30 January, 2021
Victoria, BC
Dear Poemgranates,
No roses, no foxes, no little chair to be moved on a little planet. My day of 44 sunsets goes like this. I look into a poem and find myself peering back. I wonder if that is another way of saying I find my desires better expressed in another’s words. It is many days. But I think of brevity and sharpness.
That often means I think of Christopher Citro’s “Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled With Shrieks” where Citro writes, “I love you. I want us both to eat well.” This is what I want for the day. This precision, this clarity. I want to ask for you and for little else. I think of writing another poem on beauty but I decide there is nothing more monumental to say.
I am of irrational desires. I cannot stop thinking about May Chong’s “For Reasons.” The poem takes me to another world at dawn where I wake up with irrational longings and the world is kind about it. ” Outside / some brown bird is singing / its fool heart out, and / I want its name to fall / from my mouth.” I want that too.
I read “St. Kevin and the Blackbird” again and Heaney asks “And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow, / Imagine being Kevin. Which is he? / Self-forgetful or in agony all the time” and I think this is a fair question to be asked of any saint, any poet. Here Heaney brushes imagination aside but recognises that to imagine is to find ways in and out of fugue. I write over an old poem and don’t imagine myself in it. The corporeal memory is broken and shared. This time around I am rescued. I decide to read this poem aloud. This is an invitation. I am reading a poem at the Poetry for the Pandemic FYI Series on 2nd February at 15.30 PT. Please come.
Bring a poem and we’ll move our little chairs to better see the sun.
Ever yours,
ALHS
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