[Rick Mullin]

Celestine 



Not the blind accordion player’s forró,

not the breathing bottle of Dogajolo.

Not the unaccompanied solo tuba.

Only a heartbeat.

Not the sundown Barbizon forest’s embers,

not the stone acropolis nor its flight plan.

Not the Bourse turned out as a light cathedral.

Only its aura.

Even these dissolve in a certain texture,

fade within the confines of human feeling,

enter to the realm of an ardent spirit

brilliant, eternal.
____

S3L3 was “pass into the realm…”

S2L1 was “Not the Belgian Barbizon painters landscape,

S3L1 was: Even these must pass to a certain knowledge,

[Glenn Wright]

I must confess having to look up “forró” and “Dogajolo.” (I was pretty sure that the second one was a kind of wine.)
Thoughtful meditation on the ability of art and language to immortalize the transitory.
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”
I like how the first stanza presents fleeting experiences; the second stanza presents more permanent expressions, and the last stanza crosses into the Platonic world of ideal forms.

[Nick McRae]

I enjoyed this quite a bit but there's something about 'only a heartbeat' that feels too poignant. In another poem it'd be fine, but in this one it doesn't feel as hip as the rest of the lines.

For the same reason Dylan axed a few of his early songs, they didn't fit with his persona.

It does fit nicely there, though, not sure what you'd replace it with.

[Carl Copeland]

Yeah, Nick’s got it: it’s the hipness I love in the first two stanzas—a hip Sappho! The last stanza goes abstract in the way Stevens can stray into the abstract philosophical. I’d change “nor” to “or”—it may not be wrong, but calls attention to itself with its striving—successful or not—for high correctness. Why are the first two negations in S1 and S2 separated by a comma, while the third is set off as its own sentence? You could easily end the first three lines of each stanza with commas, including a comma after “spirit” in S3; you need something there. I’m jazzed.

[Julie Steiner]

I must confess I had to look up a lot more than Glenn did, and I'm still baffled by the title. Too many possibilities.

I'm too wedded to the sort of "certain knowledge" that the poem regards as a fall from eternal, ethereal intangibility into the decidedly less-magical, paraphrasable here and now. But since it's making me consider that, the poem is doing exactly what it is designed to do.

To me (and to Carl, I now see), it seems that some sort of punctuation belongs at the end of S3L3.

[Rick Mullin]

Thanks all,

At least a couple of interpretations in your responses

Welcome to the Sphere, Glenn. Your reading of how the three stanzas work coincides pretty closely with my intent.

Hi Nick and Carl. I intend that first stanza to read differently. I'm not reading the first three lines as hip, necessarily. Lines 1 and 3 have noisy music, an instrument in isolation in line 3 after a respiratory function in line 2--a bottle open and left to "breathe". It resolves on a heartbeat.

I think forgoing punctuation before the last line is important going into something like "brilliant, eternal."

Carl, I hadn't thought about Stevens, but he does do more or less what I'm attempting here.

Hi Julie,

Well, Google says celestine or Celestine could be mineral, an austere Benedictine order, or a restaurant. I'd hope the poem might steer the reading in the right direction, but it's meant as a metaphor.

I don't understand what you mean by this--(well, to the extent I do, I think you're misreading me, as something like the opposite is intended and, I'm hoping, conveyed):

I'm too wedded to the sort of "certain knowledge" that the poem regards as a fall from eternal, ethereal intangibility into the decidedly less-magical, paraphrasable here and now.

The word "knowledge" is troublesome, but I think important.

Thanks for commenting on this one folks.

RM

[Julie Steiner]

Sorry, Rick, I guess I took all the passing and fading in S3 as a decline from brilliance and eternity, rather than as an apotheosis into it.

If there's a harder way, I'll find it—especially if it makes me look ridiculous...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/celestine

[Alexandra Baez]

Rick, I found this strangely transporting despite my not exactly clicking mentally with all the details and what they were intended to represent. I did not know any of the many meanings of “celestine,” but I took it as hopefully the correct one--a name meaning “celestial.” In both its meaning and its exquisite rarity, it’s a beautiful word for a title, and perfect for this poem. As to other terms, I was lucky enough to have been initiated into forró decades ago by my brother; Dogajolo in this context is easy enough to construe; and maybe the specifics of the Bourse don’t matter that much. (I did look up the unknowns.) I still don’t know what the flight plan of the acropolis refers to, and I didn’t even know exactly what you meant by passing into certain knowledge or fading within the confines of human feeling, although I think I get it now.

Despite all these blind spots, I somehow emerged from this poem with a suprarational ecstatic sense of its import. I think the music of the piece, its prayerlike cadence, helps a lot. I like the opening rhyme and its echo in “solo,” yet somehow I didn’t much miss the absence of rhyme thereafter--the cadence remains. But more than anything, I think the vibration behind the poem, the state you were in while you wrote it, must be what is coming through from the page so strongly for me. So much of the value in this poem comes to me through its unspokens. This doesn't happen to me very often.

I feel that you took great risks here in trying to communicate something vast and ineffable using only a few suggestive brushstrokes. But I think this must work for a reader if they have ever touched the edges of a state like the one you speak of and if they’re willing to let it this poem take them there again. To express such expansive joy as you have in this poem is also to take a great risk within the context of today’s prevailing mores. For me, this was a great thing to read the day before Easter.

And though I’m quite a stickler for punctuation, the lack of a comma at the end of the second to last line feels right to me.

[Rick Mullin]

Thanks, Alexandra, for a thoughtful reading and encouraging response. You follow what I'm hoping to get across here. And I appreciate your noting the risk involved in writing something that conveys its meaning without absolute definition.
Rick

[Jim Moonan]

Originally Posted by A. Baez

Despite all these blind spots, I somehow emerged from this poem with a suprarational ecstatic sense of its import. I think the music of the piece, its prayerlike cadence, helps a lot. I like the opening music of the rhyme and its echo in “solo,” yet somehow I didn’t much miss the absence of rhyme thereafter--the cadence remains. But more than anything, I think the vibration behind the poem, the state you were in while you wrote it, must be what is coming through from the page so strongly for me. I get such a strong sense of taking so much from the unspoken within this poem. This doesn't happen to me very often.

I feel that you took great risks here in trying to communicate something vast and ineffable using only a few suggestive brushstrokes. I think this must work for a reader if they have ever touched the edges of a state like the one you speak of and if they’re willing to let it this poem take them there again. To express such expansive joy as you have in this poem is also to take a great risk within the context of today’s prevailing mores. For me, this was a great thing to read the day before Easter.

Yes, exactly, to all this. The poem goes underneath to get transcendence. It's in the sweet spot.

My one nagging thought is a somewhat prudish one: S3L1 sounds/feels like pontification. Though it earns it, I think, in what precedes and follows it. I feel like you reached for the ring and got it.

.

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