I.
Defined:
Part alchemical chamber for the covert performance
of hermetic rites & part memorial to overt didacticism
the museum was pulled between a grotto-like hideaway,
tucked into a scholar’s private quarters & a utilitarian
& gregarious institution, like the public library.
Behind door behind door behind barbwire
behind briar, up one flight of stairs & down
one hall is an airspace. In it: the pilot, his
helm of heirlooms & juvenilia, his alter
for private worship with a bandaged finger
on the steeple of anxious penmanship.
Or perhaps he’s a matryoshka doll, the hours
eggshell-thin & woodcraft, his heart: ruby
pendant hung on chain hung on clavicle.
This palace of no-one-else’s-mouth, how
it addresses him alone & never enough.
The bookshelves stacked like windows
to so many closed shops, mirrors propped
opposite windows to duplicate the ineffable day.
II.
The analogy of the world to a picture also governed
the treasury of curiosities. Splashy arrangements
turned the repository into a theatrum whose grotesque
materials were accumulated in order to be looked at.
Ambergris in a clay bowl, sweet grass braided
in whalebone. Male figurines, hips turned out
one hundred eighty degrees. A colonnade
of candles molded from the fat of kouroi,
dried sage smoldering in an ashtray. Jade
prayer beads, plaster Buddha, copper roach.
Hennaed hand, wolf meat, sheepskin. Sad record
on the Victrola, a Polaroid of every moonphase.
Mortar, pestle, phial of polecat musk, wormwood.
Humerus, patella, eye socket, paranoia in spades.
Nightshade: deep, fried & nauseous essence
of carnival tent, enamel: whites bacteria-addled.
Basil in beer glass growing roots into water,
water into sill. Laxative, laxative, sleeping pill.
III.
Being without discernible inscription, such
barbaric bits & pieces were illiterate
& could only whisper indistinct or garbled
messages down the centuries.
O the inelegant earth, entirely escapable
for those who can explain it: composite
artifact of bald opulence, misery & neglect.
Listen for instruction. Humble, he who inherits
gilt-ridden Faberge—open to find its yolk
stillborn, its hen, flown. The impossible
is happening minute by minute & lifelong.
Go clean-shaven, go ingrown, just go god
damn with faint praise the simple, perfect
poetics of this world, in the next world.
A heart cannot endure such remarkable fatigue.
So, the silver aero plane weeps when its pilot
locks gate behind burdock bush, locks door
behind door & falls on the bed on the floor.
Notes
Italicized text borrowed from Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment & the Eclipse of Visual Education, Barbara Maria Strafford, MIT 1996
Koroui: Greek, male youth; spec. statue of a male nude standing with fists to its sides & left foot forward
Wunderkammer (trans.): Cabinet of Curiosities
ZPace
Monday, August 25, 2008
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1 comment:
The strange and often quizzical excerpts you've chosen to begin each section are an estimable choice, but I have two concerns. Must they begin every section, or might they be dispersed throughout? I think it's necessary that an excerpt begins the first section, but I'm uncertain about that necessity in other sections. Second, the excerpts tend to run very long as lines (line two counts 19 syllables). I only find this jarring in conjunction with the more long-winded language, i.e. "alchemical chamber for the covert performance," but I also feel that the dense language of the excerpts plays counterpoint to the language of the poem itself rather well.
I wonder about the geography of the first section (door, door, then barbwire, then briar?), but I sense the language wants to be at play with the surreality it describes. However, the surreality in language and image is offset here and there in section one by a straightforwardness and omniscience of voice: "In it: the pilot," "addresses him alone & never enough," "mirrors propped...to duplicate the ineffable day." While I think "it addresses him alone and never enough" is a solid line in and of itself, and that you use "duplicate" about as well as the word can ever be used, there do remain issues with what the voice is doing in this section.
Initially I was put off by section two, but after a third or fourth reading, I think this may be the strongest of the poem. My reservation arose from the form's unwavering listing, yet as a "cabinet of curiosities" I think you capture the grotesque and curious kinds of items set forth in a Wunderkammer. Where the list falters is where the descriptions become overtly "poetic," that is, where the voice attempts to add an image upon the image itself, as in "a colonnade of candles," "paranoia of spades," or "nauseous essence of carnival tent." To me, these descriptions don't hold up against the simplicity and intrigue of "ambergis in a clay bowl" or "Polaroids of every moonphase."
The excerpt in the third section is well-chosen (though again, need it be at the beginning?) and reflects the language of the poem with precision. For my ear, section three really starts churning at "The impossible is happening," where the writing starts breaking away from two conventions: that of the poem itself, and that of Z. Pace. Here the voice is without the omniscience of section one and without the objectivity of section two, and begins to speak from a place of desperation and earnest address. Such is always good. That the section, and the poem, decrescendo back into the folk-tale rhythm of the pilot's story (almost a little Dr. Seuss) I think works rather well, and it's both pain and joy to see him fall on that "bed on the floor." It almost seems like it needs a last iamb to accent that fall, like a "duh-DUM" or a "Harumph" or something odd and probably unfitting like that. Well played, sir.
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