Plethora!

UPDATE: ADDED LINK TO FINALISTS AND  LINKS TO SOME OF THE POEMS.
Slide down two posts and take a look at the links to the now-five posts of work by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. We'll be deciding on a cover image right away, so feel free to lodge an opinion!

Curmudgeon genius--

Do not miss! Sendak and Colbert part one and part two. Let the wild rumpus start!


Update: brilliant little video sent to me on facebook by the inimitable Gary Dietz: The Joy of Books.  "After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago (http://youtu.be/zhRT-PM7vpA), my wife and I (Sean Ohlenkamp) decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto."


Also, I'm still having a bit of difficulty with the next post on "The Lydian Stones," so it will probably go up tomorrow rather than today. It's more complicated than most.

Clive and the foliate head!

FINAL UPDATE (I think!):  Clive has gathered together the cover finalists.
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/marlys-book-cover/
"marly's book and henry's window"

* * *

Note for people interested in how the pictures go with the text:

John Coulthart (who definitely ought to have a cover opinion!) mentioned not knowing the text as an issue. If anybody wants a peek / preview, the easiest way is to go to “Mezzo Cammin,” where I have evidently published more poems than any other contributor (because I like the publication and the editor.)

Here are some links to some poems in the book from that site:

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2009&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans This one includes the poem called “The Foliate Head.” The second poem is also in the book.

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2008&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans The first, second, and fifth poems are in the book and, I think, all in the foliate portion. The second poem is dedicated to Clive because he once played Puck (of course!) It won’t be listed that way in the book because the book itself is dedicated to him. (This is a very Clivean project, so I think it the right one to have his name on the dedication page…)

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2009&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans All of these are in the book, though not in the foliate section. But they are quite harmonious with the greener poems.

UPDATE:  A new link has been added to the list! See below.
MORE UPDATERY:  A fifth link! Got an opinion? Voice it!

Want to see the cover work in progress for The Foliate Head, my poetry book coming out from Stanza Press (UK)? Clive Hicks-Jenkins is working on the cover, and you may look at preliminary drawings here and here. Let me know what you like best!

"marly youmans and the foliate head"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/
A wealth of initial ideas.

"marly youmans and the foliate head: part 2"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/
More leafy green man heads, including a tattooed head!

"marly youmans and the foliate head: part 3"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/
Color...

"marly and the foliate head: part 4"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/marly-and-the-foliate-head-part-4/
Tattoo!

"marly and the foliate head: part 5:
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/marly-and-the-foliate-head-part-5/
Three new heads, in color: Clive says he will repost tomorrow, as these were taken with electric light and have a bit of reflection and perhaps inaccuracy of color. But I think you can see them pretty well!

I had a great time rummaging through books on green men while I was staying in Wales, so this feels like a coming-full-circle moment. Clive is doing cover and division pages, and Andrew Wakelin is grand ruler of design. No doubt Peter Wakelin will be unable to restrain himself from an opinion or two as well. Fun! I just wish I could sit down with them all in person once again, under the shadow of the hedge by Ty Isaf...

The Lydian Stones: Sharpe chooses Gautier

There will be a slight delay on The Lydian Stones for today--I just realized that I have an incomplete translation and need to catch the author of this week's piece before I post... It is by painter and singer Yolanda Sharpe, who was head of the art department at SUNY-Oneonta for twelve years (what a saint!) Watch this space for a link...

Goldsworthy Redux

I woke up to brighter light—new snow—and thought about Andy Goldsworthy. I’m still wondering if those three stacked stones in the edge of the lake were his, a sort of private conversation with Otsego Lake and Kingfisher Tower, back when he was doing a project near Albany…  Perhaps it was simply homage to him, he being so near at the time.  He’s such an oddly Old Testament sort of figure, setting up cairns and stacked stone markers where he has had an encounter with the otherworldly this-worldly.  I am very glad he does it, though I am also glad that I make my cairns out of words.

My idea of Andy Goldsworthy is very appealing, the thought that he gets up early and works in the cold (being a Southerner, I do not want to go and do likewise!) in order to search for some kind of “rightness” and to make something that appears effortless.  It is a right goal of all art, to labor in order to create what seems tossed-off, effortless, or as natural as a leaf spiring from the darkness of earth.

