Window

by Martha Visser't Hooft

Poems use the new perspectives brought about by travel and aging to reexamine aspects of everyday life often taken for granted

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published April 1, 1990

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Windows is divided into six parts: "The Company", "Window", "Seven", "Dreams", "Eight Plus", and "Helsinki Window"...

from "The Company"...

Common's profound bottomm
of flotsam, specious increase
of the space, a ground abounds,
a place to make it.

- Common

* * *

Not much you ever
said you were thinking
of, not much to
say in answer.

- Not Much

* * *

Over the unwritten
and under the written
and under and over
and in back and in front of
or up or down or in
or in place of, or not,
of this and this, of
all that is, of it.

- Just in Time, For Anne

* * *

It's still
like. It
just ain't moving.

- Nature Morte

from "Window"...

THEN

The window had
been half
opened and the

door also
opened, and the
world then

invited, waited,
and one
entered

*

X

The world is
many, the

mind is
one.

*

WHERE

The window
opened,

beyond edge
shifts from back

a picture?
slurlike "wing"?

Who's
home?

*

The roof's
above, old

reddish dulled
tiles, small

dormered windows, two
chimneys, above

the greyish,
close sky.

*

Who's there,
old
question, who's
here.

*

LIGHT

Light's on
now

in three
sided balcony

window mid-
building, a floor

up from street.
Wait.

Watch it.
What light

on drab earth,
place on earth -

Continue?
Where to go so

far away
from here?

Friends?
Forgotten?

Movement?
A hand just

flesh, fingers?
White -

Who threads fantastic tapestry
just for me, for me?

*

WAITING

One could sit
minutes, hours,

days, weeks,
months, years -

all of its
rehearsal one

after one, be done
at last with it?

*

Or could go
in

to it, be
inside

head, look
at day

turn to dark,
get rid

of it at last, think
out

of patience, give
it up?

*

Man
with paper, white,

in hand
"tells the truth"

silent, moves
past the window

away -
sit down?

Comes back,
leans

forward at waist,

somewhat stiffly -
not

old,
young, young.

*

He must love someone
and this must be the story

of how he wanted
everything rightly done

but without the provision
planned, fell forward

into it all,
could not withstand

the adamant simplicity
of life's "lifelike" reality -

even in a mirror
replaced by another -

and couldn't wait
any longer,

must have
moved here.

To "live life" alone?
to "come home"?

To be "lost and found"
again, "never more to roam"

again. Or something more like
"the fading light," like

they say, never quite
come. Never just one.

- Window

from "Seven"...

STRAIGHT

They were going up in
a straight line right
to God, once they died -

The hills of home here
are a yellow pointer, again
God's simplistic finger -

Over the hill, the steeple
still glows in the late light -
all else whited out.

*

PLATE

All I ever wanted was
a place

up there
by myself.

*

"and the sky above - an old

blue

place" an

old

blue plate an old

blue face

*

Very carefully I
cut out an absolute

circle of blue
sky

or water. They
couldn't tell

the difference.

*

Blue plate

special

*

RED

When it goes
that fast

you don't see anything
but speed, you see

red.

*

I got something stuck
in my hand.

It was a splinter.

*

In the first World War
they had bombs

that looked like this.

*

How fast
do you think it's going?

*

SNOWMAN

Help the holes
be bigger. Put

your hand
in.

*

He grew a
point on

top
of his head -

two
of them.

*

That ice
cream cone'll

drip?

*

Curious
key hole.

*

I want to go into the immense
blue yonder

and I've built a negative number
times three.

*

WINGS

Those are hills out there
or mounds

of breasts filling
the horizon.

*

It's a bird! Such
grace.

*

Sitting here
in Maine

I put you on the window sill
against the blue, white

yellow sky. You're a
sea gull suddenly.

What else
do I want.

*

Miles away they
are waiting for the promised

land again and the wind
had moved

the sand
into these shapes.

*

BOX

What do you think
he's got it for

unless
he means to use it.

*

No way
that could fit

(me)

*

"The worms
crawl in. The"

*

People walked
through the town carrying

coffins!

*

a coffin
fit...

Heh,
heh.

*

just stand him up
in the corner.

*

BOAT

Rock me, boat.
Open, open.

Hold me,
little cupped hand.

Let me come in,
come on

board you, sail
off, sail off...

- Seven: A Suite for Robert Therrien

from"Dreams"...

I could get
all of it.

I could say
anything.

I wish I could
just get even.

I'm here.
I'm still here.

When did
it happen.

Where was
everyone.

I wish I could
just get even.

Now you've
gone away.

Nobody
wants to stay.

Here I am.
Here I am

- Lights

* * *

Flakes falling
out window make
no place, no place -

no faces, traces,
wastes of whatever
wanted to be -

was here
momentlt mother,
was here

- Sparks Street Echo

* * *

Patches of grey
sky tree's

lines window
frames the

plant hangs
in middle.

- Focus

from"Eight Plus"...

