Friday, July 21, 2017

Personal Poem (for Chris Sharp)


Personal Poem (for Chris Sharp)

Since you simply forgot to "get in touch" as you said you were going to do, which I will try not to take personally, though it's impossible, I mean not to mind meaning that little, that you would simply forget, when I want, of course, from my own small island of ego, to mean a lot, but will still try to see objectively, as in- everyone has their own life to live, their own bed to make, I instead, on this one very rare night of being sans familia, and being not of the spirit to go out into the city, which I should do, since I can't ever, am instead reading the book I was going to give you tonight as a gift, a book a picked up, like magic, from a book sale in Westport CT last week, because I knew, or at least thought I knew, I would see you this week, and it seemed so perfect, "After Nature" by Sebald, put out in conjunction with the New Museum in 2003, with illustrations by Maurizio Cattelan, Werner Herzog, August Strindberg and dozens of others you would probably recognize but I don't, and was excited to give it to you, though if I had I wouldn't have read it, as I am doing now, having just finished the first of 3 long poems in it, a dizzyingly great one about Matthias Grunewald, and so at least for that reason am glad you forgot, but for all that greatness impressed upon me, would have rather have given the book to you, as it was meant for you, and physical gestures mean more, ultimately, than the mere metaphysical, as seeing a painting in person is better than the in reproduction, ditto music or anything else in this godforsaken digital age. 

There's this thing Sebald does so well, perhaps better than anybody, a kind of lyrical limning of connections flowing so subtly as to seem dreamlike that makes me dream up a new form, which is, indeed, something akin to dreaming, the way dreaming can dispense with narrative structure inside of narrative structure, forever, and it seems to me a poem could be written that way, After Nature, and so I will, in the presence of your absence.  

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