Craig Goodworth, Ecotone Study #1 (installation view), 2014
TROPICS
Close air, metallic, bright clattering insects, a waste lot
of common-as-cabbage dinner plate leaves, pink blotched,
languid & syncopated musics, more pastel and geometric
architecture, huge birds.
So many afternoons at the shores of an Indian lake loaded
with vowels mimicking sounds of enormous intestines,
his ear to her southern hemisphere, he goes counterclockwise..
Then rains and the sequined ocean, little frayed phone wires,
wax-covered vinyl, blues sour and orange melt together.
And of course their rooms were moving, the very furniture
accommodating to the idea of eventual flea markets,
the future of everything, rattan chairs flaring their heads,
colors fading in the light. This is what liquid means,
the sound of pouring something turquoise with lemon
in two glasses, unbraiding all afternoon the Amazon
and Rio Negro, as he whispers no wind sting not withstanding.
She has a reef fish vest passing her abdomen like April
moving north, magnolias bloomed already. Even if a mango
spilled it won’t show in such sunup. The whole room designed
around a typewriter. Sinkholes and sugar. Something prehistoric
booming from the lake. Sweat beading on the keys. Birds docking
at fuschia blooms. Pure style.
_______________________
Allan Peterson
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Have you read all three? Good; now, go back, read again, and try to catch what wasn’t there before: …because – I can assure you reader – back there things have mutated drastically since you’ve passed. You won’t find things are as you left them and, actually, you too look a bit different in yourself. This is what makes poetry, poetry.
Review by Dave Mehler
Massimo is onto something here. I, too, noticed the longer I spent with these the more they revealed themselves. Also, interesting to me as an editor in charge of selection was how the three interrelated with one another. One of the many concerns of an editor is to curate and pay particular attention to how the parts contribute to the whole.