The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
600The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
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Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780819567772 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
Publication date: | 05/03/2016 |
Series: | Wesleyan Poetry Series |
Edition description: | Reprint |
Pages: | 600 |
Sales rank: | 1,142,644 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
THE LOCATION OF THINGS
The Location of Things
Why from this window am I watching leaves?
Why do halls and steps seem narrower?
Why at this desk am I listening for the sound of the fall of color, the pitch of the wooden floor and feet going faster?
Am I to understand change, whether remarkable or hidden, am I to find a lake under the table or a mountain beside my chair and will I know the minute water produces lilies or a family of mountaineers scales the peak?
Recognitions
On Madison Avenue I am having a drink, someone with dark hair balances a carton on his shoulders and a painter enters the bar. It reminds me of pictures in restaurants, the exchange of hunger for thirst, art for decoration and in a hospital love for pain suffered beside the glistening rhododendron under the crucifix. The street, the street bears light and shade on its shoulders, walks without crying,
turns itself into another and continues, even cantilevers this barroom atmosphere into a forest and sheds its leaves on my table carelessly as if it wanted to travel somewhere else and would like to get rid of its luggage which has become in this exquisite pointed rain a bunch of umbrellas. An exchange!
That head against the window how many times one has seen it. Afternoons of smoke and wet nostrils,
the perilous makeup on her face and on his,
numerous corteges. The water's lace creates funerals it makes us see someone we love in an acre of grass.
The regard of dramatic afternoons
through this floodlit window or from a pontoon on this theatrical lake,
you demand your old clown's paint and I hand you from my prompter's arms this shako,
wandering as I am into clouds and air rushing into darkness as corridors who do not fear the melancholy of the stair.
Piazzas
for Mary Abbot Clyde
In the golden air, the risky autumn,
leaves on the piazza, shadows by the door on your chair the red berry
after the dragonfly summer
we walk this mirroring air our feet chill and silver and golden a portrait by Pinturicchio we permanently taste the dark grapes and the seed pearls glisten
as the flight of those fresh brown birds an instant of vision that the coupling mind and heart see in their youth with thin wings attacking a real substance
as Pinturicchio fixed his air.
After all dragonflies do as much in midsummer with a necessary water there is always a heaviness of wings.
To remember now that the imagination's at its turning how to recall those Pierrots of darkness
(with the half-moon like a yellow leg of a pantaloon)
I would see you again (like the purple P of piazza).
Imagination thunder in the Alps yet we flew above it then met a confusion of weather and felt the alphabet turning over when we landed in Pekin. I read the late Empress's letters and thought they were yours,
that impeccable script followed by murders
real or divined as the youth leaning over the piazza throwing stones at his poems. He reads his effigy in the one that ricochets he weeps into the autumn air and that stone becomes golden as a tomb beware the risky imagination
that lines its piazzas with lambswool or for sheer disturbance places mirrors for Pinturicchio to draw his face at daybreak when the air is clear of shadows and no one walks the piazza.
All Grey-haired My Sisters
All grey-haired my sisters what is it in the more enduring clime of Spring that waits?
The tiger his voice once prayerful around the lax ochre sheen finally in withering sleep its calendar,
Relatives delicious plumages your scenery has a black musical depth the cardinal flies into he learns to repeat on an empty branch your distillations. Sombre mysteries the garden illumines a shape of honey hive the vigorous drones lighting up your face as fortunes pour from your cold pockets into the heat and glaze, fortresses for those memories brisk in the now doubling air,
Adventuresses guided by the form and scent of tree and flower blossoming the willow once frail now image cut of stone so to endure,
My darlings you walked into the wars with wreaths of pine cones, you lay by the sea and your sweet dresses were torn by waves as over each receded and pebbles were lifted at your feet in the foam,
Ancestress with blond boating hair as daisies drop at your wrists which flight are you making?
down the lime aisles I see your sashes disappear.
Why should I count you more equinoctal, sun?
Smoothly the oars into the bay the ultramarine fast as a castle, or rock its soul plunged to craters virginal
the rapid twist of spume to all-forgetting wrecks, intensely now that story's done.
Mermaids your hair is green. I recognize the powerful daylight heat. My savages a cooling torpor rearranges,
as at its southern margins, the oak.
From your journals He said: "In nymphic barque"
She replied: "A porcupine."
And later,
"Reason selects our otherness."
