Poetry by Barbara Guest

BARBARA GUEST

from: Rocks on a Platter

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

typography. A companionship with crewlessness - - shivering fleece - -

Ship

shoal

rocks

to approach this land raving!

Rocks, platter, words, words . . .

mammoth teeth.

mobility interseamed 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 1OO,
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 earth 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.'

Excerpt from Rocks on a Platter by Barbara Guest.
Copyright © 1999 by Barbara Guest.
Used with Permission from Wesleyan University Press/
University Press of New England.

(back to top)

BIO: Barbara Guest is the author of numerous books of poetry including If So, Tell Me (Reality Street, 1999), Collected Poems (Sun & Moon, 1998), Seeking Air (Sun & Moon, 1998), Fair Realism (Sun & Moon, 1988) and Musicality (illustrated by June Felter, Kelsey St. Press, 1988). She is also the author of a novel, Seeking Air (Black Sparrow Press, 1978), and a biography, Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World (Doubleday, 1984). Born in North Carolina and raised in California, she spent years in New York City where she became involved with the New York School Poets. She currently lives in Berkeley.

new writing

table of contents