Hi, Randolph & Alison--I didn't know what I thought about individual moments
in this (lovely) sequence until R articulated his own and I reacted to those
comments (often with disagreement or a slight difference of opinion), so
fwhat they're worth, here are my divergences, interweaved below. Thanks,
Alison, for posting such rich food for thought--Candice

 
>> the irises are plundered
>> from the king's empty gardens
>> 
>> a man grins into the sun
>> from a doorpost
>> 
>> a child draws a circle
>> in the mud
> 
> 
> the first couplet here is having difficulty keeping up the the second two.
> Are the irises and king garden escapes from Eliot?

I can see why R thought of Eliot, but for me the associations go further
back, to fairy tale or nursery rhyme--Puss in Boots, especially--and I
pictured the man's doorpost as a kitchen one.

 
>> remember you are unwelcome
>> and the door is shut
>> 
>> a radio plays Bach
>> in another room
>> 
>> like a dream of presence
>> long ago
> 
> The first two are full of things in a way the third isn't. I particularly
> like the way the first one is hinged so that one can be on the giving or
> receiving end of it. And the Bach in another room plays very sharply.

Agreed--but the abstraction of the 3rd stanza makes it weak relative to the
first 2 (IMHO), and I'd cut it, myself.

 
>> no one is waiting
>> at that blank address
>> 
>> no one wishes for your presence
>> no one will welcome you
>> 
>> the sunlight in that room
>> tastes of dust
>> 
>> your footprints in the silence
>> will frighten you
> 
> 
> Yes to the first two, but the third is deprived of oxygen by too near
> proximity to "dust in the air suspended etc" from Four Quartets, with a dash
> of the spidery solicitor from the Wasteland.

Again, Eliot didn't spring to mind for me, but I love R's recall of "the
spidery solicitor"! The 3rd rep of "no one" seems annoyingly poetic, to my
ear; the 3rd stanza has an appealing Paracelsian flavor for me due to his
own image of dust motes in sunlight, but it might be too familiar or cliched
to other readers(?).

 
>> everything that is said
>> everything that is not said
>> 
>> the jar of tears
>> by the door of the theatre
>> 
>> where tiny fish
>> swim like words of light
>> 
> 
> Wow! Gorgeously concrete. This is my favourite.

I love the 2d stanza! The first is again too abstract or didactic for my
taste, the 3rd too self-consciously poetic.


 
>> all the vacant dears
>> shimmering through domes of pleasure
>> 
>> pressed to a million tongues
>> like wafers of belief
>> 
>> that pass through a camera
>> from the realm of the blessed
>> 
>> they are so cold
>> their faces crumple on impact
>> 
> 
> These are lost on me.

I find them subliminally comprehensible--elegantly so, in fact--but the
images seem forced into sentential syntax and might be better left
unconnected, grammatically, so as to work on the reader's unconscious
responsive links.


 
>> in the raw wash of dawn
>> birds assert their territories
>> 
>> implacable hearts hammering
>> their iron hungers
>> 
>> their cursive flight
>> a plain fact of survival
> 
> This has possibilities. Though I'm not sure about "raw"

I love the music of "raw wash" myself and think the whole trio works well as
such.

 
>> ***
>> 
>> her hands are paler than fear
>> evaporating at dawn
>> 
>> a self of dust raining
>> in your blood, a breath
>> 
>> dispelling soundlessly as the gross day
>> plies its anaesthetic
>> 
> 
> Like the suggested  sound puns "reigning in" as in horse or monarch.
> "plies" isn't earning its keep.

Disagree with you on "plies," Randolph--it seems to me to earn its keep
twiceover (in French _and_ in English).


 
>> sweet jangles that ripen
>> to humid music
>> 
>> thinning in the shrill
>> electronic air
>> 
>> scraped to a smile
>> fluttering and dying nervelessly
>> 
>> on impermeable glass
>> which pullulates with promise
>> 
>> the market's bland
>> pornography of want
>> 
>> which strangles the infant
>> scream of love
> 
> What's electronic air? Suggest the music you get when put on hold on a
> phone.

To me, it suggested the aether--and what a wittily po-mo way to describe it!


> The ratio of energy to direction needs attention here.
> 
> 
>> two clowns are dancing
>> in a casino of sand
>> 
>> their glass hearts
>> are filling up with rain
>> 
>> money ripples past them
>> through a crowd of dolls
>> 
>> and clogs the early freeway
>> with empty cars
>> 
> Intriguing. Cd their glass hearts fill with something more interesting than
> rain?

I didn't find the rain as uninteresting as I did the "glass hearts" (shades
of Blondie!). Love the pairings of clowns/casinos and rippling money/dolls.
The last stanza seems too slight to keep, though, relative to the more
powerful ones that snowball toward it.


