"The New American Gothic" by Criselda VasquezA Poem on Criselda Vasquez’s ‘New American Gothic,’ by Bruce Dale Wise The Society February 21, 2022 Culture, Ekphrastic, Poetry 22 Comments . A Working Man and Wife “…aware of the humanity on the other side of the door.” —Criselda Vasquez They stand before some distant trees, on pavement, amber, gray,a three-door cargo van, a drab-red Astro Chevrolet,together, working man and wife, he with his upheld hoe,she with red bucket and her cleaners, hanging down and low.She wears a slender necklace, light-blue top, black pants and shoes.He wears a light-gray sweatshirt, steel-blue pants, foot-gear abused.He’s looking forward, she aside, a thin beard rounds his mouth;they seem to be two people who have traveled from the south.Low draped a plastic Lysol bottle, ‘HI’ in windowed dust;their faces solemn, classic, inelastic, proud, nonplussed. . . Bruce Dale Wise is a poet currently residing in Texas. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)Trending now: 22 Responses jd February 21, 2022 Loved this Ekphrastic poem! Thank you. Reply BDW February 22, 2022 In my early years of poetry, I was drawn deeply into ekphrastic poetry; I even created a PostModernist structure—the bilding [from Bild, in German]—to deal with architecture, photography, and the plastic arts, especi’lly painting. Its basic structure was a syllabic form, 12 x 12, and used a Fibonacci split, 89/55, which could be extended into larger structures, e.g., 144/89. Eventually, however, it deteriorated into metric verse, as I sought a tie-in to the Romantics via the Modernists; so today I rarely use it; and but for myself and a few poets, like Mr. Burke, it has been rarely used. It was the kind of form I liked to use for paintings, like the iconic “American Gothic” by Modernist Grant Wood (1891-1942), though, I believe, that poem might have been a sonnet, written in the heyday of my sonnet-writing. Anyway, although I cannot tell specifically what Ms. Donovan’s appreciation entails; for me what I appreciated in the painting of Vasquez, and, therefore longed to place into the tennos, along with the nobility of the man and his wife, were the Astro Chevrolet, the plastic Lysol bottle, and the “HI” in windowed dust, as pieces of the accoutrement of our era. Reply Allegra Silberstein February 21, 2022 I love Vasquez’s paintings honor her people and thank you for your lovely poem…Allegra Reply BDW February 22, 2022 Although Ms. Silberstein attributes loveliness to this tennos, I think that is an attribute more appropriately applied to her own strands of words, which, in a quiet cummings-esque tone, attempt one thing that I admire: present poetry and dance as a unified artform. In that, though I know we are so far from the power of the Ancient Greeks, it still bears reminding, from the sheen of a Jan Steen in silver to a PostModern Shindig or Hullabaloo. Reply Jonathan Kinsman February 21, 2022 Very good poem, but I think the word choice at the end is not what you intended to write: “Perplexed or confused?” There is a movement in nonstandard (that is, informal) American English to “unperturbed,” however, this site tends to come down on the side of SAE unless the word or phrase is used in an ironic sense. Or did you mean to do that here? Reply C.B. Anderson February 21, 2022 I’m not sure where you will come down on the “nonplussed” issue, Bruce, but I think that this is some of the best work of yours I have yet read here. Reply BDW February 23, 2022 It ever seems odd to me to look back on works that I have left behind; they are always strangely off from what it is I’m doing at that moment. So, too, this tennos, of one or two months ago, seems to me [emst]. “A very good poem? This is some [?] of the best work of yours I have read here? I feel, as T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) often did, when looking back at essays and poems he had written, that somehow he hadn’t gotten quite to what it was he was attempting to say. What I did notice, in looking back at this poem, which I didn’t notice at the time of its writing, was that its view’s backdrop drew mostly from Modernist Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). I wonder why. Be that as it may, I definitely intended to use “nonplussed” as my anchor—from Latin, nōn plūs (no more). It is true, as was mentioned above, that my usage, becoming more common since the Modernist period (1900-1950), though controversial, is certainly acceptable; nor have I ever simply accepted SAE unconditionally. Although Mr. Mantyk, one of three or four of my favourite American editors, is tied to certain traditional elements of poetry written in English, he has frequently allowed occasional controversial aspects of my writing into this portal (albeit sometimes with changes), and I definitely appreciate his willingness to do so, especially despite his disagreements. In that respect he is a remarkable editor. Reply Margaret Coats February 26, 2022 The mostly descriptive tennos seems quite static; it naturally leads to the concluding word “nonplussed.” But the picture and your title, Bruce, “A Working Man and Wife,” suggest that the static posture is something adopted perhaps proudly, perhaps defensively. This is not work without hope. Your description implies the same; these are active if private persons. As the former driver of an often dusty red Astro van myself, I can say the vehicle is a great seven-seater family van. It takes people to places where they want to go. And Bruce, if you have the energy for a tennos sequence on American Gothic, there are limitless possibilities. For one that is truly perplexed, non-working, and immobile, try the one with a coronavirus sun. You only see the couple hiding indoors if you blow up the image. Better artistic tension in this one! Reply BDW February 26, 2022 It’s difficult to tell what Ms. Coats means; but something along these lines? Coronal by B. S. Eliud Acrewe ὥρη μὲν πολέων μύθων, ὥρη δὲ καὶ ὕπνου: —Homer An Easter Interlude I Time present and time past are not the same, though they may seem so in some eyes. Will they be in the future—as a dream— as has the future been within these passing present times?. Who dares disturb the moment with his agonies, his crimes, his angst, his rhymes, his schemes, his lines? Who dares disturb these years with fears, with tears. All disappears upon this fallen Sphere, if not immediately. Hitomaro, then it may tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow go away. And time, if unredeemable, as it has been, must be an echo in the poechore of possibility. The roses open in the garden by the plastic bench; buds harden, then they flower, and the petals drop. O, Mensch! A droning plane, the moaning train, the highway traffic stir, an orchestra of birds: these sounds occur and then disburse. Green leaves unfurl in spring’s fresh world, in the vibrant air; but yesterday, today, we are are not going anywhere. It’s our response to the unseen coronavirus blues that whirl round our lives, like azure sky’s refracted hues. Humanity cannot bear very much reality; for this, and for so much, we long for ideality. II The lightning, thunder, rain, and trilling wire in the blood: the bright and white new sidewalks partly covered by the mud, the wide and empty paved street with no cars or people on ‘t, the grand e-lec-tric-sub-sta-tion, an isolated haunt, its huge electric towers, rising upward, gray and high, like as the graves of giants, silver crosses in the sky, declaring desolation on the taxes of the time, the thrilling danger of the passersby to the sublime. One hears the tweeting tenants of the houses and the trees; the people and the birds are tapping out their varied screes. It is so still, it’s like the setting of a sci-fi scene, dystopian, apocalyptic, filled with static cling. The hands of time have stopped, so too the walking of the feet; one only sees occasionally someone on the street. This is the point. One sees the concrete ship of state encased within the power grid, the turning world’s fate there faced. I cannot say how long this place, placed in the memory, will stay, endure eternity—perhaps a century— not long in the wide scheme of things—perhaps a moment’s tick— an instant in the infinite, a minute minute’s kick. III Here in the daylight walking all alone in Easter’s Sun. The desolation goes for miles; there isn’t anyone. One climbs the rise and turns the corner on to Trinity. There, seeming far away, it is the Gardens one can see. To get there one must go down Calvary. One has no choice. The blazing Sun shines overhead, the soil’s thick and moist. The streets are brilliant, blinding white, fresh pavement, smooth and flat. Such emptiness, and vacancy. This is where one is at. The wind is cold and bitter, plastic flags are flittering. The World is twittering away…its time…is glittering. Descending lower, there beyond the Be-All and the bend, one comes…to…find the Gardens gated, one can still descend. The stories grow beyond the skies of Hammurabi’s eyes, the concrete engineering for the flooding’s raging rise. Beyond the plague of Locust, one