Another thing I like about Goldsworthy is that he is not afraid to be silly and play, and that for him the whole world becomes the realm of art. For him, the landscape is always on the verge of revelation—it reveals itself in speaking water, stone, air, and fire. (Fire often appears when ice or particles or fur catch light, but it can also appear in transformed vegetable matter, as when a disk of earth-blackened leaves inside a sort of tequila sunrise of yellow-orange-red leaves shows that energy burned in a place as a bonfire does in a ring of stones.)

A great wheel of upbuilding and raveling never stops, and at its dark center one verges onto another world. It’s rather like the biblical injunction to “pray without ceasing”—that is, to make one’s entire life lit with the radiance of knowing God, knowing a greater life and being more alive. Art is always calling us to a larger life, to other worlds…

A large part of Andy Goldsworthy's art is to make one see this world with infant sight. That means that when, say, a great cairn of bleached driftwood (black-hearted, topped by a disk of darkness and absence) unwinds and floats apart as the sea comes in, we will see it drawn away as if into another plane, another reality—the work being a sort of nest of time raveled and invaded by eternity, a new sort of making rather than simple unmaking. The marriage of the dark center with the earthly driftwood limbs is seemingly dissolved yet encompasses more as it disintegrates, widening to hold the sea and vanishing as if into another realm—the sea accepts its gift.

So incense went up from sacrifice, sending up a wavering ladder of fragrance between one world and another.  Likewise Goldsworthy’s great upright circles of polar ice blocks or stone work work rather in the way pierced stone was said to allow fairy sight, transforming the eye and showing a new world, there all the time but unseen.   

Farmer chooses Reece

The weekly post is up at The Lydian Stones! Jonathan Farmer, mover and shaker of things literary in the Triangle area of North Carolina, chooses Spencer Reece.

What would happen? Quote of the Day.

Courtesy of sxc.hu and Christopher Glase
of Aberdeen, Maryland, US.

Discussing the state of civilization over a leisurely breakfast--particularly children, pregnant women, and the elderly on the Costa Concordia, cracks on the People of Walmart website, the latest romance from the Occupy movement--a teen and a level 3 sex offender--sweet redemption no doubt found...

"What would happen if a Walmart tipped over and sank?"  --M. T. M.

Waving not drowning

I've been busy with distant 12-hour wrestling meets and a near-disaster with freezing pipes, but will be around tomorrow with a new The Lydian Stones post! Also, for any Virginians who did not already see this on facebook--I'll be speaking to MALIA in Roanoke on April 20th. Open to the public. More on that later.

9 poems in "Mezzo Cammin"

Nine bites from the nine poems up at the brand new issue of Mezzo Cammin, edited by poet Kim Bridgford: lots of good company, too!  The last poem is an excerpt from Thaliad, forthcoming from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal. The eight preceded are from the manuscript, The Book of the Red King. I'll be sending that one out by the end of the year.

The Desire for the Red King 

Certain people live among our kind,
So strange they might be gold or cinnabar,
So different from us in turn of mind.


"My Poor Fool Is Hanged"

Who knows why the pages strung him up?
For nine hours he was hung at tower-top,
Roped by a foot, one leg crossing the other,


Scholastic Interlude

The college came and begged the Fool to teach;
They gave him bags of silver and a wand
For rapping on the desks of boys and girls. 


All Hallowed Angels Say

A rondel of the Fool

All hallowed angels say, not sing
Their messages and starry praise
Because the aura of bright haze


The Fool's Confession

When the Fool confesses to the Priest,
The world reels on its axis, and a gust
Of blackened leaves and feathers tears the field


The Peacock's Tail

Three days of snow. The blackened world turns white.
The garden urns hoist up their wedding cakes.
An iron table lifts the crystal coffin where


The Fool Tells Children a Story at the Solstice

Once was a particle of dust
Named Hob; and one day a big gust

Of wind whooshed him into the air,


The Red King's Word

When your stepmother shoves you out the door
Barefoot, in a gauzy smock and cobweb cape,
Do not repine. Cry not! Draw from your heart


from Thaliad

I. Luring the Starlit Muse

Year 67 After the Fire
Emma declares what she knows about the time before the fire 
and calls on a starlit muse, the only love she will ever have, 
to tell the hero's saga of The House of Thalia and Thorn.

