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Terreson's word hoard (3)
The collection I'm taking from here is called Cottage Industries. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but, incredibly enough, the collection started out as 35 poems written in the month of February, 1991. 30 poems survive. I cannot account for the rate of production. I had just finished writing a second novel. I had just taken a full, comprehensive reckoning of E.E. Cummings's collected poems. I did not have to work, having saved up enough money for a few more months of job-free time. Some days 3 poems came. I was living in a cottage standing on pilings out over Puget Sound in WA State, thus the title. Some of the poems are epigrammatic in length and some are narrative long.
Analogue
I dreamt the perfectly executed
moon son's salmon leap
the upoverending, swiftly vanquishing
once in a life cycle hero's feat.
Oddly enough that
imagined man was me
while wading in the white orgasmic
the rolling breaker skirt
the sea woman's surf
where said dreamer did drown
and willing.
Papageno
Bird man flying high, or the
tender brother who flutters inside
the party colored tree;
spirited, androgynous
and always the feminine breeze
rising inflorescent.
Sheet Music
Unsong
a poet's job is
half-done.
In print
lovers are left to
trace lips.
The Tether
Doing it the old way,
the tethered's woven old way
by getting folded down the
macrame maze when old
way through morning, noon, and
late lamp light is without the
association, the tutorial and still no
tall talent for lowering down
on the luring commercial advantage.
And doing it here, this
for no reason other than here this
hoping for the fresh glimpse furrowing,
the untrained personal hints
past presumptive
even below the second-hand experience.
But oh so not alone and this
the emphasis.
Never alone through morning, noon
into lively lamp light,
since still must be seeing in
the silent seance (can't anyone know?)
the sighting seance with the undead
great, the souls layering into
the first born cleaving on through
the land loves' beating hearts above
the world woman pitting parallel to
the wild women circling centers inside
the white night drawing down around
the moon
who's every earth sutured's constant companion.
Terreson
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Apr/15/2012, 11:02 am
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Taking from something Camus said that has stuck with me all these years. There is always a balance between philosophy and poetry in great art. Without one there cannot be the other. Upset the balance, however, and there is neither.
Proof Positive
Soul speech sketched:
the curvilinear spill
in a moon's leak first measured
in disquiet and seizure while
pressing on synapses
in excitable life;
gravity governed like a canyon river
running rapids, rilling, swirling,
then catching up in
the waiting, wide open
delta ballast of serenity;
while describing, always cosigning
the bright woman's face
burning heatless,
coldless, feverishly
upon dark cheeks.
Clarion Still
One for clear time, simple in syntax
and etched upon the bruised bone.
They will not make it without us,
who are stuck to the time line's
terminus conveyor.
The statement squarely blocked by
the cutlery of now and then.
With their profiteers, presidents,
and social scieentists,
or the assembly cybernate
of virtual reality climate,
even the rapturist whose swish
is just a death wish,
they're still not making the soul loop
the connecting hoop
coiling, continuous.
Still they're falling through
the rent matrix of
never green again.
Sadly the same so too their children.
The Refusal
It is the mighty movement they want
and indeed will get when the middling main
becomes the great venture besting them.
Only, they will not want it then,
they will not want what urges them on;
not when the dark tide comes cresting,
to crumble the sandbagging, upoverending,
never discerning
between faith and betrayal
as they turn on themselves.
I think I will cultivate peace until then
even to call all the little ones in,
nor worry the minor league troubles.
I think I will grow budding branches
with hair of evergreen
and tendril toes to moisten the soul.
Then I think I will select to deaf ear
when comes the patriot call to mobilize,
crusade, deport, hate who they say.
I think I will wrap 'round instead
inside land loves and dema mounds where
the first ones come calling too and signing,
rising through slender, certain breezes,
bodying the deeper in sense meaning;
to circle inside and earthy story
while they keep on course for history.
Terreson
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Apr/22/2012, 12:37 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Funny how a refusal can double as an affirmation,
Thanks Tere,
Chris
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Apr/22/2012, 1:41 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
North Wind Blows
North now and north the wind
what blows down the bay
the disruptive torque of the
northwind horse
the whitemare ribbing over
the waves until
hollowing up into, cupping up
into hallowed calendar trees
in the bowl of the wind you hear
but cannot see;
while cottage fire heats in
burning brand the heart of embercoal
the little heart of brick and iron stove
to keep us warm away from
forms of palace ice
geometric inside the windows
fronting the northwind horse
the grazing force
rounding year's first shiver
that branches before winter.
Spell Cast
I signed a song on
the day she was born,
in the midnight morning when
souls slip out
and slipping in;
when she came climbing out of
her matter maternal
her earth bow mother
having who nurturing her in
the self-spun, the womby water.
Then I saw her
and there swallowing back
that long tear of love
what with which I signed the song
forever holding on,
and hidden so deep
(hidden so deep)
like a charm you keep
to see your own child safe and free.
It's been the burning brand
I never sing or show
well hidden, well covered
in strong storm;
only the sight of it here
warm, weaving years
upon the largess down the well
or linen wrapped like
the witchy cottage doll.
An Unsayable
Upwelling the underfeeling
in the love of you
in the wintry darkness gardening
in the sticky sycamore pasty leaves
in the Black Hills bulging blue
the atmospheric feeling for you
when harbor dogs go barking
and silver coyote the suddening dream
of recent times and your cleft thighs
up above wide river gorge
like brown Theban hills
flashing the flood in the rain
in the nameless the swelling
the sweeetening conception the same
when not knowing the knowing
how to picture convey
the upwelling in underfeeling;
in the love of you
nothing else to do.
Terreson
Last edited by Terreson, Apr/29/2012, 5:34 pm
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Apr/29/2012, 5:23 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
quote: North Wind Blows
North now and north the wind
what blows down the bay
the disruptive torque of the
northwind horse
the whitemare ribbing over
the waves until
hollowing up into, cupping up
into hallowed calendar trees
in the bowl of the wind you hear
but cannot see;
while cottage fire heats in
burning brand the heart of embercoal
the little heart of brick and iron stove
to keep us warm away from
forms of palace ice
geometric inside the windows
fronting the northwind horse
the grazing force
rounding year's first shiver
that branches before winter.
An excellent, physical, felt-in-the-body poem about the wind. I love that it is a horse – white like the whitecaps it awakens. I love the verbs here, such as “Ribbing up” – so precise and visual. I also very much appreciate the “palace ice / geometric inside the windows” – I can see the ice crystals like the leaded windows of manor houses. Can’t help thinking how “whitemare” sounds like “nightmare” and love “embercoal,” another of your lovely coined compound words.
quote: Spell Cast
I signed a song on
the day she was born,
in the midnight morning when
souls slip out
and slipping in;
when she came climbing out of
her matter maternal
her earth bow mother
having who nurturing her in
the self-spun, the womby water.
Then I saw her
and there swallowing back
that long tear of love
what with which I signed the song
forever holding on,
and hidden so deep
(hidden so deep)
like a charm you keep
to see your own child safe and free.
It's been the burning brand
I never sing or show
well hidden, well covered
in strong storm;
only the sight of it here
warm, weaving years
upon the largess down the well
or linen wrapped like
the witchy cottage doll.
This is the best thing I've read about this most fundamental and defining of moments.
So much here to respond to. First and most essentially, the feeling contained. The “swallowing back that long tear of love” is so elemental that the line itself catches in my throat like a swallowed tear. I love the signed but unsung song, the guarded magic, “like a charm you keep” close to protect a child now outside the safety of “womby water” and needing to be kept “safe and free.” I see this loving magic as a gestured rune, a spell made from the clenched heart of perfect love.
The first part, in which the narrator speaks of how:
quote: she came climbing out of
her matter maternal
her earth bow mother
having who nurturing her in
the self-spun, the womby water
is gorgeous evocation of that elemental miracle called birth. Also the idea of the spirit of her slipping in at that moment – it speaks to me personally. One question: not getting the syntax of “having who.”
The wrapping/weaving of love, like a “linen wrapped… witchy cottage doll” is again so evocative of what that is like -- the layers that build up through time: layers of moments and words and the physical, heartfelt ache of being her father.
