On the back cover of The Joy of Shadows, I wrote that the book is a continuation of The Mercy Killing. That claim is not very fair to either book. The Joy of Shadows is a collection of fragments left over from The Mercy Killing that I finished at some point and thought, “Wow! I have a hundred pages of poetry here.” The attempted poems also have very little relationship and do not find their inspirations in Neoclassicism.
The Joy of Shadows is still a book of parodies and mimicries as The Mercy Killing was, but its inspirations are Poe, John Ashbery, Matthew Arnold, Yeats, Dylan Thomas…well, I would have to read through to remember the others, but it is not infused with ideas from Alexander Pope though the prose essay introductions are satirical enough I suppose.
The Joys of Shadows contains only one poem that I have rewritten and reworked. That poem is Emma Jean. The new version is so much better that the two are hardly comparable. It is very interesting to me how in snippets of poems, I found the “voice” or the natural poetic rhythm that will now allow me to create a poem like the following one, pretty much at one sitting. It is like I was discovering my breath. Here’s the poem I am talking as a current representative of my realizing my flow:
An Oak Leaf Fell
(Where there’s No Will)
In sloughing wind, the oak leaf fell,
The chill air barely braked its fall,
It ticked on every stick it hit,
Its falling meant nothing at all.
Its falling meant nothing at all
Nor would it mean more had it hung,
Dead notion on a living limb,
A lost thought on a voiceless tongue.
A lost thought on a voiceless tongue,
A breathless sigh, a tacit word,
Its purpose served, will set it free
As if its use had not occurred.
As if its use had not occurred,
Nor ever shined in gold nor green,
Nor ever glowed yellow nor red,
Nor beauty in its form was seen.
Nor beauty in its form was seen
Nor elegance in verdant style.
In sloughing wind, the oak leaf fell
And decomposes in a pile.
The snippet in The Joy of Shadows that reminded me of this was (I am having to type this.)
Inside his hive, did Honey Bee
Make his magic liquor for me,
Where drips the sugar swollen sweat
Through caves of woven paper net
Down to a molten sea.
Ah! There is a pretty decent imitation of the beginning of the poetic fragment Kubla Kahn. I just now noticed that.
Anyhow, as I always say. The Joy of Shadows, to my knowledge, is available through all of the major online booksellers. I will be glad to loan, share, or sell copies to you if you get it touch with me. I have few sitting around. If you would like some bookmarks, I have a few made up that I can give to you. If I run out, I will make more.
That covers all three of my current books. I guess that, now, I can move on to other discussions.
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