Poem Friday: Frank X. Gaspar.

I ran across Frank X. Gaspar's book Night of a Thousand Blossoms at my friend's house a few years ago. I read a few poems and liked them, then bought a copy of the book for myself and spent mornings one summer reading them. I liked their expansive lines and the way he easily brought in his learned, well-read perspective without ever seeming to show off. I liked that I could imagine him reading, or thinking, or writing, someplace in a house in the late evening, when the early shift of people--people with day jobs, families, well-established routines--had gone to bed, and the late shift--the people who were out all hours, working in the night, coming home to dark houses--was still on the job. He was on the late shift, it seemed to me, ruminating and meditating.

This poem, "The One God Is Mysterious," is in Night of a Thousand Blossoms. It reminds me of the poem that begins Linda Gregg's Chosen by the Lion, "The Ninth Dawn," in which the speaker meditates on human suffering in the classical myths, and suggests that

                                         The gods
want the honey in the hive, are willing to have
the lovers destroyed. There is a grand design
pulsing around their perishing. 

Gaspar is not as dramatic as that, but the impulse is similar, to find in ancient texts--in this case, an illustration of a Babylonian sculpture--the rhyme with one's own experience--one's 

own memory of excess and extravagance,
of abandonment to the weight of everything
that pulls me down to ruin, those same ticks
and voices that lift me up and fill me with breath.

I want a life in which art, or history, or contemplation, makes 'every dark wish lie down with every bright wish':

The One God Is Mysterious

Frank X. Gaspar

from an illustration of Babylonian sculpture

The king and his queen are feasting.
They recline, sumptuously, on long divans
and are attended by naked servants. They
can have anything they want, this much is
clear, and I believe they have been having
sex with one another and with the servants.
Why wouldn’t they? Who among the servants
would not be honored to help? And it’s Babylon
after all, and doesn’t Babylon exist in your
memory? Isn’t Babylon the clear rumbling
of your heart at ease with its every craving--
not the way it is now, fenced off with spiked wire
and old pipes, with signs telling the pedestrians
to beware:  the litter, the old cans rusting. No,
this is my own memory of excess and extravagance,
of abandonment to the weight of everything
that pulls me down to ruin, those same ticks
and voices that lift me up and fill me with breath.
And don’t you want to drink the breath of your
beloved? And his beloved? And her beloved?
You see how it goes. The One God is mysterious
and He has made me crazy. Maybe I am the king
or the queen. Or one of those sculpted figures
that bend so sweetly toward them, so graceful,
so finely formed and desirable in every way.
I remember being desired like that, and desiring
like that also. And I remember my heart in its deep
voice, commanding. Now that my common neighborhood
is tucked in for the night, the cars parked in the driveways,
the blinds drawn and everyone’s drapes closed and the garage
doors locked, I can breathe easier. Now, in Babylon,
you see what is possible. The queen and her king are
dining, forever, in a gray frieze, but even so, they make
a fire in us, they free the ache from my shoulders,
they make every dark wish lie down with every bright wish,
they bring a great comfort to the harried in this land.

Poem Friday.

Earlier this week, my oldest darling friend M. sent me a message, along with a link to the article in the New York Times which announced Matthew Zapruder as the Sunday Magazine's new poetry editor. My friend said she would like it if I would do as Matthew Z. will now do: post a poem once a week on my blog, prefaced by a few words. 

Nothing would please me more, especially since, in so doing, I can pretend just a little bit that I myself am Matthew Zapruder, and therefore that I am a poet that I myself much admire.

(Let me add parenthetically that I missed this delivery of the New York Times because my delivery situation is all fouled up, vis a vis the Sunday Times. It is the subject of much consternation and many emails, and still, still: I miss the paper the week that Matthew Z. debuts. Alas!)

Well, I think it's only fitting that for my first poem I pick a poem by Matthew Zapruder. So I did. This poem, which I found on the Poetry Foundation website. It was originally published in Poetry in September of 2010.

I like the flat sound of Zapruder's voice, although really, it just sounds like a person talking, a person with, perhaps, a mordant and dry wit, which is what I find attractive, really, in his poems. This poem,"The Prelude," makes reference to the Wordsworth epic, which I both did and did not read for my prelims, because although I love Wordsworth--a lot--The Prelude, like many epic poems, has its longueurs and dry parts. I love that the beginning of the poem has the poet invoking a refreshing beverage, a beverage which is, upon reflection, not quite so much refreshing in itself but rather redolent of sensations that lead nostalgically and synecdochically to other sensations. These take the poet back from a potentially rapturous walk in the world back to the city, where his ordinary temperament and self-doubts and his habit of verging on the dark await him. Just as our own natures, our own predilections always wait for us, no matter how many ways we try to transcend them:

Come to the edge
the edge beckoned softly. Take
this cup of darkness and stay as long 
as you want and maybe a little longer.

THE PRELUDE
Matthew Zapruder

Oh this Diet Coke is really good,

though come to think of it it tastes 

like nothing plus the idea of chocolate,

or an acquaintance of chocolate

speaking fondly of certain times

it and chocolate had spoken of nothing,

or nothing remembering a field

in which it once ate the most wondrous

sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese

yet still wished for a piece of chocolate

before the lone walk back through

the corn then the darkening forest

to the disappointing village and its super

creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair

I returned to the city. Something 

seemed to be waiting for me. 

Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth 

wrote he would even were it “nothing 

better than a wandering cloud”

have followed which of course to me

and everyone sounds amazing.

All I follow is my own desire, 

sometimes to feel, sometimes to be

at least a little more than intermittently

at ease with being loved. I am never

at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk

and look at the brightly colored

houses filled with lives, not with night

when I lie on my back and listen,

not with the hallway, definitely 

not with baseball, definitely 

not with time. Poor Coleridge, son

of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel

the energy. No present joy, no cheerful

confidence, just love of friends and the wind

taking his arrow away. Come to the edge

the edge beckoned softly. Take

this cup full of darkness and stay as long

as you want and maybe a little longer.