Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Again with the poem?

Earthquake, 4/4/10

This solid-seeming earth’s a mist, a rolling
sea of subatomic particles. It takes a day like this,
when tectonic plates sing out like struck bells,
to put us straight. What we know as solid
isn’t—a seething, shifting mass.
Made of the same stuff as that
old redwood, we rise like bracket
fungus, overnight and all the many
cities that we build are made of air.
Perhaps geologists, in their spotless
coats, probing and measuring, so sure
in what they know, will any minute feel
the jolt, and fall down on their knees, afraid.

3 comments:

marly youmans said...

Hey,I like the way you broke the line before "isn't" this time. I'd move the comma in line 8 to after "overnight."

Like.

Listen, why don't you try googling images for "yoga drawing" and see what you find? There may be somebody out there doing the kind of thing you do with the yoga poems only in yoga pictures... I'm sure there will be a zillion instructional cartoons and some sexy illustrations, but somewhere in there you might find a soul mate.

Robbi N. said...

Hi Marly. Thanks for the suggestions.
RE: Googling yoga art, that was the very first thing I did, back in December. I also joined a group on Facebook (two) that linked yoga and art, and also an Iyengar yoga Facebook group, but nothing has come of any of those things.
The yoga art online was cheap and flashy, for the most part. It was not at all what I had in mind.
I begged my friend Linda Southwell, a sculptor with whom I feel an affinity, to try it, but she doesn't have time.
My yoga teacher's brother is an artist, but he is busy with his own shows. He doesn't have time.
I have called local art departments at universities.
There is one person who could do it, but I decided I didn't like her work enough. It is quite good, but a bit unpracticed yet, in my view.
RE: the poetry collection (the full book), I have gotten an idea with this newest poem that there are many many poems in my oeuvre that relate to science in one way or another as well as natural history. |
I can shape the book around that.

Robbi N. said...

RE: yoga art, I also wrote that essay for the Iyengar yoga newsletter, and although lots of people seem to have read it, I haven't gotten any art work or suggestions for artists.
In fact, I have not heard from at least a few people I've sent the poems to at all. I guess they don't know what to make of them.