[Michael Juster]

A fascinating poet named Julia Budenz died last week in Cambridge. I never met her, although we tried to get her to read for the Powow River Poets.

Julia, a former nun, abandoned most of her life to write a single poem for over forty years, a poem estimated to be about 1,700 pages long, called The Gardens of Flora Baum. It has a bit of a cult following (she is often compared to Emily Dickinson) even though most of the poem has never been published. It is a mix of free and formal verse, and sections such as the 15 sonnet sequence in Book III have caught the eye of Frederick Turner and other formalists.

Segments of the poem and a brief interview with her are available at a site called Poetry Porch. I'm dubious The Gardens of Flora Baum was "finished," but I don't think anyone really knows right now.

My guess is that you will see publication of her magnum opus in sections in the coming years as well as intense debate on its merits.

[ChrisGeorge]

Thanks, Michael. Julia Budenz is new to me and I am sorry to hear of her passing. I will look out for her magnum opus. Let's hope that someone will publish it.

Chris

[Roger Slater]

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ob...olumes/?page=2

[R. Nemo Hill]

Sounds fascinating, Michael.
Thanks for the link, Roger.

Nemo

[W.F. Lantry]

I didn't know of her either. But just cruising through, I found this poem. If there's more like that, I'm a fan...

Thanks,

Bill

********************************

HIEROS GAMOS

The term was forever
Forty years ago this very day.
The vows were final. The term was forever.

It was the marriage.
It was the marriage to the god.
It was performed in the chapel of stone.

The marriage, the chapel, the chant, the Latin,
The candle, the banquet, the sacrifice were facts
Acting, dazzling, entrancing together.

The incense went to heaven.
The ring of gold
Encircled less the finger than the soul.

The roses of the coronal shone white.
Beneath the bloom the fluent veil gleamed black.
Amid the stone the vows were loud.

Upon the crown the flowers withered.
Out of the vows the sound faded.
The words were canceled, deleted. The mind was changed.

The heart’s shout was louder.
The heart’s candle kept on burning.
The heart’s Latin lasts forever.


*******************

http://www.poetryporch.com/jb07.html

[W.F. Lantry]

Wow. The more I read, the more I like her.

Try going here, and skip down to March, 2003.

What a month of poetry! We should all be so blessed!

Thanks,

Bill

************************

"Only a list, and he not even first
But suddenly recalled as when we met.
I was just seventeen. The hero burst
Into my world. He made mind larger. Yet ... "

[Andrew Frisardi]

Yes, I'm excited to learn about this poet. I didn't know her before, and what I've seen makes me want to read more. I must admit, I'm a bit daunted by the thought of 1,700 pages!

[Anthony Lombardy]

Julia Budenz was certainly a fine poet and a fascinating character, though I never had the sense that I really understood the intellectual or emotional motives that drove her sprawling work. In her professional life, in classics, her religious studies, translating Newton, she did seem always to perch at a point where the boundaries of human understanding are most emphatically defined, and she seemed to think it her duty to report to the rest of us what the weather was like out in that borderland. I am still fond of a sonnet published in the Tennessee Review in 1997:

Reply 14 to poem 107)
by Julia Budenz

Was I undone as Dido was undone
Or did I like Aeneas hear the call
To sail away? Could Carthage hold in thrall
One whom the gods have summoned? Does the sun

Sink to a burning like the love of one
Whose love was death, or will the shining ball
Rise over Rome like love that conquers all?
Was it a person, place, or thing that won

My undefended heart? I never guessed,
When I began, that Ama, Vide, Veni,
Meant Come, Come, Come, meant For you is the nod,

The thunder, of the greatest and the best.
Is it, is he, the sky, the sky’s great god,
Jupiter, golden, bright, or gray and rainy?

(Copyright © 1996 by Julia Budenz)

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Anthony Lombardy

and she seemed to think it her duty to report to the rest of us what the weather was like out in that borderland.

Interesting point. I can think of far worse things for a poet to do!

She seems to have just sat down, day after day after day, and composed something. It seems as if all her life was devoted to study and work and composition. It seems as if, compared to her, we're all just narcissistic dilettantes...

And if someone like that decides a weather report is the most worthwhile thing for her to do, I'm prepared to accept her reasons. I'm certainly prepared to sit and listen for a little while, as she describes the clouds...

Thanks,

Bill