BERNEVAL

Phil Hall The Oak Hunch ends with a sequence called “Index of First Lines” which opens with a discourse on missionaries, islands and the nature of words which leads to an image of the poet manifesting stigmata in a very visceral fashion.

I am the one with these stinking wounds in the
palms of my hands—these gifts?—my articulate
hands that can not make straight arrows

I like the ambiguity of “articulate” meaning both jointed and enjoining.

The coda takes on the aura of an homage to James Merrill with a most striking image.

I hold the blunt end of my pen in my mouth,
and put my palms together so the stinking holes
in my hands make one hole I can see through.

Bowing my head, I shove the pen through the
hole in my hands—planchette!

Before you run to the nearest Ouija board and instigate a series of Ideomotor moves, consider that Hall identifies as nodes to this sequence two other poets: Ronald Johnson Ark: The Foundations 1—33 and George Open Of Being Numerous (where we find Oppen quoting Whitehead (believing it to be from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) “In these explanations it is presumed that an experiencing subject is one occasion of a sensitive reaction to an actual world.” which sensitive reaction brings us back to our reading Hall who ends his sequence with little faith in any way back: “SAYING A LOST PATH BACK, as of old . . .”). A bendy arrow.

And so for day 2231
21.01.2013

The contrast is set up between those seeking warmth, a multitude, and the skater, a lone figure.

Coffee drinkers fill the hut with steam;
They warm themselves within against the cold
That creaks without and circumvents the light,
While Mr. Murple, in a cloud of frost
Centripetal,
Turns on his pivot skates the captive sky.

And the crowded alliteration binds the turning figure to the elements: cloud/frost/centripetal and skates/captive/sky. Apt for the creaking cold.

“Ice At Last” in Endeared by Dark: The Collected Poems of George Johnston.

And so for day 2230
20.01.2013

Ever wonder how best to celebrate the character and accomplishments of a great literary figure?

Here is a praise poem for Northrop Frye found in Endeared by Dark: The Collected Poems of George Johnston. It was written on the occasion of a conference in Moncton. Its title: “A Celebration For Northrop Frye, May 28, 1980”. And here are its concluding stanzas:

How do we honour one
already in the fane
    of honour,
    how bear

our messages of praise
before his critic’s eyes?
    Well, anyhow,
    we do

confident of his smile
and knowing that we dwell
    this hour
    together
    in Eden’s bower.

Ending thus on an image of conviviality is superlative: not only praised the man but also marked the occasion with fine wit.

And so for day 2228
18.01.2013

I would perhaps not have been so sensitive to these lines by George Johnston if I was not aware of the work of Marlene Goldman on dementia and stigma, Forgotten: Narratives of Age-Related Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Canada.

[…]

we come to our beauty,
     terrified or serene
or beyond both, more likely,
     knowing even as also we are known.

I guess I shall not again
     see him, as we leave his room;
his wits are gone
     and he is as though at home

yonder. He smiles from a distance;
     and he is, as you say, beautiful
for all his ambience
     of tubes and bottles, the whole

apparatus of delay
     that keeps some good things on,
his courtesy, and the play
     of his Irish sense of fun

[…]

George Johnston “Goodbye Margaret” in Endeared by Dark: The Collected Poems

And so for day 2226
16.01.2013

Moon in puddle Zen trope is here at play, I believe, in the very reflective white space between stanzas. But here the moon is pluralized — each moment of perception offering its own.

I will not refuse the moons
you show me

caught in the gutter water

Liz Howard “Bingo Riot” in Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent

And so for day 2225
15.01.2013

If you are entitled to one line to ponder for a day …

what else is a river but the promise of a text

Liz Howard “Foramen Magnum” in Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent

And so for day 2224
14.01.2013

This set could be extended in imitation of Erasmus’s De Copia. But it’s power comes from its limited triplicate form and the tactical placement of line breaks.

Love the person not the police report.
The wrists not the weapon, the grievers
not the tears.

The metonymy of “wrists” adds to the sensation of compression — a poetic grenade about to go off.

Priscilla Uppal “Try Not to Romanticize” in Live Courage.

And so for day 2223
13.01.2013

In Live Courage, using the footer section of the pages, Priscilla Uppal constructs the emulation of a news crawl in which she threads excerpts from Homer’s Odyssey translated by Richard Lattimore with various online and print news sources.

The effect relies as much on page breaks [pb] as continuation.

[…] mistake and release his son / And once the spirit has left the white bones, all the rest of the body [pb] is made subject to the fire’s strong fury, but the soul flitters out / Floods caused by pounding mon- [pb] soon rains have left some 77 people dead in Bangladesh and India and marooned almost two [pb] million / Poor fools, and they had not yet realized how over all of them the terms of death were […]

The page turning brings an additional dimension to the play of juxtaposition.

And so for day 2221
11.01.2013