[New-Poetry] another Stevens related poem we missed...

[Anny Ballardini]

I agree. Ah the Hortus Conclusus of a Book!
You can start preparing the revised and more complete edition, James, better
sooner than later...
and I will try to contribute as well, I missed your previous call, or maybe
saved it in one of the numerous files I have titled : To Do.


On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 7:38 PM, James Cervantes
<cervantes.james at gmail.com>wrote:

> Terrific.  Thanks for making it known.
>
> - Jim
>
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 11:30 AM, <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:
> > For months now I'm sure I'll be running across poems, like this one by
> > Richard Blanco...
> >
> > Tía Olivia Serves Wallace Stevens a Cuban Egg
> >
> > The ration books voided, there was little to eat,
> > so Tía Olivia ruffled four hens to serve Stevens
> > a fresh criollo egg. The singular image lay limp,
> > floating in a circle of miniature roses and vines
> > etched around the edges of the rough dish.
> > The saffron, inhuman soul staring at Stevens
> > who asks what yolk is this, so odd a yellow?
> >
> > Tell me Señora, if you know, he petitions,
> > what exactly is the color of this temptation:
> > I can see a sun, but it is not the color of suns
> > nor of sunflowers, nor the yellows of Van Gogh,
> > it is neither corn nor school pencil, as it is,
> > so few things are yellow, this, even more precise.
> >
> > He shakes some salt, eye to eye hypothesizing:
> > a carnival of hues under the gossamer membrane,
> > a liqueur of convoluted colors, quarter-part orange,
> > imbued shadows, watercolors running a song
> > down the spine of praying stems, but what, then,
> > of the color of the stems, what green for the leaves,
> > what color the flowers; what of order for our eyes
> > if I can not name this elusive yellow, Señora?
> >
> > Intolerant, Tía Olivia bursts open Stevens's yolk,
> > plunging into it with a sharp piece of Cuban toast:
> > It is yellow, she says, amarillo y nada más, bien?
> > The unleashed pigments begin to fill the plate,
> > overflow on to the embroidered place mats,
> > stream down the table and through the living room
> > setting all the rocking chairs in motion then
> > over the mill tracks cutting through cane fields,
> > a viscous mass downing palm trees and shacks.
> >
> > In its frothy wake whole choirs of church ladies
> > clutch their rosary beads and sing out in Latin,
> > exhausted macheteros wade in the stream,
> > holding glinting machetes overhead with one arm;
> > cafeteras, '57 Chevys, uniforms and empty bottles,
> > mangy dogs and fattened pigs saved from slaughter,
> > Soviet jeeps, Bohemia magazines, park benches,
> > all carried in the egg lava carving the molested valley
> > and emptying into the sea. Yellow, Stevens relents,
> > Yes. But then what the color of the sea, Señora?
> >
> >
> > >From CITY OF A HUNDRED FIRES (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998)
> > http://www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/poets/tiaolivia.html
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-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
Friedrich Nietzsche
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