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20 Mar: "The Poet as Setting" by Douglas Kearney

The Poet as Setting

Related Poem Content Details

The jolt that comes to bones inside a tumbled streetcar

is what the painter considers as she strokes her-
self into story. There is less to the jolt that
  
comes as he shuts his eyes before the monitor, save

what he imagines—a lightning bolt, a god tapping
the shoulder. He imagines the sky swelling
 
with ceiling fans or the guano of extinct birds,
  
a jolt riding from his shoulder
blades to his eyelids, dropping with roller
  
coaster clacks to his fingers. Here, he dreams of Frida

Kahlo. Here, he says, let me spread my flesh out like a
table linen, let my bones be silver that touches,
  
making, again, that clack. My skull will be a glass,
  
set properly, I have class enough. What jolt is
it to chew over class, his body set before him as

a reader sips (perhaps) a glass of something heady? We give
  
books spines, we break them. The table will have
its legs, its head. The body is upon us. Does the table have

a stomach? Is it simply there to bear our hunger
 
without its own, like a eunuch bathing a stripper?
What is the poet without eyes or ears—reading, listening? He is
  
a platform—a place to set, that to set it with. And if this is
 
all, what will he do when the reader finishes a glass,
rises from the poet’s head, and passes
 
into the city? Covered with a linen, he is waiting for
  
something to spill, perhaps a girl in Mexico rolling 
her ankle in a street-
  
car.

2 comments:

  1. This is a magnificent...
    From she to he to us to her again...
    The story of a poet, of inspiration- of where each thought could have originated...it just keeps going and connecting and pondering. Curiosity and personification....weaved throughout the story. A poet is just telling the same story we are living...in reverse and upside down.

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  2. This is a lively poem. The images and symbols are so strong. Transportation, inspiration, presentation, and protection. I'm envious and motivated by this poem.

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