Tag diction

finding with robert wrigley

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

I’m a fan of when poems seem self-contained visually, but surprise me as I begin reading. This week’s poem – “Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin” by Robert Wrigley – is a good example of what I mean. On a purely visual level, the poem sits in two six line stanzas. When one considers the title includes the word “bible,” the symmetry of these stanzas mirror an open book. This suggestion charges the poem with expectation.

cabinIn the first stanza, the title’s premise is followed through in rich detail. From the look of “the book’s leather cover” to the “back-of-the-neck lick of chill” the speaker feels as they move closer to the book, Wrigley sets up image and evocation as a means of attention. The poem would be engaging enough with such vivid description, but it grows in its depth across the stanza break.

The speaker’s hesitant movement and approach in the first stanza is pushed back against in the first line of the second stanza as we’re told “the book / opened like a blasted bird.” Suddenly, the speaker’s knack for articulation is put in the service of keeping track of the new details. The choice in words remains rich as we’re told about the “thoroughfares of worms, and a silage / of silverfish husks” that have rendered a book down to “perfect wordless lace.” What is most surprising is how much life is found in these “abandoned” things, and how these things live now in this poem, another kind of “box” of “miraculous inks.”

Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin – Robert Wrigley

Under dust plush as a moth’s wing,
the book’s leather cover still darkly shown,
and everywhere else but this spot was sodden
beneath the roof’s unraveling shingles.
There was that back-of-the-neck lick of chill
and then, from my index finger, the book

opened like a blasted bird. In its box
of familiar and miraculous inks,
a construction of filaments and dust,
thoroughfares of worms, and a silage
of silverfish husks: in the autumn light,
eight hundred pages of perfect wordless lace.

from Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems (Penguin 2006)

* bee-ntanglement with ross gay

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

I like reading a poem and finding myself admiring how tangled it is in its words. When done well, it changes Robert Frost’s adage No tears for the poet, no tears for the reader for me into No entanglement for the poet, none for the reader.

The poem below, Ode to the Beekeeper by Ross Gay from his collection Bringing the Shovel Down, is a good example of what I mean. With the subject declared in the title, it’s fun to watch what kind of bee-related words are drawn in (note the tension of the second use of “chamber” towards the end, the tension with “heart” in the same line).

Another thing I noted in rereading was the structure. The poem consists of one really long sentence followed by two short ones. The effect is similar to the staggered flight of a bee as much as the subject’s fascination with them.

* comb a little closer *

* comb a little closer *

Ode to the Beekeeper – Ross Gay
for Stephanie Smith

who has taken off her veil
and gloves and whispers to the bees
in their own language, inspecting the comb-thick
frames, blowing just so when one or the other alights
on her, if she doesn’t study it first — the veins
feeding the wings, the deep ochre
shimmy, the singing — just like in the dreams
that brought her here in the first place: dream
of the queen, dream of the brood chamber,
dream of the dessicated world and sifting
with her hands the ash and her hands
ashen when she awoke, dream of honey
in her child’s wound, dream of bees
hived in the heart and each wet chamber
gone gold. Which is why, first,
she put on the veil. And which is why,
too, she took it off.

***

Happy veiling!

Jose