The “largess down the well” speaks to me of so many wells – the well of time and the eternity of a father’s love. Or also of history – an ever flowing continuum, back and back and back, of this love felt for a child, among those generations of parents who allow themselves the vulnerability to feel such a scary, magical feeling. Also the well of love itself – the largess of unconditional love, or love of any kind for that matter.
quote: An Unsayable
Upwelling the underfeeling
in the love of you
in the wintry darkness gardening
in the sticky sycamore pasty leaves
in the Black Hills bulging blue
the atmospheric feeling for you
when harbor dogs go barking
and silver coyote the suddening dream
of recent times and your cleft thighs
up above wide river gorge
like brown Theban hills
flashing the flood in the rain
in the nameless the swelling
the sweeetening conception the same
when not knowing the knowing
how to picture convey
the upwelling in underfeeling;
in the love of you
nothing else to do.
Beautiful. I am especially in love with the musicality of: “saddening dream”, “sweetening conception”, “upwelling in underfeeling” which captures the swelling of love and how it is a feeling underneath every thought or moment. The ending, too, is powerfully evocative of the inevitability of every moment when one is in love – there is nothing else to do but be inside it, taken over by it.
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Apr/29/2012, 6:33 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Thank you for reading, vkp. Thanks especially for your generosity. Not sure the poems deserve it, but they'll take it. One thing, however, and said in the spirit of textual understanding. An Unsayable may be a love poem. It probably is. But not to a woman. Rather it is addressed to she Goethe called the Eternal Feminine. Others call her Goddess.
Tere
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May/5/2012, 4:19 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
In a Minor Key
The deep wood king coming some
three days before comes the dream,
vermilion crested, talons black and sharp
and coin of gold still in the eyes
from the minor ancient burial rite;
the wood king, the select transformed
in great love, greater feeling for
the sentence of year's surrender,
and standing out once in deep relief
against the lichen gray on alder tree.
Or coming home on that same day
as when seeing the carnal king
and seeing too a council of the crows
bodied black, holding over cottage station.
The thought then leading on itself
'not by chance' the king or crows
with then the wind bell music
and not a breeze in left over leaves.
Just the wondernment certainly yes
at the way of incident coincidence.
Soon there following the near day
a full moon day and perigee
when seeing her rise over the bay,
then spilling along on her own water road
like the bending blade's bridge waverly
touching far to home shore.
And suddenly the self-knee bending,
responsive, unthinking,
with soon the circle in moon magic drawn.
First gathering up from, then drawing
down into, and finally set inside
the centric sight of how she pulls
upon the spool threaded through
the moon lovers' bridge;
yes, and then the rising dema loves,
the first ones already tilled beneath
but feeling the fulling and coming
closer, arcing over, lively while
feeling free to spirit away
in earthrides of all that keeps
barely below the surface of things;
then there wheeling the great blue heron
deciding the time for closing the chant,
for breaking the circle of stone chalk
where gets sewn the witchy one will
to that of the First Ones' dark, fertile heart
pounding in the pull of the moon.
Later there comes the indwelling dream
in thrill of the image seen unasleep:
the deeply entranced, the dark demesne
and no slanting spill, no liquid light in
the black time of midnight life;
and the voice who calls for her familiar,
the voice unseen, but stilling as when
a woman signs her small sweet summons.
And finally looking up in high branches,
looking for a voice's silver source,
and focus finding in the flutter of
the white, bright woman bird
unspooling hair of tinctured light,
what pours down through forest tangle.
Terreson
Poem's debut. Never shown before. Gerund nazis would send me away on a cattle car. For this poem I would gladly go.
Tere
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May/5/2012, 4:56 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
The Actress
She plays the parts assigned to her in the
dreamscape of the spotlight upon the stage where
the play gets played in the theater next
the theater next where dramatic of action
crystal collects in active verbs
signing the words as she entrances believably,
rhythmically, believably.
She draws on the audience's dark unsaying soul,
the whole of theater's soul she carries up
in her first epiphany
of the forever feminine's whitening woman,
the morning star of Sailor hope,
the resident queen presiding over dreams
and giving the gift of promise to return just as
the curtain implicates her in its folds.
(Then she's gone and daily dramas drag on.)
Then she returns as she said she would,
only now she is masked, wearing the part
of the slumming man's, the darkdoor man's whore,
the one who wants the answering slut bending to
his self-love, his stranger charge, his
unrelieved lust to abase her.
But she who slips away still standing.
(Once again gone while daily the drama drags on.)
