The Radiance of Pigs: Poems - Softcover

Rice, Stan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375704345 ISBN 13: 9780375704345

Verlag: Knopf, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

Now in paperback, Stan Rice's most recent collection brims with dynamic, unpredictable poems that delve into the darker reaches of humor and experience.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stan Rice is the author of five collections of poetry, including Fear Itself and Singing Yet. For many years he was associated with San Francisco State University, where he was Professor of English and Creative Writing, Assistant Director of the Poetry Center, and Chairman of the Creative Writing Department. He has been the recipient of the Edgar Allen Poe Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and a writing fellowship for the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, the novelist Anne Rice.

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n paperback, Stan Rice's most recent collection brims with dynamic, unpredictable poems that delve into the darker reaches of humor and experience.

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Doing Being


Those who would know the emotional quality
Cannot ignore Pound's ear, his timing. And I left
My son in the dorm room. Kissed his whiskered
Babyskin cheek, and blew him another. As he
Walked off with two girls named Elizabeth.
Or ignore his raptor's eye, or forgive him
His monomanias, and the light of his
Mind like the light on wavelets that cannot
Cohere or reach shore. This is what Ezra
Pound means to me on the day after I leave
My son at Brown University and sit in this
Room in New York wondering what to do next.
Fixed in one place like the wavelets that
Imitate livingness. Is this modern enough?
Anne, you hedge-full-of-lightning-bugs,
When I close my eyes I can see you. The sparkling
Behind eyelids, who is it? Now
She is I, the ordinal, whipping the horses
To a lather as I tremble in the haycart
Behind her that tips on two wheels at the
Precipice. In dreams she lashes the horses. And
Forever the corn smells of sun as I walk into it
To urinate. What happened in time
Stays in time. Now even our images are entangled.
Root out the horses, they have
Grown tendrils from their steel shoes and
Though my books are in no bookstores,
Root out the horses. This is the Second Day.
There stand the carriage horses. They tread
Their golden droppings. Some people pass
Holding maps to their noses. That horse
Is the color of rust in sun. They could
Not pull fireplaces, or orange coals and iron.
That would take Homer, Winslow. He's at the
Met now. Let's go over. Here we are. This
Is dangerous. In the painting of the fox in the snow
Are the world's best crows. There is
Green in their blackness. Then there's the
Watercolor of the leaves and the oranges.
And the one of the fogbank creeping
To strand the rowboat from the mothership. Faux forces
Thrash the black water to foam. But Im
Disappointed. He is not our Vermeer. I bet
Hopper liked him. Now let's go buy
Some neat clothes. Of course we dont Need
Them. But the salesgirl wears flesh
Skipants, butchlength blond hair, and eyes
Crystalized in Antarctica. Save me! In
Homer's green net of death I struggle like
A wig in a washing machine. And then the
Moment is over. And only her profile in the
Mirror as she hands my credit card back to me.
Rapunzel, reach down your little hands, too.
It is troubling to me that our greatest songster
Was crazy. This, the transitional century.
None other such swift change. And
The gleaming at the box edge as the lid
Is lifted. Angels, monsters, in coitus. The box
Hot as a lightbulb. From in it, labor-pain screams
Muffled by mother of pearl. To
Know the emotional quality, lest grief
Break the egg of the skull. Irrational,
The songster's transitions, but also like
Those of the waves. Oh, really? Now night
Has fully fallen on New York. The streetlamps
Shiver in Queens over the invisible East River.
Chris in Providence. Anne in Chicago. And
My future shorter now, though the babies
In strollers look the same age as ever. Night is
Earth's shadow on itself. One of Winslow's
Crows drinks from a downspout in New Orleans,
Whether witnessed or not. In the broken glass
Shade of a streetlamp in Central Park a bird
Builds her nest, the lightbulb for warmth.
Sparrows fall as often as leaves and God is