It was the age beyond the ragged time
When all that matters grew disorderly--
When artworks changed, expressive, narcissist,

Another award for Howard Bahr

Howard Bahr has received the Mississippi Governor's Award for Literary Excellence! And that makes me glad--Howard is one of those writers who quietly works in solitude and semi-obscurity, devoted to the beauty and power of the muse.


He is also one of the most charming correspondents in the whole great multi-verse, and he still writes on paper! A letter in the mail from Howard makes the day brighter, more adventurous. I am lucky in my pen pals, but Howard is almost unique among them in his aversion to email--my stash of letters is a visible reminder of his artfulness and heart.


Howard may strike you as a writer cut from bolder cloth than most.  He was a gunner's mate during the Vietnam war, and he was a brakeman and yard clerk in the South and West.  That doesn't mean that he doesn't have graduate degrees; he does, and he teaches at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi. He is also the former curator of Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home.  Howard is the author of The Black Flower (Nautical & Aviation Press, 1997), The Year of Jubilo (Henry Holt, 2000), The Judas Field (Henry Holt, 2006), and Pelican Road (MacAdam/Cage, 2008).  He also has a children's book, Home for Christmas, also from Nautical and Aviation.

Howard suffered a setback when MacAdam/Cage toppled shortly after his last book was published, but the company has a bit of the phoenix somewhere in the bones, and is struggling up from its own ashes.  Pelican Road is still available for purchase, and so if you don't have a copy, please consider buying one from a legitimate source. (Readers need to remember that when you buy the book of a "mid-list" writer, you cast a vote in his or her favor that matters and is counted--and upon which the publication of the next book may depend. People often think that our "votes don't matter" in the political realm, but in publishing they matter a great deal.  In a publishing world where marketing departments have the most power, sufficient "votes" make a great difference.)


I'm glad to say that A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage is dedicated to Howard, and it offers a quote from Pelican Road on the dedication page. It's good to give thanks for those who stand against the meretricious and the trendy and stand for the shapeliness and beauty of a made thing.  The Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts are only given to those who have made significant contributions to our culture through their work. Like Howard Bahr.

Hicks-Jenkins chooses Youmans on The Lydian Stones

The Lydian Stones went on a short hiatus for much of the holidays, and I am pleased to say that I have actually received letters of reproach! In apology, I post the next offering a day early. Clive Hicks-Jenkins was the first off the mark with a post, but I have delayed him because it seemed flaunting and immodest to have the first post be about one of my own poems.

One of those days

Detail,Yolanda Sharpe painting, Earlville Opera House Show.

I am reading A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage for the very last time--it's about to go to the printer. And I am having one of those awful days where absurd things happen, and everything goes wrong. The most recent thing is that I just broke the glass in a biggish watercolor by Louis D. Rubin, Jr.  Glass all over the dining room that I will have to pick up without accidentally slicing off my head, which is where I am supposed to keep my brain, though today I am not sure where it is. Honestly. I'm going out with a painter friend, Yolanda. Shall have to be careful not to be run over by an elephant escaped from a traveling circus or be stung by a knot of winter bees or eat a poisonous fish. Because it's one of those sorts of days.

Current Digby videos of my poems + news

In Extremis from The Throne of Psyche: film and music by Paul Digby

The Exile's Track from The Throne of Psyche: film and music by Paul Digby

The Nesting Doll from The Throne of Psyche:  film and music by Paul Digby

A Fire in Ice from The Throne of Psyche:  film and soundscape by Paul Digby

The Birthday Roses from the manuscript of fall 2010, The Book of the Red King:  film and music by Paul Digby

Next up:  some videos for The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, forthcoming) and The Book of the Red King (to be submitted this year.) We already have the three division pages for The Foliate Head, and Clive Hicks-Jenkins is working on the cover... And I am doing final scrubs on the 140+ poems of The Book of the Red King. I have cut some but imagine it will run about 145 poems in all.

The Lydian Stones will be back next week--I'm waiting until after Twelfth Night!

Collaborations with artists, 2012

A foliate head by Clive Hicks-Jenkins...

With painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins and designer Andrew Wakelin of Wales:

Clive is giving me three foliate heads for division pages and painting a head for the cover of The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press), and Andrew will be working with us on book design.

With painter Graham Ward of England:

I'm writing poems for Graham's opening in June--and having lots of fun doing so and getting first peek at his new paintings.

With the English-born transplant to Ohio, composer-and-much-more Paul Digby, and his wife, painter Lynn Digby:

We'll be doing what appears to be a fairly ambitious collaborative project, but right now it's barely getting started. More on that one later. This one is a sort of outgrowth of Paul's curation, music composition, and paintings joined with work by Lynn Digby and four other painters in "Into the Light" at Anderson Creative (November, 2011)--at least, doing such a large collaborative project seems to have fired the desire to do another.

Also with Paul Digby:
Paul is going to be matching more of my poems with music and film. Five are already up at youtube.  Rather saintly of him, I think!

Bookwise

New Year a-coming! Get a Vicki-calendar here...

New Year’s resolutions/orders-to-self

in the kingdom of books

1-   Do more book events at conferences/meetings.

2-   Polish The Book of the Red King where needed and submit by year's end.

3-   Do final reads on some manuscripts already accepted.

4-   Don’t be so dratted lazy about sending out poems.

5-   Don’t drive yourself absolutely bats by agreeing to do more than you can for other people's novel and poetry manuscripts...

6-   Care about what matters and let the rest go.

7-   Do something about that manuscript gathering dust!

8-   Read more. Maybe you'll have time...

9-   Establish the regional arts group that you have been feebly toying with—start with a web site?

10-  Don’t bother thinking about luck… It’s way beyond your control.

The other blurb request...

Marly Youmans' new book is a vividly realized, panoramic novel of survival during The Great Depression. There is poetry in Youmans' writing, but she also knows how to tell a riveting story.

Ron Rash

March 2012. Mercer University Press.

My Christmas card, 2011

Graham Ward, "Angel Entering a City"
Pilfered from Clive Hicks-Jenkins's Artlog--
thank you, Graham and Clive!


It is the last of Advent, and what a strange time it has been! Beautiful, lucky things have happened--heartfelt letters from writers I respect and homecomings and unforgettable hours.  My children are all in the nest, and we are five again.  One deeply sad thing has happened--a friend, self-slain--that reminds me of our great human hunger for love and mercy, now and always.

Today is Christmas Eve, and there is much to birth before the day is done. Greetings to you and a merry Christmas to you and wishes for that ever-desired love and mercy to follow you all the days of the coming year.

Attributions:  The painting by Graham Ward has already been shared by my friend Clive on his Artlog. I picked it in honor of the now-underway collaboration I'm doing with Graham, to be finished by June in time for an opening.  Original source for poem:  http://qarrtsiluni.com/2011/11/16/i-heard-their-wings-like-the-sound-of-many-waters/#comments  Forthcoming in The Foliate Head (UK:  Stanza Press.) Thanks to editors Dave Bonta and Beth Adams for nominating the poem for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks to issue editors Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita for their long work of editing.


“I HEARD THEIR WINGS LIKE THE SOUND OF MANY WATERS”

In the dark, in the deeps of the night that are
Crevasses of a sea, I heard their wings.
I heard the trickling of tiny feathers
With their hairs out like milkweed parachutes
Floating idly on the summer air,
I heard the curl and splash, the thunderbolts
Of pinions, the rapids and rattle of shafts—
Heard Niagara sweep the barreled woman
And shove her under water for three days,
I heard a jar of fragrance spill its waves
As a lone figure poured out all she could,
Heard the sky’s bronze-colored raindrops scatter
On corrugated roofs and tops of wells,
I heard the water-devil whirligigs,
I heard an awesome silence when the wings
Held still, upright as flowers in a vase,
And when I turned to see why they had stilled,
Then what I saw was likenesses to star
Imprisoned in a form of marble flesh,
With a face like lightning-fires and aura
Trembling like a rainbow on the shoulders,
But all the else I saw was unlikeness
That bent me like a bow until my brow
Was pressed against the minerals of earth,
And when I gasped at air, I tasted gold.

Year's Best 10

Table of contents for Year's Best Fantasy 10 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, forthcoming from Tor.com.

