Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Sublimation Point

So sorry to have missed the discussion of Jason Schneiderman's book of poetry. I've thought of posting some of the things I might have said (the Caliban poem, e.g., is wonderful, and the aperçue  "To think / that the young are always beautiful / is to admit to have grown old" is trenchant) but the best commentary is perhaps simple quotation:

THE SURFACE OF THE WATER

has properties, tension, behaves differently
from the rest of the water. If you fell

onto it from a height, you would bounce.
The surface would reject you, say

I'm a solid too—we can't both be here,
but then the rest of the water would accept you,

take you into itself, pull you down
away from the surface, saying I'm sorry,

I want you, come in.