I downloaded it... in the process of reading it now. Thank you for sharing
this!

Joanne Draper

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Bradley Omanson
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 8:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Vernal Equinox" by Virginia DeCourcy

Did anyone even bother to read this book?

Download "Vernal Equinox" free as a pdf file at
http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/VernalEquinox.pdf


"Vernal Equinox" is a lyrical cycle of seven poems written in the author's
twenty-ninth year. They reflect her learning in literature, philosophy and
the classics, but are less meditations of intellect and erudtion than songs
of the unconscious, drawing their imagery from ancient Mediterranean wells,
from Egyptian, Hebrew and Greek traditions.

Virginia DeCourcy's first publication was an epistemological study on the
nature of learning written when she was sixteen. During the same year she
wrote a regular editorial column for the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph.
She graduated with honors from Rockford College with a double major in
classics and philosophy. Subsequently she studied the conservation of rare
books and manuscripts at the University of Chicago and journalism at the
University of Minnesota. She died tragically in 1986 at the age of
thirty-six. This book is the only public appearance of her poetry.

from "Rainy Hyades":

        When I found spring in a thicket, in a world grown old,
        she wore a golden embroidered cap
        like Persephone's, close-fitting as skin,
        to hide the secret hair of her autumn:
        such was Hyades rising in the enigma of rain,
        as the halo wound about the sun
        on yearning days ~~
        its passion remembered:
        a golden claw that accompanies
        the face of the sphynx.
                                  I loved the body,
        its rainy coolness against black deeps
        like a violet wild on a far tundra ~~
        to nourish beyond the short span of the moon,
        creating unnatural lines of grace
        among thawing streams where black carp drift
        before the divining tree.


from "Pilgrim":

        As a swift horseman on urgent journey
        through a bleak roumania of foothills and snow,
        (no familiar roof toward evening),
        I entered the dark unknown of a wood
        and there discovered, in a small clearing,
        a holy burial ground of stakes
        and crucifixes, fresh-driven.

        The saints all hung there, flayed and torn,
        noble prey like lion or stag,
        in the art of medieval venery ~~
        dark blood staining their humble linen.

        It is painful
        to approach the lord in rushing night ~~
        his touch like fire that rips the face,
        twisting the sinews of the world
                to make
        a beatific faith.


Download "Vernal Equinox" free as a pdf file at

http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/VernalEquinox.pdf