How2

Vol. 1, No. 2

September 1999

Barbara Guest is the author of numerous books of poetry including If So, Tell Me (Reality Street, 1999), Collected Poems (Sun & Moon, 1998), Seeking Air (Sun & Moon, 1998), Fair Realism (Sun & Moon, 1988), and Musicality (illustrated by June Felter, Kelsey Street Press, 1988). She is also the author of a novel, Seeking Air (Black Sparrow Press, 1978), and a biography, Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World (Doubleday, 1984). Born in North Carolina and raised in California, she spent years in New York City where she became involved with the New York School Poets. She currently lives in Berkeley.

from Rocks on a Platter

I

To live is to defend a form . . .

HÖLDERLIN

.

Ideas. As they find themselves. In trees?
To choose a century they are prepared to inhabit. Dreams
set by

typography. A companionship with crewlessness - - shivering
fleece - -

Ship

shoal rocks

to approach this land raving!

Rocks, platter, words, words . . .

mammoth teeth.

mobility interseamed with print: "a small car beside the porch and
wind
with a harsh caress . . ." another STORY BEGINS:

A DONKEY DRAWS A CART TO THE FURNACE AND
THE CHILDREN PRESS AROUND, THEIR SMALL TEETH GLOWING.

I heard the wolf.

.

It had been a vagabond voyage and the entrepreneur was
fatigued, yet
held up his head inflamed with "LITERATURE, the ABSURD."
Ideas
dropped off vines and into his mouth. An idea fell off a SECULAR
vine
roaming his head: BAKED APPLES!

Among his listeners, a waterer of his vines, was a beautiful girl who
hand-
typed A BOOK CALLED "BAKED APPLES." THESE ARE STORIES
THAT "MELT IN THE MOUTH," said the critics.

THE KING READ BAKED APPLES 1OO,
AND GAVE HER AN APPLE TREE GROVE.
THE KITCHEN MAIDS, who had written JONQUIL TALES,
asked the
king for a jonquil grove. "I prefer BAKED APPLES," said the
King.

TEARFUL, THE KITCHEN MAIDS CLOSED THEIR KITCHEN
AND
OPENED A JONQUIL STORE IN BUDAPEST, WITH YELLOW
DOORS, and GREEN CEILINGS THAT VERY SOON APPEARED
IN A
FILM "THE BRIGHTENING OF BUDAPEST."
(The King, who liked the film, donated 25 white Palace
chairs.)

.

Passivity . . .

pollen indoctrinated AND fragrance.

She digs with her fingernails into the earth while
speaking and

weeping. Her face is also

introduced into the story:

a fragrant narration.

"ASTOUNDING BEING ALIVE!"

.

Pockets jingle highly responsive place in the
shelter
of those rocks at last the jingle of your
pockets

HEARD ON THE PAGE.

.

. . . in its contiguous
treatment of time, literature:

is inclined to divorce
the uninhibited aroma of BEAUTY,
OR
SPECTACULAR LEAP

suspicious
of fragmentation,

or sweet reproach of
invisibility.

.

Tradition

Tantamount to theory

treacles
of tender
truckland

near Trebizond.

TRIUMPHS.

A TREMENDOUS TUNE-UP. ORTHODOXY.
tremendous tune-up

tra- la-la.

.

Wet earth disinters itself.

With aplomb

bestows

"The Kiss behind the
Counter."

.

Implacable poet.

.

Shattered rocks

hid in the rock?
Deft, vehement. Amulet cast from the pocket.

And wind over red-tiled roof and we grow
     closer
to the moss of subjectivity guarding an iron
     basin
limed,   old stars.

Rays modern rays,
modernly, so be it.

Noise of the shattering!

Behooved us to welcome tonality,

or succumb to the theme of inharmony . . .

"where we once were."

.

Fiction and Complice

torment the mineral kingdom,

feathering the
page
in the merit of feather.

Of brokenness - -

brokenness resembles
evasion (although not separate),
and
with a coat of arms,

'afloat with the telling.'