From: zola@hardy.u.washington.edu (riene des tournesols)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: a postcard from the road to clayton, new mexico... / Marek (1990)
Date: 12 Dec 92 20:35:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Dec12.203539.3569
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle




This is an unprecedented move on my part, but I will chance the
wrath of the gods.  And yea, before you all, comment on Mr. Lugowski's
poem.


Marek writes:

>
>		a postcard from the road to clayton, new mexico,
>		going east at sunset
>		-------------------------------------------------------------
>
>		there is aching in the telling and there's grass, greening
>		but really, goldening, in the naked blossed and ripened
>		zuni sun.
> 
>		you look out over the mesa country, so sparse with trees,
>		ouch.  none here.  none here forever.
> 
>		golden foothills raced up to the rockies.
>		clayton, new mexico.
> 
>		i want to move into a cabin here, far from the trees, far
>		from the moist breeze that seas give, that humans do, too.
> 
>		i want to live in the dry ocean of golden late shadows
>		and sharp skies turning dark not yet. 
>		with venus in or not in the blaze, near the
>		lion-roared silent corona.  i wander in thoughtscape,
>		i wonder if there's been born a girl.

this is nice.  I like the sort-of-golden crisp sunset images,
and maybe because I love the southwest, I can feel this. And I will
be there next week.

>
>		no, i've not yet found a cabin.  but, clayton, santa fe,
>		los alamos, taos, farmington, yea, but new mexico, i've found.
>		here, it spreads like a playful woman, smiling at all to see
>		from all directions at once, but mostly downstream
>		from the sun, now behind me, smiling all the way, all the way
>		from santa fe, smiling all the way to bloomington,
>		my hoosier home cheated-on.

 a sense of the heart of New Mexico being just over the next hill.

>
>		oh, but look again, look at the map, once again, on the map
>		at the very least.  breathe the open spaces, the open seas
>		of grass, greening, but i saw it goldening, remember...
>		at the vastly blue margins: not a cloud,
>		not a tree, not a breeze or a howling breeze.
> 
>		i brought a fine postcard from there, though sadly not of
>		the same cloudless sunset i saw.  pretty to the touch.
>		the mind's touch.  let your mind experience sorrow, soar,
>		taking in the treeless prairie as it breaks up in
>		stilled waves, as foothills, as dry as honest handshakes.
>		once you too pass through there, new mexico, you
>		are too hooked for life, or scared for life, by or of
>		the desolate.
>
>		and I?  I'd wish to see a well-oiled ancient singed-glass
>		lamp, barely of wick, and a fourpost bed without a canopy,
>		and i'd like to see her, in spirits mysterious and good,
>		and a bracing homestead that
>		a fine book makes.  when there's two to read to.
>
> 
>				-- Marek
>

I really enjoyed this poem.  It does a great job of portraying the
wistfulness and loss when one leaves the desert.  Driving out of marvelous
colored country at sunset, not to return for some time.  Flying out over
a red dry sunset, and a landscape that does not acknowledge humans.

Of course there is the inevitable sexual imagery that ML insists on 
including in everything, but at least there is not the usual fuck all
over the poem.

Really this is quite lovely.  Thank you, Marek.

(I really must go back to being a bitch now.)

-Rebecca
 
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