new literature

I do hundreds of pages of reading a week generally (or at least, hundreds of pages are assigned) and am constantly discovering new authors two pour over and new books to reference. A poem by Andrew Hudgins from Bearing The Mystery about one of Botticelli's paintings caught my mind with the depth of emotion and history captured a few weeks ago. Because it must be shared, here is a segment of that and here are a few other bits and pieces from other poems as well.

Botticelli: The Lamentation over the Dead Christ

Dismiss the body bent so awkwardly

across his mother's lap: there's no god in it.

Dismiss the saint holding the nails, the thorns.

Remember only the Marys: Salome,

Cleophas, Magdalen -

and Mary, fainting virgin, her body

distended, bulging, because she suffers more

than anyone can grieve unless she loosen

her human shape and become impossible.

~~~~~~

How Beautiful the Beloved, Gregory Orr

The poem he's writing is a list

Of things he suddenly knows

Are precious.

He doesn't know

Where he's going - old man

At the start of a long, cold ride.

The list he recites is also long.

As long as he keeps making that list,

He's traveling towards the beloved.

~~~~~~~

This house, it's a thin place,

I think. The wind outside

might be the wind that summons

the faraway and brings, as near

as breath, the spirit of the dead

watching.

Who are you?

I ask the acres of emptiness

into which everything is gathered

and is -

turning the question

at last towards my own heart,

blind and stupefied - Who?

~~Margaret Gibson