/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13180617]

Let's all wish this man a happy 84th birthday.

[Anonymous No.13180626]

>>13180617
Fuck niggers

[Anonymous No.13180629]

hb
care to post some of his writing to try and make me care about him?

[Anonymous No.13180634]

>>13180626
That is an Irishman.

[Anonymous No.13180657]

>>13180629

The Cradle Logic of Autumn
By Jay Wright

En mi país el Otoño nace de una flor seca,
de algunos pajaros; . . .
o del vaho penetrante de ciertos rios de la llanura.
—Molinari, “Oda a una larga tristeza”

Each instant comes with a price, the blue-edged bill
on the draft of a bird almost incarnadine,
the shanked ochre of an inn that sits as still
as the beavertail cactus it guards (the fine
rose of that flower gone as bronze as sand),
the river's chalky white insistence as it
moves past the gray afternoon toward sunset.
Autumn feels the chill of a late summer lit
only by goldenrod and a misplaced strand
of blackberries; deplores all such sleight of hand;
turns sullen, selfish, envious, full of regret.

Someone more adept would mute its voice. The spill
of its truncated experience would shine
less bravely and, out of the dust and dunghill
of this existence (call it hope, in decline),
as here the blue light of autumn falls, command
what is left of exhilaration and fit
this season's unfolding to the alphabet
of turn and counterturn, all that implicit
arc of a heart searching for a place to stand.
Yet even that diminished voice can withstand
the currying of its spirit. Here lies—not yet.

If, and only if, the leafless rose he sees,
or thinks he sees, flowered a moment ago,
this endangered heart flows with the river that flees
the plain, and listens with eye raised to the slow
revelation of cloud, hoping to approve
himself, or to admonish the rose for slight
transgressions of the past, this the ecstatic
ethos, a logic that seems set to reprove
his facility with unsettling delight.
Autumn might be only desire, a Twelfth Night
gone awry, a gift almost too emphatic.

Logic in a faithful light somehow appeases
the rose, and stirs the hummingbird's vibrato.
By moving, I can stand where the light eases
me into the river's feathered arms, and, so,
with the heat of my devotion, again prove
devotion, if not this moment, pure, finite.
Autumn cradles me with idiomatic
certainty, leaves me nothing to disapprove.
I now acknowledge this red moon, to requite
the heart alone given power to recite
its faith, what a cradled life finds emblematic.

[Anonymous No.13180713]

>>13180657
i'm too brainfoggy for this
sounds nice tho

[Anonymous No.13180723]

>>13180713
yeah; his obscurity is in no small part due to what a difficult read he is

[Anonymous No.13180891]

>Wright has been praised by critic Harold Bloom as “an authentic poet of the Sublime…laboring to make us forsake easier pleasures for more difficult pleasures.
bloom seal of quality huh
maybe would have been enough to make it possible to make him in to a meme some years ago
now it's all about nonfic and anti-modernity posting it seems

[Anonymous No.13180908]

>>13180657
Higher IQ than the other resident blackman, TS.
Impressive.

[Anonymous No.13180948]

>>13180617
Interesting, heard the name but never followed it up, have something to read before bed now - happy birthday to him

[Anonymous No.13180967]

>>13180634
Irishmen don't look like that
they look like this

[Anonymous No.13181332]

Happy birthday, Mr. Wright. You work is a light in poetry's darkest time.

[Anonymous No.13181806]

>>13180948
Awesome. Enjoy!

[Anonymous No.13181960]

What a wholesome thread.
:)

[Anonymous No.13182250]

Pauline Trio
By Jay Wright

1

One could sing October rain,
and one had a gift for plain
chant and prayer, a domain
unsettled by love or its
intimate other. What fits

with this theology no
one dares to say. These twins so
perfectly in tune must know
"the modesty of nature,"
the perfect art and texture

that sustains the other name.
Paris could not be the frame
for loyal Romans, their shame
worn upon their bodies light
as air, and nothing is quite

as endurable as death.
Those who have taken this path
move with an abiding breath.
Such a common dance this dense
intention of love's expense.

Keep this for that special hour
when the Roman drops his sour
gift for abandoned splendour;
et c'est la nuit, the footfall
that troubles that other Paul.

2

I have learned the felicity of fire,
how in its wake
something picks at buried seed.
Think this a most festive deed,
nature's mistake,
borrowed flare of a village dance, satire
of the sun's course, light you read
through waste, repair. Death had freed
that first opaque
habitation (what a widening gyre),
an aspen ache,
a lustrous scar that might lead
to a hidden grove, or breed
astonishment in its loss; all entire,
a shaping breath proposes its own pyre.

3

Solitude guides me
through this minor
occasion;
moon is my mentor,
one on a spree.
This notion,
night's philanthropy,
courts my favor.
Devotion,
love's predecessor,
sings its tidy
discretion.
Such gentility
reins all vigor,
all caution.

[Anonymous No.13182411]

>>13180723
>what a difficult read he is
if you have learning disabilties. the guy's a completely mediocre npc

[Anonymous No.13182439]

>>13182411
>npc

[Anonymous No.13182453]

>>13182411
It's okay if you don't understand him (and miss the frequent obscure allusions), but you don't have to be bitter about it.

[Anonymous No.13182831]

I hope he had a nice day.

[Anonymous No.13182859]

not feeling this lad

[Anonymous No.13182900]

a nice, tender piece this time:

The Healing Improvisation of Hair
By Jay Wright

If you undo your do you would
be strange. Hair has been on my mind.
I used to lean in the doorway
and watch my stony woman wind
the copper through the black, and play
with my understanding, show me she cóuld
take a cup of river water,
and watch it shimmy, watch it change,
turn around and become ash bone.
Wind in the cottonwoods wakes me
to a day so thin its breastbone
shows, so paid out it shakes me free
of its blue dust. I will arrange
that river water, bottom juice.
I conjure my head in the stream
and ride with the silk feel of it
as my woman bathes me, and shaves
away the scorn, sponges the grit
of solitude from my skin, laves
the salt water of self-esteem
over my feathering body.
How like joy to come upon me
in remembering a head of hair
and the way water would caress
it, and stress beauty in the flair
and cut of the only witness
to my dance under sorrow's tree.
This swift darkness is spring's first hour.

I carried my life, like a stone,
in a ragged pocket, but I
had a true weaving song, a sly
way with rhythm, a healing tone.

[Anonymous No.13182998]

>>13180657
Damn. This is gonna stick in my brain.

[Anonymous No.13184314]

>>13180617
Happy birthday!