Camille Martin's LOOMS: strolling down a parallel road

At first I was confused. Shaken. Oh yes, I was adrift.

Overly dramatic? Not when it's about poetry, in this case, Camille Martin's Looms, which like Penelope's famous twenty-year woven prevarication while Odysseus is out and about, begins each day anew with each poem, each poem begun without fanfare and needing none.

What it is: there are no titles and without titles, I initially was unmoored and a little ashamed I needed the perfunctory "To a Skylark" or "Homage to My Hips" to orient me. But then I got with the agenda gloriously so - allowed myself to float, to be shuttled (but not shuttlecocked) from perspective to image and on, each sonnet a frame and yet an embrace, a scene and invitation.

Martin launches the collection with a quotation from Barbara Guest:  Its remoteness from the center of things is what is endearing about a Tale and it doesn't tell the truth about itself. It tells us what it dreams about. Ah!

I recommend you get hold of Looms (published by Shearsman Books, publisher of Mervyn Taylor, Janet Holmes, Tom Clark, and a long, long list of other terrific poets).  Here's why (from page 36):

Between grass and vacuum, standing on faded
tapestry in a low cloud, the odd pine cone skittering down
a roof. Some burgeoning belief poses-index finger raised-
and then that becomes life strolling down a parallel road
beneath a gentle sky, a cruel sky, Consoling
to think of burning ballast for light, brewing letters from ashes
moistened with a little fog. If all weather reports of one life
redeemed emptiness, maybe the ordinary could re-emerge,
inert, forgettable, except for the part where it juts and struts
and sobs. Worth a try to con it with words of practiced
lust settling like dead metaphors on scrap. Easy to love
indelible ink, gliding down opaque roads. But to ponder it
is to falter and to falter is to reawaken standing on faded tapestry
now different somehow. If I could sugar-coat one tiny historical
diva of a moment as the last rose on earth withers  Then that
becomes the reigning prophecy. No way to grasp unique
blades, so they vanish with or without exegesis
into static. With no motive but moving limbs, pedestrians
absorb bland gravity and step on soft signals.
____
Camille Martin, Looms, Shearsman, 2012.

George Herbert: thundering at goddess and god

Disclaimer:  I often cringe when I come across protestations of faith which assume rightness.  Nonetheless belief, life, death, life after life, the sublime, life before life, have always been been hobbies of mine. When I mention them I talking about myself as much as when I write on Mr. Movie Snack or politics. To hide my great interest would be dishonest. Okay, I'm not telling "all" but one size doesn't fit "all" so who tells the greater lie?

Yes, my choice of illustration (left) is whimsical and not necessarily referential or logical but, I suggest, charming, well, more likely weird. And who doesn't like weird? A related [R.S. Thomas, also Anglican priest and poet who admired Herbert]: [R.S. Thomas: I have heard...] is here.

I have no problem with atheism, but do think it's a belief and that belief is belief, even in reverse; right? My overstatement sweeps all the toy soldiers off the table--just like that; it's not going to win any mock battle. I did try atheism for two years. I was nineteen; edging twenty-one when I recommenced belief.

It took years and years, however, for me to sweep Sarah Sarai's ego off the table so I could deepen my sense of the divine. But that's a different story.

Yesterday I discovered this wildly famous sonnet by George Herbert, Anglican minister and poet; knew John Donne. I had to have heard it quoted; probably read it; don't remember at all and am simply happy to have it called out. "Church" is just a word as is "mosque" as is "temple." The greater container for divinity and expression of gratitude, the latter being the only true prayer, is the beauty, is mystery. "Reversed thunder"? Back at ya, divinity.

What I don't believe in is my ability to indent. If "Prayer" doesn't have proper indentations, just click here==George Herbert's "Prayer"==to see a closer facsimile.


PRAYER. (I)

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

Source: Herbert, George. The Poetical Works of George Herbert. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1857. 61-62.