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The Window
Poetry. California Interest. The New Yorker calls his poetry, "Expressive, gestural, and image laden, St. John's lines fairly hum with the pleasure of their making." W. S. Merwin identifies St. John's work as that of "...an urgent sensibility and a true ear." And John Ashbery writes, "Like the films of Godard and Rohmer, David St. John's poems evoke cryptic encounters in an unltramodern, often European setting. The mood is one of pain, tension, and urgency, but there is finally the experience and pleasure of what Mr. St. John calls 'the most graceful of misunderstandings.'"
64 pages, Paperback
First published March 23, 2014
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June 1, 2014
APERTURES OF POSSIBILITY
The vibrant, impressionistic poems in David St. John’s The Window capture scenes of desire and longing. In the title poem, which serves as a prologue to the collection, a man is standing outside the apartment of a former lover, a woman he left long ago. He looks at the brightly lit windows, remembering moments of their time together and feeling his own emptiness. He doesn’t know if she still lives there, and we wonder if he will knock and find out.
Actual, physical windows appear in many of the subsequent poems, but whether there is a glass window or not, there is always an “aperture of possibility,” an opening that might be the “narrow stone gate of the gods,” a “pyramid of light” formed by flaming torches, the open lips of a lover, or a gray coat opened to reveal a lining of iridescent silk. What enters through these apertures might be love or despair, loss or confusion, or “odd good fortune.” Regardless, there is the necessity to open oneself to the moment, to fully experience it and find out.
Many of the poems feel timeless: they could be taking place 200 years ago, 2,000 years ago, or yesterday. I recommend reading them more than once to savor the images, which are sometimes beautiful (“the bowl of ragged scarlet tulips/Suddenly lifted in the sunlight”), other times unsettling (“the last book of the future thrust open by knives”). It’s a feast you can indulge in again and again.
The vibrant, impressionistic poems in David St. John’s The Window capture scenes of desire and longing. In the title poem, which serves as a prologue to the collection, a man is standing outside the apartment of a former lover, a woman he left long ago. He looks at the brightly lit windows, remembering moments of their time together and feeling his own emptiness. He doesn’t know if she still lives there, and we wonder if he will knock and find out.
Actual, physical windows appear in many of the subsequent poems, but whether there is a glass window or not, there is always an “aperture of possibility,” an opening that might be the “narrow stone gate of the gods,” a “pyramid of light” formed by flaming torches, the open lips of a lover, or a gray coat opened to reveal a lining of iridescent silk. What enters through these apertures might be love or despair, loss or confusion, or “odd good fortune.” Regardless, there is the necessity to open oneself to the moment, to fully experience it and find out.
Many of the poems feel timeless: they could be taking place 200 years ago, 2,000 years ago, or yesterday. I recommend reading them more than once to savor the images, which are sometimes beautiful (“the bowl of ragged scarlet tulips/Suddenly lifted in the sunlight”), other times unsettling (“the last book of the future thrust open by knives”). It’s a feast you can indulge in again and again.
Displaying 1 of 1 review