Distracted to madness. Only the nazis kept excellent
Records. Behold! They are the golfers in lightning.
Three days passed. Jesus rose on a seashell,
Hand shielding vulva, at last, masculine.
The only religion to start with a murder,
Said Anne. I dont get it. The babe in the stroller,
Its eyes liquid nickels. Forgive it? Two fawns
Stiffen at streamside. Spots of sun
In their fur. They have come down to drink
From the stream I am squatting in. The doe
Mother, also, rigid. Moment of wholeness.
A twitch, and they crash off through the sticks
And the hair of my flesh stood up (Job 4:15).
The emotional quality of the moment is
The religious experience of the atheist. This
Is Day Three. Ezra Pound makes me sit
Under the gold painted equestrian statue
At Central Park South and 5th.
Where some kind of needle has its way with a thimble.
Next to me sits a smooth man. Obsessed with the
Physical. Im 40. Im 6 one. 180.
Im not little but Im not big. This big
Black guy. 250. He jumps me. I fended
Him off. The cops come. Five years I had
Stayed in the house. I hadnt gone out. I
Dont know why. But this got me out. I said
Im gonna live. So the next night I went to
A bar. An Irish bar. My kind. Im talking
To this female. Her boyfriend is sitting
At the other end of the bar. For twenty minutes
We talk. I didnt know. Then he yells Hey
That's my woman youre with. And I say,
I want no trouble with you, Im not fighting
No whiteman. And he says, Why NOT?
When I reach to shake his hand he smiles and says
No, man. Germs. So we touch fistknuckles and I cross
The street and head up 5th to the Museum of
Modern Art show, Picasso and Portraiture.
When the rowboat is swamped, when the lilies
In it are level with the water, I see the
Glass ball paperweight of snowflakes in oil
Of the moment, the rose window in the cool
Cathedral, and for our delectation. I enter
The museum, tense that the tentacles of the
Masters might brush me, that the suckers
Might suck me. Picasso is making me do this.
About whom Pound, to my knowledge, said nothing.
American economy, and Spanish blood never so red
As when ink on the bull's black hump.
Shall we stroll awhile in the inferno of previous crybabies?
Picasso, a pivot. And many
Of The Cantos near gibberish. The eye of
The portrait floats until it reaches its spot
Then stops. Pound and Picasso, their footprints
Darkspots in dew. The dream doesnt tell me
What the supporting characters in it
Are thinking. Though we be like sun-spotted
Fawns, we are ignorant. Something
In the veins of the maple requires no pump
Against gravity. My shoes are more wrinkled now
Than on Thursday. The lobster is impossible.
It goes without saying. A student
Asked Ingres what was the most beautiful thing
About painting and he said Two colors touching
Which are almost the same, but not.
And then a death-thought washes over me.
I momentarily lose faith in my senses. Perhaps
All experiences are bug-eyed green plastic
Fishinglures, with hooks dangling down.
Then something blinks, and the stuffed deer
Crash through the glass diorama, slipping
On the icelike linoleum.
Leaving the poem without information.
Fake rocks, painted clouds, white vault.
Hang on, hang on! the soldier shouts
To the corpse of his buddy. And under
The ceiling fan the candle does its death hula.
Laugh, laugh, phonograph. When the music stopped being
Its own explanation the booze and the pot
Had to stop. There I sat, staring at the singing birds,
Begging them to make sense. It is
Impossible to know when the lines are too long
Or when autobiography is a crock. All that
Energy expended on antlers and then they
Fall off. It is as if a bony watermelon.
Or in the African river the dead babies,
Now brown balloons, bump one another. Only
The subjective sacrifice of love
Being the counterbalance to that. River ripening,
Loved ones in two other cities. Only
The cycles for solace. That the baby
And the watermelon differ. That the salmon are
Counter-intuitive. That the sexes pull apart
With a cry. Pound is actually a private thing.
Picasso's goat is the thought still visible
In it. Are you tired of these two
In my song? Well, they are gone. I feel better now.
The gigantic mouth has spit me
Out. Phew! Too bitter. And my...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375704345
• ISBN 13: 9780375704345
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 96
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien