*
Merry Christmas, darlings…
xx.
quatre merles flickr
*
Hey, remember slap bracelets? Many years ago, while sitting in a bar in Seattle, I fell for a boy just by the way he took off his bracelet and slapped it onto my wrist. It was like he was claiming me. Everything sort of changed right when that weird elastic bent and wrapped itself around the skinniest part of my arm. But that was a long time ago, and god only knows where he is now. He probably doesn’t even remember but– I do. Only because I read this post today and it took me back. So, everyone is coming out with the best 50 of 2009. I say, why 50? why not 29? or 48? I mean, go crazy, make it 99 or something. What’s up with 50?
*
*
words with a slight – [electrical charge]+
i love that idea. [wings and batteries]
i. love it.
*
I just said I didn’t know
And now you are holding me
In your arms,
How kind.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.
Yet around the net I am floating
Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it,
They are beautiful,
But they are not good for eating.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher
Than this mid-air in which we tremble,
Having exercised our arms in swimming,
Now the suspension, you say,
Is exquisite. I do not know.
There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries
Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water
Near it, bubbles are rising and salt
Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer
Air than water. I am closer to you
Than land and I am in a stranger ocean
Than I wished.
*
“Eventually as the poem progresses,” Guest once explained, “the poem will find words are lifted from its page…and the poem will be known as ‘winged.’” That words can be like notes, like strokes of paint, means that they are comparable to things of more evident material substance or sensual impact; yet at the same time it is to see them in abstraction from their own specific material substrate. There is also a dematerialization of the word–”not the thing, but its effect,” in the words of Mallarmé that Guest quotes in a 1986 essay.
For her, this is experienced as a sort of trembling, a vibration whereby language becomes unstable, and “this trembling is a good idea, because it means you are not exactly in charge.” “A poem should tremble a little,” she repeated sixteen years later; it should contain a “mysterious element of change, as when the poem lies quivering on its page.”
This trembling or quivering is something that occurred in Guest’s writing with greater and greater frequency as she grew older. Here is “Freed Color,” from her last book, The Red Gaze:
*
The branches are placed in a wet cloth,
clover reaches out.
They cannot locate a blue vine.
Purple fills the agenda. Red is on the plant,
the setting of a hibiscus tree.
They are warned not to linger in the purple shade.
Are these bitter colors? Are they accompanied
by rhyme to cheer them when they cross
into that land where color is rare?
They hasten to make use of freed color
who bends to no one,
who dwells in a tent like rhythm
continuously rolled.
To stop the riot of color, to hasten the quiet paucity of rhythm,
to sleep when it is time.
And doors open into narrow surprise.
The jingle of crystal follows you everywhere,
even into the whistling corridor.
- From The Nation, March 23, 2009, on Barbara Guest
icanteachyouhowtodoit.com
+agnes and leigh rockin the raven hair+
tres fetch.
Happy Monday! It’s Winter Solstice- the shortest day of the year! Days will get longer, nights shorter, after today (yay).
“Somewhere darkness churns and answers are riveting,
taking on a fresh look, a twist. A carousel is burning.
The wide avenue smiles.”
-John Ashbery
photos: martina hoogland ivanow
