A poem a day in April from Rutgers English PhD students and friends.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

from _Fragmentary Ekphrases Based On Paintings Made By Monkeys_
























[Green and yellow acrylic; by Gipsy, a chimpanzee]

“If the spectator tries to follow the pathways, his gaze goes astray, lost in the brush-strokes; Ariadne’s thread gets tangled and frayed in these painted marks.”
—Thierry Lenain, Monkey Painting




Like a flame framed within flame,
        or as Eli Cash
might     say:     Medusa’s
     tresses
    before a   friscalating
mirror
              To gaze on this
not stonily
   but
to
meander,
       astonished, within
the
                      nomadic maze
of metaphor,
     let’s call it:
        “a
yellow hyacinth
              unspooling
itself,”
              let’s christen it:
“the shadow-
    play
  of     a hypnotized
 hydra”

4 comments:

  1. Haha, love the Eli Cash line. "Well everyone knows Custer died at Little Big Horn. What this book presupposes is -- maybe he didn't."

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  2. Or how about "WIIIIILIDCAT...." !!!

    I, too, crawled into this box to say it's so nice to see Eli Cash in a poem, and now I too want to make sure to use "friscalating" in a sentence, & especially during a reading!

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  3. Does Eli Cash ever say "friscalating," or are you just great at thinking of things Eli Cash might say?

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  4. Challenge: use friscalating in seminar this week, straight face.

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