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Issue 4: | July 2020 |
Poem: | 209 words |
If to serenade almost to man is to miss, by that, things as they are,
say that it is the serenade of a man that plays a blue guitar.
—Wallace Stevens
I am playing my blue guitar pale as sky can be, terror- filled bottomless ocean, it must be played, played out gently wicked full of deceit, put down picked up fingers flamenco urged: strings, heartbeats, flurrying feet I play my aimless blue guitar, strolling through spring gardens, anticipation’s heaven, but this blue guitar is seldom satisfied. Beyond peak or gravity, earthly attachments a widening expanse of pluck, strum, slap and pop. My blue guitar could save your life when poised for a leap, eternal sleep... Pace e Bene lose control when they hear my blue guitar. What frets are weaving a shroud in your mind when your window opens to the universe, every cloud shaped like a blue guitar? Ephemeral/eternal couple in daylight, oil and water breed a new blue chord. There are whole libraries written about what rescues us. Will you invent endless stories of creation, each one cancelling out the other? Are you the savior of civilization, composing measures of time? Oh, blue guitar, tricking thought into action, will this serenade end?
Publisher’s Note:
Epigraph is from the 33-canto poem by Wallace Stevens,
The Man With the Blue Guitar, from his book The Man With the
Blue Guitar & Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937).
After leaving a position as Assistant to the Dean of General Studies at a New Jersey state college, Rina Terry attended seminary and became an ordained United Methodist Minister. She has served as pastor of several New Jersey churches and spent many years as Supervisor of Religious Services at a state prison. She holds an MA in English: Creative Writing from Temple University and a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Rina has published poetry, short fiction, book reviews, and academic articles, and frequently writes columns on jazz and literature. She contributed three poems to Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013), and the “Spirit of Names” prompt in that book was influenced by her work.
To accompany the release of Cardboard Piano in 2014 by Texture Press, Rina wrote How Layered Experience Becomes Art, in which she discusses her poetics and some influences on the writing of her book, a work of fiction told through poetry.
For more info, including links to reviews, further writings, and a reading from Cardboard Piano, see author’s bio at Texture Press.
⚡ An Evening With Billie Holiday by Rina Terry, at Texture Press
⚡ Learning to Weld in Palette Poetry (23 July 2018)
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