THE CLOSEST I’VE GOTTEN TO MODERNISM

When I lived in Boston from 1990 to 1995, I experienced my most productive period of writing poetry. I was in a city in which the Arts were at times more important than food. I hung around with a wide array of writers and musicians and a smaller circle devoted to the craft of writing.

My influences at the time were the classical forms. Shakespeare’s sonnets and Keats’ eloquent and passionate rhymes. I was at heart a Romantic. A friend gave me a copy of early 20th century European poetry. Surrealism and Modernism were now placed in my lap. If I were a chef, it would have been like someone introduced me to a new cuisine. The elements are different as is the ultimate product. At times, however, the creative impulse remains the same.

I wrote several pieces that were without distinct forms with the intention of broadening my language, my voice. It was as much an intellectual effort as a creative one. While I do not disregard these works some thirty years later, I simply recognize they were the product of a young man stretching his creative mind.

This is one of those poems.

5 VIEWS OF A SKYSCRAPER

I.

Looking at it from across the river,

it may be one of many.

But it has its own style and form

distinctive from the others.

Trying to see it,

there are far too many passing

in front in the foreground,

all different in their intrusions.

II.

Five or six blocks away,

a parallel movement

and a perpendicular turn.

No straight-line availability.

If only I could fly to the roof…

III.

Castle of financial woe

O ye who enter at the gate

Beware the battlements

A tower of Babel

A different language

on each floor

Man creates something greater than he.

No fear; he can destroy it.

IV.

Straight across my vision is undaunted.

An expanse of epic measure

fills the full of my retina,

inflates the complete peripheral,

overwhelms my capacity to protect.

Strai

ght d

own I

reali

ze th

e pre

cario

us po

sitio

n, ha

lf-wa

y bet

ween

morbi

d fea

r and

exult

ation

V.

All these pipes and lights,

concrete and hissing,

this ugly sewer,

this musty netherworld,

this holds it together.

This keeps it tall and proud.

This creates majesty.

I would be disgusted to roam

inside of myself.