YOU BET

Birds like
windows.

*

YONDER

Heaven's up
there still.

*

THE KIDS

Little muffins

in a
pan.

*

THE CART

Oh well, it
thinks.

*

NEGATIVE

There's a big
hole.

*

SITE

Slats in
sunlight a
shadow.

*

PURITAN

Plant's in
place.

*

VIRTUES

Tree limbs'
patience.

*

CARS

Flat out
parking lot.

*

BLUE

Grey blue
sky blue.

*

HOLES

Sun's
shining through

you.

*

TEXAS REVERSE

You all
go.

*

ECHOES

"All gods
children got -"

*

OLD SONG

"Some sunny
day -"

*

YEAH

Amazing grace
on Willy's face!

*

HELP

This here
hand's out.

*

SEE

Brown's another
colour.

*

DOWN

It's all
over
the floor.

*

WINDOW

Up from reflective
table top's glass the
other side of it.

*

AROUND

The pinwheel's pink
plastic spinning
blade's reversing.

*

EGO

I can
hear I can
see

*

DAYTIME

It's got to be
light.

*

SPACE

Two candles
light brown -
or yellow?

*

WINDOW SEAT

Cat's up
on chair's edge.

*

EYES

All this
colour's yours.

*

GREEN

Plant's tendrils
hanging from

but not
to -

*

SEASCAPE

Little boat
blue blown
by bay

[...]

- Improvisations, for Lise Hoshour

* * *

What's still here settles
at the edge of this
simple place still
waiting to be seen.

*

I didn't go
anywhere and
I haven't
come back!

*

You went by so
quickly thinking
there's a whole world
in between

*

It's not a
final distance,
this here
and now.

*

How much I would
give just to know
you're standing in
whatever way here.

*

Human eyes
are lights to me
sealed
in this stone.

*

No way to
tell you anything
more than
this one

*

You walk tired
or refreshed, are
past in a moment,
but saw me.

*

Wish happiness
most for us,
whoever we are,
wherever.

*

If I sit here
long enough,
all will pass me by
one way or another

*

Nothing left out,
it's all in a heap,
all the people
completed.

*

Night's eye is
memory
in day-
light.

*

I've come and gone from here
with no effect,
and now feel
no use left.

*

How far from
where it
was I'll
never know.

*

You there
next to the others
in front of
the one behind!

*

No one speaks
alone. It
comes out
of something.

*

Could I think
of all you
must have felt?
Tell me.

*

What's inside,
what's the place
apart from
this one?

*

They say this
used to be
a forest
with a lake.

*

I'm just
a common
rock,
talking.

*

World's
still got
four
corners.

*

What's
that
up there
looking down?

*

You've got a nice
face and
kind eyes and
all the trimmings.

*

We talk like
this too
often someone
will get wise!

- Eight Plus

from "Helsinki Window"...

The trees are kept
in the centre of the court,
where they take up room
just to prove it -

and tha garbage cans extend
on the asphalt at the far side
under the grey sky and the building's
recessed, regular windows.

All these go up and down
with significant pattern,
and people look out of them.
One can see their faces.

I know I am safe here
and that no one will get me,
no matter where it is
or who can find me.

- X

* * *

Whatever's
to be
thought
of thinking
thinking's
thought of
it still
thinks
it thinks
to know
itself so
thought.

*

Though so
itself know to
thinks it
thinks still it
of thought
thinking's
thinking
of thought
be to
whatever's.

- Whatever

* * *

Outside the
trees
make limit of
simple

sight. The
weather is
a grey, cold on
the

skin. It feels
itself
as if a place it
couldn't

ever get to
had been at
last
entered.

- Echo, for J.L.

* * *

The ducks are gone
back to the pond, the echo

of it all a curious
resonance now it's

over, life's like that?
What matters, so soon become fact.

- For J.L.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creeley’s collection of avant-garde thought experiments in the Black Mountain School method often read like shorthand, an abbreviated symbolic writing method that seeks to mimic the speed of perception, the brevity of conscious awareness, and the fleeting impressions of phenomena—all inscribed with laconic, self-referential indifference by a “dislocating, imploding/ self.” Classic examples: “Whatever,” “What.” As Joyce Carol Oates notes, “no poetic theories are required to support such art; it achieves its own permanence by relating at once to our own groping, semi-articulate wonder.”

Favorite Poems:
“Song”
“You”
“Funny”
“Oh”
“Echo”

[Daanish Shabbir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among his later collections... an immense treat.

NOT MUCH
Not much you ever
said you were thinking
of, not much to
say in answer.


SCALES
Such small dimension
finally, the comfortable
end of it, the people
fading, world shrunk

to some recollected
edge of where it used to be,
and all around a sound
of coming, going, rustle

of neighboring movement out there
where as ever what one finally
sees, hears, wants, waits
still to recognize--is it

the sun? Grass, ground,
dog's bark. bird, the
opening, high clouds, fresh
lifting day-someone?

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable.