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Noelle Kocot
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"many writers have assumed the mantle of the visionary tradition in order to meet this unspoken need. Yet few contemporary poets risk this assumption of prophetic authority. This past year, though, Noelle Kocot published a long apocalyptic poem called “Poem for the End of Time” that uses this tradition to entirely new purposes.
The title “Poem for the End of Time” probably refers to Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” an eight-part composition based on the book of Revelation. Messiaen’s quartet was written and first performed when the French composer was at a German prison camp in 1940 and 1941. Kocot, a practicing Catholic like Messiaen, also took Revelation, as well as Lamentations and Isaiah, as her starting point. Apocalypse is everywhere you look in current American culture, from the Left Behind novels all the way to Cormac McCarthy. But Kocot uses the conventions of the form in a unique and experimental way. Lines leap out of order. There are “yards of ears and skeletons in bathrooms.” The speaker seems guilt-ridden and terrified rather than puffed up and self-righteous. Kocot herself has mixed feelings about the poem; she describes the experience of writing it as frightening and out of her control."
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May/16/2014, 6:30 pm
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Re: Noelle Kocot
Very interesting article, Libra. Very interesting poet. Thanks.
Chris
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May/17/2014, 8:24 am
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