 
>> a sleep uneasy with murders
>> a sun swollen with blood
>> 
>> a trinket of human hair
>> an empty village
>> 
>> a child locked in a room
>> and footsteps receding
>> 
> 
> The last two overpower the sun swollen with blood.

I found this whole sequence rather too literary (Shakespearean, `a la
Macbeth), though the individual images are quite striking.


 
>> where shall I place my lament?
>> the heart is deaf
>> 
>> the stars have vanished
>> entirely
> 
> Mild protest against use of deafness as a metaphor for the inability to
> communicate.

It's objectionable as a cliché too, I'd say, and would cut everything here
but the poignant "where shall I place my lament?"


 
>> o slim foot
>> of a Giacometti madonna
>> 
>> through ink's astringent passion
>> an immediate dew
>> 
>> ripens the moistening eye
>> as a shy doe breaks
>> 
>> the mind's foliage
>> gravid already with myth
>> 
> 
> To my ear the "shy" and "already" are redundant.

Agree re "shy"; not sure about "already"--love "the mind's foliage" (but not
the overly literary Giacometti foot and the cliched "moistening eye").


 
>> no one set the violet
>> in these rocks
>> 
>> the desert hunters
>> planted nothing
>> 
>> but the raw bone
>> of their song
> 
> I like this, but, again, wonder has it escaped the gravitational pull of
> Eliot's rocks and bones in the desert. Though he hasn't copyrighted the
> entire ecosystem. More evidence of desert experience perhaps would defuse
> this?

I read "the violet/in these rocks" as Wordsworthian, not Eliotesque, and
like the contrast to a more expected "honey in the rock" image. The other
two stanzas could go with no loss, it seems to me. (How easy it is to be
ruthless with someone else's poem!)


 
>> I was never politic
>> the mute sky punishes me
>> 
>> a great empty bell
>> trembling with starlight
>> 
>> that I cannot hear
>> I cannot understand
> 
> Yes!
> 
>> my soul thirsts, o beloved rain
>> listening for your steps
>> 
>> irises slide through ash
>> towards the rumour of your undressing
>> 
>> and whisper in your humours
>> all night long
> 
> Another thumbs up. Lovely music in the fourth line particularly.

I dunno--the vaguely biblical/babylonian/o susanna diction makes me wiggle
with impatience in my seat, and the rhyme of "rumour"/"humours" goes
ca-thunk on my ear.
 

 
>> absolute poem
>> mocks the empty hand
>> 
>> divides itself by infinity
>> resolves as nothing
>> 
>> blindly grasps
>> the hems of stars
>> 
>> as if they were a proof
>> against this finitude
>> 
>> fractured by religions
>> and histories and wars
> 
> "the empty hand" could just as well be deleted.
> What about "denominated by infinity"?

But keep "mocks" (somehow)--dunno about "denominates," Randolph, as it's not
exactly synonymous with "divides itself," and I like the double sense of
meieosis (or do I mean "mitosis"? cellular division anyway), which would be
lost for the more theological act or denomination (haha).


> I'd be tempted to drop the last and go for "against this fractured finitude"
> 
>> death is not a man in black
>> death is no one
>> 
>> no one comes
>> down the fluorescent corridor
>> 
>> through the numberless doors
>> and sits by a white bed
>> 
>> to answer the stubborn pain
>> of an old woman
> 
> A bit ordinary?

I didn't find anything but the last stanza "ordinary" myself, and I really
like the way the first stanza reaches back to the ur-Man in Black (Chaucer's
John of Gaunt) only to rocket into modernity with the second stanza's
"fluorescent corridor."

 
>> there was a pool that solaced you
>> in the middle of the forest
>> 
>> in the middle of the pool
>> was a green eye
>> 
>> it looked straight into the sun
>> it never blinked
> 
> I don't get it.

Does it help to see the green eye on a lilypad, Randolph? That doesn't need
stating for me to imagine it, but then again I might be interpolating an
element that's not meant to be there.
 

 
>> a rippling mail of light
>> dulls to grim oils
>> 
>> under night's blunt keel
>> whose wash of litter nudges
>> 
>> small white crosses of bone
>> crumbling on the shoreline
> 
> Is white _and_bone necessary?
> The rhythm stops at keel making it hard for the wash of litter to
> articulate.

Again, the forcing of sentence structure on these otherwise disconnected
images seems to me to weaken their power, and--for what it's worth--I
misread "blunt keel" as "blue keel" the first time through.


 
>> and when you open the door
>> you will find the irises on the table
>> 
>> gathering night in their petals
>> just as you dreamed
> 
> Lovely.

I think the first stanza is too wordy and takes too long, undercutting the
surprise of the irises discovery, and I'd end the sequence with that
stanza--with the power of that image rather than the more
directive/conclusive couplet, which feels tacked on for the sake of neatness
or closure, and in so doing closes off the possibility of a sequel (or
infinity).