In the broad strange light,
a region of silences. The delphic clouded tree knows its decline,
if you were to forget animosities, girls,
and in the pagan grass slide heedlessly blossoms would return such songs as I've sung of you, the youthful ashes fling upward settling fragrant brightness on your dusky marquetry,
All grey-haired my sisters this afternoon's seraphicness is also fading. Linger while I pass you quickly lest the cherry's bloom changed to white fall upon my head.
Windy Afternoon
Through the wood on his motorcycle piercing the hawk, the jay the blue-coated policeman
Woods, barren woods,
as this typewriter without an object or the words that from you fall soundless
The sun lowering and the bags of paper on the stoney ledge near the waterfall
Voices down the roadway and leaves falling over there a great vacancy a huge leftover
The quality of the day that has its size in the North and in the South a low sighing that of wings
Describe that nude, audacious line most lofty, practiced street you are no longer thirsty turn or go straight.
Russians at the Beach
The long long accent
the short vowel that thing wrapped around a palm tree
is it this water, or this jetty?
The blue, in air dismal
to the face further than sand then green rolling its own powder
you will provide you stranger
The cargo intimate cargo
of lashes and backs bent like a crew the miles are vast and the isthmus
shows five-toed feet erect thunders all afternoon
You have traveled more than this shore where the long bodies
wait
their thin heads do not understand
They are bent
the breeze is light
as the step of a native is heavy you are tired
but you breathe
and you eat and you sleep where the stream is narrow
where the foam has left off
ascending
the day meets your borders
so easily
where you have discovered it.
The Hero Leaves His Ship
I wonder if this new reality is going to destroy me.
There under the leaves a loaf The brick wall on it someone has put bananas The bricks have come loose under the weight,
What a precarious architecture these apartments,
As giants once in a garden. Dear roots Your slivers repair my throat when anguish commences to heat and glow.
From the water A roar. The sea has its own strong wrist The green turf is made of shells
it is new.
I am about to use my voice Why am I afraid that salty wing Flying over a real hearth will stop me?
Yesterday the yellow Tokening clouds. I said "no" to my burden,
The shrub planted on my shoulders. When snow Falls or in rain, birds gather there In the short evergreen. They repeat their disastrous Beckoning songs as if the earth Were rich and many warriors coming out of it,
As if the calm was blue, one sky over A shore and the tide welcoming a fleet Bronzed and strong as breakers,
Their limbs in this light Fused of sand and wave are lifted once Then sunk under aquamarine, the phosphorous.
Afterwards this soundless bay,
Gulls fly over it. The dark is mixed With wings. I ask if that house is real,
If geese drink at the pond, if the goatherd takes To the mountain, if the couple love and sup,
I cross the elemental stations from windy field to still close. Good night I go to my bed.
This roof will hold me. Outside the gods survive.
Les Réalités
It's raining today and I'm reading about pharmacies
in Paris.
Yesterday I took the autumn walk, known in May
as lovers' walk.
Because I was overwhelmed by trees (the path from the playhouse leads into a grove and beyond are the gravestones),
squirrels and new mold it is a good thing today to read about second-class pharmacies where mortar and plastic goods disturb death a little and life more. It is as if perpetual rain fell on those drugstores making the mosaic brighter,
as if entering those doors one's tears were cleaner.
As if I had just left you and was looking for a new shade of powder orchidée, ambre, rosé, one very clarified and true to its owner, one that in a mirror would pass for real and yet when your hand falls upon it
(as it can) changes into a stone or flower of the will and triumphs as a natural thing,
as this pharmacy turns our desire into medicines and revokes the rain.
In the Middle of the Easel
My darling, only a cubist angle seen after produces this volume in which our hearts go
(tick tick)
I see you in a veil of velvet
then I'm quiet because you've
managed the apples, you've arranged
to sit. You are twice clothed
in my joy, my nymph.
Painters who range up and down Mont hill or Mont this, disarray in the twilight those boulevards,
make every stroke count and when one of the Saints
(in the dark apse tonal) quits,
I'm with you.
Together we'll breathe it,
you and I in the sleeve forgiving requiem,
in the priest tinted air.
In the gaslight that ridiculous plume
reminds me of hawks, I admire
their arc, I plunge
my everyday laughter into that kimono wing
what a studio soar! What rapture!
The gifted night, the billowing dark!
