficult form for this pupose.
Before I slip into my customary verbosity, I will say thanks, again, for the fine comment; and bring my response to a close.
Everything you wrote in this: Everything you wrote in this shimmering tapestry of starlight and appreciation for literary granduer is stunning in its accuracy. Cascade has been mesmerizing me for many years now, and I'm always on the lookout her latest posts.
I love the clever endorsement you gave her "Paled By A Thousand Sunday Suns" and your recognition of artistic traits that set her work apart from the rest: "The resonance of sparkling honesty" and words that "flow across the page in a cascade/ of verbal beauty", the latter a whimsical nod to her screen name.
A Shakespearean sonnet was, absolutely, the most fitting choice.
The perfect tribute to our irreplaceable Cascade of talent.
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