has published 4 Praise-Chants (& One Lament),
from a new manuscript called
Tidal Flats,
for New Year’s Day 2021!
You can access the poems here.
************************
A few words about how the praise-chants came about:
These poems are from a section of the Tidal Flats manuscript called Twenty Chthonic Praise-Chants & One Lament (after Neruda’s first book: Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair).
I wrote the bulk of these
praise-chants in the fall of 2019, when overwhelming fear and sorrow were
constantly moving through me from news about the current mass extinction taking
place across the planet.
At the same time, I realized that deep grief is a form of praise for those
things we have deeply loved (See MartÃn Prechtel’s The Smell of
Rain on Dust: Grief & Praise.
With this in mind, the “chants” developed out of my desire to record my own
personal ecstasy in the presence of so many things (seemingly) outside the
human realm.
That ecstasy includes the realm of death—the underworld, the depth of the earth itself, the chthonic, grief and praise—how they burst onto the senses together.
These are dark love poems to the natural world. You can find the ones recently published in Mudlark here.
***************************
Other praise-chants have previously been published by Cholla Needles, or will appear in upcoming issues of The Banyan Review and The Bitter Oleander.
Here’s one that previously appeared in Cholla Needles 48:
Honeybee Creator of the Sun Chthonic Praise-Chant
Bees in catmint hollows of lamb’s ears pour from the sun’s heart
First there was the hive and then wings pumping the sun into being
The leaf shattered sun-veins slick with sacrificial viscous hemolymph
So many thorax muscles beating wings 230 times per second
incomprehensible
Bees in the eyes nose face map the terrain in the brain
Ommatidia light detector that connects word to light connects fear to
calm connects sight to insight
Ocelli-motion vibration detector of desert paintbrush
Firedark interior to embrace the fire-dark figures lurking inside the mind
My bee necklace folded into Broca’s Area
Bee creator of the sun bee alumni of the goldmother at the center
of the hive
Fine-hair of the pollen-basket that cradles this world’s sex-dust
Tube-Proboscis taproot slips down plumb line to the center of the sun
Tarsal claws cling to hairy stems smooth stems to the narcotic language
of Jimson Weed to the Narcoleptic Black Cosmos to the haloed
extravagance of Mexican Gold Poppies
Bee claws root in the petal’s slide leaving no trace and still able to bear
the brutal torque of the earth’s turns
Dawn dawn and savory bee sound in waves rides the breeze
Antennae cleaners keeps bee-radio free of static
Radio to mars to planets that circle around the Orange Globe Mallow
petals drooped open
Synesthesia-radio smelling the song of mites dying of old age inside
a Datura trumpet hearing the mallow’s orange mouth speak
to the moon
Bees the fire sewn into the lining of Pascal’s jacket
Bees the map of the field map of the brain
Bees longing for the sun for their mother
Bees the practicality of compound desire
Bee-shit animal smell of the hive of the belly of a creature asleep on
the earth next to a stone shaped just like that animal
Twins in the sun
Happy New Year!
Four Chthonic Praise-Chants and One Lament
