Katherine Hastings’ curiously named publisher, Spuyten Duyvil in New York City, actually provides me an apt leaping off point for her incredible achievement Cloud Fire.
“Spuyten Duyvil” derives from the New York Dutch and their
“spewing devil” where “spui” and “spuit” involve the gushing forth of
water. However, while we have so much of
water here, it is the fog-shrouded California Pacific, much better painted by a
gentle sorcerer stirring rather than a fearsome devil spewing—less gushing,
more being.
Still, lest I forget, the book’s title contains both clouds
and fire,
My city whose hair is
a cloud fire
This theme of “hair” continues into the poem “Lonadier
Rampant. A poet “too near the bridge,”
does jump, and Hastings, after painting Lynn Lonadier crash from a cliff into the sea, then has her
beloved San Francisco sing a final lullaby,
Lonadier Your hair/Will be the last of you/To hit the
sea/The city that saved you again and again/Rising swiftly/To still you/To
sleep.
It is the City-By-The-Bay, shrouded and elevated by fog that
provides Katherine Hastings (also the painter of her book’s cover) her magical
palette. She becomes the Whitman of
clouds, singing of clouds
Fog-mantle on the
breast of meadow/where voices from the emerald womb—feathered throats and bud
bloom—sing through
I don’t employ the word “masterpiece” frequently, and never
casually. However, in the case of Hastings long opening
poem, “Clouds,” I have no choice. In it,
I feel the spirit and depth of Hart Crane’s “Bridge”
How many dawns, chill
from his rippling rest/The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,/Shedding
white rings of tumult, building high/Over the chained bay waters Liberty—
And Hastings on “flight,”
We do this like
children or angels living/on the ledges of waves and lips, downy/wings so white
they hum every color./Bees rolling in a white rose.
Cloud Fire works
best read in one sweeping panorama from front to back. Hastings
begins in clouds, opens into complex life experiences and wraps up in a final poem
also title “Clouds” where, “In fog you
are everywhere/and nowhere.” Amidst the
clouds and between them, the book exposes both the grime and glimmer of earth
below as in this from “ O’Sidhe of Greenwich Street,”
...With one hand she
catches a dove,/breathes it back to flight, with the other/turns the sizzling
knob.
Were I to give you my reader only one bit of advice today,
it would be to buy this book now. Then
take it home and read it through from beginning to end, and over and over. It’s that good!
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3 More Ed Coletti Poems
A Trio of Triolets (tree-oh-lays)
Figuring that probably 95% of serious poets writing today eschew traditional poetic forms for free verse, I surmise that the poets who do at least occasionally try formal verse paradoxically could be termed today's "rebels."
I liken the "restriction" of such forms to swaddling a baby. The resulting security is a benefit. "Restricting" myself to a poetic vessel seems to free the soul to pour its contents into the container in a way that is different from an uncontained beginning. I've chosen the triolet which issues from 13th century France, is similar to the rondeau, was briefly popularized by Robert Bridges at the turn of the 20th century, and which can lend itself nicely to humor.
Triolet On Time
"For boys add to their woe by sitting
still"
Was
the best line of my youthful poem.
Now
age and illness ask again why will
Such
boys add to their woe by sitting still?
You’d
think of this they’d had their awful fill
And,
dreaming dreams of life they’d finally sow them.
"For boys add to their woe by sitting
still"
Was
the best line of my youthful poem.
Published at The New Formalist September 2012
Triolet Of The Critical Loser
“Stick
to painting, I don’t like your poems,”
Averred
Cowboy Bob who I’d beaten in chess.
Perhaps
he feared lofty emotions,
“Stick
to painting, I don’t like your poems,”
More
difficult work beyond his knowing.
Give
him Kipling, McKuen, Edgar Guest,
“Stick
to painting, I don’t like your poems,”
Averred
Cowboy Bob who I’d beaten in chess.
Triolet From A Line By Eric
Clapton
My
darling you look wonderful tonight.
Your
short silver hair, shining opal eyes,
When
I see you smiling everything feels right.
My
darling you look wonderful tonight.
Thought
of your passing’s a terrible fright,
Loss
of part of me, joy and wisdom dies.
My
darling you look wonderful tonight.
Your
short silver hair, shining opal eyes.
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