Biography

by Barbara Guest

Guest's Poems, 1980.

Genres: Poetry

16 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

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

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mutinies of celebrations
like birds in aviaries
or spies at the diaries,

I read all that.

Thanks @Alana for the birthday gift.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now in the Spring air with leaves posed above benches
the waterfall as hesitant as ever,
Biography removes her gauntlet
 to cast care from your brow
 - Heroic Stages for Grace Hartigan (from The Location of Things, Archaics, The Open Skies)

One


The people inside

 how to transfigure
 the way night transfers its stars

As heat nets this room

 where are we
 caught in the ruts
 where are they
 defused withering?

The difficult stabbings
required by detection

 introspection arraigned
 a warning
 waves from the honied vaults.

A gliding outside getting out
beyond the old feathers

into the courtyard

postillions lay wait

Ready for racing the years
there were: transfers, excursions,
analyses clocked by their tears,

Irregular vines covering
the cottages
concealing the entrance ways

Pockets filled with words
mice sliver the curtains and wings
 beat.



Two


 Did you locate the forms in the vests,
 the particular bride's visit to the magistrate,
 the divorces, were they hidden under twine?

 Delving into the lime, unscrewing
 taking out the corks at last discovering
 the white shawl; not so much climate with
 the exception of rain; a few good days
 for bathing, the usual fog, however later
 a wonderful isolation surrounded by plants 
 with doctors securing the ice lanes.

 (When we foundered in the labyrinth of word
 puns set like traps, and when the first Angel . . .)

The day it snowed on the statues and the light
whispered of coming to grips with the problem, of a thaw
when the sun lit the mounds, the sky grew blue as its
burden fell in drops and over my shoulder a new atmosphere
of comprehension, of desire, of yearning . . .



Three


An itch
 the width of an elbow
an urge
 really to "know"
when the flea entered the garment
anemonies
where were they picked?

Icy shadows
 grapes in the "goblet"
 the fabric ripped

An excellent "e" for evening
when the spicy shrieks sent out alarms,

 then a word like Egypt.



Four


 The reason for caterwauling
 on the stair was simple
 it went up and I went on
 of course the chamber was empty.

 But the view
 made up for the journeying
 although I don't enjoy real lakes,

 There's something there on the bottom
 like Galuppi with his music
 a kind of dead stick,
 it frightens me
 here on the fringe 
 just beginning to discover the swans.

Idiosyncracies set out on the terraces - hers and mine.
A need to escape so we breathed separately, the air spun
into a pact, as wistfully the figures disappeared into -
Geneva - as the chairs reassembled themselves, hers
and mine.



Five


Yet another day
among the boxes
 what was the year of the prince
 whose telephone rang in the flat?
Dizziness shared
a hint of disgrace amid the pine,

The card said, "William Blake,"
yet the notes were from another climate.

Birthdates absconding
I read the stars.

This one of mid-morning
weaving its plume from the sky,

Again the Angel descends.

Tomorrows begin to wither
the ashes form their ring
and voices whisper,

There's sobbing too
behind the arras

And nuttiness hits me
a sting like rivers
you forget in the rain
their flash.

 Then you see from the window
 the physical features - 
 the bangs, the brow, the frown
 where it lingers on its arithmetic
 of cities, trading symbols

 The archer, the Virgin, the Twins.

 Mutinies of celebrations
 like birds in aviaries
 or spies at the diaries

 I read all that.



Six


To make it look so simple. Finding the bee in a cup, stone on sand, flowers flushed. Rhythms established with chants; shards decorated into vases where you looked for a winged foot. Using the same initials, repetitions of black, pitying the frock on the doornail and the clutter of letters that never came back, not even after you called, throwing out your plums, the uniform was attacked. It vanished with the lover and musical tree. Well there are the songs under the gorse.

 Still with the fresh heat
 of the child's body standing there
 in the sun without need of arrows
 of marble, the smell from
 a child's warm body.



Seven


This town I've bored into
while kidnapping the rooms
and being crude about it,
yet admiring the orange linoleum
the black chair.

I was proud of the snow
the way it stuck at the statues,

Later the daffodil
found in the bronze buttonhole.

Seasons honouring the dead
and I among them honouring,

Avoiding their eyes
their thumbs,

A pretense at Roger de Coverley.



Eight


Biography a dubious route

 curate's disease
 the offhand way they plunge
 into the locker room

 subsidies for living,
 raven's wings shadowing the wall.

Deadly moon-struck

 weed-stuck
 gardens

the too calm sea.



Nine


A single seeming blinded object
 a sentence a voice
 the throat
then the rushing. Sound rushing dramatic
away from its disability
there's a not selective.

Passage without a pen
through the hurricane
 whorl shell Shade

Fictions dressed like water.