can see the Highway fills with eighteen-wheelers, trucks and vans, and fast au-to-mo-biles. Their movements mesmerizing as they go their metaled ways; they speed along at sixty down the Highway of Amaze. One turns around, poised at the future…in the present…past. One longs for immortality…until the very last. IV We leave behind the Gardens, quite alert, not soporous, aware some thing’s not right, no entry there was offered us. We leave the Crimson Circle, as we head back to the House. No mockingbird is singing here; we cannot hear a sound. We leave old Abram to his miracles and then ascend. We leave the Be-All and the End-All. We turn around the bend. No bell is ringing, rich deep tones accentuating day. Verbena of the Prairie, purple Moradillas sway. We touch the Spring bouquet, not clutch or cling, we cannot stay. We only stray a moment from the Way—then go away. V The Word inscribes the World, here upon this open stage, so vast and grand, this Promised Land, that stretches through the Age. Though silent, it describes reality within the mind. It is the miracle humanity can seek and find. The form, the pattern, the idea in the Universe, allowing us to grasp the Be-All and th’ Eternal Curse. In the beginning was no knowledge of the End or Start. We only walked and walked due to the pumping of the heart. Before the end there was no time we did not know we were; that is the burden of existence, as we know the Word. We move along, unmoved, unloved, desiring only change. forever for awhile attempting ever greater range. But to what purpose, caught within the limits of our lives, what is the reason anything we formulate survives? We breathe it in, the bitter wind, again, again, again, the azure heavens, argon, oxygen and nitrogen, and all the other elements that make our atmosphere. The timeless essence of Eternity is also here. It stretches far before and after us. How could it end? And so we have come here to note a thing or two, and then… Meadowedge I In the beginning is the end, and as the end begins, one comes upon a row of houses at the city’s end. An open field, grand and vast, is covered in lush grass, so green beneath the azure blue of sky’s extensive gas, the nitrogen and oxygen, refracted by the Sun. It is the same as it was when the journey had begun. Here at the meadow’s edge, the World opens fresh and new, upon the blades of grass, the tiny diamond drops of dew, the crickets chirping, crystalline and clear across the grass, a choir that acquires the ears of any who may pass. In the beginning is the end, and as the dawn goes on, across the open field, leaving lovely lane and lawn, one comes upon another realm beyond the deep red rose, to long rock walls, and cement slabs, some scattered boulder flows. This is the only gray within the giant bowl of green surrounded by a line of trees along the skyline seen. And there above the trees, like as some alien ship sent, a giant water tower sits, high as a monument, a cross between a classic dome on pillars standing tall, or giant spider, concrete, reinforced, in steel sprawl. II What is coronavirus doing, vexing spring with plague; the creatures of the meadow unconcerned on wing or leg. The rabbit leaps across the flowing water in the ditch that slowly trickles there beneath the rusty red-brown bridge. A pair of ducks sits midst a puddle on a concrete slab, a pair of killdeer tries distracting one who does not gab. The swallows dive about the field, oblivious to stars, the morning Sun, but one among the constellated wars. Its blasting penetrates this stage, the crickets chattering, converting hydrogen to helium, mass shattering. The hoped for calm, the longed for balm the pleasing hebetude— Have we deceived ourselves again, with peaceful quietude? Since every moment is a new and shocking vision to reality, we must be willing to exchange each view. The past is but experience the dead had come to know, the wisdom of the ages in the pages of the old. The rose bush at the wooden fence, the honeysuckle swells, the scarlet harlot in the garden, the perfumed purple spells: Though it seem not to be, the houses will not stay in place. Don’t let enchantment keep one from humility and grace. III It isn’t much at the beginning, hardly anything, some mild, slanting slopes, a narrow dale skinnying. It’s not a place for gods. They do not frequent its rough trough; and at its low and mean surroundings, they would rather scoff. But in the end this is where some have come to pause and think, where slowly what is not a creek begins to start and sink. Here at the rusty bridge one sees a pond where frogs abide, the tall and thin green reeds, pink evening primrose at its side, as well as golden orange-yellow desert chicory, each like a little living sun in windy flickering. The distant goal so far away, is not infinity, but hard to comprehend, like as the God of Trinity. It measures time, not as we do, its canvas greater space; it slowly swells beyond the Gardens of this parklike place. The morning doves don’t lie awake at night; at light they coo, perduring time, not calculating any future view. They sleep before their morning watch; there is no past for them; they’re motivated by their instincts; their main stratagem. Meandering, the creek bed, only tri-ckl-ing at most, the raging drainage of the deluge, vanished like a ghost. IV One walks along, alone, and leaves the oak leaves on the trees, the hoped-for health, the absence of the hated, late disease, reminding us of Adam’s curse, as we proceed beyond the roses and euonymus, the wakening at dawn. Across the meadow’s length, the stridulating, crickets chirp, the gossip, grand, mechanical, a whirling, swirling whirr, accentuated only by the swallows overhead, or rushing winds across the massive, grassy area, like as some futuristic ruined Circus Maximus. And though we may now call this Monday good, it taxes us. V So here one finds oneself beside the huge arena bowl, the cricket match, a crowd of insects rattling en el Sol. The distant elevated storage tank, high in the sky, and gleaming white, reminds one that the urban sprawl is nigh. Each venture is a new beginning to another end, and each conclusion is a start to one more re-ascend. Dawn takes one’s breath away. One breathes the fragrant, fresh air in. Ah, grass, or straw, the air is redolent with each rich wind. If not propitious, then at least one makes the great attempt, here at this empty, brimming place with nature’s full assent. The telly utters news of the new novel plague’s success, but here one is each step removed from that and its duress. The strangeness of the World and its many calls and cars is far from here and morning’s daily masking of the stars. Not merely is a lifetime not enough to comprehend, it isn’t long enough to find assurance at the end. When here and now both cease to matter, and all energy is dissipated from these words and their vain venery, how then shall old men be explorers of this endless climb to the sub-lime and hoar-frost rime that comes to all in time? Cooper Creek I The gods are angry, rum-bl-ing across the open skies. The dark clouds hover over us, but there is no surprise. And when the lightning and the thunder vanish as they must; it is as if the gods are gone again. Who can we trust? Fierce rains start Cooper Creek beside the highway and the hill. Without them it’s naught but the adumbration of a rill, that grows until the water that it carries has an edge, a problem that confronts the builders when they build a bridge. O pioneers, who cleared the way, constructing routes to go, o worshippers of the machine who helped us cross its flow. Beside the first bridge one can see a rabbit leaps its banks, so narrow and so still it hardly seems more than a thanks. Beyond, it goes to Trinity, past so much past to bear. The river goes without us to the sea, its constant lair. Bestride the second bridge, one spots a little larger marsh, its charm is more the lushness of the plants within its charge. Beyond the crickets, one can hear the traffic on the road, each vehicle in its own way there carrying its load, the road a bridge itself though hardly visible at all, unlike the arched bridge with wood planks above the water’s crawl. II Where is the end, the soundless waiting, silent withering? calamitous annunciation, winding slithering? the consequence of further days, the rotting of the log? the slimy vegetation of the cricket and the toad? Here at the green and wooden-slatted bridge that arched the flood, spring’s brisk winds are unfurled, hardly noticed by the World. There is an end; for time and nature spare no one or thing, including all the questioning and answering in spring. The creek meanders through the banks past plant and shallow pant; the shadows of the morning cast their great lengths at a slant. As one gets older, one should be exploring pioneer, especi’lly when the future is inevitably near. One sees a man and woman with a baby and a dog atop the cement engineering, over reed and bog. One sees the walkers, runners, bikers, o, so many souls, each passing one, and you as well, part of the cosmos whole. And yet