And once again she falls into the spotlight in the
stormy night when lips enlarged are red,
and her hair is wildmare black and she is the
life-blood beauty whom half-hearts haunt
who cannot follow the rule she knows
when the beauty rule requires the whole
of the haunted soul who wills to walk with her
in the bright night's distended light
bottoming through the catacomb womb
in true beauty's unkempt measure.
But soon she goes when the haunted show
how they cannot fully fall to her.
(And stilling she's gone when daily dramas drag on.)
Only, somehow she returns when she's become
the wilder woman in the artist girl who is the
self-conversant, self-acting,
selfing sister joy birthing the
greening boys in flowering form she draws
in calligraphy written large
in life weave of honey wine and tendril dream
as too soon she hides inside undrawn regions.
(And gone again while rope and pulley
drag down the daily drama on.)
And the play will come to its final scene
when hers is to initiate the neophyte
into life's unsecured mystery.
How else should she seem but as the
Minoan serpent queen for whom the plain secret
is in the solitary dance, in the wild,
in abandonment, in the
anciently young, circling mandalic,
the hilltop ceremonial where the truth
she decribes is in the storied lives
twining through before and after,
pressing up inside the dramatic now,
as the curtain calls and the players bow
to the audience seeing only seeing her
(just before she's gone and daily dramas drag on).
But now it's time to play real, since,
the actress of whom I speak when the show is
complete will come the way home with me.
We are lovers, you see, and we are friends.
And we will talk of how the part played, of how
she forgot three lines, of how she entered into
the stirred, the illusions up on the stage,
of how it went through the hall, of
how the audience fell inside her spell,
of how ...
But then she will talk herself still,
ready to fall folded to our small home, our
warm home where the damper downs, and the
wood stove rounds the edge of chill
as she settles in the spin of soft sleep
while I hold her from under, and she
burrows into my side as I keep a late watch
on worrisome things watchers will see:
what I didn't tell her as we talked, or while
she released her breath on sleepy air
of the thing I saw at the theater,
when the thing I saw was in the words I heard
when the lawyer said, when the lawyer who is
reputed to make a hundred grand in dollars a year;
and the lawyer talking when the show was ended,
and watching her when the players mingled,
and he being the public's defender,
the community's reasoning, well regarded leader,
who said while keeping his eyes on her,
"I preferred her slut to her other parts."
Just the prayer coming in the gentling, in the
magic coming through words quilting for her:
dearest actress, dear heart's trusting friend,
if the daily in your drama drags you along to where
if ever you must break the still in birdie flight,
never let that one cover your twilight, or cast you
in the dark of his townhouse door.
Poem posted elsewhere. It comes from Cottage Industries
Personally I think it is something poets no longer have a capacity for doing.
Terreson
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May/5/2012, 8:39 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
She is Florida
Maybe a mother song can sing
about a personal lady,
truly the tidewater, a Spanish Hammock beauty,
an excitable woman, a mother of children,
a sometime casualty of men;
even a daughter of her own black eyed mother
whose picture once seen,
a certain turn-of-the-century photograph,
shows a warmly defiant smiling girl,
a member of the Lower Creek clan,
and whose high mother love, mother pride,
woman fire
would filter through to the daughter child
one day to become another mother, lover
and woman on fire.
But just a mother song can sing
high in bole branches of the live oak
where woman when still a child
would escape her family's poverty
with morning's biscuits bundled in rag
and books about reappearing, disappearing
shiny savior knights in misty mid-distance;
who could still smile childishly since
life turning to love loss was not yet
a ribbed road to reckon with;
who would one day climb down that tree
motherless, father itinerant, to care for
the other, too many children;
and who would come to plumb the deep
savanna of her heart as she kept keeping
to lessons learned of the marsh, the ones
telling all little sisters 'keep on flowering,
growing berry ripe in the emotions,
keep on rooting, closing in dark humid nights,
keep turning my way in morning's hush light.'
And so she lived a lengthy love with life,
she who closely loved the lengthy fight
with anyone rash enough to tell her no.
She had her men, several by account,
her husbands and lovers,
all noted in the errants' tally;
she had her sibling circle reunion hymns,
her bridge parties and Sunday socials,
her memory talent for Cracker cuisine,
her children whose children would seek her out,
her sherry kept in the cupboard,
her Esperanza home proudly owned
and situate between gray ocean and tidal river;
she had her yard of twilight gardening and her
nights of the wild eyed desires unresting with her like
a mistress of the lizard guard underworld;
and she had romance stories, her tales of true love
cajoling her through the flamingo's
flouncing wings of dawn, to urge her well into
the last years while waiting,
still waiting for that man who might be
man enough to walk the tidal time with her.
