Sunday, May 28, 2017

Everyone Forgets That Icarus Also Flew



  • Egoslavian High Bleggalgazing Day still three days away, but Memorial Day Weekend marks the start of the Blog Days of Summer.
  • So, a post on the slowest day of the second slowest weekend of the year in Blegsylvania.
  • I directly addressed a bleggal-twaater overlord yesterday instead of averting my eyes, forgive me, I got the non-response I expected though the bleggal-twaater's use of the link I sent, unattributed, fifteen minutes later? I wish that surprised me.
  • So, reminder: if you are Kinding me and me not you, please let me know.
  • If there's someone you think I should be reading, please let me know.
  • Be Kind, fellow motherfuckers.
  • Nap last night.








  • RIP Larry Fagin.
  • Biblioklept's RIP for Denis Johnson.
  • RIP Gregg Allman. I like the Allman Brothers when I hear them, I don't put them on.
  • You will hear - I bet a pint - some great Greg Allman music here midnight Sunday.
  • RIP John. I was ringbearer at his wedding to Paulette, Planet was ringbearer for their daughter M's wedding.
  • Having it out with melancholy.





FAILING AND FLYING

Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. 
It's the same when love comes to an end, 
or the marriage fails and people say 
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody 
said it would never work. That she was 
old enough to know better. But anything 
worth doing is worth doing badly. 
Like being there by that summer ocean 
on the other side of the island while 
love was fading out of her, the stars 
burning so extravagantly those nights that 
anyone could tell you they would never last. 
Every morning she was asleep in my bed 
like a visitation, the gentleness in her 
like antelope standing in the dawn mist. 
Each afternoon I watched her coming back 
through the hot stony field after swimming, 
the sea light behind her and the huge sky 
on the other side of that. Listened to her 
while we ate lunch. How can they say 
the marriage failed? Like the people who 
came back from Provence (when it was Provence) 
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. 
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, 
but just coming to the end of his triumph.




4 comments:

  1. I will now feign surprise at your choice of Allmans tribute, conceived as it was in a Macon graveyard.

    Nope. Can't. But nice choice.

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  2. Love a verse led by an epigraph terse, trenchant, and true. Its conclusion's positive yet positively portentous such that its creator's demise'd've been dreadful enough were it at the poet's own hand. Her being felled by a devastatingly common disease lends solace if it's the view that at least she'd found comfort post melancholy. Makes one want to read Donald Hall. Or maybe not.

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    Replies
    1. This is true: Donald Hall was Earthgirl's father's bestfriend and is godfather to my brother-in-law. The few times I've met him he was generous and kind. Earthgirl once mentioned to him, to my horror, that I wrote poetry, and he - whose poetry I knew but did not particularly admire - offered to read my poems. I begged off. He insisted. I gave him a small chapbook - he liked the two villanelles and the one sonnet, the other dozen not so much. He was generous and Kind. He asked me if I'd like him to push the villanelles to small mags he was on board or somehow connected, I said no.

      I only met Jane once - they lived in New Hampshire; every time I met Hall was in DC, and she only came down once that I met Hall. She was extremely sweet, quiet. *Her* poetry I greatly admire.

      Forgive me, I'm small: I think Don took too great pleasure and too great profit writing mourning widower poems. It was *her* disease and death.

      Delete
  3. Death comes to the boogie-ocracy.

    ReplyDelete