MOANING, WHEEZING
the overblown organ of winter wind
shivers the glittering crust on the field
and gratitude is spare in the house
as fresh air. Our throats croaking
in the wood stove’s heat, the steaming
kettle an affectation. So, we exist,
a couple very like the first, oldest of all
at birth. It’s that complex, so what
have we to do with our slaked selves,
that heated and throbbed, wet between the legs,
with the past that seems so close ahead of us?
We sniff like the dog for some shy green waft
to scent the sighs beneath the door, to tint
the window sills of desiccated spruce.
_____________
Paul Nelson
Review by Massimiliano Nastri
As a one-poem poet published here, one of the best.
Sonnet-like control of how sound and images dance as guests at a marriage reception: o-ver-blOn O-rgan ofwinterwind sh-ivers cru-st gr-atitude spear fresh air throats stove steaming. Hypnotic. The story is an accompaniment to the awareness of getting old, getting there together. I must confess I envy the simplicity of means – no epigraph, no showing off Greek literature – and the moral not restlessness but acceptance not resignation. The last line of Memoires d’Hadrien (I know, one has one’s own shrines) says something along the line: we have to enter death with open eyes. Stoicism but not dryness.
Review by Jared Pearce
I find the move interesting where the speaker is at first associated with nature, then moves away (or even above) nature, only to return to nature for confirmation.
Review by Dave Mehler
Most probably would never recognize this as a sonnet proper, but it does deal with one or more of the big three, God, Love, Death, and it’s a fourteen liner. It’s also highly dense and complex in its turn of imagery and rhetoric. On top of all that it might be one of Paul’s last poems–maybe the last? I don’t know–it was one of the last of his I ever saw. An old couple, as old as Robert and Elinor, in a house during a Maine winter, stuffy and hot with wood-fire, the wind playing an organ and readjusting the snow crust with its force, with the past that seems so close ahead of us? This is uncanny. I know there are Frost poems like this one–how far away is New Hampshire? Paul speaks of ingratitude, because the winter is hard, and he is past the age of 90. But the couple is like Adam and Eve, he says. Also it’s so visceral and physical, they are slaked, but wet between the legs. Full of description, visuals, smell and sound, I hardly need to paraphrase. I’m in awe. What a way to go, like Jim Harrison, dying at his writing desk, in the midst of writing a final poem, the last line the handwriting gets shaky: Man shits his pants and trashed God’s body