And a mother song certainly can sing
for one who is still, and restless,
out in there on a marsh moist breeze,
whispering, sometimes rising through
fronds of sable palms;
to sing of how she loved to early drive
through the old Florida, the fingerling of
porous land swept slanted by the sea, and
pushed by the sun, and pulled on by the moon
into her own volupting interior.
While this tidewater, a Spanish hammock beauty
passed down shadow sown byways, between
nighthawk groves and out into wide prairies
beneath gossamer skies fulling
the bowl of her soul.
Terreson
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May/12/2012, 5:54 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
A response to: In a Minor Key
quote: The deep wood king coming some
three days before comes the dream,
vermilion crested, talons black and sharp
and coin of gold still in the eyes
from the minor ancient burial rite;
the wood king, the select transformed
in great love, greater feeling for
the sentence of year's surrender,
and standing out once in deep relief
against the lichen gray on alder tree.
Everything in the above opening is powerful. I see the wood king – three days before the dream. I love the “year’s surrender” and his love for what is about to unfold. He is sculptural to me – eternal and real and standing, as you say, in relief.
quote: Or coming home on that same day
as when seeing the carnal king
and seeing too a council of the crows
bodied black, holding over cottage station.
The thought then leading on itself
'not by chance' the king or crows
with then the wind bell music
and not a breeze in left over leaves.
Just the wondernment certainly yes
at the way of incident coincidence.
The council of the crows reminds me of southern lore and ancient lore and the Crow king, chanting over the dead, escorting or at least guiding. A crow can be a guide of any kind, though, isn’t that so? Love: “wind bell music” which can exist here on my porch, now, as the chimes clink in a breeze, or can happen among the leaves of the forest. “Incident coincidence” leaves me speechless. Thus I will not comment further….
quote: Soon there following the near day
a full moon day and perigee
when seeing her rise over the bay,
then spilling along on her own water road
like the bending blade's bridge waverly
touching far to home shore.
And suddenly the self-knee bending,
responsive, unthinking,
with soon the circle in moon magic drawn.
First gathering up from, then drawing
down into, and finally set inside
the centric sight of how she pulls
upon the spool threaded through
the moon lovers' bridge;
yes, and then the rising dema loves,
the first ones already tilled beneath
but feeling the fulling and coming
closer, arcing over, lively while
feeling free to spirit away
in earthrides of all that keeps
barely below the surface of things;
then there wheeling the great blue heron
deciding the time for closing the chant,
for breaking the circle of stone chalk
where gets sewn the witchy one will
to that of the First Ones' dark, fertile heart
pounding in the pull of the moon.
The visuals of the opening of this section are perfect. The word “waverly” is one that should be added to the dictionary immediately. “The bending blade’s bridge” sings. This is my favorite part of the whole poem, perhaps:
quote: And suddenly the self-knee bending,
responsive, unthinking,
with soon the circle in moon magic drawn.
The amorous, smitten wood king in thrall to the moon, worshipfully bending at the knee to her and drawing his magic circle – it takes my breath for it is so organic and the “unthinking” nature of his body-driven/soul-driven response is purely evident.
The drawing of the moon into his circle, the “feeling the fulling” of her, and how she pulls on him as he draws on her – it is moving as well as beautifully erotic. The ceremony ends with the heron (perfect). The final line of this strophe is just as musical and powerful as they come.
quote: Later there comes the indwelling dream
in thrill of the image seen unasleep:
the deeply entranced, the dark demesne
and no slanting spill, no liquid light in
the black time of midnight life;
and the voice who calls for her familiar,
the voice unseen, but stilling as when
a woman signs her small sweet summons.
And finally looking up in high branches,
looking for a voice's silver source,
and focus finding in the flutter of
the white, bright woman bird
unspooling hair of tinctured light,
what pours down through forest tangle.
Aside from the part mentioned above, this whole strophe is my other absolutely favorite part of this poem. It all works, musically and visually and in its “pounding pull” on me, personally. The “unspooling hair of tinctured light” pouring “down through forest tangle” may be one of the most beautiful poetic images I’ve ever read.
