CARYL
PAGEL
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Slown Site (Both
Sides of Glass)
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What you’ll find, fellow reader, on
attending to Caryl Pagel’s
poems, is not comfort. Nor beauty if beauty is ease.
Nor confession if confession absolves guilt, and in so absolving guilt, makes
of the poem a particular use. These are not poems to be used. Nor are they
poems that refuse use—that is, in cleverness shift shape in your hand, so that
what you thought was a hammer ends up being a moth, a moth ends up being a rag,
a rag made of taffeta . . . and so on through the whimsy endemic of our
particular poetic age. Caryl writes, as you’ll soon
see, in old form: Eclogue and Apostrophe. Nor does Caryl
seek archaic voicing as a means to escape the deep crisis of contemporary
poetics. She writes in the form and the voice she does to unveil difficulty, to
approach it, to be responsible to it. Here is a poet not self-vaunting, and
more challenging, in her compulsion toward self-accusation—the poet accusing
herself of the persona of one who writes poems!—not self-coddling, not
holier-than-thou, striking against her humility as hard as she strikes against
her pride.
What I’m trying to say is that reading Caryl’s poems is a distinct privilege—for hers is a poetry
that attends to difficulty in difficult ways. This is not an intellectual
exercise, nor an emotional purging. Caryl’s poems
don’t trust themselves, nor does the speaker trust herself. She senses poems do
work, do some kind of work, but never assumes that her poems are doing such
work, or that if they do, never assumes the work once done stays done. One
feels in Caryl’s work that the only answer is to read
the next poem—to trust that the effort of making meaning, of sowing meaning, of
raising and razing meaning, never accomplished in any single poem, builds into
an accumulating whole that does profound good . . .
The good of
attending to a poem that attends to itself attending to the world. A bit of a riddle,
yes—but what strives toward clear truth that doesn’t
begin in such riddling complexities? One should—I do—feel grateful for the
clarity carved from such honest confusion. And I learn from the refusal to take
refuge in that clarity.
--Dan
Beachy-Quick
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Must have choked—
shocked
outside the craggy shell
exotic sounds
faint whir of dawning
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Wonder each song
its direction
its stake in
self— sent out from the throat
a cord to loop
around the earth and back—
imprisoning its owner
now that we’ve broken free
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The position of
each note
fluttering or tremulous
along a chord
makes sad tremendous sounds
A strangle
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What can be wasted
What cannot be contained
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Inside the shell
no noise coherent
Meanings may not
change
in many versions
outside the shell
wild wind rustles and wakens sigh
Silence the gift
The gift or the
gift’s limit
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Kept we look
farther
learn songs
to bury
so once through
blue walls we can burst
again in trilling
reach
Call it disclosure
Call it surrender
Push open to call and lose something
THE
FARM
Every day we pass by
the cows stand
sturdy— propped
against the sky. I see them.
I see them whispering
little. They are cued
by unheard signs.
We move out
to the farm
never
having lived
because the land, you say
is an introduction.
And, an excuse.
My cards read we
are acting
in a time of general
rest. If I believed in anything
it would not be
written. Look
how corn becomes my filler.
The field
pours forth falsely
as a mouth I want to dig
out of the earth. As seeds
for a sustainable word.
A few lines
are incomparable with
crows that slowly lasso
clouds— narrowing the distance—
to an unsuspecting meal.
How is one so hungry
patient? These things only
the work
will teach us. We must load
our guns silently.
We won’t have
much
to share unless.
I’m framed
in a flowered sundress—
yellow wings strapped
to my arms.
Kneeling. Calm-
faced. Pressing one ear
to rippled rings
on a fresh split-open log.
From that angle
I cannot read
your expression
so I stare up
at camera’s
lens. You gaze
down checkered-red
behind me—
an axe swung back
and aiming
wild. At my neck.
My fragile fruitless head.
For the good
of growing more we
must be rid of
what can’t thrive. You said cut
the lesser lines
to let the strong ones
carry on. We came out here
together
to figure working
out. The picture
snapped too soon: watch
my body
flailing— still.
THE
FOX
Two shades of shadow meet
at night
on forest's edge. One pitch
black, ending
abruptly in gray where light
from the farmhouse spreads. Here,
I wait- before the light-
staring straight across
the grounds. I hear
a scratching: you,
in your bright home
working hard
to make a mark. The farm
a greater lesson
in laws unnatural-
unnatural but worth
a struggle outside the city.
Time spent in the wilderness
to pacify a wildness.
I make a motion, crackle
coop's floor
and then the forest.
You come to the window, look
across the field
directly into my eyes. You see
a double reflection, know not
how to save. No matter.
I've killed already
all the chickens-
ate one, left the rest
a brutal mess. Aught I have let
your stock live on?
Now you won't have much
to share- unless you learn
a quick defense. In my jaws
I grind the bones of your income,
run back into the woods. Out here,
when hungry night illuminates:
there is no private property.
SLOWN
SITE (BOTH SIDES OF GLASS)
Of a strung V some lose out
lost- left jagged
breaking crumbs then falling
silent
The new birds balance on a grate behind the window
They clack into the season
What kind of birds?
There is no way of finding out
things as you think of them
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Quiet folds up sleeping wings
while nature repeats
through distant heavy tremors-
heart-placed heart
empty room
glance to build a runway
You stay routing glass
Wait perched up in the frame
just to hear the egg fall
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It has been a year of barely breaking
Outside
phantoms search for sight
Edges the only left over
What answer
first rejected the shape of a sound
Open the window
Flight out by call
Every sound still returns
in echo
till it turns
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Who can help the nesting
the going-getting by
when there are so many frames we've never seen through
Where are you in place
Balanced on the wire- watching flutters vein the distance
reflection shock inside
The image poses
Shows there are all these reasons to be less sorry
strangers
Live on less secretive sides
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You only bury the bodies
The bodies bury the beaks
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From this transparent slate
all noise comes doubling back
No sense- just static
and reduced refractions-
talking right up to
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both sides of glass
Who would you be
if not forever standing by?
A louder open window
Clack-clack in their abandon
It is time to shell the bone
It is time to shell the bone
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Someday you too will fade away
with all this hearing
and end as what is unspoken in this unspoken
All right to tip
the shoddy boat
over—
walk blank
planks or dive
straight off
this wrecked
rocking failed-sail
lately labeled
poem. Stuck
at surface
without
both oars
I splash around
half-hearted
as the floats are
pinned
to shore.
Unbearable
loss— lines
caught in the muck—
my mind
a field
just drowned.
If ship was sunk
I'd take it— at least
there'd be some death.
Some hero.
A bottle
aiming home. Pity
light
at bottom give
me little-shine
to sink for.
Guess with me
at horizon’s tell: no
clear view between
buildings
of the red sky at
night—
in my sketch for you
of the city: place I
need
relief from. Lately,
this well-tread ground
sprouts little; streets
glazed with ice too thin
for support. In
hindsight,
the hurried birds
we watched return
seems an omen. A gesture
of what I’m just learning.
Come spring
these piles better melt—
fill a block
with their ink
causing structures to rise
up
float away. Prepared,
you’ve started to pack.
I am already on the top deck
of a large boat,
teasing out
the surge. Within me
monstrous waves sway.
Strung of silver nerves
they push far
from any shore— soak
my purpose deep
with warning. I write
in my poems I will
never arrive—
this far out
you cannot read. My
words
open only in the
motion: a bottle
mouthing caution to the
sea.