The Blue Stairs

by Barbara Guest

Guest's poems, 1968.

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

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]

There is no fear
in taking the first steps
or the second
or the third
 having a position
 between several Popes
In fact the top
can be reached
without disaster
 precocious
The code
consists in noticing
the particular shade
of the staircase
 occasionally giving way
 to the emotions
It has been chosen
discriminately

To graduate
the dimensions
ease them into sight
 republic of space
Radiant deepness
a thumb
passed over it
 disarming
 as one who executes robbers
Waving the gnats
and the small giants
aside
 balancing
How to surprise
a community
by excellence

somehow it occurred
 living a public life
The original design
was completed
no one complained

In a few years
it was forgotten
 floating
It was framed
like any other work of art
not too ignobly
 kicking the ladder away
Now I shall tell you
why it is beautiful

Design: extraordinary
color: cobalt blue
 secret platforms
Heels twist it 
into shape

It has a fantastic area
made for a tread
that will ascend

Being humble
i.e. productive

Its purpose
is to take you upward

On an elevator
Of human fingerprints
of the most delicate
fixity

Being practical
and knowing its denominator

To push
one foot ahead of the other

Being a composite
which sneers at marble
 all orthodox movements
It has discovered
in the creek of a footstep
the humility of sound

Spatial selective
using this counterfeit
of height

To substantiate
a method of progress

Reading stairs
as interpolation
in the problem of gradualness
 with a heavy and pure logic
The master builder
acknowledges this

As do the artists
in their dormer rooms
 eternal banishment
Who are usually grateful
to anyone who prevents them
from taking a false step

And having reached the summit
would like to stay there
even if the stairs are withdrawn
 - The Blue Stairs

A brilliant collection by one of the lesser known poets of the New York School. Although she is associated with the New York School, Guest's style is distinctively different from the other associated poets such as John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara. The only core poet of the New York School
comparable to Guest's poetry is James Schuyler. Specifically the poem "Turkey Villas", in which Guest seems to appropriate (perhaps even parody) Schuyler's emphasis on the colour blue...

a white cup
(more of a mug)
falls, falls up-
ward and crack
splits into
two glazed
clay clouds.
- James Schuyler, from "Blue" (The Crystal Lithium)


Down
the valley a
line of far-
off mountains
are deeper,
bluer than the
sky....
- James Schuyler, from "Sunset" (Hymn To Life)


At night I sometimes see
those wooden villas
as if they were shacks
caught in an avalanche
and I crossing the Alps

Or
to make a shorter story
and relate in truth
to my life
as if it were San Francisco
1937
and a waterfront strike
the houses on the hills
were wooden and grey
tilted

Those ordinary houses
in which a few people
preserved the art
of pipe playing . . . A.D.

It is a vast smooth dream
this uncrippled Bosphorus

I don't like to consider
what goes on at the bottom
or the galleons and risks
that plunged
as ever so often a canoe

It is a shade
a window shade also
one that can be drawn if the
curtain is working
like a vat of oil

Now to be a proper historian
of my dreams
I must relate
the sidereal action

Of a ship seen from
A Hotel Hilton balcony
Think of that
Balcon Hilton!

Enough of this dizziness
let us apply the oars

Not to freeze
in a mosaic
not to be fooled
by a Mosque

What an idea!

I am spinning with ideas
to the top of the Mosque
I am an ice cream cone
Muzzein

I am drenched
with Blue

Fevered with ideas
I heat them in my pocket
these beads of ideas
and when they have cooled
what I shall have to exist on

I shall be able to escape the seraglio
I shall go on collecting pottery
yet it shall be blue

as an edifice
blue as the diagram
of a prince watering his horse

I shall be medieval and slim
at once!

Blue canopy
unmodernized
and empty

Blue windows
to let in the grey

Blue metaphysics
of the ultra refined center

I shall be able to paint
blue
those wooden villas

What sylvan blues
have I dreamed

What half-oriented eyes
have I opened

forcing them to see
the blue heavens

Effacing the mud
wracking myself with blue
coughs

And rising to walk
in my blue veils
over the Bosphorus

to my villa
my wooden peg

where I can advocate
successful blue Crusades

Yet I am always sleepy
and troubled
when the moon
is at its Crescent

I am not sure
of the color of those shutters

My dreams
are stupidly turbulent
I am in a boat
and the tourist guide
says
Regard those grey houses

Mohamet
I wake
with a cold toe.
- Turkey Villas

Another aspect of the poems of Guest and Schuyler deserving of comparison is the poets' use of nonsense, often in a humorous context...

The sky smiles and out
of its mouth drifts free
a milk tooth which of itself
glides under the pillow
of a cloud....
- James Schuyler, from "Poem for Trevor Winkfield" (The Crystal Lithium)


The heavy umbrellas
aren't worth their weight.
Doors swing and slam
checked by gusts. A whisperer
has a friendly reek.
A hell broth!
and hollows among clouds.
Then the moon goes crocus.
- James Schuyler, from "Crocus Night" (Freely Espousing)


There was once a shadow
called Luis; there was once an eyebrow
whose name was Domingo. Once there
were children, grown-ups, organs;
there were moving legs and there was
speech. In the daylight there were
small whimpers made by the African cat;
in the candlelight there were couplings
of such sonority evening callers
merely left their cards; no one drew back
the curtains; there were no curtains
the candlelight fell on grass and
like a candle up stood the water hose.
- from Saving Tallow

These comparisons, however, only skim the surface of both poets. It's important to note that Barbara Guest is a remarkably original poet. That this is an early collection (her second?) makes her originality all the more remarkable. I've included a few of my favourite passages to illustrate my point...

You are a lucky person who hears
 the wild the luxurious birds
their scream is like yours
 when you fear the cold
 - from Colonial Hours


Repeatedly striking, i.e., to strike the imagination
another blow, neither heat nor cold,
but the power in the wing, the chill
smothering feather outlined narrowly
by vertebrae extended for an instant;
it makes one shudder, the quick umbrella
unfurled near the tearful statue.
 - Fan Poems, III


"I cannot place him." Yet I do.
He must ascend indefinitely as airs
he must regard his image as plastic,
adhering to the easeful carpet that needs
footprints and cares for them.
as is their wont in houses, the ones we pass by.
 - from A Way of Being


Sleep is 20
 remembering the
insignificant flamenco dancer
in Granada
 who became
important as you watched
the mountain ridge
 the dry hills

What an idiotic number!

Sleep is twenty

it certainly isn’t twenty sheep
there weren’t that many in the herd
under the cold crest of Sierra Nevada

It’s more like 20 Madison Ave. buses
while I go droning away at my dream life
Each episode is important
that’s what it is! Sequences —
I’ve got going a twenty-act drama
the theatre of the active
the critics are surely there
even the actors
even the flowers presented onstage
even the wild flowers
picked by the wife of the goatherd
each morning early (while I sleep)
under the snow cone
of Sierra Nevada
 - from 20


Rolling through: On the way to line up it's under the soup
 you with your immaculate verb sense the
 indicative clause so under control and
 the novel how much you understand of
 character plot not to
 mention vice...
 - from A Handbook of Surfing, III

[Oisín · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between Guest's first collection and this one, the quality of the poetry writing has definitely gone up. The experimental aspect has been toned down a little, which is unfortunate as I thought she pulled it off quite well. Overall though this was a good collection, I particularly liked "The Return on the Muses" which was probably the most successful fusion of Guest's impressionistic style with the historical theme of the collection.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I brought home / an unopened poem. It should grow / in the kitchen near the stove”

A great introduction into the work of Guest. I look forward to reading many, many more of her collections. Up next: Stripped Tales