(Jolene)
There's a moose sprawled on the highway as some spiritual food
(pierced to its poor minnow heart)
saying no to decay, exemplarily and ordinarily, in its shy way--
a knee bowed in asphalt, poor heart!--
with a fresh open cut in its side and looking about ready to die,
looking skyward, 'bout ready to die
in that white no-good body of hers
4 comments:
Like William Stafford's "Traveling through the Dark"--the title poem in his National Book Award winning collection.
I thank you, good sir. My Jolene, on the other hand, is both a song and prophecy.
Hello Conrad, it's been a good long while since I've read your work, and it's always interesting to come back and read you again seeing it with new ears, and fresher ears. Strange to say as one gets along the road, my hearing ear has finer tuning . Does that make sense? Well, I like what you are doing here in these pomes. The proof is that i can find lines and couples of lines, or stretches of'em over the course of several postings which I'd like to quote back to you, to display their ingenuity and elegance, their withheld beauty even as in
'a knee bowed in asphalt'
and 'a open cut in its side and looking ...ready to die'
and this especially
" in that white no-good body of hers.'
A very powerful line, and an even stronger way to end the thought in that poem . Realizing full way there's more than way to read it.
About your book of poetry which had you sent me and which I read at a bad time in my life I wanted to say something about that. It was the wrong time for me to be reading your work in print and my reactions, such as they were, were just that, reactions and not tuned into what you were doing. You stand in line with a fine tradition of poetry which it might take me a while to uncover but suffice it to say it has its own legitimacy. Not that I've 'spoken' in that rather formal 'voice' I'd like to switch modes here and say,
Keep up the good work,
Keep writing poems whose lines I'd like to quote.
Best to you and yours this winter season
Dada Duffy etc.
Duff-meister
nice to hear from you, indeed. And, hey, there is never a good time to read poetry. I'd say the worst time is the best time to read. And as Jung says " [the poet] must resort to an imagery that is difficult to handle and full of contradictions in order to express the weird paradoxicality of his vision"
Telling me my lines make the reader wince and grimace and scratch their head only makes me wanna write more
Any poem's that's read/understood at one go isn't worth a turd
And best to you and yours, as well, good sir. It's always nice to hear from you
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