The Art of Gravity

Poems

Jay Rogoff

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780807138922
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

George Balanchine, one of the twentieth century's foremost choreographers, strove to make music visible through dance. In The Art of Gravity, Jay Rogoff extends this alchemy into poetry, discovering in dancing -- from visionary ballets to Lindy-hopping at a drunken party -- the secret rhythms of our imaginations and the patterns of our lives.
The poems unfold in a rich variety of forms, both traditional and experimental. Some focus on how Edgar Degas's paintings expose the artifice and artistic self-consciousness of ballet while, paradoxically, illuminating how it creates rapture. Others investigate dance's translation of physical gesture into allegorical mystery, especially in Balanchine's matchless works. Rogoff pays tribute to superb dancers who grant audiences seductive glimpses of the sublime and to all of us who find in dance a redemptive image of ourselves.
The poet reveals dance as an "art of gravity" in the illusory weightlessness of a "dance that ends in mid-air, " in the clumsiness of a Latin dance class's members "trip- / ping over each other in the high school / gym, " and in the exploration of ultimate Gravity -- a sonnet sequence titled "Danses Macabres." Ultimately, Rogoff confronts with unflinching precision the dark consummation of all our dancing.

1 The Code of Terpsichore

Dancing is an action, showing outwardly the spiritual movements which must agree with those measures and perfect concords of harmony which, through our hearing and with earthly joy, descend into one intellect, there to produce sweet movements which, being thus imprisoned, as it were, in defiance of nature, endeavor to escape and reveal themselves through movement.

—Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, On the Practice or Art of Dancing (1463)

To know how to dance is to know how to control yourself.

—Motto of the Gordon Dancing Academy in Swing Time

Museum

Quick sidelong glances

clodhoppers in fourth position

and you know

this young woman

you’re trying to conceal you’re studying studying

with you this Degas

dancer dances

so it’s difficult not to imagine

as you watch those flinging

painted limbs the flinging

in precise abandon of these legs growing

out of her clunky

shoes like saplings springing

from the pavement and inclining

their two trunks

like lovers toward each other irrevocably

seeking a crux

and disappearing

into the short

shade of her black skirt.

Art

is exciting. As you peek

from the paint to the paint

on her eyelids an identical

mauve under Degas’s light

and this, she shoots a look

too quick to be meaningful

and you’ve stopped breathing right

so you haul

your attention back to the work

of art from the work

of art. Yes.

Yes the forms. This

should be a decent

enough interval but when you look she’s gone

so you turn

to see her walking, turned out

out

into the next gallery.

Hurrying to the center of the room you yearn

to raise

your hand ah despair but that

seems silly

so from afar you watch her thick-soled slenderness assume

second position in front of—

does it matter? The dance

must go on, her exit, your entrance

this absurd chasing from room to room

of art that must insist on inspiring

you and give

you nothing, nothing! you! savoring

this fruitless

pursuit.

Latin Class

Herschel will be pissed

I know. We missed

last week and have practiced

exactly once even

after I cobbled some Van

Dyke Parks and Steely Dan

into a fake merengue tape.

In a panic I tell you it’s hopeless

but your Presbyterian genes insist

so we try to look invisible

among the couples tripping

over each other in the high school

gym and shrug when Herschel’s cool

skeptical

eye stares us down.

He seizes Christy his partner by the wrist

and they whip

around each other in an impossible

new step

hips driving like some insane

Caribbean machine

and the others’ jaws drop

yeah right so I can tell we’re all on an equal

Anglo footing. We walk it through

fast way too

fast he cues the tape

and suddenly it’s carnival

for spastics screaming out for correction

Fellas! Fellas! oh

the wrist

this way the hip

that and now I’m not stepping

on your feet and the planetary whirl

and shift of weight and tension

in our arms feel

fine

as I catch

you in the orbital

swing and watch

your eyes light up Caribbean

while Herschel

bails out of our lurching

path his smile

I imagine

barely suppressed

at us the Dominican champion

estrellas orientales as we dip

dangerously only to rise up in the East.

Umbrella Pines

Not chaste and balletic,

Italy,

but wildly wickedly

operatic:

the umbrella pines

won’t dance

no matter

how their foliage might suggest

the gauze flutter

of dancers’ skirts, their slender trunks

resemble legs at rest.

But between the trunks light like Bellini’s

moves

in airy trapezoids, however the breeze

contrives

as if the supple trees

stepped

once then stopped

to loom

in splendor

unreachable. Beneath

we breathe

a hot voiceless

balsamic

music

pregnant

with pine and ranker

perfume

whose descent

from those skirts along those limbs carries

rich air

dancing so as to haunt

us in the sleepy heat and render

us faint

with arias of aroma.

Primavera

for Siobhan, Richard, and Deirdre Dunham

So what if love is carnality

crossdressing as caritas?

In spring sex goes

dancing spinning at the center

of a universe

phoney as Ptolemy

in which we refuse

to disbelieve. The metamorphosis

of a goddess

I mean a dancer

into a mother

displaces

her capacity for air

with roundness

formerly a curse.

Borne

a thousand brilliant nights flown

across the stage in the finale of The Four

Temperaments she would pose

in open

fourt...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Invocation
• 1 The Code of Terpsichore
• 2 Danses Macabres
• Acknowledgments