David X Novak
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Strength in Sonnets: Two Poems by Edgar Bowers

9/30/2018

 
I was looking into the Collected Poems of Edgar Bowers. Two outstanding poems appealed to me, and both were sonnets.
​

In the Last Circle

You spoke all evening hatred and contempt,
The ethical distorted to a fury
Of self-deception, malice, and conceit,
Yourself the judge, the lawyer, and the jury.
I listened, but instead of proof, I heard,
As if the truth were merely what you knew,
Wrath cry aloud its wish and its despair
That all would be and must be false to you.

You are the irresponsible and damned,
Alone in final cold athwart your prey.
Your passion eats his brain. Compulsively,
The crime which is your reason eats away
Compassion, as they both have eaten you,
Till what you are is merely what you do.
​

The Mirror

Father, I loved you as a child, and still,
When trouble bruises him whom I retrace
Back to the time I cannot know, I fill,
By my desire, the possible with grace
And wait your coming. Then I see my face,
Breathed by some other presence on the chill
Illumination of this mortal glass,
Gleam from the dark to struggle in your will.

In that fixed place, around me, others move,
Vivid with long conclusion, who, once dead,
Quickened the little moment I could prove;
And, though I seem to live, there, at my head,
As if the thought translating all I see,
He stands, who was my future, claiming me.

The Lack of Ethics Gorsuch Showed

9/30/2018

 

​The lack of ethics Gorsuch showed
    Accepting of a seat
That had been stolen, down the road
    Seems destined to repeat.


As lo! a party candidate
    Accepts the party vote
Who lies profusely, if not great,
    His oath of minor note.


To be a judge, yet disregard
    The way of law, impartial,
All jurisprudence to discard
    Belligerent and martial;


Who parses his words to mislead,
    Omits, obfuscates, lies,
And lo! what verdicts must succeed
    Such bold hypocrisies?


To see a nation fumble, fall
    Was never my desire,
But Gorsuch and his ilk, et al.
    Have lit the raging fire.
​

So human nature often is
    Though it might better be— 
I sing my witness, much remiss
    The travesty I see.

The Nominee’s Defense

9/28/2018

 

“You’ve ruined my reputation
By airing in the light
My history of predation
And acts of denigration
That by no estimation
Could ever have been right.

“What I — and all my buddies — 
Have done, felt good to us,
But accusation muddies
Our name as goody-goodies:
When we were having woodies
Nobody made a fuss.”

These words with tears being spoken
So seethed the nominee:
“My crimes should count as joking,
Sweet privilege unbroken,
But since on lies I’m choking,
The victim here is me!”

Ah, his interlocutors
They scratched their heads, and sighed,
“It’s what boys do, young tutors,
In training to be looters,
And we are their recruiters:
The entry way is wide.”

Then all the good boys voted,
They cast and cast and cast,
As one by one they gloated
That no great harm was noted,
Hypocrisy being floated
Miasma like, and vast.

“It’s like a creeping karma,”
The nominee declared,
“I thought I was a charmer,
No less the harmed than harmer,
But must truth pierce my armor?
I haven’t been prepared.”

It is the Way of action:
What’s done, may well return,
Each character infraction
And wayward satisfaction
For which, in their attraction,
We burn because we burn.

The Prospect of Bereavement

9/1/2018

 

I give you this, my darling,
    The world is unco cruel,
With snarling met with snarling,
    Malevolence in duel.

When anger leads to rancor
    And hurt returned for hurt,
Without hope for an anchor
    Or option to avert.

Regardless, you, my brother,
    And I, amidst this strife,
Toned down, to one another
    According love and life.

It may well be you saved me,
    Or may be I saved you,
But rage no more enslaved me
    When love came shining through.

So now, to see you suffer,
    Anon to see you die,
Becomes in prospect rougher
    Than any past gone by.

I pray that I remember
    What lonely hearts have learned,
The warm glow of an ember
    In wake of great love burned.

Let Us Go Then, You and Me...

9/1/2018

 
As it turns out (referring to yesterday’s post) the website Alison Croggon co-founded and jointly edits with Robert Reid appears to leave theater reviews in front of the paywall and not behind. (That means I have a bit of a backlog to slog, though not too much, the site being extant none too long.)

Only Croggon’s reviews interest me much, not the other bloke’s, and part of the reason is the contextualization she (sometimes) brings to a merely local and temporal event. Take, for example, the review linked here. It is hard, off in Chicago, to muster up much interest in the play. But take a gander at paragraphs 6-9 (beginning “Who and what human beings are…" through to “by definition, not human”) and you'll see what I mean.

That said, other commitments probably preclude much archive prowling for the time being. Much as I enjoy the inestimable Croggon’s reviewery and critical peregrinations, such as leave their trace in non paywall-protected internet mews and alleyways, I have business elsewhere. I suspect the best—and more generalist—is not available (even as her own website restricts access). ’Tis pity but ’tis so.





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    A new poem is always news to the poet.
    ​Or whatever.

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