626
PARTISAN REVIEW
almost by accident, as
if
Wright simply sets the words in motion and they,
playing a game according to their own rules, write the poem. Certainly
Wright is aware of this strange power of words; all three of his books contain
poems which, strictly speaking, refer only
to
words and their maneuverings.
Here is one from
The Grave in the Right Hand:
Black Sonnet
O.
Psittacosis
1.
Cuckoopint
2.
Reliquary
3. Pysidium
4. Entelechy
5.
Wyvern
6. White bryony
7. Zymotic
8.
Contrapposto
9. Typolysis
10. Syzygy
11.
Anti-matter
12. X
13. Carthago delenda est
Whereas' 'Black Sonnet" is raunchy and humorous, a sort of burlesque
in which the words parade themselves like
Las
Vegas showgirls, "Tattoos 12,"
another poem about words, from
Bloodlines,
displays a different kind of
word eroticism which operates between the words themselves .
It
is an eroti–
cism which some might deem perverse in that the words seem to be attracted
to
each other through a dynamic which appears to defy not only syntax but
semantic "sense":
Oval, oval oval oval push pull push pull .
Words unroll from our fingers.
A splash of leaves through the windowpanes,
A smell of tar from the streets:
Apple, arrival, the railroad, shoe.
The words, like bees in a sweet ink, cluster and drone
indifferent, indelible,
A hum and a hum:
Back stairsteps to God, ropes to the glass eye:
Vineyard, informer, the chair, the throne.
Mojo and numberless, breaths
From the wet mountains and green mouths, rustlings,
Sure sleights of hand,
The news that arrives from nowhere:
Angel, omega, silence, silence. . .
"Tattoos
12"
