Readings: Some Highbrow Erotica

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In a poem entitled "Etymology" from the collection Time and Materials, Robert Hass, immediately after presenting us with images of a waterfall, and rapids of flowing water, gives us this transcendentally beautiful erotic image:


xxxAnd what to say of her wetness? The Anglo-Saxons
xxxHad a name for it. They called it silm.
xxxThey were navigators. It was also
xxxTheir word for the look of moonlight on the sea.

Oh, my...
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Readings: Discovering a New-to-Me Poet

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Until I was prompted to look into his work further by this post on the very excellent blog of my dear friend Pentimento, I was familiar with Robert Hass only as the translator of some of the works of Czeslaw Milosz. Happily, Mr. Hass turns out to be a formidable poet in his own right (or “write” as John Lennon would have it.)


Here, as a tiny indication of what has elicited my admiration, is the first section of the poem “Sunrise” from Hass’s collection Praise:

Ah, love, this is fear. This is fear and syllables
and the beginnings of beauty. We have walked the city,
a flayed animal signifying death, a hybrid god
who sings in the desolation of filth and money
a song the heart is heavy to receive. We mourn
otherwise. Otherwise the ranked monochromes,
the death-teeth of that horizon, survive us
as we survive pleasure. What a small hope.
What a fierce small privacy of consolation.
What a dazzle of petals for the poor meat.

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Oh, to just once write a stanza that strong!
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