Thursday 8 April 2010

Barbara Guest's Miniatures and Other Poems (Wesleyan UP, 2002)

NB: Often the spacing here is not consistent with the spacing in the book. If you're enticed by these passages, please read it yourself.



Earth has gala momentum.

"Shabby Boat"



In the past we listened to photographs. They heard our voice speak. Alice, active. What had been distance was memory.

*

The old camera refused to penetrate the unknown. Its heart was soft, unreliable.

from "Photographs"


Sound lays the structure. Sound leaks into the future.

last line of "Sound and Structure"


Opened the entrance door,

and make-believe arrived with a doll on its surface

*

Lived not for pleasure, to hear the cry

in a small coil
of ice.

And heard through the oak panel—,

amazing to listen to speech by way of adulthood.

To articulate velvet,

without noise or spectacle

*

the sorrow of falling

into an historical position

*

Lived not for pleasure, to hear the harp-like
cry in a coil,

to live in an eccentric balloon.

from "Pathos"


An attempt to get beyond the arrangement,

the vibration of a peculiar touch.

*

A hint of what was going to be.

Covering and uncovering necessary.

Self pouring out of cloudedness.

from "Blurred Edge"


Advanced Book Exchange has a handful of secondhand copies of Miniatures for sale at good prices.

No comments:

Post a Comment