Eratosphere - Donald Justice

Busy, Busy.

I can’t find any of my books.

What poets? First, I’d like to start with living poets. I hope no one goes, well, sure, we know, or say that I am taking a safe bet. It is not a safe bet, it is what I think, although I must add that there is a factor of ‘let’s see’ how things go with this poet. And by no means is this poet perfect, but she is doing things few others are doing now. It is possible she sees the future of poetry more than others, but maybe she is just paying attention to the art, and, she may well leave many in the dust because she does pay attention to critical items in the art. My disclaimer is that I do not know Alicia Stallings except a what is here on erato, and my claim is that I personally try to give credit where credit is due.

It is interesting to me that the poets I do like are all women, Stallings, Rhina Espaillat, Deborah Warren, and a few others, except one male who I will mention in a later segment to this, (along with Wilbur) who I see as addressing the art with integrity, which to me is the most important factor in any art. I bring this male-female fact up because I haven’t figured out exactly why this is, except maybe the men write arguments, points without wisdom, with issues rather than presentations. (Fred Longworth has a great poem, but he seems totally unknowable right now to me. I will add the male poet in another segment for a reason.)

The idea of this is to construct what and why I like a poet, Stallings. Here is in full the first poem in the latest Poetry. And then I will go through some of it and then compare the sense with some other poetry in the same issue.

Prelude

Lately, at the beginning of concerts when
The first-chair violin
Plays the A 4-40 and the bows
Go whirring about the instruments like wings
Over unfingered strings,
The cycling fifths, spectral arpeggios,

As the oboe lights the pure torch of the note,
Something in my throat
Constricts and tears are startled to my eyes,
Helplessly. And lately when I stand
Torn ticket in my hand
In the foyers of museums I surprise

You with a quaver in my rote reply—
Again I overbrim
And corners of the room go prismed, dim.
You’d like to think that it is Truth and Art
That I am shaken by,
So that I must discharge a freighted heart;

But it is not when cellos shoulder the tune,
Nor changing of the key
Nor resolution of disharmony
That makes me almost tremble, and it is not
The ambered afternoon
Slanting through motes of dust a painter caught
Four hundred years ago as someone stands
Opening the blank
Future like a letter in her hands.
It is not masterpieces of first rank,
Not something made
By once-warm fingers, nothing painted, played.

No, no. It is something else. It is something raw
That suddenly falls
Upon me at the start, like loss or awe—
The vertigo of possibility—
The pictures I don’t see,
The open strings, the perfect intervals.

The sound and sense match in every sentence, and the notes in the music are fully human, individually human, you can hear it. The subject is interesting; haven’t we all felt something like this entering a museum or at the start of a concert? Here are some running notes, as I call it.

Lately, at the beginning of concerts when
The first-chair violin
Plays the A 4-40 and the bows
Go whirring about the instruments like wings
Over unfingered strings,
The cycling fifths, spectral arpeggios,

As the oboe lights the pure torch of the note,
Something in my throat
Constricts and tears are startled to my eyes,
Before I know it, I am taken to a place of images and sound—off and running, as it were, and I am no longer reading a poem—how many poems have you read that you just know you are reading a poem? Who wants to read a poem? Nobody! The reader wants to connect, to feel compassion with another person, not read another poem.

Helplessly. And lately when I stand
Torn ticket in my hand
Let’s take a look at this line. And lately when I stand torn ticket in my hand… The reader is drawn in empathically because “I stand torn ticket’ instantly melds the image in the reader mind AND keeps the sound, the sound of a person trying to express something.

In the foyers of museums I surprise

You with a quaver in my rote reply—
Again I overbrim
And corners of the room go prismed, dim.
Again I overbrim and the corners of the room go prismed, dim. Quite frankly, this is a very pretty line, and the sound gets the message across. There is a mild dramatic emphasis between … prismed, dim. Here, I will add to take note of some word usage: unfingered, startled to, overbrim, go prismed, freighted heart, ambered afternoon, once-warm, shoulder the tune; each one is original, concise, effective.

You’d like to think that it is Truth and Art
That I am shaken by,
So that I must discharge a freighted heart;

But it is not when cellos shoulder the tune,
Nor changing of the key
Nor resolution of disharmony
Now when is the last time you had a conversation with anyone in the world about the ‘resolution of disharmony’? I can’t speak for anyone else, but this is the world I live in myself, highly concerned with the resolution of disharmony, art as making order out of chaos, beauty as opposed to pleasure, love as clarity, and so on.

That makes me almost tremble, and it is not
The ambered afternoon
Slanting through motes of dust a painter caught
Four hundred years ago as someone stands
Opening the blank
Future like a letter in her hands.
It is not masterpieces of first rank,
Not something made
By once-warm fingers, nothing painted, played.

No, no. It is something else. It is something raw
That suddenly falls
Upon me at the start, like loss or awe—
The vertigo of possibility—
The pictures I don’t see,
The open strings, the perfect intervals.
Well done. Here, I find myself sensing that the poet has more to say, and draws me closer with curiosity. The poem is tuned.

Here are some comparative lines by other poets from the same issue. Compare the lack of voice and sounds.

No snowfall is so quiet
As the first one; the details
The white obscures are so fresh.

Capsize once in a while, in water
Like that you die, that’s all, that water
Isn’t even frozen.

A dove is not bird. You can make the argument in reverse, but it’s not as convincing because it lacks those tangible elements by which we measure…

There will be no trees there,
no split-barked sycamore
ascending, spirit and flesh
caught in rough metaphor,

My evangelical brethren have let me know,
via the quarterly fundraising letter,
that they can’t get the gospel around
because their van has given up the ghost.

Late August was a pressure drop,
rain, a sob in the body,
a handful of air
with a dream in it.

Rooms may be
using us. We may be the agents
of doorknobs’
purposes, obeying
imperatives china dreams up or

The above segments leave me dull and tired to look at them.

More later, any comments welcome.

TJ