so small, each like an ant upon a rugged rock, in gorgeous morning sunlight clear or near fog-covered frog. It was a tone, almost a moan, both deep and serious, which steadied, whether weather halcyon or furious. III The future is no faded song, no Royal Rose perfumed. It too, in time, once oped and closed, will also be exhumed. As the coronavirus spreads, from there to far and near; time is no healer, when the patient is no longer here. Bulrushes, reeds, cattails and sedge, pink evening primrose stalks, greet those, who pass in dawn’s light dance, on rides, in runs or walks. This is a place of Evers, there a church and here a school. A large, brown, wood cross stands…for more than just the golden rule. Forever’s not a long time; it can never be the same. It is like as the future, come what will and come what may. The past is over and the future is beyond the news; but here upon the bench that’s only one of many views, you pause to catch your breath; it is too hard to take all in— the many passing images. The head begins to spin. Each time of peace is but the rest between this and the next. All’s so complex, and then there is the editing of text. How can one make sense of the grasses and the passing creek? Each time you cross its flowing water is itself unique. As Krishna told Arjuna to buck up and face it—all— the voyager must fare well as he journeys spacetime’s fall. IV O, all along its length, they go about their business—birds— without the everchanging rearranging, gaging words. Upon the bright green railings of the arching bridge, they perch, or down beside the marshy route, they make their driving search. Across the catchment battlements, the killdeer scurry fast; at this good spot, they want all travelers to hurry past. Above the first bridge flying round about in swirling sweeps, barn swallows seek out insects in the scented air so sweet. Atop the lamppost singing in the early morning light, o, mimic, many-tongued, the mockingbird sings out and bright. V Eventu’lly one comes to find there are new routes to take, another way, another day, another heart to brake. Observe disease in signatures, evoke biography from wrinkles of the open palm, from fingers, tragedy. The tea leaves of this morning’s drink alert one to the press of time upon each individual and each distress, o whether one is on the shores of Asia or this path in North America beyond Achilles and his wrath. The trail ends before the dead end of Longfellow Lane, here where a lone white egret cautiously surveys terrain, and then flies high into a circle on enlightened wing, above the squirrels round the oaks and creek bed widening. Here the impossible connects the future to the past, the movement of the open freedom of the present, vast. Here one returns back to the place where one begins again, past empty church and empty playing field devoid of men, past wakened morning doves that take a sprinkler’s shaking bath: your word a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. The Building Site I Midspring is not eternal, as the days increase in length, here, too, between the tropics and the poles requires strength. The Sun flames overhead, the concrete way hard underfoot; the wind blasts through one’s very soul, a howling, growling whoot. The glare’s mind-blinding here on Trinity, when facing east; one half expects some serpent to attack one at one’s feet. One fears the shadows up ahead, the dark things on the road, the sudden snapping of a banner shakes one to one’s soul. There are no houses here, no workers building brand new homes; this is the zero spring we’d heard of not so long ago. If you had come this way, the route you took and you would take, come from the place where you had been, and all that did you make, in May, it still would be the same, the journey is required; not knowing what you came for was not dreamed of nor desired. Perhaps you were a broken king, a damaged, ravaged queen, mad scientist, philosopher, or priest of the unseen, whatever were your circumstances matters not at all, nor the locale, an empty city or a woodland sprawl. If you had come this way, at any time, from anywhere, you, too, would take this odyssey, America or there. II Here where there are no houses yet, earth, water, air, and fire, all live in mouth, nose, ears and eyes, the fingers of desire. Cleared lots are yielding to wild flowers, grasses, shrubs, like as great brier patches, prepping for both wood and bush. the water tower in the distance, closer than the Moon, above the fire hydrants, sewer covers, run-off too. There in a drainage ditch a yellow-crowned night heron stands, until disturbed, and then flies into azure sky-flight bands. The block electric boxes sit beneath the crossing wires, where scissortail flycatcher greets brilliant solar fires. In these days of hands washing, social distancing and masks, near Calvary at Sunrise, a lone traveler is passed. In the uncertain hour, the lone traveler goes on before the blin-ding, daz-zl-ing, un-ra-vel-ing of Dawn. The traveler proceeds along the silver cyclone fence, rust-coloured Indian grass there, ghost-like and thin, but dense, bindweed, like tiny morning glories, sulphur cinquefoil gold, green johnsongrass, star thistles, purple, shapes and colours bold, then pauses at the intersection, Crown and Trinity, a prayer at the breaking day—time and infinity. III The walking, biking, driving, far from daily press of news, indifferent to Internet, detached from clashing views, here in the freedom of the present, past and future haze, renewed, transfigured, in another pattern of these days; of no immediate concern, the strife and fight of life; the vacant land, all workers gone, with vegetation rife. And yet the silence and the emptiness is grand and vast; so many are the things we see and make that will not last. Why strive to purify the language of the human tribe? Who wants it, cares to find it, or refine it, by and by? And when the heavy rains appear, up swells the little creek, and it becomes torrential, exponential to its peak. It pours along, and roars so strong, in a relentless rush; the trickle turns into an urgent, surging, crushing, whoosh. The ditches rise to creeks, the creeks, like raging rivers run; the grasses and the sedges bend until the swell is gone. No herons sit upon their banks, no egrets fly above, no crickets chirr, no swallows chirp, there coos no morning dove. Beneath the sewer covers, plashing waters hasten on, and charge across the landscape till the hurly burly’s done. IV Each day is a chance to achieve a new discovery, and this day is a chance for hope and some recovery. The morning dove breaks Sunday’s air, ascending once again. The atmosphere is flushed, fresh, present, post-diluvian. The black-eyed susan starters take the building site by storm, as May’s days lengthen and become increasingly more warm. The Sun is back to dry this tract of land and love and life; The Sun is blazing, it’s the true inventor of the fire. The earth is heated, water dried up, air warmed thoroughly. One pauses momentarily beside the stately tree. V As every poem is an epitaph, so are its parts; and as one nears the finish line, resigned to flaws and starts, amidst the morning bird-calls, like incessant ringing phones, and highway traffic roaring past with its loud blasting tones, one comes to see, in this the land’s vast span of dirt and plants, utility poles shiny, silver, cross-like in one’s glance, that everything depends upon the blinding, blazing Sun, concisely, everything that everyone has ever done; and so we make these visits, take these transits, wake to be, filled with profound, acute humility diurnally. We learn the vulnerable are not just only the diseased, but shall not cease from exploration till we are deceased, When the last of earth to discover is that which we find in the beginning was the end to which we set the mind, we shall be satisfied that we have tried all that we did. All will be well, though it be hell, within this power grid. The droning of the plane, the moaning of the train unseen, the groaning trucks, the going flux, the constant changing scene, here by hackberry, honey locust, post oak and mesquite, box elder, cedar elm, and ash, one still can feel complete. Reply Margaret Coats February 28, 2022 This was not what I had in mind, but I haven’t had time to read it. Give me a while, and I’ll get back to you! Reply Margaret Coats March 5, 2022 When I suggested a tennos sequence on American Gothic, I simply meant poems dealing with some of the many pictorial reinterpretations of Grant Wood. Here you’ve gone beyond a sequence to a corona, which is considerably more structured. Or it will be if it turns out to be like a crown of sonnets! This kind of work takes a lot of attention, and so far, I’ve just managed to read “An Easter Interlude” with attention. You have a remarkable array of allusions and wordplay, within this treatment of the time and modernity and eternity themes. I’m unsure where you’re going with it, but it is a pleasure to read and contemplate. I certainly agree on the longing for ideality (not quite the same as longing for immortality, although that is here, too). Comment to be continued when I have enough real time to do more reading! Reply BDW March 15, 2022 as per Beau Lecsi Werd: There should be a comma, not a period, before Hitomaro (c. 653 – c. 709), the prominent waka poet of the Man’yōshū. BDW March 7, 2022 Ms. Coats had suggested a tennos sequence of pictorial reinterpretations of Modernist Grant Wood (1891-1942), but this artist has really only focused on Wood’s iconic self-portrait and his famous “American Gothic”. So many other Modernist painters (Klee, Picasso, etc.) have elicited far more ekphrastic poems, as, for example, lengthy sequences, done in bildings and sonnets, on paintings, like those of Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), and more moderate sequences, in bildings and sonnets, as on Da Vinci (1452-1519) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) paintings, which have influenced my writing more, Rembrandt with his colour choices and content, and Da Vinci with his clash of focused perceptions. Sometimes painters have been used in lengthy poems, like Whisler (1834-1903) in “Nocturnes” with its London setting, or haiku poets in poems, like “Cicadas’ Voices”. I rarely use the tennos ekphrastic’lly, having created the bilding for that purpose; so this tennos on Vasquez’s “New American Gothic” is a rarity. The tennos, invented in the previous decade, is an American inversion of the sonnet, so though “Coronal”, a series of thirty-six tennos, approaches “a crown of sonnets”, it is not quite that. Yet, in that comment, Ms. Coats’ literary criticism reveals a brilliant acuity. Reply Tamara Beryl Latham March 12, 2022 Bruce, your poem (with both its tone and imagery) is heart-wrenching. I would imagine these migrant figures are seen quite frequently by you in Texas. They do so much for so little, as they work in the heat of the day with very little break time. Yet, their rewards are not on this earth. The words you’ve chosen in your poem, reflecting the artistry of Criselda Vasquez in “New American Gothic,” should also mirror the subject matter, as I feel yours do. Yet, I believe, as another poster has suggested, “perplexed” is a better synonym than “nonplussed” for the poem’s end. Nicely penned. 🙂 Reply BDW March 15, 2022 In going back to the poem, to check if “perplexed” was a better definition (the tennos is such an open form, it is natural for readers to supply diction and meanings that come to them); in the end, Ms. Latham’s suggestion does not work for the artist, as that was not the intended meaning. He really meant not bothered, surprised, unmoved, id est, strong. And though the artist thought “nonplussed” as such was a good anchor to the poem, it is one more example of how once a work of art has been released into the World, its interpretations are beyond the author—words are our common treasure—and it is thanks to close readers, like Ms. Latham and Mr. Kinsman, where we can see this. I am reminded of a short story by American PostModernist Eudora Welty (1909-2001), “A Worn Path”, where the artist had a different take on her work than her readers. Where she imagined a continuation of a hard life, her readers imagined death was implied, and thought that made the story better; I suppose, more profound. I certainly cannot argue against an interpretation, but can only give reasons for what was aimed at. Having spent much of my second and third decades in hard labour, from farm work, industrial work, waiting, cleaning, digging, the military, et cetera, I did not find Vasquez’ couple tragic or heart-wrenching; in fact, I related to them, as proud workers. I think there is a deep satisfaction in working hard and well, no matter what remuneration one might receive. I remember working a whole day, picking over an already picked-over field of cucumbers in the early 1980s, and receiving only $2.00. Despite the low pay for that day’s work, I have yet to forget that day. In Eudora Welty’s tale, it is the unpaid grandmother’s labour of love that is central to the short story. Reply Tamara Beryl Latham March 16, 2022 Completely understood, Bruce. You alone know what you meant to say and the definitions of “perplexed” and “nonplussed” are not exact. Promise I won’t offer suggestions to any of the poets on the board from this day forward. 🙂 Tamara Beryl Latham March 16, 2022 BDW says: ” I did not find Vasquez’ couple tragic or heart-wrenching; in fact, I related to them, as proud workers.” My reply: Sorry, BDW. I initially believed you meant your poem to align with the intent of the artist. Vasquex says: “I want to expose the heart-breaking pain of what a Mexican immigrant’s family goes through.” “I strive to capture how their expressions deliver that sense of tiredness, resignation, and quiet acceptance.” https://twistedsifter.com/2019/10/the-new-american-gothic-by-criselda-vasquez/ BDW March 17, 2022 On the contrary, I hope Ms. Latham will continue to “offer suggestions to any of the poets on the board from this day forward”; for it is from critiques, like hers, that one can discuss the higher purposes of artistry…especially from a NewMillennial writer and chemist from Brisbane, living now in Virginia, who has written such poems as “The Holocaust—a Poem of Remembrance”. Perhaps Ms. Latham could entertain, as T. S. Eliot has, in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” the analogy which “takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide”, as it relates to the creation of poetry. Margaret Coats March 14, 2022 I’m completing the comment on “Easter Interlude.” Sorry this takes a while, but you gave me a lot to consider, and I am tiring easily while recovering from an injury. From Part II, you focus more clearly and more entertainingly on passages through time and space, with the same brilliant wordplay noted in Part I. The brightness of tone here and the visionary quality of the landscape imply that chronicled real experience is less important. I don’t mean not important, I just get the effect that the words are flying above it. Part III becomes existentialist, though still much airier and more pleasant than reading Sartre. Part IV has the interesting appearance of “we” who are departing. Doesn’t seem worthwhile to say from where or what, but I do wonder if the vegetation reflects your move to Texas. Part V is in the Promised Land, which somehow seems a little disappointing. There is still movement to be made, or having been made. We move from past to present tense. The world in inscribed, the land is described, this is geometrical in a basic sense. It seems unbounded as we are about to move to Meadowledge. It was, in fact, an interlude. How does that read in relation to the poet’s intentions? Reply BDW March 17, 2022 First off, one need not apologize for late commenting on a work of art; for I imagine, each one of us has so much to do, and so much to write about, one never can keep up with either the demands of poetry and prose, or, more importantly, life. As to “Coronal”, there are so many echoes from literature, the author cannot identify them all, even when he finds them, the foremost being T. S. Eliot and Samuel Coleridge. Yet, here again, Ms. Coats has rather brilliantly hit upon another important mental state of the poem—its “visionary quality”. [Is this because she is so focused on the visionary in her own poetry and translations?] I have to admit it was the strangest feeling I have ever had, while writing this work. It felt as if I were upon an “open stage,/ so vast and grand”, and it was as if the words were “flying above” the landscape, “existential” indeed, but not Sartre, Kant, or Marcel, not Nietzsche, nor Heidegger… I do not think the poem everywhere succeeds in this “visionary quality”—but it was definitely there. I wonder if I could even achieve it in such a landscape again. In her wondering, Ms. Coats, correctly points to the landscape as Texan—Cross Timbers, in fact—and the City—the Metroplex— “A droning plane, the moaning train, the highway traffic stir,/ an orchestra of birds: these sounds occur and then disburse.” Reply Tamara Beryl Latham March 18, 2022 Bruce, you’ve obviously looked up my profile. BDW says: “Perhaps Ms. Latham could entertain, as T. S. Eliot has, in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” the analogy which “takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide”, as it relates to the creation of poetry. My reply: Are you referring to the sulfur trioxide reaction”? Platinum or Palladium is used as a catalyst in chemical reactions; however, the catalyst merely speeds up the reaction, it doesn’t take part in it. Are you suggesting I should be a catalyst for poetry? 🙂 My critiques (theoretically) are meaningless, so if people take offence at something I’ve suggested, they shouldn’t. I’m only offering an opinion. With relation to iambic pentameter and whether a rhyme is slightly off (trochee, spondee, feminine rhyme) my ear detects it as not being perfect rhyme, so I might offer a suggestion on an iamb. The poet can either accept my offer or reject it. And as it has been so often stated, “Advice is free, so you’ve neither spent nor lost a penny.” People have offered suggestions on changing certain words in some of my poems and sometimes I make the change and sometimes I don’t. The poet is the one who holds a poetic license. Yes, the Pagan Federation of the U.K. featured my poem on their youtube 2020 Holocaust memorial day channel (my poem starts at 2:05) along with Barbra Streisand’s song. I suppose that’s where you saw it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNuKxvoeFYs Thanks for your reply, BDW. 🙂 Reply Tamara Beryl Latham March 18, 2022 P.S. BDW: Referring to the catalyst, when I say it speeds up the reaction, it doesn’t take part in it, I mean it is neither a reactant or a product and is not consumed during the reaction. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
BDW February 22, 2022 In my early years of poetry, I was drawn deeply into ekphrastic poetry; I even created a PostModernist structure—the bilding [from Bild, in German]—to deal with architecture, photography, and the plastic arts, especi’lly painting. Its basic structure was a syllabic form, 12 x 12, and used a Fibonacci split, 89/55, which could be extended into larger structures, e.g., 144/89. Eventually, however, it deteriorated into metric verse, as I sought a tie-in to the Romantics via the Modernists; so today I rarely use it; and but for myself and a few poets, like Mr. Burke, it has been rarely used. It was the kind of form I liked to use for paintings, like the iconic “American Gothic” by Modernist Grant Wood (1891-1942), though, I believe, that poem might have been a sonnet, written in the heyday of my sonnet-writing. Anyway, although I cannot tell specifically what Ms. Donovan’s appreciation entails; for me what I appreciated in the painting of Vasquez, and, therefore longed to place into the tennos, along with the nobility of the man and his wife, were the Astro Chevrolet, the plastic Lysol bottle, and the “HI” in windowed dust, as pieces of the accoutrement of our era. Reply
Allegra Silberstein February 21, 2022 I love Vasquez’s paintings honor her people and thank you for your lovely poem…Allegra Reply
BDW February 22, 2022 Although Ms. Silberstein attributes loveliness to this tennos, I think that is an attribute more appropriately applied to her own strands of words, which, in a quiet cummings-esque tone, attempt one thing that I admire: present poetry and dance as a unified artform. In that, though I know we are so far from the power of the Ancient Greeks, it still bears reminding, from the sheen of a Jan Steen in silver to a PostModern Shindig or Hullabaloo. Reply
Jonathan Kinsman February 21, 2022 Very good poem, but I think the word choice at the end is not what you intended to write: “Perplexed or confused?” There is a movement in nonstandard (that is, informal) American English to “unperturbed,” however, this site tends to come down on the side of SAE unless the word or phrase is used in an ironic sense. Or did you mean to do that here? Reply
C.B. Anderson February 21, 2022 I’m not sure where you will come down on the “nonplussed” issue, Bruce, but I think that this is some of the best work of yours I have yet read here. Reply
BDW February 23, 2022 It ever seems odd to me to look back on works that I have left behind; they are always strangely off from what it is I’m doing at that moment. So, too, this tennos, of one or two months ago, seems to me [emst]. “A very good poem? This is some [?] of the best work of yours I have read here? I feel, as T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) often did, when looking back at essays and poems he had written, that somehow he hadn’t gotten quite to what it was he was attempting to say. What I did notice, in looking back at this poem, which I didn’t notice at the time of its writing, was that its view’s backdrop drew mostly from Modernist Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). I wonder why. Be that as it may, I definitely intended to use “nonplussed” as my anchor—from Latin, nōn plūs (no more). It is true, as was mentioned above, that my usage, becoming more common since the Modernist period (1900-1950), though controversial, is certainly acceptable; nor have I ever simply accepted SAE unconditionally. Although Mr. Mantyk, one of three or four of my favourite American editors, is tied to certain traditional elements of poetry written in English, he has frequently allowed occasional controversial aspects of my writing into this portal (albeit sometimes with changes), and I definitely appreciate his willingness to do so, especially despite his disagreements. In that respect he is a remarkable editor. Reply
Margaret Coats February 26, 2022 The mostly descriptive tennos seems quite static; it naturally leads to the concluding word “nonplussed.” But the picture and your title, Bruce, “A Working Man and Wife,” suggest that the static posture is something adopted perhaps proudly, perhaps defensively. This is not work without hope. Your description implies the same; these are active if private persons. As the former driver of an often dusty red Astro van myself, I can say the vehicle is a great seven-seater family van. It takes people to places where they want to go. And Bruce, if you have the energy for a tennos sequence on American Gothic, there are limitless possibilities. For one that is truly perplexed, non-working, and immobile, try the one with a coronavirus sun. You only see the couple hiding indoors if you blow up the image. Better artistic tension in this one! Reply
BDW February 26, 2022 It’s difficult to tell what Ms. Coats means; but something along these lines? Coronal by B. S. Eliud Acrewe ὥρη μὲν πολέων μύθων, ὥρη δὲ καὶ ὕπνου: —Homer An Easter Interlude I Time present and time past are not the same, though they may seem so in some eyes. Will they be in the future—as a dream— as has the future been within these passing present times?. Who dares disturb the moment with his agonies, his crimes, his angst, his rhymes, his schemes, his lines? Who dares disturb these years with fears, with tears. All disappears upon this fallen Sphere, if not immediately. Hitomaro, then it may tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow go away. And time, if unredeemable, as it has been, must be an echo in the poechore of possibility. The roses open in the garden by the plastic bench; buds harden, then they flower, and the petals drop. O, Mensch! A droning plane, the moaning train, the highway traffic stir, an orchestra of birds: these sounds occur and then disburse. Green leaves unfurl in spring’s fresh world, in the vibrant air; but yesterday, today, we are are not going anywhere. It’s our response to the unseen coronavirus blues that whirl round our lives, like azure sky’s refracted hues. Humanity cannot bear very much reality; for this, and for so much, we long for ideality. II The lightning, thunder, rain, and trilling wire in the blood: the bright and white new sidewalks partly covered by the mud, the wide and empty paved street with no cars or people on ‘t, the grand e-lec-tric-sub-sta-tion, an isolated haunt, its huge electric towers, rising upward, gray and high, like as the graves of giants, silver crosses in the sky, declaring desolation on the taxes of the time, the thrilling danger of the passersby to the sublime. One hears the tweeting tenants of the houses and the trees; the people and the birds are tapping out their varied screes. It is so still, it’s like the setting of a sci-fi scene, dystopian, apocalyptic, filled with static cling. The hands of time have stopped, so too the walking of the feet; one only sees occasionally someone on the street. This is the point. One sees the concrete ship of state encased within the power grid, the turning world’s fate there faced. I cannot say how long this place, placed in the memory, will stay, endure eternity—perhaps a century— not long in the wide scheme of things—perhaps a moment’s tick— an instant in the infinite, a minute minute’s kick. III Here in the daylight walking all alone in Easter’s Sun. The desolation goes for miles; there isn’t anyone. One climbs the rise and turns the corner on to Trinity. There, seeming far away, it is the Gardens one can see. To get there one must go down Calvary. One has no choice. The blazing Sun shines overhead, the soil’s thick and moist. The streets are brilliant, blinding white, fresh pavement, smooth and flat. Such emptiness, and vacancy. This is where one is at. The wind is cold and bitter, plastic flags are flittering. The World is twittering away…its time…is glittering. Descending lower, there beyond the Be-All and the bend, one comes…to…find the Gardens gated, one can still descend. The stories grow beyond the skies of Hammurabi’s eyes, the concrete engineering for the flooding’s raging rise. Beyond the plague of Locust, one can see the Highway fills with eighteen-wheelers, trucks and vans, and fast au-to-mo-biles. Their movements mesmerizing as they go their metaled ways; they speed along at sixty down the Highway of Amaze. One turns around, poised at the future…in the present…past. One longs for immortality…until the very last. IV We leave behind the Gardens, quite alert, not soporous, aware some thing’s not right, no entry there was offered us. We leave the Crimson Circle, as we head back to the House. No mockingbird is singing here; we cannot hear a sound. We leave old Abram to his miracles and then ascend. We leave the Be-All and the End-All. We turn around the bend. No bell is ringing, rich deep tones accentuating day. Verbena of the Prairie, purple Moradillas sway. We touch the Spring bouquet, not clutch or cling, we cannot stay. We only stray a moment from the Way—then go away. V The Word inscribes the World, here upon this open stage, so vast and grand, this Promised Land, that stretches through the Age. Though silent, it describes reality within the mind. It is the miracle humanity can seek and find. The form, the pattern, the idea in the Universe, allowing us to grasp the Be-All and th’ Eternal Curse. In the beginning was no knowledge of the End or Start. We only walked and walked due to the pumping of the heart. Before the end there was no time we did not know we were; that is the burden of existence, as we know the Word. We move along, unmoved, unloved, desiring only change. forever for awhile attempting ever greater range. But to what purpose, caught within the limits of our lives, what is the reason anything we formulate survives? We breathe it in, the bitter wind, again, again, again, the azure heavens, argon, oxygen and nitrogen, and all the other elements that make our atmosphere. The timeless essence of Eternity is also here. It stretches far before and after us. How could it end? And so we have come here to note a thing or two, and then… Meadowedge I In the beginning is the end, and as the end begins, one comes upon a row of houses at the city’s end. An open field, grand and vast, is covered in lush grass, so green beneath the azure blue of sky’s extensive gas, the nitrogen and oxygen, refracted by the Sun. It is the same as it was when the journey had begun. Here at the meadow’s edge, the World opens fresh and new, upon the blades of grass, the tiny diamond drops of dew, the crickets chirping, crystalline and clear across the grass, a choir that acquires the ears of any who may pass. In the beginning is the end, and as the dawn goes on, across the open field, leaving lovely lane and lawn, one comes upon another realm beyond the deep red rose, to long rock walls, and cement slabs, some scattered boulder flows. This is the only gray within the giant bowl of green surrounded by a line of trees along the skyline seen. And there above the trees, like as some alien ship sent, a giant water tower sits, high as a monument, a cross between a classic dome on pillars standing tall, or giant spider, concrete, reinforced, in steel sprawl. II What is coronavirus doing, vexing spring with plague; the creatures of the meadow unconcerned on wing or leg. The rabbit leaps across the flowing water in the ditch that slowly trickles there beneath the rusty red-brown bridge. A pair of ducks sits midst a puddle on a concrete slab, a pair of killdeer tries distracting one who does not gab. The swallows dive about the field, oblivious to stars, the morning Sun, but one among the constellated wars. Its blasting penetrates this stage, the crickets chattering, converting hydrogen to helium, mass shattering. The hoped for calm, the longed for balm the pleasing hebetude— Have we deceived ourselves again, with peaceful quietude? Since every moment is a new and shocking vision to reality, we must be willing to exchange each view. The past is but experience the dead had come to know, the wisdom of the ages in the pages of the old. The rose bush at the wooden fence, the honeysuckle swells, the scarlet harlot in the garden, the perfumed purple spells: Though it seem not to be, the houses will not stay in place. Don’t let enchantment keep one from humility and grace. III It isn’t much at the beginning, hardly anything, some mild, slanting slopes, a narrow dale skinnying. It’s not a place for gods. They do not frequent its rough trough; and at its low and mean surroundings, they would rather scoff. But in the end this is where some have come to pause and think, where slowly what is not a creek begins to start and sink. Here at the rusty bridge one sees a pond where frogs abide, the tall and thin green reeds, pink evening primrose at its side, as well as golden orange-yellow desert chicory, each like a little living sun in windy flickering. The distant goal so far away, is not infinity, but hard to comprehend, like as the God of Trinity. It measures time, not as we do, its canvas greater space; it slowly swells beyond the Gardens of this parklike place. The morning doves don’t lie awake at night; at light they coo, perduring time, not calculating any future view. They sleep before their morning watch; there is no past for them; they’re motivated by their instincts; their main stratagem. Meandering, the creek bed, only tri-ckl-ing at most, the raging drainage of the deluge, vanished like a ghost. IV One walks along, alone, and leaves the oak leaves on the trees, the hoped-for health, the absence of the hated, late disease, reminding us of Adam’s curse, as we proceed beyond the roses and euonymus, the wakening at dawn. Across the meadow’s length, the stridulating, crickets chirp, the gossip, grand, mechanical, a whirling, swirling whirr, accentuated only by the swallows overhead, or rushing winds across the massive, grassy area, like as some futuristic ruined Circus Maximus. And though we may now call this Monday good, it taxes us. V So here one finds oneself beside the huge arena bowl, the cricket match, a crowd of insects rattling en el Sol. The distant elevated storage tank, high in the sky, and gleaming white, reminds one that the urban sprawl is nigh. Each venture is a new beginning to another end, and each conclusion is a start to one more re-ascend. Dawn takes one’s breath away. One breathes the fragrant, fresh air in. Ah, grass, or straw, the air is redolent with each rich wind. If not propitious, then at least one makes the great attempt, here at this empty, brimming place with nature’s full assent. The telly utters news of the new novel plague’s success, but here one is each step removed from that and its duress. The strangeness of the World and its many calls and cars is far from here and morning’s daily masking of the stars. Not merely is a lifetime not enough to comprehend, it isn’t long enough to find assurance at the end. When here and now both cease to matter, and all energy is dissipated from these words and their vain venery, how then shall old men be explorers of this endless climb to the sub-lime and hoar-frost rime that comes to all in time? Cooper Creek I The gods are angry, rum-bl-ing across the open skies. The dark clouds hover over us, but there is no surprise. And when the lightning and the thunder vanish as they must; it is as if the gods are gone again. Who can we trust? Fierce rains start Cooper Creek beside the highway and the hill. Without them it’s naught but the adumbration of a rill, that grows until the water that it carries has an edge, a problem that confronts the builders when they build a bridge. O pioneers, who cleared the way, constructing routes to go, o worshippers of the machine who helped us cross its flow. Beside the first bridge one can see a rabbit leaps its banks, so narrow and so still it hardly seems more than a thanks. Beyond, it goes to Trinity, past so much past to bear. The river goes without us to the sea, its constant lair. Bestride the second bridge, one spots a little larger marsh, its charm is more the lushness of the plants within its charge. Beyond the crickets, one can hear the traffic on the road, each vehicle in its own way there carrying its load, the road a bridge itself though hardly visible at all, unlike the arched bridge with wood planks above the water’s crawl. II Where is the end, the soundless waiting, silent withering? calamitous annunciation, winding slithering? the consequence of further days, the rotting of the log? the slimy vegetation of the cricket and the toad? Here at the green and wooden-slatted bridge that arched the flood, spring’s brisk winds are unfurled, hardly noticed by the World. There is an end; for time and nature spare no one or thing, including all the questioning and answering in spring. The creek meanders through the banks past plant and shallow pant; the shadows of the morning cast their great lengths at a slant. As one gets older, one should be exploring pioneer, especi’lly when the future is inevitably near. One sees a man and woman with a baby and a dog atop the cement engineering, over reed and bog. One sees the walkers, runners, bikers, o, so many souls, each passing one, and you as well, part of the cosmos whole. And yet so small, each like an ant upon a rugged rock, in gorgeous morning sunlight clear or near fog-covered frog. It was a tone, almost a moan, both deep and serious, which steadied, whether weather halcyon or furious. III The future is no faded song, no Royal Rose perfumed. It too, in