The rhetoric of images
Continues to torment me.
A long time ago, I knew
An emphatic professor
Who would bellow at students
"Be concrete, God damn it!"
Pushing the heels of his hands
Into his own eyes in frustration,
As if miming grisly old Oedipus.
I was young then. I stared hard
At everything and didn't expect
I could ever be caught far off guard.
I wondered. Was the sin of mellifluous
Or even slangy abstraction so great
As to make for despairing self-mutilation?
Then I ran into the poets.
Not the antique, oratorical poets
Whose flourishes could go on forever
Without any phrase homelier
Or more easily visualized
Then some allusion to a goddess.
No, I spotted the Imagists,
All long gone into the ground,
Canonized or forgotten themselves
Now, metamorphosed except, somehow,
Even now, even when one eschews
The minor tyrannies of parseable
Intent, one still feels one must chew
The scenery a bit, like a salad,
In deference to their healthful crudités
Of concrete reference, or else
One hasn't really kept watch.
I like vivid images as much as any
Reader, especially the surprises,
Sights linked by strange conceits,
Continues to torment me.
A long time ago, I knew
An emphatic professor
Who would bellow at students
"Be concrete, God damn it!"
Pushing the heels of his hands
Into his own eyes in frustration,
As if miming grisly old Oedipus.
I was young then. I stared hard
At everything and didn't expect
I could ever be caught far off guard.
I wondered. Was the sin of mellifluous
Or even slangy abstraction so great
As to make for despairing self-mutilation?
Then I ran into the poets.
Not the antique, oratorical poets
Whose flourishes could go on forever
Without any phrase homelier
Or more easily visualized
Then some allusion to a goddess.
No, I spotted the Imagists,
All long gone into the ground,
Canonized or forgotten themselves
Now, metamorphosed except, somehow,
Even now, even when one eschews
The minor tyrannies of parseable
Intent, one still feels one must chew
The scenery a bit, like a salad,
In deference to their healthful crudités
Of concrete reference, or else
One hasn't really kept watch.
I like vivid images as much as any
Reader, especially the surprises,
Sights linked by strange conceits,
How arcane, radical, quicksilver
Tricky, musical, or message-delivering
The poem as a whole pretends to be.
I'm not immune to looking sharp.I don't dislike dreams served bright
Blue and wide as eyes. There's verse
In the misleading appearances
Of describable things--this moony,
Sorrowful, heifer-white hill wrappedBlue and wide as eyes. There's verse
In the misleading appearances
Of describable things--this moony,
For a cold spring under wretched,
Barely budded blankets of scrub
Pointillism of my night watchman's
Thoughts dissected, the distraction
Of a light, late flurry disguising
The knife of the ice that slips belowOf a light, late flurry disguising
The fanned-out, feathery pale leaves
At my moonlit feet. But I hate the concrete.
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