Chopsticks and Vertigo

—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Public Domain Photos

 

 

 

LIVING FALL
 
Let’s hear no more of a, quote, dying fall
—Wrenched from Shakespeare’s hot tongue, mouthed
                                                            in cold Eliot’s—
Which phrase, held tongue to teeth till each word rots,
Melts on the “watery palate,” morphs into gall
(My rising gorge!), cliché cliché cliché;
All life affords now is a living fall;
This, Hitchcock’s Vertigo spreads on display;
Down, down, the acrophobic cop James Stewart
Drops from San Juan Bautista’s pretend bell tower.
The fall begins, a spiral, coiling thing.
Not to bounce off the red-tiled mission roof,
Not to collide with smacking pavement there
To liquefy in softened cloth’s decay
But this, this living fall: cement-block air
To one who dives from an airplane keen on death;
No; now the gulf’s a confounding, stunning white,
White, white, that shocks the pajama’d man in bed,
Jolts him to half-sitting posture. Living fall
Arrests cold sweat before droplets can break out,
Widens panicked eyes and hammers ears,
Shocks this poor sleuth’s mind more mad than dead.
Remember, it’s Hitch; no dullard noir pitched dark,
For any fool can turn a blankness black.
This masterstroke, this vacancy is pure
White. Egret-plume white caps the nightmare dark,
This inner Void that tingles where it crawls.  

 

 

 

 

ANNE STEVENSON’S BLUE AEROGRAMME
(In memoriam A.S., poet, essayist, and biographer, 1930-2020)
 
We corresponded briefly, very briefly,
Not by your wish, perhaps; but I was shy.
Just when The Silent Woman, written chiefly
To set straight Plath’s life work, must also vie
With her mythos. So did your book: Bitter Fame
Drew brickbats from wits and unwitting alike.
Malcolm’s opus, versus all who’d defame
You, helped; and you stayed tough enough no shrike
Could quite impale your book. Your judgment sound,
Your aerogramme to me sums up your thoughts well;
“ARIEL” (all caps, typed): “a monument
to UN-niceness.” A “‘nice’ perpetual
Civilization”—cozy sentiment—
Plath has “exploded,” dashed to shards on ground.
“Poetry will never be the same again.”
Plath influenced you, yet yours was your own pen.
 
Your quarreled bitterly with Olwyn Hughes;
When reading Sylvia’s letters you could praise
Her somewhat at the expense of Ted. Your views
And Olwyn’s clashed so, each pair of eyes shot rays;
Yet with her frankly acknowledged partnership
You finished the work. Hers, help in the critique
Of Plath’s verse, but yours the firm-handed shape
Smoothed from biographer’s clay. Unfazed, unmeek,
You stood your stand. I find it curious
Nor Olwyn nor Janet saw fit (was this “ableist?”)
To write of your deafness; only furious
Conflict. Who’s the truth teller, who’s the fabulist?
I daresay you lip-read well to hold your own,
Keep your book yours, against one not grownup-grown.
 
Teach-cheep, teach-cheep, teach-cheep, teach-cheep,*
You wrote of sparrows’ talk, their cadences
Saved where no deafness could delete the seeps
Or chirp-quirks of these ones. Like fragrances
(Your “Himalayan Balsam”) there for keeps;
A Brahms-, Beethoven-tenacious inner ear
Retains long-untouched piano notes. Asleep
Only to rise from storage once more clear
At the Muse’s summonses. Forget
Your father’s music? No more than lose your grasp
On his philosophy. Snagged in the neural net.
Kept in your stubborn grip, so like the asp
Queen Cleopatra hugged tight to her breast.
What urgent task stirs in your rustling nest?
What instinct will your sparrows find most strong,
Free flight? Incessant cranium-circling song?

 
*From lines by Stevenson, quoted in Poetry, November 2020.

 

 

 

 

 FOR ANNE STEVENSON
 
How Beethoven, your chosen theme
of extolling the poet’s ear,
how its anvil-and-stirrup traps pulses
yet deflects them as Yeats does the horseman,
bidding mind, mood, and music pass by.
But retains light harmonious tingling
where a soft breeze buzzes the lobe.
I insist, how Beethoven, because
though you’ve publicly spoken of deafness
you still stand upon sound for a proving ground
like the man whose triumphantest “chords”
are the resonances hard in the hollows
—suspension-bridge strung but no roadway—
in wide spans between bass note and treble.
Thumped two-fingered as any “Chopsticks,”
no doubt, with those great stubby indexes.
Tension long after lifting the pedal:
the notes lingering glorious and troubled
in the sunset and dusk of his hearing.

 
—Published in Sinfonietta, Rattlesnake Press,
2009, and in Twelve-Tone Row: Music in Words,
2018, I Street Press)

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:
 
TWO CONEYS
—Tom Goff
 
Judge Barrett is a newer brand of Bork,
As fresh and empty as if brought by stork.
 
***
 
Vapid question brings back vapid answer.
Smart judge acts part of weightless, brainless dancer.
 
____________________

—Medusa, thanking Tom Goff for his musings today about Hitchcock, Shakespeare and Beethoven on this Veterans’ Day, 2020 ~

 

 

 

Don’t forget our Seed of the Week, a message for the world: Healing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world, including
that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!