Red Leaves of Night, The

by David St. John

Possession and loss, rapture and despair: David St. John's narrator in this dazzling collection of poems remains unflinchingly aware that the trajectory between these two states is both brief and irresistible. Like modern Dante's Virgil, he guides us through a mosaic of experiences to depict the vast architecture of erotic desire and communion. The sexual bond, with its potential for the breakdown of all spiritual and physical boundaries between two formerly separate beings, becomes the site of almost unbearable psychological and erotic tension that runs throughout the collection. The Red Leaves of Night finds its breathtaking power in a recognition of the necessary impermanence of such communion, and gives voice to that most courageous of modern men--one who grasps the dangers of ecstasy yet cannot turn away.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 1999

Reviews

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lush language describes a passionate but past love affair. Shades of longing and desire permeate its pages. It has a confessional feel to it, all of the poems related to each other and to the poet's lived experience. The end poems will be familiar to anyone who has loved and lost and found him or herself alone. In "Beeches," the poet retreats to the woods and bathes in the nostalgia the walk engenders in him to a point where he is able to let the past be, to find some peace ...

"To say that I miss you is to say almost nothing
To say that the forest is the sanctuary of ghosts
Is only the first step of my own giving way --

Not the old giving up -- just the old giving thanks."

Lovely evocative work.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I taped to the wall above my office desk the postcard/ Of Klimt's painting called The Park/ An example of cliché so profuse it touched my heart"

This line alone is enough to make reading the book worth it.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elegant, sensuous, delicate, ephemeral. Somehow lush and diaphanous at the same time -- muscular and ghostly. And I think "ghostly" is the word that best captures the experience of these poems, this collection, for me: I am haunted by the erotic grief I find in these poems.

[Joe M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lately, only three things interest me-
The unsayable, the unknowable, & you.

The colors of the morning edge in a little
Here, as a backdrop to the towers of the Loire;

Ash white limbs languish above the river's muted reds,
Its blazing lace of late-summer's light, that

Holy figure. Around us- swirling-those grains of
Rumor, pearls of salt kissed from an open palm...

Each night suggests the fortunes of the moon.
The way our room remains requited by desire.

My prize: A night alone (again) with you, tracing
This brocade of sweat along your amber shoulder.

Let's weave together the dawn's superior light-
A script of bodies, inscribed by the summers night.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection, though, No Heaven is my favorite.

[Emily Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ideal way to read this book is aloud, in bed, to a companion. Mysterious, sensual, intellectual - a good book for those who love love but might be tired of Neruda.