Rickey Laurentiis' "Study in Black"

In the current issue of Poetry, I read Rickey Laurentiis poems, among which "Study in Black" is particularly striking.

The epigraph," Tu Fu, 'Thoughts While Traveling at Night,'" prepares us for the nature imagery. But Laurentiis' use of unusual line lengths, line breaks, appositives, double dashes, alternating long and short lines and indentation take us into the meditative space of not just Tu Fu but this particular speaker who sees his words as limiting. Not just that. But the speaker calls himself a "spook bird" a violent image of poet and bird roped and alone, rotting.

Ironically, the whole poem has a lightness to it like the "wind in the grass" we are introduced to in the opening line--the lightness is maintianed in phrases like "there here," and the amazing number of internal rhymes--"down"-"ground," "wonder"-"plainer," "injuries"-"me," "know"-"solo"-"roped;" off-rhymes as in "boat"-"mast"-"night," "moon"-"skin," and assonance as in "fame"-"age," "injuries."

 

Although the poet tries not to be dark in the beginning, the poem inevitably arrives there. The sky is a solemn witness. Is this what we feel like when we cannot produce art?

Janet Krauss' "The Lamppost," selected by the Wickford Art Association for their poetry/art event

The Lamppost

Nothing can go wrong tonight---

the lamppost keeps watch,

a yeoman of the guard

making sure we won't stumble,

lighting up the fresh snow

along the sidewalk, the stage

where the snowcapped posts

of the fence stand ready

to dance as the tree lifts

its white gloved branches

toward the light in silent song.
--Janet Krauss 

Janet Krauss' poem packs in much emotion in a few lines. Beginning with the opening line with its firm tone, "Nothing can go wrong tonight," we are made ready to receive the beauty of the world, not pain or sorrow. The lamppost has a role to play here--it is witness to the dance of nature mirroring the joy of the speaker whose inner life is shaped by the beauty around her. The poem invites us to be selective about what brings us happiness--snow capped fence posts ready to dance, the tree lifting its white gloved branches, fresh snow on the sidewalk, and the silent song behind these images. 

Note the quiet tread of the syllables--so many single syllable words like "watch," guard," "snow," "posts" at every line break--as if the words were walking the snow-covered page of the poem, leaving their prints! And on this wintery stage of the poem, the words are spoken in a single sentence. Will a fresh snowfall cover these words?