Rocks on a Platter

by Barbara Guest

A meditation on the difficulty of assemblage and a reflection on the poetic process.

Genres: Poetry

51 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 1999

About the author

Barbara Guest, née Barbara Ann Pinson (September 6, 1920 – February 15, 2006), was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry.[1] Guest wrote more than 15 books of poetry spanning sixty years of writing. In 1999, she was awarded the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Poetry Society of America. Guest also wrote art criticism, essays, and plays. Her collages appeared on the covers of several of her books of poetry. She was also well known for her biography of the poet H.D., Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (1984).

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

 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
typographers. A companionship with crewlessness - shivering fleece -

 Ship
 shoal rocks

 to approach this land raving!

 Rocks, platter, words, words . . .


 mammoth teeth.





Mobility interested 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 100,
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 each 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."