time, once oped and closed, will also be exhumed. As the coronavirus spreads, from there to far and near; time is no healer, when the patient is no longer here. Bulrushes, reeds, cattails and sedge, pink evening primrose stalks, greet those, who pass in dawn’s light dance, on rides, in runs or walks. This is a place of Evers, there a church and here a school. A large, brown, wood cross stands…for more than just the golden rule. Forever’s not a long time; it can never be the same. It is like as the future, come what will and come what may. The past is over and the future is beyond the news; but here upon the bench that’s only one of many views, you pause to catch your breath; it is too hard to take all in— the many passing images. The head begins to spin. Each time of peace is but the rest between this and the next. All’s so complex, and then there is the editing of text. How can one make sense of the grasses and the passing creek? Each time you cross its flowing water is itself unique. As Krishna told Arjuna to buck up and face it—all— the voyager must fare well as he journeys spacetime’s fall. IV O, all along its length, they go about their business—birds— without the everchanging rearranging, gaging words. Upon the bright green railings of the arching bridge, they perch, or down beside the marshy route, they make their driving search. Across the catchment battlements, the killdeer scurry fast; at this good spot, they want all travelers to hurry past. Above the first bridge flying round about in swirling sweeps, barn swallows seek out insects in the scented air so sweet. Atop the lamppost singing in the early morning light, o, mimic, many-tongued, the mockingbird sings out and bright. V Eventu’lly one comes to find there are new routes to take, another way, another day, another heart to brake. Observe disease in signatures, evoke biography from wrinkles of the open palm, from fingers, tragedy. The tea leaves of this morning’s drink alert one to the press of time upon each individual and each distress, o whether one is on the shores of Asia or this path in North America beyond Achilles and his wrath. The trail ends before the dead end of Longfellow Lane, here where a lone white egret cautiously surveys terrain, and then flies high into a circle on enlightened wing, above the squirrels round the oaks and creek bed widening. Here the impossible connects the future to the past, the movement of the open freedom of the present, vast. Here one returns back to the place where one begins again, past empty church and empty playing field devoid of men, past wakened morning doves that take a sprinkler’s shaking bath: your word a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. The Building Site I Midspring is not eternal, as the days increase in length, here, too, between the tropics and the poles requires strength. The Sun flames overhead, the concrete way hard underfoot; the wind blasts through one’s very soul, a howling, growling whoot. The glare’s mind-blinding here on Trinity, when facing east; one half expects some serpent to attack one at one’s feet. One fears the shadows up ahead, the dark things on the road, the sudden snapping of a banner shakes one to one’s soul. There are no houses here, no workers building brand new homes; this is the zero spring we’d heard of not so long ago. If you had come this way, the route you took and you would take, come from the place where you had been, and all that did you make, in May, it still would be the same, the journey is required; not knowing what you came for was not dreamed of nor desired. Perhaps you were a broken king, a damaged, ravaged queen, mad scientist, philosopher, or priest of the unseen, whatever were your circumstances matters not at all, nor the locale, an empty city or a woodland sprawl. If you had come this way, at any time, from anywhere, you, too, would take this odyssey, America or there. II Here where there are no houses yet, earth, water, air, and fire, all live in mouth, nose, ears and eyes, the fingers of desire. Cleared lots are yielding to wild flowers, grasses, shrubs, like as great brier patches, prepping for both wood and bush. the water tower in the distance, closer than the Moon, above the fire hydrants, sewer covers, run-off too. There in a drainage ditch a yellow-crowned night heron stands, until disturbed, and then flies into azure sky-flight bands. The block electric boxes sit beneath the crossing wires, where scissortail flycatcher greets brilliant solar fires. In these days of hands washing, social distancing and masks, near Calvary at Sunrise, a lone traveler is passed. In the uncertain hour, the lone traveler goes on before the blin-ding, daz-zl-ing, un-ra-vel-ing of Dawn. The traveler proceeds along the silver cyclone fence, rust-coloured Indian grass there, ghost-like and thin, but dense, bindweed, like tiny morning glories, sulphur cinquefoil gold, green johnsongrass, star thistles, purple, shapes and colours bold, then pauses at the intersection, Crown and Trinity, a prayer at the breaking day—time and infinity. III The walking, biking, driving, far from daily press of news, indifferent to Internet, detached from clashing views, here in the freedom of the present, past and future haze, renewed, transfigured, in another pattern of these days; of no immediate concern, the strife and fight of life; the vacant land, all workers gone, with vegetation rife. And yet the silence and the emptiness is grand and vast; so many are the things we see and make that will not last. Why strive to purify the language of the human tribe? Who wants it, cares to find it, or refine it, by and by? And when the heavy rains appear, up swells the little creek, and it becomes torrential, exponential to its peak. It pours along, and roars so strong, in a relentless rush; the trickle turns into an urgent, surging, crushing, whoosh. The ditches rise to creeks, the creeks, like raging rivers run; the grasses and the sedges bend until the swell is gone. No herons sit upon their banks, no egrets fly above, no crickets chirr, no swallows chirp, there coos no morning dove. Beneath the sewer covers, plashing waters hasten on, and charge across the landscape till the hurly burly’s done. IV Each day is a chance to achieve a new discovery, and this day is a chance for hope and some recovery. The morning dove breaks Sunday’s air, ascending once again. The atmosphere is flushed, fresh, present, post-diluvian. The black-eyed susan starters take the building site by storm, as May’s days lengthen and become increasingly more warm. The Sun is back to dry this tract of land and love and life; The Sun is blazing, it’s the true inventor of the fire. The earth is heated, water dried up, air warmed thoroughly. One pauses momentarily beside the stately tree. V As every poem is an epitaph, so are its parts; and as one nears the finish line, resigned to flaws and starts, amidst the morning bird-calls, like incessant ringing phones, and highway traffic roaring past with its loud blasting tones, one comes to see, in this the land’s vast span of dirt and plants, utility poles shiny, silver, cross-like in one’s glance, that everything depends upon the blinding, blazing Sun, concisely, everything that everyone has ever done; and so we make these visits, take these transits, wake to be, filled with profound, acute humility diurnally. We learn the vulnerable are not just only the diseased, but shall not cease from exploration till we are deceased, When the last of earth to discover is that which we find in the beginning was the end to which we set the mind, we shall be satisfied that we have tried all that we did. All will be well, though it be hell, within this power grid. The droning of the plane, the moaning of the train unseen, the groaning trucks, the going flux, the constant changing scene, here by hackberry, honey locust, post oak and mesquite, box elder, cedar elm, and ash, one still can feel complete. Reply
Margaret Coats February 28, 2022 This was not what I had in mind, but I haven’t had time to read it. Give me a while, and I’ll get back to you! Reply
Margaret Coats March 5, 2022 When I suggested a tennos sequence on American Gothic, I simply meant poems dealing with some of the many pictorial reinterpretations of Grant Wood. Here you’ve gone beyond a sequence to a corona, which is considerably more structured. Or it will be if it turns out to be like a crown of sonnets! This kind of work takes a lot of attention, and so far, I’ve just managed to read “An Easter Interlude” with attention. You have a remarkable array of allusions and wordplay, within this treatment of the time and modernity and eternity themes. I’m unsure where you’re going with it, but it is a pleasure to read and contemplate. I certainly agree on the longing for ideality (not quite the same as longing for immortality, although that is here, too). Comment to be continued when I have enough real time to do more reading! Reply
BDW March 15, 2022 as per Beau Lecsi Werd: There should be a comma, not a period, before Hitomaro (c. 653 – c. 709), the prominent waka poet of the Man’yōshū.
