Watermelons

by Ron Loewinsohn

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: Poetry

29 pages, chapbook

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Loewinsohn earned his BA from Berkeley in 1967 and his PhD from Harvard in 1971 with a dissertation on the early poetic development of William Carlos Williams.

Loewinsohn Joined the English Department faculty at UC Berkeley in 1970, where he spent the remainder of his career. His first novel, "Magnetic Field(s)," was one of five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1983.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE OCCASIONAL ROOM

You came very close to me
& I reached out & kissed you
overwhelmed you wanted me to.
And the moment
--meaningless when thought of as such--
because enshrined in the afternoon
eternal in the memory,
which, as Williams says,
is a kind of achievement
because it opens new doors to us.
New countries who beckon to us,
who aren't born until
we reach out & embrace them
as I did you that
one afternoon--
It was Christmas Eve
& the afternoon, the moment
(always the eve of something
until our hunger or need &
the acknowledgement of that need
overpowers our fear of
resembling the child or
seeming unsophisticated,
until we can stand in a
position of strength granted us
by the weakness we admit in
offering whatever part of us
is useful or needed to those we need)
is born!
& becomes: the time I reached out
& kissed you in a room overlooking
all of my beautiful white city,
or the time in New York
I asked the girl if
I could sleep on her floor
having no floor & no money
& no one else to ask.
...& the moment extends itself
opens like a flower
becomes an afternoon, an evening
in which the need & fear are
not so much absent, but
unthought of as such
like faces in a crowd.
It's only when
these things are perceived in isolation
that they take on significance,
begin to dominate & direct our actions
--outward into bars & evening beaches,
or inward as in my case:
A small room
without windows & only one door;
its acoustics make even laughter dissonant
Every ocean, orchard, city, speech,
sin, book & body I've ever known
lie scattered all over the place.
The light has a habit of emphasizing
only one object at a time
lending it an air of the visionary,
the unreal, awesome, or even fearful
--simple objects like a face or hands,
a street, a stretch of beach,
a hiway thru Connecticut.
The source of this light
is actually the room's dominant feature:
a little globe of blood-colored glass
screwed into the high ceiling,
inscribed in white with
a single word, which
inspite of its terrifying aspects,
has been the comfort of generations: EXIT