The heroine Paint sobs
"No one who has ever loved me
can tell me why
there are two birds at my wrist
and only one flies."
On the Way to Dumbarton Oaks
The air! The colonial air! The walls, the brick,
this November thunder! The clouds Atlanticking,
Canadianing, Alaska snowclouds,
tunnel and sleigh, urban and mountain routes!
Chinese tree your black branches and your three yellow leaves with you I traffick. My three yellow notes, my three yellow stanzas,
my three precisenesses of head and body and tail joined carrying my scroll, my tree drawing
This winter day I'm a compleat travel agency with my Australian aborigine sights, my moccasin feet padding into museums where I'll betray all my vast journeying sensibility in a tear dropped before
"The Treasure of Petersburg"
and gorgeous this forever I've a raft of you left over like so many gold flowers and so many white and the stems! the stems I have left!
Cape Canaveral
Fixed in my new wig the green grass side
hanging down I impart to my silences
operas.
Climate cannot impair
neither the grey clouds nor the black waters the change in my hair.
Covered with straw or alabaster I'm inured against weather.
The vixen's glare, the tear on the flesh covered continent where the snake withers happily and the nude deer antler glitters, neither shares my rifled ocean growth
polar and spare.
Eyes open
spinning pockets for the glass harpoons
lying under my lids
icy as summers
Nose ridges
where the glaciers melt into my autumnal winter-fed cheek hiding its shudder in this kelp
glued
cracked as the air.
Sunday Evening
I am telling you a number of half-conditioned ideas Am repeating myself,
The room has four sides; it is a rectangle,
From the window the bridge, the water, the leaves,
Her hat is made of feathers,
My fortune is produced from glass And I drink to my extinction.
Barges on the river carry apples wrapped in bales,
This morning there was a sombre sunrise,
In the red, in the air, in what is falling through us We quote several things.
I am talking to you With what is left of me written off,
On the cuff, ancestral and vague,
As a monkey walks through the many fires Of the jungle while a village breathes in its sleep.
Someone stops in the alcove,
It is a risk we will later make,
While I talk and you bring your eyes to the fibre
(as the blade to the brown root)
And the room is slumberous and slow
(as a pulse after the first September earthquake).
Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher
I just said I didn't know And now you are holding me In your arms,
How kind.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.
Yet around the net I am floating Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it,
They are beautiful,
But they are not good for eating.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher Than this mid-air in which we tremble,
Having exercised our arms in swimming,
Now the suspension, you say,
Is exquisite. I do not know.
There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water Near it, bubbles are rising and salt Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer Air than water. I am closer to you Than land and I am in a stranger ocean Than I wished.
The Crisis
Not to be able to carry mice to your room when you have walked the boulevards with rain at your tail and umbrellas opened an edifice of dragoons preparing to ascend when the park was hungrier,
its bursting branches were loaves under the yellow sky. Alas the great days of desire have passed.
Prepare for bulbs and minor grasses; seize on imported mauves, ivory cutlasses prepared in Switzerland for sailors whose white eyelashes will curtain the whim of captains and make graceful the long Cape trip. You will sail upon mats of periwinkles, if you prefer.
Why tramp now the marshes where the expert mice rest on borders and sit with their pierced hearts? They have grown fat under the discipline of raiders who need in the night corridor a lawful pillow, in the black watches a slim straw purchased for a mouse, a hat to cover the dark marches and the small confidences laid on cushions before daybreak when fountains plash and mirrors reflect the thick mud where armies have passed.
Upside Down
Old slugger-the-bat
don't try to control me I've a cold in my head and a pain in one side
it's the cautious climate
of birds.
Where the bitter night shows fat as an owl the skeleton
not counting the skin.
This species can't bite,
but it has a hurt. We've all got birds
flying at us
little ones over the toes.
The hand that holds is webbed no knuckles
but the bone grows.