Dragon’s Deep · Cecelia Holland
The Green Bird · Kage Baker
Dulce Domum · Ellen Kushner
The Parable of the Shower · Leah Bobet
The Dragaman’s Bride · Andy Duncan
Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela · Saladin Ahmed
Images of Anna · Nancy Kress
Icarus Saved from the Skies · Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown · Holly Black
The Score · Alaya Dawn Johnson
Sleight of Hand · Peter S. Beagle
Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva · James Morrow
A Delicate Architecture · Catherynne M. Valente
Swell · Elizabeth Bear
The Bones of Giants · Yoon Ha Lee
The Minuteman’s Witch · Charles Coleman Finlay
Conquistador del la Noche · Carrie Vaughn
Winterborn · Liz Williams
Three Twilight Tales · Jo Walton
Power and Magic · Marly Youmans
The Avenger of Love · Jack Skillingstead
The Persistence of Souls · Sarah Zettel
An Invocation of Incuriosity · Neil Gaiman
Three Friends · Claude Lalumière
Shadow of the Valley · Fred Chappell
Technicolor · John Langan
Economancer · Carolyn Ives Gilman

Reeser chooses Gioia

Poet Jennifer Reeser chooses a poem by Dana Gioia at The Lydian Stones.

Ghosts of Christmas past

In the tradition of the scholarly M.R. James, who always read a marvelous new one of his own composing at Christmas, it's time for a ghost story. And here's a new review of Ghosts by Gaslight,edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers. Must say about my mention that this is the first reviewer to imply that there might be a relationship between the mode in which the story is told and the identity of the narrator...

Evidently poet, professor, and twin (very ghostly, that!) Damian Walford Davies has started a Christmas Eve (or thereabouts) reading series featuring James stories by candlelight at the University of Aberystwyth. I wonder how many places have revived the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas--a wonderful idea.

Behind the door

Every day my children, big as they are, still like to open a door on the little wooden Advent calendar and find a present inside. Here is a kind of door for you, with a present inside.

Originally published in Mezzo Cammin.
Included in the poetry collection, The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011)

 SNOW WHITE IN WILDWOOD

Certain things were given to me:                 

Such loveliness as swords possess,

Humility as hushed as snow,

Kindness branching red in my veins,

The love of wildwood animals.

I learned early I was a fool                          

And worthless. Still, I dare to lodge

Certain protests against brokenness,

Certain protests against heart’s maiming,

Certain protests against death’s hour.

The mirror made such promises!

Was it godly, was it devilish?

A scabbard waiting to be filled,

The seven little fairy men,

A face like snow that sleeps in glass.

Not one of them came true, and now

I kneel forsaken on the ground,

In turn reproaching Christ and men,

So close to perishing that I

Dream lanterns and my mother’s face.

The Kingdom of God is next to me.     

That’s what the holy father said.

It is closer.  Death is a seed

Gripped in my hand. I never thought

To know such wildwoods of despair.

What good has all my kindness done

That stood in the hall like a red branch?

What use was beauty’s melting snow?

Must I forgive this naked life

Of thorns, the sweat kissing my brow?

"Belle réussite"

I've had several books translated into French but never seen a French review of my writing... so what fun to see this review of "Static" and other stories from Extraordinary Engines in Les Notes d'Eumene de Cardie.

If you want the somewhat amusing Google translation, it's here.

And if you haven't bumped into this anthology before, it is a steampunk anthology edited by Nick Gevers and published by Solaris. The publishers bill it as the "definitive" steampunk anthology, but I don't actually think that was what the anthology tried to do--all the stories were new, requested from specific authors, so it is an all-original-publication anthology...

"Static" feels a bit Dickensian, in part because it hews to that curious and rare phenomenon, spontaneous combustion. You may remember how important that element is in Bleak House. If you haven't read Bleak House, please do.  So complex and inventive! Every now and then I feel a deep need to travel around in Bleak House. "Static" may also remind you a slight bit of Rapunzel. There's certainly a lot of hair! And a rather unattractive old woman.

I had a lot of fun making up a world where static poses a constant danger. Living in Yankeedom no doubt had some influence--that and being a mother of three and so doomed to much shocking laundry and crackling winter static in the No'th and cold.

