Several years ago my good friend Carter Monroe sent me a book. He often sends books to people when he thinks they need to know about a writer or might be influenced by their craft. I appreciate Carter in that aspect. Over the years he has introduced me and Michael to many wonderful writers. Too bad I'm such a shit friend. I don't keep in contact in this hectic world. I need to be better at keeping friendships.
The book he sent is called "The New American Poetry 1945-1960". There are a lot of great writers in this book. It was a time of post World War II leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. People were stewing their minds in all sorts of political and social mire. The pot was getting ready to boil. I can't say that every writer in this book is my cup of tea or that I understand where they are coming from. Our worlds are exponentially different in so many ways, but I do appreciate where these writers are coming from.
I would like to share a poem by Stuart Z. Perkoff called "The Recluses". I identify with this poem as I tend to fall into periods of hermitage from the people that mean a lot to me. The last few years has been shrouded with the deaths of family and friends. It has lent me to a longer seclusion than I would have liked. Frankly at this point, I've become invisible. Here's to silence and imagination.
The Recluses
by Stuart Z. Perkoff
They paper the walls of their world
with their strange rhythms,
visions of this, their sighted dreams.
They have within their deepest eardooms
fragments of freshest wildness.
That of a woman
never feeling breastingly through their eyes,
they have no sin. But on their walls
of rhythmed visioned scenes
they often have lines about a mountain.
That black which is the greedy of the mind,
that reaches up and grasps from
the perceiving eye
all of the memoric stanza brought on by the world
is their fine house.
They live there.
They have their own dark lines.
They are always
inside
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