Seeing You Off
Bracketed in my own barn
where ignorant as those armies I flash my light upon the Hudson
and shout continental factories take fire! Send navies out from Jersey
let there be more edens
of soap and fats
Such splendors make rigid a democracy
define its skeleton permit the night to cleanse its air
with moving vans
olympic as dawn
Upon the big liner
moored at last by little landscape poems
frail as lifeboats settling down to rest
While we kiss in the saloon
far above the cries from plows and auto parts
sending up goodbyes
as ugly as those waifs of paper
on the pier or that truck profiled into gloom
his whole insides protest
Departures make disgust into a cartoon
of rose Nabiscos and I digest the sinking afternoon in a fleet
of taxicabs dead sure as you
and Carthage after?
we'll float on that wine-dark sea
Excerpted from "The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Estate of Barbara Guest.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Fair Realist - Peter GizziTimelineWorks by Barbara GuestNotes and Acknowledgments THE LOCATION OF THINGSThe Location of ThingsPiazzasAll Grey-Haired My SistersWindy AfternoonRussians at the BeachThe Hero Leaves His ShipLes RéalitésIn the Middle of the EaselOn the Way to Dumbarton OaksCape CanaveralSunday EveningParachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us HigherThe CrisisUpside DownSeeing You OffSafe FlightsSadnessJaffa JuceIn DockPeople in WartimeLandingHistoryOriental MovieThe CrisisWest Sixty-Fourth StreetThe Time of DayHeroic StagesIn America, the SeasonsBelgraviaIn the AlpsThe Past of a PoemARCHAICSAtalanta in Arcadia"From Eyes Blue and Cold"Dido to AeneasGreen AwningsPalm TreesIn the Campagna"Who will accept our offering at this end of autumn?"THE OPEN SKIES (1962)The Voice TreeLights of My EyesSnow AngelSanta Fe TrailNocturneThe First of MayDardanellaThe Brown StudioAll Elegies are Black and WhiteThe Open SkiesHurricaneHis JungleTimor Mortis, FloridaSandWaveGeographyTHE BLUE STAIRS (1968)The Blue StairsTurkey VillasWalking BuddhaColonial HoursSaving TallowThe Return of the MusesA ReasonDirectionBarrelsEast of OmskParade's EndClouds Near the WindmillFan PoemsA Way of BeingFour Moroccan StudiesA Handbook of SurfingI CHING (1969)I ChingMOSCOW MANSIONS (1973)Red LiliesIllyriaEgyptNebraskaOn Mt. SnowdonRosyEnsconcementsEven OvidThe InterruptionsMoscow Mansions 1Moscow Mansions 2Knight of the SwanCarmenMuseumByron's SignatoriesThe PoetessLosing PeopleThe Poem Lying DownSassafrasCircassiansAnother JulyDrawing a BlankStupidPhysical PainRosesLights of My EyesPassageHohenzollernThe StragglersOlivetti odeOn the verge of the pathGravelBicyclingShifting the IrisGreen RevolutionsPoemEveningThe Old Silk RoadNowTHE COUNTESS FROM MINNEAPOLIS (1976)123: 50 Floors4: Thinking of you Prokofief5: River Road Studio6: Portrait of Mary Rood7: Eating Lake Superior Cisco Smoked Fish8: Musings on the Mississippi9: Legends101112: Prairie Houses131415: At the Guthrie Theatre1617: Persians in Minneapolis18:19: (Scop – A Poet) Widsith20212223242526272829303132333435: Crocus Hill3637: Activities3839: June404142: AmaryllisTHE TÜRLER LOSSES (1979)BIOGRAPHY (1980)OneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineQUILTS (1980)QuiltsMUSICALITY (1988)Originally with drawings by June FelterFAIR REALISM (1989)Wild Gardens Overlooked by Night LightsLa Noche Entra en CalorThe View from Kandinsky's WindowThe ThreadIlexSpring VineDora MaarAn Emphasis Falls on RealityValuable MörikeThe Rose Marble TableShuffling LightThe Screen of DistanceHeavy VioletsThe Farewell Stairway (after Balla)WordsTwilight Polka DotsThe NudeWestern AdditivesIn Medieval HollowBleatRopes Sway/Country CousinsSavannahsThe Cradle of CultureLawn BumpsTesseraDEFENSIVE RAPTURE (1993)PaulowniaDoveExpectationGeese BloodFleet of WhiteAtmospheresThe Surface as ObjectII.Defensive RaptureBeautiful/EvilBorrowed Mirror, Filmic RiseRestlessnessChalkIII.BorderlandsDissonance Royal TravellerThe Advance of the GrizzlyThe Glass MountainOtrantoWinter HorsesIV.The AltosSTRIPPED TALES (1995) WITH ARTIST