The Face

David St. John

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780062105929
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Littérature générale

A haunting and inventive book length sequence of poems from the distinguished author of Study for the World's Body.

The Face is both fiercely lyrical and intimately conversational. Coming to terms with the failure of a great love, the speaker descends into his own dark night of the soul. Here are poems that explore the drama of the shattered self in a variety of voices, calling on memory to speak and imagination to make beauty from the shards. Slowly, the speaker reassembles his life and again finds faith in himself and the world. These poems reveal a swirling cinematic poetry of visionary scope; meditative and confessional in some moments, ironic and playful in others.

Deeply passionate and raw in its candour, The Face may be for this generation of poets what Lowell's Life Studies and Ashbery's Self–Portrait in a Convex Mirror were.

III.

XXXI.

Well, you won’t believe this, but they’ve started to shoot the film—

Astonishing. Infanta called & said, It’s a go, dear! They still don’t have

A finished script, & Infanta says nobody can decide whether this film

(Of my life) should be edited to go forward or, Infanta’s choice, in reverse!

Though, she adds, nobody seems to think it’ll matter much. So much

For my “cinematography of the soul” idea. I’d begged them to get Storaro

To be the cinematographer, but of course it’s some video kid

With a pierced dick & a Brooks Brothers trench coat. I can’t believe he’s

The one who gets to light all my precious secrets. I guess I still think of myself

As just some piece of long-lost Roman circumstance; you know, maybe a few feet

Lifted off the cutting room floor after Antonioni has left the room for dinner

At Vecchia Roma. I guess I was looking forward to a more solitary séance

With myself, but this will have to do. Of course, Infanta says. Don’t be an asshole.

It’s odd though. These intrusions of the past sliding through the liquid mirror

Of this movie, those past selves lit by the reflections & reckless

Prayers of one night of twisted celluloid. What an awful cinematographer

I was in my youth (can you believe I actually said, “in my youth”?), putting

The figures in my scenes huddled too close together—like puppies—

Until all of the characters began to answer to each other’s names.

In the movie of my life, the scenes seem so hopelessly repetitious;

Even the actors playing my troubled friends keep calling in sick, or sending over

Body doubles, & even the stand-ins have stand-ins. I suppose that Cybèle,

The young girl playing me, has been the shrewdest, insisting on wearing my own

Ancient leather jacket from the St. Vincent de Paul in Fresno, the one Larry

Said would make even Audrey Hepburn look tough; but even she,

The young actress with her taped-down breasts & miles of attitude, has begun

To complain that most of the dialogue in the awful, half-baked script

(Most of it lifted, I confess, directly from many of the most elegant & moving

Scenes in the pageant of my brief life)—well, each line, she claims, finally

Ends up sounding exactly like every other. I have to say,

This actress Cybèle, she’s got this Sappho-mojo thing going, working

Overtime in fact. One night, in an Italian restaurant on the pier, Infanta

There too, I tell her how much I admire her

As me, even more than I admire myself as me, I say, & what’s more she looks

Even tougher in my leather jacket than I do; I mean, so much the man I’ve always

Tried to be. When I start to apologize for all of the bad lines of my life, all of

The awful poetry she’s meant to speak each day, she just holds a single

Finger against my lips, the way you’d shush a child, until I’m silent—then she

Looks right at Infanta & says, I’ll fuck you the way I’d fuck myself. I have to think

For a moment, wondering if she’s saying that line as me—

Speaking the line of some badly written scene, just to let me hear how lame it is—

Or as herself coolly laying that line on Infanta. Cybèle sees my confusion, & this

Time when she says it, I’m going to fuck you as I’d fuck myself, I’m pretty sure she

Means it, but Infanta just starts to laugh, & Cybèle turns to me & says, You know,

It’s bad enough having to be the voice who is the ghost of you, but even more

Painful, every day we shoot, is having to hear the echo of the sad warblings

Of your body, & those—its—poor, pathetic mockingbird lies, those false songs

& false notes…. That body, your body, left here long after the ghost of you

Had the good sense to get up & walk away. That’s what she said! Me? I couldn’t

Believe my good fortune! That’s exactly what I’d told my ex, Isabella, after

She’d slept with the director of VORTEX (a tedious avant garde film)….

Just think about it!—At last, to find an actor who could play the soul & heart of

The real, the vital & the gloriously broken me.

XXXII.

Then I was given the Path of Green Tea. It was a way of being present

That was presented to me, the way spring presents the white-&-green

Narcissus poking up through the black loam…the way

The crackled glaze of the ancient teapot presents the myriad

Reflections of its pourer, as the steam rises from the dragon of the leaves,

& the wise monk who has traveled for thirty-seven days looks up at his host

Then hands him the gift of bundled green tea, elemental & luxuriant….

The split carapace, the shattered shell of the will

Begins slowly to fall away, & the air of the mountain temple is again misty

With praise as the monk reveals the blessings of the drained cup, sip by sip

Unravelling the complex compass leaves of the future. The way we are given—

Those of us lucky enough to sense the faintest scent of ceremony & ease—

A path that unfolds slowly, like the origami of disease, like the self…

To take only one example…until the lines of the faint green paper seem

Crinkled & lined as a ghost’s palm, as the simple frond feather of a leaf of tea.

XXXIII.

I hardly know where to begin. The constant harvest of light warns us

Each evening, with the swallows, of the liquid cruelty of the world flowing

Into our every night. Even the oldest sorrows feel new again….

Still, I am unconvinced that the red dog with the fat silver collar is an evil

Capable of parting the gates of Atlantis, the veils of memory, or the black shadows.

No, I suppose, when all is finally done & said, I believe only in those writings

That evaporate beyond all writing, just as, at this very moment, I imagine you

Lifting these frail images beyond the film’s frames: those indelible elements

Of this invisible script carving themselves across your miraculous, soft eyelids.

I am addressing these very words to you. So please, do anything you please….

—Just grant me my simple release.

XXXIV.

Consider the ease of release. This really sweet guy Bill is driving Charlie & me

To the bar just outside of town where Padgett’s been working his ass off

Setting up the post-conference oyster roast we’ve been not-so-secretly

Waiting for the whole week, & when we start talking about Gainesville & music

All of a sudden it emerges that Sweet Bill used to play

In River Phoenix’s band, River being a Gainesville homeboy, & Bill’s telling us

What a terrific guy River was, so clearly missing his friend; & I think how

That very night River bought it on the sidewalk outside The Viper Room

On Sunset, I was just half a dozen miles away at

Almost exactly that moment in the early morning hours of Halloween

1993 as my daughter, Vivienne, was being born, & as I tell this to Bill & Charlie,

Charlie turns around from the front seat & says, So…who else died that night?—

Meaning, I think, any other not...