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May/13/2012, 10:28 am
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
What a poem to read on mother’s day. I am left with an aching but full heart. It is powerful to me, as a mother, to see how closely a mother can be observed – through all the layers that are there in that relationship, to think of being that closely seen by one’s son or daughter is, frankly, overwhelming, moving, strangely shattering and rather glorious. To be human to our children is both necessary, in time, and seemingly impossible. You have shown that it is not impossible.
So many lines, moods, words here pull me in. I did have maybe two quibblequestions with a word or line here and there (maybe two – already can’t remember because it is so unimportant). The poem is simply beautiful. Just purely purely beautiful.
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May/13/2012, 10:39 am
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Thank you for reading, vkp. And for your comments that always tend to say something showing me something I hadn't seen or thought about. Both in response to my writing and to everyone else's on the board.
As mentioned above the whole of the collection came in 28 days, month of February. Not sure from where actually. But I do remember coming home one afternoon and spotting a piliated woodpecker flying through the slope's trees above my cottage. The sight is what triggered In a Minor Key. In witchy lore the piliated, or great crested woodpecker Brits call it, there can be an association between the bird and the wood king, titular spirit of forests. Aptly enough here called the carnal king. Anyway, poem is almost entirely pure reportage.
She is Florida makes for a funny coincidence. It happened to be on top of the stack, waiting to get posted. And it happened to be Mother's Day eve. I guess it is a coincidence. What you say about mother's getting seen by their children is interesting. Never thought about it actually. But I get what you mean. Anyway, the old Florida I grew up to is as gone as the poem's girl/woman. I cannot think of one without remembering the other. Thanks again.
Tere
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May/13/2012, 1:55 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Tere,
Wonderful, deeply felt, embodied love poems dedicated to the Feminine in all her guises and disguises: Goddess, mother, daughter, lover, the earth herself. Whoever told you not to write about these things was way off-base. So very glad you didn't listen to such a strident siren's song.
I enjoyed reading all these poems and the commentary they provoked. I don't know where to begin commenting on them myself. Each one is heart-catchingly captivating in its own right. I can't pick a favorite from the bunch, so I won't. You made me see and love and fear and hope for all of them, and for the male narrator.
Last edited by Katlin, May/19/2012, 8:22 pm
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May/15/2012, 3:20 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Those are awefully big words, Kat. You'll understand if they are a bit humbling. I wish I could take the credit when it appears I've gotten something right, poetry-wise. But I can't, which you'll understand also.
The next poem I'll post is a narrative poem, that all but forgotten kind of poetry. Form is vers libres. I hope it comes as a treat.
Tere
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May/19/2012, 2:04 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Twin Hills
There is a Gallic story told old ago,
told when old ago was not so old.
It is about the Whitening Woman,
the Territorial Queen
the everlasting Beauty whose lips conferred
the summerhaven dream.
It tells of how she went wood walking
early one ancient day
and when she came upon a clearing
where a lonely man lived, tilling his fields;
and how he looked mighty fine to her
where he worked to the terracing,
stripped in the sunning to the waist,
his bronze back rippling with
muscle hammocks moving
like living rings of snakes.
And the Lady who then emerges
from out inside her mystery thicket,
walking to where the man had cows,
speaking no words,
but only pulling on the udders
until she makes the milk cows mild.
Then how she shapes shelter sides
and rounding the rough house boards,
performing the straightening,
and generally working through the day,
helping the man whose echo she heard
inside her own quilted body sense,
until it was time to lead him to her,
until time came for loving in the straw,
just the feeling and the flood,
the touch of two in yellow straw.
Then she who leads her farmer to prosper,
leading him by the hand,
leading the land to black fertility
while she herself the Whitening Woman
made big with twins in her belly.
And it's how they kept together,
fitting that well around each other,
and how they combed through the timely tale
of two planetary lovers.
Or until there came the day the news
of a new year's festival day,
with the farmer summoned by the king,
called upon, since,
the region of the king would be renewed
by the Up-From-Under-Mothers.
And he who now will celebrate
the lease on life granted him.
And so there coming the day set for
the gaming, the bard words, and the drink,
with the farmer man ready to leave
and his Lady who wishes he would stay, since,
she says he will want to boast of her
and this would not be best.
But still the landholder feeling certain, sure,
he can rub against the hero company
and never telling the tales of her.