ANNE DUNNstructured / immediacy/ lottery can guessthe moment / a noun / settles into space/ germination beginsundermining /opposing ides // which-awayphilosophy / in Norwaymoody / adjectivalnessneed / to identifyodd / paginationproperty / mix-up/ selfdoma venetian / pallorice / buttonshistory / ambushedklebnikov lootage /useful / techniquesloose grams / of nutmegtypestry /ghost / aboardthe French woman / beckonedmoment / of ingenuityantiquity /what we say /empathetic / chimeslaw / of the etherBergson's Law /magicked /the position / anarchicalphoto / mirageQUILL, SOLITARY APPARITION (1996)Finally, to the Italian GirlGarmentFell, DarklyPallorLeaving ModernityCold and its DemeanourQuill, Solitary ApparitionIF SO, TELL ME (1999)Valorous VineStorytellingOutside of This, That IsIn Slow MotionDoublenessDora FilmsLilyThe poetry MeterThe LullRusset FlameUnusual FiguresIf So, Tell meThe LuminousStringsDeceptionAthletic WritingFaery LandThe Paris LecturesThe Green FlyConfession of My ImagesEffervescenceThe StrumMusic HistorySidewaysTHE CONFETTI TREES (1999)OverboardThe TearThe CoughTrousers for ExtrasNostalgiaThe Guerilla ReportersConfuciousColorNunsCorelliThe Vanished Library"Lonely Mess"LubitschNoisePreparedness"Moments Before…"The Dream Motion Picture; A Proposal for AnimationNemesiaThe AromasFalling in LoveDetailsThe Confetti TreesRomanceNo WordsScreening Room NotesThe Minus OnesScenario-isteCelluloidArs, LongaMetropolisEnchantmentSimultaneityThe Spell of BeautyThe Utmost UnrealityDisappearanceROCKS ON A PLATTER (1999)"Ideas. As they find themselves…""And the words linger, deciding which direction to take…""Intimacy of tone…""Without shyness or formality…"SYMBIOSIS (2000)SymbiosisOriginally appeared with artwork by Laurie ReidMINATURES AND OTHER POEMS (2002)MiniaturesShabby BootBird of ArtSpirit TreeTurretNegative PossibilityCamisoleTiny Foreign TearsTranscriptionLost SpeechFirst PrintsYesterdayPilgrimageFinnish OperaPhotographsPetticoatBlueArthurAutobiographyNoisetoneFourteenth of JulyChekhovaniaCoalColonial HoursSound and StructureMusicianshipPathosBlurred EdgeDURER IN THE WINDOW, REFLEXIONS ON ART (2003)PoetryLunch at Helen Frankenthaler'sOn a Painting by Hayden StubbingHomageTHE RED GAZE (2005)1NostalgiaAn Afternoon in JeopardyImagined RoomLonelinessA Different HoneyA Short NarrativeFreedomAlterationA Burst of LeavesThe Next FloorRoman StripesThe TricksterThe Hungry KnightThe PastModernismGreen NumbersStair of Our YouthA Noise of ReturnFreed ColorThe Gold TapMinimal SoundThe Brown Vest2The Red GazeA Dawn WalkNo Longer StrangersHans HofmannVignettesEchoesInstructionsCompositionSuppositionLAST POEMSIn the HotelConstable's Method Brightening Near the BridgeBeginning of Rain NotesShelley in the Navy-Colored ChairStorytellingElfHotel ComfortWhat People are Saying About This
"Barbara Guest has created a textually saturated poetry that embodies the transient, the ephemeral, and the flickering in translucent surfaces of contingent connections. These poems unravel before us so that we may revel in them, find for ourselves, if we go unprepared, the dwelling that they beckon us to inhabit."
“Reading Barbara Guest’s Collected Poems is like sitting on the very edge of time, as each poem, each book, seems to surpass its own expectations, foraging and inventing in a ceaseless renovation of poetic energies. Barbara Guest envisioned, for generations to come, a future for lyric poetry.”
"Barbara Guest has created a textually saturated poetry that embodies the transient, the ephemeral, and the flickering in translucent surfaces of contingent connections. These poems unravel before us so that we may revel in them, find for ourselves, if we go unprepared, the dwelling that they beckon us to inhabit."—Charles Bernstein
"Reading Barbara Guest's Collected Poems is like sitting on the very edge of time, as each poem, each book, seems to surpass its own expectations, foraging and inventing in a ceaseless renovation of poetic energies. Barbara Guest envisioned, for generations to come, a future for lyric poetry.""—Ann Lauterbach