[A. E. Stallings]

Perhaps he's been featured before, I don't recall. His poems have come up occasionally on other topics ("Anonymous Drawing" in the Ekphrastic thread). Anyway, a master of verse formal and free, with a number of experiments in between.

Here is one of the more widely anthologized:

Men at Forty

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret,

And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

At first read, straightforward free verse, a moving, melancholy little poem. But closer inspection yields some other patterns. The first and second line of each quatrain rhyme after a fashion on the falling syllable--with the exception of the last, where the monosyllable "sound" assonates with houses (though perhaps the connection is with immense and houses, sound and slope). The third line of each quatrain expands and the fourth retracts again. All of this adds to a sense of tightness and control in what is essentially (unless I am missing something!) free verse. Every word counts, and we feel the weight of "mort" in mortgaged.

[Tom Jardine]

Alicia,

I need advice. I don't know if I should speak up about what I think of this poem, or should I shut up. Let me give an example; I don't think the poem is very good at all, and is quite mediocre, and of course everyone is entitled to thier opinion, but I could elaborate exactly why word for word why this poem by Justice fails entirely to achieve any level of interest for me. Often, when I do speak up, I hear a clamor for me to sit down. Deconstructing a poem to the utmost integrity is what interests me, and over the years I've learned to be quiet because so few seem interested.

I see what the poem offers as a mood, without saying a thing, a kind of abstract sketch. But isn't there more?

There must be more. I see poets write good snippets now and then, then the writer sort of falls off the wagon into the mud, probably for lack of encouragement.

If anyone replies I will do a deconstruction on this poem and show what I mean, how it is almost as if effort is taken to accomplish mediocrity as a goal.

Just my opinion.
TJ

[Alder Ellis]

Here are two others I like very much (courtesy of http://plagiarist.com). The first one is, as I take it, in syllabics (7 syllables per line, varying accentual pattern). The second one, iambic het met, & should be formatted with various levels of indentation, in the manner of Romantic odes.

To the extent I am familiar with Justice he strikes me as a consummately intelligent poet. I think he's terrific.


The Tourist From Syracuse

One of those men who can be a car salesman or a tourist from Syracuse or a hired assassin.
-- John D. MacDonald

You would not recognize me.
Mine is the face which blooms in
The dank mirrors of washrooms
As you grope for the light switch.

My eyes have the expression
Of the cold eyes of statues
Watching their pigeons return
From the feed you have scattered,

And I stand on my corner
With the same marble patience.
If I move at all, it is
At the same pace precisely

As the shade of the awning
Under which I stand waiting
And with whose blackness it seems
I am already blended.

I speak seldom, and always
In a murmur as quiet
As that of crowds which surround
The victims of accidents.

Shall I confess who I am?
My name is all names, or none.
I am the used-car salesman,
The tourist from Syracuse,

The hired assassin, waiting.
I will stand here forever
Like one who has missed his bus --
Familiar, anonymous --

On my usual corner,
The corner at which you turn
To approach that place where now
You must not hope to arrive.

.

Ode To A Dressmaker's Dummy

Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included.
-- Sears, Roebuck Catalogue

O my coy darling, still
You wear for me the scent
Of those long afternoons we spent,
The two of us together,
Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes
Of household spies
And the remote buffooneries of the weather;
So high,
Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,
Which, often enough, at dusk,
Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,
Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.

How like the terrified,
Shy figure of a bride
You stood there then, without your clothes,
Drawn up into
So classic and so strict a pose
Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew
Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.
Or was it only some obscure
Shape of my mother's youth I saw in you,
There where the rude shadows of the afternoon
Crept up your ankles and you stood
Hiding your sex as best you could?--
Prim ghost the evening light shone through.

[This message has been edited by AE (edited November 25, 2003).]

[A. E. Stallings]

Tom--

I can see where this poem might come off as mediocre--it is very plain spoken and its skill is very hidden. Nor is the subject grand and high-flown, but very much down to earth. I posted it partly for those qualities. But I can see that it might "underwhelm" on a first read. It's the sort of thing that looks easy and is not.

AE--

Thanks so much for posting these, two favorites. I had wanted to post Dressmaker's Dummy, but the formatting seemed daunting. We will just have to refer folks to the original for its shapeliness on the page.

A prose poem that I think hilarious. But then, it is one of my favorite myths:

Orpheus Opens His Morning Mail

Bills, Bills. From the mapmakers of hell, the repairers of fractured lutes, the bribed judges of musical contests.

A note addressed to my wife, marked: Please Forward.

A group photograph, signed: Your Admirers. In their faces a certain sameness, as if "I" might, after all, be raised to some modest power; likewise in their costumes, at once transparent and identitical, like those of young ladies at some debauched seminary. Already--such is my vice--I imagine the rooms into which they must once have locked themselves to read my work: those barren cells, beds ostentatiously unmade; the sngle pinched chrysanthemum, memorializing in a corner some withered event, the mullioned panes, high up, through which may be spied, far off, the shorn hedge behind which a pimply tomorrow crouches, exposing himself. O lassitudes!

