NOTE
In the
original, the sex of the person
at the next
table is ambiguous.
The anonymous
speaker is
not an imaginary
character.
The first
version
was written
with the
title,
“Love It
More.”
Loosely
rhymed.
The speaker
encumbered
by love. Threes,
threes
& threes.
Three roses
& three
stems.
Red where in
the whorls
petal lying
in its glow,
her
immaculate white bed
mounts a
lonely street.
I’m just now
going through Juliet Patterson’s first trade collection, The Truant Lover (Beacon NY: Nightboat Books, 2006), thanks to the
author’s generous gift through the mail, after I recently reviewed her Albion Books chapbook [see my review of such here]. The Truant Lover is an absolutely magnificent and startling collection
of poems. What appeals immediately is the silence and slowness that radiate
from her lines, and her fragments each force a pause that strikes, deep into
the heart. Patterson manages to compose poems that contain just about
everything—from Lorine Niedecker, Francesca Woodman, origami, small splashes of
blue—and the density of her language sends breathless chills down the spine. With
her repeated poems referencing and working variations on portraiture—“Who is
her Other a Figure in the Picture Attending,” “Self-Portraits (after Francesca
Woodman),” and the two poems titled “Study for Self-Portraiture”—she highlights
her use of the poem as explorations of the portrait, composing studies that
explore a series of designations, and a series of studies on what portraiture
allows. We might not know what a particular subject (whether the self or other)
might look like, but we understand full well what the subject contains.
STUDY FOR SELF-PORTRAITURE
If it had no
pencil, would it try mine—now dull & tender
& sweet. If
it had no word, would it make the daisy
most as big
as I was when it plucked me.
Would those
eyes see even less than the tiny nostrils
Breathe. Would
the penis be slighted, its tip flush
with the contour
of thigh if the forearm left
the torso to
swing into space, narrow in the grass.
If it came to
rest just where you might expect
a signature,
would steep rows of white seats swell
for a pencil,
a drawing hand. Would the grass divide
as with a
comb. Would the penis suggest the conceit of another
pun, for
example, genitals = genius, penis = pen
or I’m
nobody! Who are you? Would everything work
by
repetition, telling each to each: you, you & you.
Would the eye
then demand horizon, or more precisely,
would the eye
knot & bite its thread. Would it lay an emphatic
thumb with
the flutter of something really happening.
Would it be
the funeral loose in my body so long it seemed
yesterday across
the threshold on the next page.
How does such an open, fragmented poetic manage to be so damned precise? These poems, on the
complexity of living and being, accomplish a remarkable precision, even as they
display considerable emotional risk. Everyone should be reading this remarkable
book: can I make that any clearer?
AMERICAN REVERIE
We are
thinking of the tender mouth of the rabbit pulling
at blades of
grass. A flower,
if you blink,
from bowel to breast.
We want to be
so beautiful.
If we wanted,
we could remember
anything. The
eyes of the rabbit
might be open
or closed. There is Friday
& then
Saturday. A season changes, years
Pass. The long
grass lays itself down.
What may be
better & what may be
worse &
what may be lover
nobody knows.
Yes, there is a rabbit on the lawn & the wish
comes true
before you make it.
Do you know
what you’ve seen?
Do you know
what to do?
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