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TRYFON TOLIDES


My Life*



I stopped to hear my life.
Strange I had not heard it before,
though I must have
in passing,
at least in some sort of oblivious underneath hearing way.
Strange now to even be talking about my life
as though it has a life of its own,
possibly separate from me.
And had I never stopped before?
What is stopping?
When I listen to Coltrane I forget
I am listening. I lose the music entirely.
I think I come to nothing.
Am I listening then?

Tryfon Tolides

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* From the editor’s desk

Byzantine, Chinese, and American masters find a welcome rationalization
in Tryphon Tolides’s "My Life." The poem has all of
Gregory of Nazianzus (Eis Hemauton) self-auscultation, Frost’s vesperal sigh
and Chuang-Tzu’s wonderment at the butterfly’s dreaming of Chuang-Tzu.
His core riff "in some sort of oblivious underneath hearing way,
" as the verses build up to the proper noun "Coltrane," is sheer,
uncontestable virtuosity. "I forget I am listening. I lose the music entirely.
I think I come to nothing" is the kind of maximal gain-in-self-loss
[the mystical "kenosis"?] every single poem in the collection makes possible
for the reader to reflect upon.