And so he goes.
With the morning comes the noon
and with the sun bulging at its brightest
there come the hero games when the king
must bring the chariot with two horses,
saying no one can run faster than they.
And when the farmer must boast of his Lady
as finally having recognized
the silver threads of Sovereignty,
while saying she can win any race run.
And when the farmer must be tied
so told he will die
unless his Lady does outrun the sun.
Then the king's men sent to summons her
and she being told her lover's life is lost
if she does not lead the solar horses.
But being as carefully near as she is
to the fullness of her term
she naturally asks for small mercy,
with it not near enough for messengers to give her.
And her farmer man, in addition they say,
who will soon see the shallow grave
of an only man's death.
So then the Lady goes to the games
and once again asking, now of the assembled,
to be shown a margin of mercy.
But still those heroes who cannot hear her.
And she who races in the outside rim
outrunning the solar twins,
while reaching to the finish line
and just in time
to birth the pair of holy hills
in hard pain, in kneeling labor,
while still the heroes gathered,
the king's company looks on.
And maybe she's through with men by then,
the Whitening Woman who once loved a farmer,
since, when she slowly stands in her afterbirth
she tells of what is in store for them.
She only saying, "Such indifferent heroes
deserve to feel the pangs of birth,
and so you will whenever the region
is pressed in deepest danger,
and fully for five days, incapacitated,
with the bending pains of kneeling labor."
And after plainly saying what she feels
the Whitening Woman turns away
and wraps herself inside her cloak,
with no one telling if she looks a last time
down the twilight tide towards her lover,
she who hides in breasty hillsides.
And it's just an old story told old ago
when fields kept to smaller clearings
and trees spread in wider groves.
Mostly forgotten except in books,
mostly forgotten except for near events.
And how about that simple farmer?
Still lonely, likely, and no wiser.
Terreson
The particulars of the story are of my invention. Story itself belongs to ancient Irish lit. Called the Pangs of Ulster, sometimes called the Pangs of the Ulstermen. It is intended to explain why the warriors of Ulster were absent from the great battle, known as The Tain, a cattle raid in which the armies of Connaught and their allies invade Ulster. There, by himself, the hero, Cuchulainn, must face the invading armies. The slaughter is tremendous. But finally he is run through. Pangs of the Ulstermen. Damn but the story resonates for me.
Tere
Last edited by Terreson, May/19/2012, 4:03 pm
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May/19/2012, 3:51 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Those are awefully big words, Kat. You'll understand if they are a bit humbling. I wish I could take the credit when it appears I've gotten something right, poetry-wise. But I can't, which you'll understand also.
Gotcha, Tere. I went back and edited out the awefully big words.
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May/19/2012, 8:23 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Minoan Memory
She came as if painted
painted panels raised
while wearing the rounding white
the thirteen opening robes,
even learning on the chatter
carrying up over
from down under Mothers;
and each wood word picture
turning in warm on one before
while hanging her heart out next
in the lifeness fold.
Or had it been like blue frescoes
in some time dark hall
down the wet walls
and leaning us nearer inside
the labayrinthine body hive;
leaning on the footway on
until face to adoration's face
in the secret light place
with the sovereign, the shuddering
the high likeness lady's
resonant, high soul?
And being other else than
a man what am
she'd have shown herself differently.
While certainly less else
than a man what am
she showing herself out
not at all.
Terreson
Yet another Minoa incited piece. The Antonin Artaud scholar will notice that S3 is lifted from the beginning of one of his poems, read when I was 21.
"Here where I myself stand / a man
I stand
what I myself do / a man
I do
there is nothing more
there will never be anything more
than that.
There is no science, no wisdom,
life has been lost from the day one single thing
became known.
I am not of your world,
mine is on the otherside of all that is, knows itself, is
conscious, desires, and acts."
Tere
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May/20/2012, 2:12 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Yikes -- I can't keep up! I love love love the Twin Hills myth retold, told with capacious understanding, insight, imagination and intuition.
The whole opening captivates. Love the description here: quote: his bronze back rippling with
muscle hammocks moving
like living rings of snakes.
Muscle hammocks -- there's an image so exquisitely exact that one wonders how it had not been thought up before.
