Keith Waldrop
"I have trekked far," is the quiet reply. To which we should add that when it was all made--with such a perfect blending of love, secret enterprise, and malevolent cunning--it was left outside. The actions seem to be wholly mysterious, as is fitting. We must reemphasize the complete independence of the author and his traces. Can we say that they are a "pathos"? an "image"? a "Nothing"? A breaking into the garden? Or a bridge? In any case, after this there is, for a time, no ghost in the stairwell, though a light appears in some neighboring window and goes out again.
(The collage below--Untitled {Man and Column], 1989-- is also by Keith Waldrop.)
2 comments:
This unfolds in different ways depending on where you start, and it does seem to invite multiple readings in a way a more linear piece would not.
That's a great point, Gwynne. It helps to give the reader some instruction. I have to say the poem doesn't let me go; I think I've read it at least a half dozen times since I came upon it last night.
(Keith Waldrop, by the way, just won the 09 National Book Award in Poetry.)
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