"Publishers Weekly" on Amazonian demands

Some of my regular readers have no doubt already seen this on Facebook or elsewhere, but I think it is important for both writers and readers to be informed about such issues--particularly those of us with publishers who sell on Amazon or who buy books from Amazon. Just as it is important for Amazon to understand the issues publishers face...

-2011

Diana Wynne Jones.  Christopher Logue.  And now Russell Hoban.  Unique, special writers.  And they all are gone from us this year, leaving behind gifts.  Howl's Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci novellas. War Music and All Day Permanent Red.  Riddley Walker and The Mouse and His Child and the Frances stories. And many more.

I was left behind
as wind divided for the ghost;
as grass first opened, silent,
and then, silent, closed.
    --from Rosanne Coggeshall (1946-2009), "Dead Quail"

Requiescant in pace

Owen chooses Frost

Writer, illustrator, publisher, dreamer, James A. Owen chooses Frost for today's post at The Lydian Stones...

Small private sale for Palace followers, Dec. 9-12

Signed or incribed copies for my blog readers--

If any of my readers are interested in picking up a signed or inscribed copy of The Throne of Psyche or Val/Orson, I have a few copies on hand that I am willing to sell at reduced price. If you want one, write me at camellia [at] marlyyoumans.com. (And if you should fall into the spam filter and not emerge and hear from me within a day, call for help here!) In addition, if you would like to reserve and then receive a signed or inscribed copy of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage in March, you may claim that as well.  If you purchase one of those three books now, you may also buy some of my other books at a greater discount. To read more about my books, you may visit my website.

Prices:  
U.S. postage is $3.50 for a first book, .50 for each additional book. Query if outside the U. S.

Hardcover The Throne of Psyche ($30. retail)  $24.
Paperback  The Throne of Psyche ($18. retail) $14.
Hardcover A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage ($24. retail) $19.
Hardcover Val/Orson (In pounds, varies; was around $24. plus intl. shipping when I ordered) $20.

If you buy one of the above books, you may order signed/inscribed first edition hardcovers of The Wolf Pit ($24. retail), The Curse of the Raven Mocker ($18. retail), or Ingledove ($16. retail)  for $14. for the first and the latter two for $12. each. I no longer have copies of my three other books.

All of these copies are, of course, limited in number.

Train on the way--

The pre-order period has now begun...

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage tells of a young boy's travels through the black heart of Depression America and his search for light both metaphorical and real. Writing with a controlled lyrical passion, Marly Youmans has crafted the finest, and the truest period novel I’ve read in years. 
                --Lucius Shepard

Stephenson chooses Robertson on The Lydian Stones

Tuesday has come round again; please fly over to The Lydian Stones, where poet Hannah Stephenson chooses Robin Robertson. We have had a composer and a painter choose so far; it was time for a writer.

from "The Throne of Psyche"

Here's a little gift for all you passers-by who are still making out your Christmas lists... And I'll be doing some recommendations soon.

This poem first appeared (along with some others by me) in a feature about Southern women poets in storySouth and was collected in my newest book, The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011.)

SOUTHERN TO THE BONE                                              

1.

To explain—as if she could!—

She says:  When I was young

And passing fair and strong

Like a girl in a fairy tale,

I ran from God and angels.

I flew to dark powers

--Though they aren’t dark but seeming-light,

With glamour on them like the fey—

And I frisked with the demons on the hills,

Then curled to sleep against their thighs,

A wing along my bow-bent spine.

I woke, dappled with dew.

And found that they had picked         

Me clean of clothes and more,

Treasures dear to me.

I was bereft.

I was:  weakness.

All-conquering. 

The rains

Began.

 

2.

She says:

Rain is rain is rain.

This was no rain but light,

Or not light but arrowy

Fine peltings of a fire

Shot slantwise through the skin

Until I could not tell

What was me from rain

Or light, and river waves

Not-rain-or-light-or-fire

Swamped me until I drowned

And washed into the sea,

To drift with sailor boys

Past luminous weeds and fish

Unto the roots of the world.

3.

Don’t ask her any more

What Southern really means,

Or why we just can’t quit

Mulling over a tale

Of rum and slaves and gold.

She married powers of dark.

She burned in bright rivers.

That’s why.