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#1466 - Thursday, June 19, 2003 - Editor: Jerry
This edition of The Highlights consists of a few poems selected from the following web page: http://www.onlinepoetryclassroom.org/links/poetlinks.cfm?prmAlpha=R
First you might want to view some unusual sacred images at http://www.livejournal.com/community/sacredphoto/. I believe you'll need a fast connection.
--Jerry
Ron Padgett
Fixation
It's not that hard to climb up
on a cross and have nails driven
into your hands and feet.
Of course it would hurt, but
if your mind were strong enough
you wouldn't notice. You
would notice how much farther
you can see up here, how
there's even a breeze
that cools your leaking blood.
The hills with olive groves fold in
to other hills with roads and huts,
flocks of sheep on a distant rise.
Kay Ryan
Emptiness cannot be
compressed. Nor can it
fight abuse. Nor is there
an endless West hosting
elk, antelope, and the
tough cayuse. This is
true also of the mind:
it can get used.
Kay Ryan
Death by Fruit
Only the crudest
of the vanitas set
ever thought you had to get
a skull into the picture
whether you needed
its tallowy color
near the grapes or not.
Others, stopping to consider
shapes and textures,
often discovered that
eggs or aubergines
went better, or leeks,
or a plate of string beans.
A skull is so dominant.
It takes so much
bunched up drapery,
such a ponderous
display of ornate cutlery,
just to make it less prominent.
The greatest masters
preferred the subtlest vanitas,
modestly trusting to fruit baskets
to whisper ashes to ashes,
relying on the poignant exactness
of oranges to release
like a citrus mist
the always fresh fact
of how hard we resist
how briefly we’re pleased.
Kay Ryan
Nothing Ventured
Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
it's the big wager.
Don't you wonder
how people think
the banks of space
and time don't matter?
How they'll drain
the big tanks down to
slime and salamanders
and want thanks?
~ ~ ~
Two Poems by Kay Ryan
Chemise
What would the self
disrobed look like,
the form undraped?
There is a flimsy cloth
we can't take off—
some last chemise
we can't escape—
a hope more intimate
than paint
to please.
That Will to Divest
Milan Kundera
Action creates
a taste
for itself.
Meaning once
you've swept
the shelves
of spoons
and plates
you kept
for guests,
it gets harder
not to also
simplify the larder,
not to dismiss
rooms, not to
divest yourself
of all the chairs
but one, not
to test what
singleness can bear,
once you've begun.
Every once in a while
we need a
backward miracle
that will strip language,
make it hold for
a minute: just the
vessel with the
wine in it —
a sacramental
refusal to multiply,
reclaiming the
single loaf
and the single
fish thereby.
Matthew Rohrer
You have already noted the girlish beauty
of the Morning Glory,
the delicate lavender panties.
Looking around you,
as far as you can see,
plants are imprisoned.
Each morning Morning
Glories open upstairs,
out of sight.
Each night the concrete lies
like a hot compress on the dirt.
Thank you for your brief attention.