All That Will Be New

Paul Mariani

• Verlag: Slant Books
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781639821136
• Thema: Literature
• Thema: American Poetry

In the poem that opens this, his ninth collection, one of our most celebrated men of letters contemplates the "primordial tensions" felt in the crashing waves of a Northeaster, the glory and terror of the storm as "the real comes crashing finally down on you." Contemplating as we all must the unrelenting passing of time and the harsh realities of history, Paul Mariani embodies the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's dictum that "the artist is the one who does not look away."

In the face of pandemics, wars, and the open wound of racism, the poet continues his search for those artists, activists, writers, and saints who can guide us through the wilderness and help us preserve the hope that all things can be made new.

Whether he is contemplating painters from Caravaggio to Van Gogh in deft ekphrastic poems, evoking the courageous witness of Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X, or visiting with the poets, living and dead, who have been his masters, Paul Mariani's lyrical voice rings true. In the end, after the arduous journey that has taken him so far, the poet joins a simple supper, where the real shines forth in the breaking of bread

II

THOSE BELOVED GHOSTS OF COMPIANO

Wallace Stevens, late in life, evoking the ghost

of Coleridge, another poet philosopher, then

in his twenties, starting out on a packet bound

for Germany, invited by some Danes to share a drink.

He was dressed in black, with large shoes and worsted

stockings, so that they mistook him for some Methodist

on a mission, though the fact was he was on his way

to Göttingen to learn what language has to teach us.

“Doctor Teology?” they joked, half drunk and having

one hell of a time up on the deck. No, he said, no,

he wasn’t that. Then what? “Un philosophe, perhaps?”

No, he said. That was the last thing he thought himself

as being, though that in fact was what he was.

Well, they laughed, weren’t we all philosophers?

And with that he joined them for a song until all rose

“as one and danced on the deck a set of dances.”

O happy day, when the philosopher and the poet

could sing and dance together, a cup of wine held high

in your hand, as angel-headed hipster Danes danced on

and the river flowed on and on beneath your feet

and evening descended gently with each passing moment. . . .

Each night now, as this plague keeps descending on us,

refusing to let go, my dreams turn strange and stranger,

as if I were some blind Orion searching for the rising sun.

Like you, I’m on a journey, though where I’m going

changes with each moment. Sometimes I’m in a car

driving with my wife beside me, who’s there until she isn’t.

Or I’m on a plane, every last seat empty now,

my destination unknown even to the pilot.

Or I’m on a boat, watching peasants dance

their madcap turns like the ones you see in Breughel’s

Kermess, as some unheard music goes reeling on.

Mostly, though, I’m just walking, one step followed

by another. Sometimes there’s a stranger walking

there beside me, but who never says a word.

And then—like that—there’s no one there but me,

and I’m thinking to myself that if I just keep

moving on, I’ll get to where I’m going.

The trouble is I don’t seem to know where i...