But it's this part that annihilates me:
quote: helping the man whose echo she heard
inside her own quilted body sense,
until it was time to lead him to her,
until time came for loving in the straw,
just the feeling and the flood,
the touch of two in yellow straw.
Quilted body sense -- what an image of woman/womanhood and the interior knowing one can have. So simple and sweet the feeling of their joining. And then the awful tragedy of his betrayal, her loving rescue, the curse upon the men, the denouement, so inevitable and yet heartwrenching.
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May/21/2012, 4:32 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Thank you, vkp. I'm a sucker for the ancient Irish stuff, have drawn on it at least twice. Always those truths in lit when the race was younger. World wide even.
Tere
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May/23/2012, 2:26 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
The Algebra of it All
So smooth when this and here,
so smooth when anyone must see
how many folded we get in seam
when the whole rum thing of
life's dimples is so simple.
Simple said and easy even too.
But if when shown how life is womanly
you might not see how life is
womanly. Now mother, now lover,
now layer out as said olden before.
Therefore, then, differently saying:
she is many moods within her
overlarge mood like near moon
gone raised rounding tidal wave;
or like sweet onion whose skin
peels, peels, then peels away to
where each layer, each water lush
layer is a way of her until
peeled to center and you see
your life is over, since, then
you've peeled her.
Something like this only larger,
because you never really leave her
and she always pulling closer and
she is never even over and
someday you must learn this too:
such is called timing.
And timing comes infolding
in sense of deep crush on skin,
or leafy texture in fleshy pastures
of cloth of deep crush on skin.
Time too is praying. That is timing.
Time is knowing when
child is growing when
silent you worry for
someone so new.
That is timing.
In mood and timing: that is life.
And living: that is love.
Then when wanting her again, wanting
the everfold infolding in creasing
and parting and pushing and pulling;
when you must sit in her seat and
feel her heat and shiver when her nightquake
covers you both because
she only ever holds those
who have white moon in eyes.
This is her start again,
this is her high berry, her overpoise,
This is how simple when
world lets, calls, herself go.
Terreson
Okay. So the poem is of the worst kind, belonging to that thing called wisdom literature. Then, again, the course it suggests is indecently unwise.
Tere
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May/23/2012, 2:46 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Just a Thing
There is a warbler in the green,
hard to know the name
in the body of the green,
the little yellow warbler
as surprising as
the female flower
when she's swollen, standing
holding open
in late dewlight and spring.
The warbler through the window
near to where I kneel,
calling back behind
to the working girl who's home;
just a little seen thing
a smaller passerine
fluttering, feeding, nearer to
the heart stop.
Mascara eyes, the flashing
whiteness in the wings,
then gone inside
the living wall of green,
coming back behind, out beside
along the willow stems and limbs
of where we want to be,
gone further between
the tremble of trees.
Terreson
I once bested an enemy with this poem. He was a Formalist, a closed-versification traditionalist, could not see a poem not jacketed in formal, outwardly structured verse patterns. My position was that the formal stuff has long since osssified, too much calcium deposits rendering the prosodic joints stiff, that it is long since time to create new, responsive forms, and with the logic of prosodic syntax proceeding from the inside out, organically. He acceded to this poem's prosodic units involving half-rhyme, slant rhyme, use of assonance, outriders, punctuated metrical pause and stress playing on the ear. I let go of the fight finally. No point in arguing with the second-rate.
Word Hoard 3 now finished.
Tere
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May/23/2012, 3:14 pm
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Tere: I have been gone awhile. This posting from May 23 is a beautiful poem. I am in love with certain moments.
quote: as surprising as
the female flower
when she's swollen, standing
holding open
in late dewlight and spring.
I love the sensuality of these images and the term "dewlight" -- another of your personal words that seem inevitable when seen on the page for the very first time.
quote: just a little seen thing
a smaller passerine
fluttering, feeding, nearer to
the heart stop.
Flashes of nature, the animal world or any of the small, magic moments that 6 billion people miss but we are blessed to see -- they capture us and your lines perfectly capture what that is like.
"Tremble of trees" is basically perfect. Love it. See it.
So glad I found this today.
vkp
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Jun/16/2012, 8:40 am
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Re: Terreson's word hoard (3)
Thank you for reading and commenting, vkp. Pretty much I feel this is one of my best realized poems. Slight as it is. Good to see you back on the board.
Tere
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Jun/16/2012, 12:52 pm
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