BDW March 7, 2022 Ms. Coats had suggested a tennos sequence of pictorial reinterpretations of Modernist Grant Wood (1891-1942), but this artist has really only focused on Wood’s iconic self-portrait and his famous “American Gothic”. So many other Modernist painters (Klee, Picasso, etc.) have elicited far more ekphrastic poems, as, for example, lengthy sequences, done in bildings and sonnets, on paintings, like those of Winslow Homer (1836-1910) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), and more moderate sequences, in bildings and sonnets, as on Da Vinci (1452-1519) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) paintings, which have influenced my writing more, Rembrandt with his colour choices and content, and Da Vinci with his clash of focused perceptions. Sometimes painters have been used in lengthy poems, like Whisler (1834-1903) in “Nocturnes” with its London setting, or haiku poets in poems, like “Cicadas’ Voices”. I rarely use the tennos ekphrastic’lly, having created the bilding for that purpose; so this tennos on Vasquez’s “New American Gothic” is a rarity. The tennos, invented in the previous decade, is an American inversion of the sonnet, so though “Coronal”, a series of thirty-six tennos, approaches “a crown of sonnets”, it is not quite that. Yet, in that comment, Ms. Coats’ literary criticism reveals a brilliant acuity. Reply
Tamara Beryl Latham March 12, 2022 Bruce, your poem (with both its tone and imagery) is heart-wrenching. I would imagine these migrant figures are seen quite frequently by you in Texas. They do so much for so little, as they work in the heat of the day with very little break time. Yet, their rewards are not on this earth. The words you’ve chosen in your poem, reflecting the artistry of Criselda Vasquez in “New American Gothic,” should also mirror the subject matter, as I feel yours do. Yet, I believe, as another poster has suggested, “perplexed” is a better synonym than “nonplussed” for the poem’s end. Nicely penned. 🙂 Reply
BDW March 15, 2022 In going back to the poem, to check if “perplexed” was a better definition (the tennos is such an open form, it is natural for readers to supply diction and meanings that come to them); in the end, Ms. Latham’s suggestion does not work for the artist, as that was not the intended meaning. He really meant not bothered, surprised, unmoved, id est, strong. And though the artist thought “nonplussed” as such was a good anchor to the poem, it is one more example of how once a work of art has been released into the World, its interpretations are beyond the author—words are our common treasure—and it is thanks to close readers, like Ms. Latham and Mr. Kinsman, where we can see this. I am reminded of a short story by American PostModernist Eudora Welty (1909-2001), “A Worn Path”, where the artist had a different take on her work than her readers. Where she imagined a continuation of a hard life, her readers imagined death was implied, and thought that made the story better; I suppose, more profound. I certainly cannot argue against an interpretation, but can only give reasons for what was aimed at. Having spent much of my second and third decades in hard labour, from farm work, industrial work, waiting, cleaning, digging, the military, et cetera, I did not find Vasquez’ couple tragic or heart-wrenching; in fact, I related to them, as proud workers. I think there is a deep satisfaction in working hard and well, no matter what remuneration one might receive. I remember working a whole day, picking over an already picked-over field of cucumbers in the early 1980s, and receiving only $2.00. Despite the low pay for that day’s work, I have yet to forget that day. In Eudora Welty’s tale, it is the unpaid grandmother’s labour of love that is central to the short story. Reply
Tamara Beryl Latham March 16, 2022 Completely understood, Bruce. You alone know what you meant to say and the definitions of “perplexed” and “nonplussed” are not exact. Promise I won’t offer suggestions to any of the poets on the board from this day forward. 🙂
Tamara Beryl Latham March 16, 2022 BDW says: ” I did not find Vasquez’ couple tragic or heart-wrenching; in fact, I related to them, as proud workers.” My reply: Sorry, BDW. I initially believed you meant your poem to align with the intent of the artist. Vasquex says: “I want to expose the heart-breaking pain of what a Mexican immigrant’s family goes through.” “I strive to capture how their expressions deliver that sense of tiredness, resignation, and quiet acceptance.” https://twistedsifter.com/2019/10/the-new-american-gothic-by-criselda-vasquez/
BDW March 17, 2022 On the contrary, I hope Ms. Latham will continue to “offer suggestions to any of the poets on the board from this day forward”; for it is from critiques, like hers, that one can discuss the higher purposes of artistry…especially from a NewMillennial writer and chemist from Brisbane, living now in Virginia, who has written such poems as “The Holocaust—a Poem of Remembrance”. Perhaps Ms. Latham could entertain, as T. S. Eliot has, in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” the analogy which “takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide”, as it relates to the creation of poetry.
Margaret Coats March 14, 2022 I’m completing the comment on “Easter Interlude.” Sorry this takes a while, but you gave me a lot to consider, and I am tiring easily while recovering from an injury. From Part II, you focus more clearly and more entertainingly on passages through time and space, with the same brilliant wordplay noted in Part I. The brightness of tone here and the visionary quality of the landscape imply that chronicled real experience is less important. I don’t mean not important, I just get the effect that the words are flying above it. Part III becomes existentialist, though still much airier and more pleasant than reading Sartre. Part IV has the interesting appearance of “we” who are departing. Doesn’t seem worthwhile to say from where or what, but I do wonder if the vegetation reflects your move to Texas. Part V is in the Promised Land, which somehow seems a little disappointing. There is still movement to be made, or having been made. We move from past to present tense. The world in inscribed, the land is described, this is geometrical in a basic sense. It seems unbounded as we are about to move to Meadowledge. It was, in fact, an interlude. How does that read in relation to the poet’s intentions? Reply
BDW March 17, 2022 First off, one need not apologize for late commenting on a work of art; for I imagine, each one of us has so much to do, and so much to write about, one never can keep up with either the demands of poetry and prose, or, more importantly, life. As to “Coronal”, there are so many echoes from literature, the author cannot identify them all, even when he finds them, the foremost being T. S. Eliot and Samuel Coleridge. Yet, here again, Ms. Coats has rather brilliantly hit upon another important mental state of the poem—its “visionary quality”. [Is this because she is so focused on the visionary in her own poetry and translations?] I have to admit it was the strangest feeling I have ever had, while writing this work. It felt as if I were upon an “open stage,/ so vast and grand”, and it was as if the words were “flying above” the landscape, “existential” indeed, but not Sartre, Kant, or Marcel, not Nietzsche, nor Heidegger… I do not think the poem everywhere succeeds in this “visionary quality”—but it was definitely there. I wonder if I could even achieve it in such a landscape again. In her wondering, Ms. Coats, correctly points to the landscape as Texan—Cross Timbers, in fact—and the City—the Metroplex— “A droning plane, the moaning train, the highway traffic stir,/ an orchestra of birds: these sounds occur and then disburse.” Reply
Tamara Beryl Latham March 18, 2022 Bruce, you’ve obviously looked up my profile. BDW says: “Perhaps Ms. Latham could entertain, as T. S. Eliot has, in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” the analogy which “takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide”, as it relates to the creation of poetry. My reply: Are you referring to the sulfur trioxide reaction”? Platinum or Palladium is used as a catalyst in chemical reactions; however, the catalyst merely speeds up the reaction, it doesn’t take part in it. Are you suggesting I should be a catalyst for poetry? 🙂 My critiques (theoretically) are meaningless, so if people take offence at something I’ve suggested, they shouldn’t. I’m only offering an opinion. With relation to iambic pentameter and whether a rhyme is slightly off (trochee, spondee, feminine rhyme) my ear detects it as not being perfect rhyme, so I might offer a suggestion on an iamb. The poet can either accept my offer or reject it. And as it has been so often stated, “Advice is free, so you’ve neither spent nor lost a penny.” People have offered suggestions on changing certain words in some of my poems and sometimes I make the change and sometimes I don’t. The poet is the one who holds a poetic license. Yes, the Pagan Federation of the U.K. featured my poem on their youtube 2020 Holocaust memorial day channel (my poem starts at 2:05) along with Barbra Streisand’s song. I suppose that’s where you saw it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNuKxvoeFYs Thanks for your reply, BDW. 🙂 Reply
Tamara Beryl Latham March 18, 2022 P.S. BDW: Referring to the catalyst, when I say it speeds up the reaction, it doesn’t take part in it, I mean it is neither a reactant or a product and is not consumed during the reaction. Reply
