monday poem #52: Cate Marvin, "Dear Petrarch"
I don't remember how Cate Marvin's World's Tallest Disaster ended up on my books-to-get-my-hands-on list. Wherever it came from, I'm grateful.
This is a book about... I was going to say "the aftermath of love gone wrong," but that's too simple and not right. Robert Pinsky's foreword offers "passion," and that's better: longing and bitterness, darkness and damage, entanglement and resentment. Or, as the epigraph from Rilke says, "We, afflicted by ourselves, / gladly afflicting, gladly / needing to be afflicted."
It's difficult to quote from these poems, to pick out individual lines or stanzas; each one is so entirely its own thing, so carefully knotted together, so rigidly symmetrical, that it cannot be broken apart. From a formal point of view, this is the kind of poem I want to write; I admire tremendously the way Marvin has managed to use language and form to render intensely personal stories in ways that transcend the confessional.
Similarly, it is difficult to pick just one poem to post; each one is a piece of the book, which I intended to read a bit at a time but ended up reading-no, consuming-in a single sitting because I could not put it down. Highly, highly recommended.Dear Petrarch
The sweet singing of virtuous and beautiful ladies...
More like dogs barking, more like a warning now.
When our mouths open the hole looks black,
and the hole of it holds a shadow. Some keep
saying there's nothing left to tell, nothing to tell.
If that's the truth I'll open my door to any
stranger who rattles the lock. When my mouth
opens it will scream, simply because the hole
of it holds that sound. As for your great ideas,
literature, and the smell of old books cracked-
the stacks are a dark area, and anyone could find
herself trapped, legs forced, spine cracked.
It's a fact. Everyone knows it. If I lived in your
time, the scrolls of my gown would have curled
into knots. It's about being dragged by the hair-
the saint, the harlot both have bald patches. Girls
today walking down the street may look sweet,
chewing wads of pink gum. And the woman at the bar
may never read. Lots of ladies sing along to the radio
now. But the hole of our mouths holds a howl.
- Cate Marvin
from World's Tallest Disaster
This is a book about... I was going to say "the aftermath of love gone wrong," but that's too simple and not right. Robert Pinsky's foreword offers "passion," and that's better: longing and bitterness, darkness and damage, entanglement and resentment. Or, as the epigraph from Rilke says, "We, afflicted by ourselves, / gladly afflicting, gladly / needing to be afflicted."
It's difficult to quote from these poems, to pick out individual lines or stanzas; each one is so entirely its own thing, so carefully knotted together, so rigidly symmetrical, that it cannot be broken apart. From a formal point of view, this is the kind of poem I want to write; I admire tremendously the way Marvin has managed to use language and form to render intensely personal stories in ways that transcend the confessional.
Similarly, it is difficult to pick just one poem to post; each one is a piece of the book, which I intended to read a bit at a time but ended up reading-no, consuming-in a single sitting because I could not put it down. Highly, highly recommended.Dear Petrarch
The sweet singing of virtuous and beautiful ladies...
More like dogs barking, more like a warning now.
When our mouths open the hole looks black,
and the hole of it holds a shadow. Some keep
saying there's nothing left to tell, nothing to tell.
If that's the truth I'll open my door to any
stranger who rattles the lock. When my mouth
opens it will scream, simply because the hole
of it holds that sound. As for your great ideas,
literature, and the smell of old books cracked-
the stacks are a dark area, and anyone could find
herself trapped, legs forced, spine cracked.
It's a fact. Everyone knows it. If I lived in your
time, the scrolls of my gown would have curled
into knots. It's about being dragged by the hair-
the saint, the harlot both have bald patches. Girls
today walking down the street may look sweet,
chewing wads of pink gum. And the woman at the bar
may never read. Lots of ladies sing along to the radio
now. But the hole of our mouths holds a howl.
- Cate Marvin
from World's Tallest Disaster