Songs of Harmony/Songs of Discord

[Sentimental Gentleman]

A poem written around an ecstasy I experienced while out with my darling tonight. It's a rather ugly work at the moment, but as of yet I have no idea how to bring it together into some more pleasing form.

Guillotine moon
Stay your trembling execution
Until the sun has been
Doused in her eyes

Reveling stars
Your drunken shine
Shall never cross
Our dream

Silken night
Unspool yourself not
For I am the only thread
On the spindle of her lips

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

"Reveling stars," "silken night," "on the spindle of her lips." It's as though this recent poem you wrote is made up of other poems; each would serve as a fine title.

[Sentimental Gentleman]

"Reveling stars," "silken night," "on the spindle of her lips." It's as though this recent poem you wrote is made up of other poems; each would serve as a fine title.

Perhaps that's precisely what's troubling me...it lacks precision. It's trying to condense a too large a whirlwind of sensations into words too general and too few to truly contain them. Ugh, it's quite the labor imagining producing anything tenable out of this. It's probably more a product of the fancy than of any properly deployed poetics.

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

Perhaps that's precisely what's troubling me...it lacks precision. It's trying to condense a too large a whirlwind of sensations into words too general and too few to truly contain them. Ugh, it's quite the labor imagining producing anything tenable out of this. It's probably more a product of the fancy than of any properly deployed poetics.

There's nothing objectively wrong with it. No poem is perfect, but poetry needn't be perfect. Move on to the next piece. And the next. Maybe you'll like this one more later; or maybe you'll have a moment of inspiration that allows you to tie it all together with unexpected ease.

[Sentimental Gentleman]

There's nothing objectively wrong with it. No poem is perfect, but poetry needn't be perfect. Move on to the next piece. And the next. Maybe you'll like this one more later; or maybe you'll have a moment of inspiration that allows you to tie it all together with unexpected ease.

You're quite right, Ziggy! The modern moment demands a rapid pace and the intoxication of inspiration. Best to charge ahead and rely on my inner instincts than weigh my mind down with the ball and chain of rumination.

[Sentimental Gentleman]

I've been reading Jacob Rabinowitz's brilliant, Beat-inflected translation of the corpus of Catullus again, and as usual I find myself striving after the conversational clarity and forcefulness of his rendering of that august poet. In addition, I've felt that I needed to write something to sooth my feelings in this time of ups and downs. And so I wrote this unworthy (and probably too conversational) little lyric which touches on how A.J. has comforted me in this trial.

My grandfather, he who loved my mother
As his daughter and me
As another son, is in a thousand pieces
All as black as the soil of the garden where he coaxed forth
His tomatoes and his peppers; their sweetness is still in my mind
Now that he has greeted the fire of the crematory

I wonder, if I ran him through my hands,
Would one of those ashes once have been
In his heart, some muscle
That pumped the blood he passed
Into my veins?

My heart is still beating
Against yours, off only
By the space of a breath
As you hold me close with that boldness I adore
Dear one! I may still weep when I remember
But my blood forgets itself
In you!

[Ziggy and Angelbaby]

Deeply poignant and brave, Gentleman.

[Sentimental Gentleman]

Deeply poignant and brave, Gentleman.

Thank you, even if I don't feel that poem merits such accolades. A poem of mourning, even one which mixes in the tender sentiments of love as this one does, should be as unadorned as possible, I'm realizing, even if it works against its affective quality. Maybe that's a curious thought, but it's what I'm feeling now. Even if it's not a good poem, it's a rather true poem in this mode, and as such I should leave it alone for the most part. It's helping me by its existence, is what I'm saying, and to change it would be to admit it into a literary life to which it doesn't properly belong or derive its power from.