Dragonfly's Poetry & Prolixity: Explicating the Twilight

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Explicating the Twilight - Jack Gilbert

"...purple is black blooming." ~Jack Gilbert

Explicating the Twilight

Jack Gilbert

The rat makes her way up

the mulberry tree, the branches

getting thin and risky up close

to the fruit, and she slows.

The berry she is after is so ripe,

there is almost no red. Prospero

thinks of Christopher Smart saying

purple is black blooming. She lifts

her mouth to the berry, stretching.

The throat is an elegant gray.

A thousand shades, Christopher wrote

among the crazy people. A thousand

colors from white to silver.

2 comments:

erin said...: such an ecstasy between the elegant extended grey throat and the berry at this volatile precipice! what a poem, ripe in understatement, magnifying intensity!!!

i have been thinking so tenderly of jack gilbert lately, reading his work again (always for the first time!) and adoring him, grateful to and for him.; August 15, 2015 at 1:02 PM
Kelly said...: I totally visualized this poem while reading it. And that flower... what a deep, gorgeous color!; August 15, 2015 at 1:49 PM

I Love Lorrie Moore!!

“You’re not a poetess, I hope,” said the English geologist next to her. “We had a poetess here last month, and things got a bit dodgy here for the rest of us.”

“Really.” After the soup, there was risotto with squid ink.

“Yes. She kept referring to insects as ‘God’s typos’ and then she kept us all after dinner one evening so she could read from her poems, which seemed to consist primarily of the repeating line ‘the hairy kiwi of his balls.’”

From: “Birds of America” by Lorrie Moore, page 266, ‘Terrific Mother’

Miranda July's Best Book:

"Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise." From: "No One Belongs Here More Than You Stories by Miranda July", Page 11

A Dreamy, Drug of a Book

"The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week---yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat night and day, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town." ~Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume", page 240