Finally, an invitation to attend certain rites to be celebrated, come equinox, on the river bank. I am to be guest of honor. As always, I rehearse the scene in advance: the dark, the hired guards, tipsy as usual, sonorously snoring; a rustling, suddenly, among the reeds; the fitful illumination of ankles, whitely flashing. . . Afterwards, I shall probably be asked to recite my poems. But O my visions, my vertigoes! Have I imagined it only, the perverse gentility of their shrieks?

[A. E. Stallings]

And a charming sonnet. The hesitant dissonances of occasional slant rhymes (and rubato time) resolve beautifully into the major chord of the close:

The Pupil

Picture me, the shy pupil at the door,
One small, tight fist clutching the dread Czerny.
Back then time was still harmony, not money,
And I could spend a whole week practicing for
That moment on the threshold.
Then to take courage,
And enter, and pass among mysterious scents,
And sit quite straight, and with a frail confidence
Assault the keyboard with a childish flourish!

Only to lose my place, or forget the key,
And almost doubt the very metronomome
(Outside the traffic, the laborers going home),
And still bear on across Chopin or Brahms,
Supid and wild with love equally for the storms
Of C# minor and the calms of C.

[oliver murray]

Alicia,

Thanks for starting this thread, which I am enjoying.
I am not very familiar with Justice's work.

Tom,

I applaud you for speaking your mind, even if I rarely agree with you. I do not know Justice very well, but I enjoyed these poems, but I could see how they could be described as having a journey which is more interesting than the destination. However, you say you could fault them "word for word" which I would have though is one way they could NOT be faulted, so I was wondering if, without necessarily "deconstructing" the whole poem, you could give us an example?

Regards


Oliver.

[Tom Jardine]

Let me try a couple, Oliver. word by misused word, is what I mean.

And deep in mirrors
This line is egregiously pulpy. ‘deep in mirrors’ is utter nonsense, it sounds nice, but when I think about it, just how many mirrors are there? In other words, the ‘deep’ is a pointer-word, pointing to an idea for the mood, which can be a great tool, but here it is obvious-obvious: “Oh, look, hear me, what I say is deep, deep…” and then the ‘mirrors’ is also a, “let’s be reflective, OK?” It is a silly set-up.

They rediscover
Who does? The men at forty? The mirrors? The men rediscover something they already discovered? What? The face of the boy? The face of a boy he once was? What?

The face of the boy as he practices tying
Why isn’t the line, at least, ‘they rediscover the boy’s face?’ This line is more of that ‘the face of the boy’, ‘the light of the moon’, ‘the sound of crickets’ kind of amateur poet on the stage ham-acting speech.

His father's tie there in secret,
Well, thank goodness the tie is ‘there.’ If it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be there.

And the face of that father,
‘face of that’ ? Why not ‘And the father’s face…’ Why not? Because without the pseudo-tones there is no tone in the poem. Do you hear it? La de da, and la de da, da da.

Still warm with the mystery of lather.
Now the poem tells us there is mystery. Mysterious lather? Does he mean that the boy, as young boys often are, interested in their fathers shaving? And why is it ‘still’ warm. It either is or it isn’t. Doesn’t “warm with the mystery” of anything sort of turn your stomach? Construct the mystery, don’t just add the mystery for cheap effect.

They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Now here is another “They.” What exactly does this line mean anyway? The child makes a boy of the father? It is a Walmart sentence.

Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope BLA bla bla, BLA bla bla
Behind their mortgaged houses.
A criminal line! Something? What? What is the difference between ‘what’ and ‘whatever?’ Two “filling’s?” What on earth is “twilight sound of THE crickets? And where on earth did the woods come from? What slope? Oh, the one behind the financed houses? This is poppy-cock garbahhhge. Do you hear it?
“Something is filling them something that is like the sound of”
Prose? What ever it is, it is pure frilly nonsense. Plain, obvious foolery. It sounds like a man trying ever so hard to think up something sensitive. “like the sound of the ocean, like the sound of a river, like the sound of the mountains,” on and on. I know I might sound cynical, overly critical, even caustic, but this kind of stuff makes me sick. I don’t buy the first two stanzas either. I do appreciate poetry anywhere I find it, and I do try to speak up and encourage what I think is good, and I don’t really want to be a negative bell-ringer, because no one likes them. Of course, it is never a good idea to ‘draw anyone’s fire.’ Especially in the arts.

[Tom Jardine]

I wanted to add that this kind of writing is often appreciated by readers who read with their head. In other words, fewer readers read with exact sensuality combined with thought; most read the thoughts mainly, and think the poetry is in the thoughts, the subject matter. I can explain this further, but I should write a full essay.

TJ

[Janet Kenny]

Tom
I really like these poems and I care deeply about word/music in the most austere sense of that idea.
The content/music is not overt but it's there. I always find that pulling a poem to pieces like that tends to leave you with poem parts all over the floor and nothing much left to show for it. It reminds me of the time my father decided to tune the piano himself and took the whole thing apart and then stood there looking at it.
Just my two cents' worth.
Janet

[Janet Kenny]

Alicia
I had already discovered "Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy" and loved the subtle layers in such an apparently simple poem.
"The Pupil" is even more remarkable. The "dread Czerny" indeed until the calms of C. Beautifully constructed and very evocative. And such interesting slant rhymes
best
Janet