Responses to American Poetry

The aim of this online space is to host the research work of university students or young scholars as this emerges from larger projects focusing on the American poetry scene. The objective of this initiative is to bring this kind of research activity to the attention of the general public in an attempt to further promote the exchange of ideas with regard to the process of reading, understanding and appreciating poetry writing.

  

Tatiani Rapatzikou 
(Associate Professor, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece; Advisor and initiative co-ordinator trapatz@enl.auth.gr)

ZOI VRENTZOU

 

 

 

Double Vision

 

I want to tell you I crave beauty

I want to tell you we crave beauty

we need it

the pretty things

We are desperate for the aesthetic of it

Not the glitter and flicker and spark

But the thistle and thyme, the time-torn tender rendering of truth, the rolling lyricism of the larynx that slips

And is whole.

I want to tell you we see everything in doubles

I want to tell you about the eye, how it duplicates, inverting images inside of itself

To witness.

I want to do that too sometimes.

To duplicate and keep some safeguarded words, some droplets of thoughts, but alas

I want to tell you

I want you to tell

I want you I won’t tell you

So the eye keeps looking, keeps searching, keeps keeping inside of itself pictures

Keepsakes multiplying the longer you stare at winding stairs and windows open to let some wind in

To circulate

Countless rolling pictures on the retina.

YET I REMEMBER A GREATER BEAUTY

HE SEEMS TO ME MORE BEAUTIFUL

NOW WHEN MY SOUL RECALLS HIM FROM THE YEARS

Memory re-calls re-presents re-members re-casts re-

Stretches time

As time turns and turns into a stained-looking

-glass window

Look at you.

Grip a handheld mirror

Grip a hard mirror

Grip hard and never let go

That would be

That would be suicide

That would be not being

I hold you in my hands, hard grip hard man

I never let go

That would be a would broken in half, it would be a now, a broken infinity it would be a shame

Shame same name shame came and then left and then broke the mirror in half and then stopped looking and jumped off the window.

It’s a shame, a now in the middle of all this everything.

WHEN I LOOKED AROUND I SAW AND HEARD OF NONE LIKE ME. WAS I THEN, A MONSTER?

We need to see ourselves to recognize ourselves

We need to see ourselves othered

We need to see others see our selves

We need the action locked in perpetual duplication

An eye in an eye in an eye, rolling and ever rolling, inverted pictures perpetuated, retinas reflecting selves in infinity.

Let me see. For the love of

GOD, WHEN I MEET YOU I’M GONNA BE PRETTY. IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO I’LL BE A BEAUTIFUL ANGEL

For the love of love

Repetition lasts I’ve found.

LOOK THEY LIED TO US NO ONE HERE WAS EVER UGLY LOOK

Explicitly gorgeous as clothes burst open like a summer

Σάρκας απόλαυσις ανάμεσα στα μισοανοιγμένα ενδύματα· γρήγορο σάρκας γύμνωμα — που το ίνδαλμά του είκοσι έξι χρόνους διάβηκε· και τώρα ήλθε να μείνει μες στην ποίησιν αυτή.

Pleasure of the flesh amidst clothes half-torn; swift baring of the flesh –its image leapt over years six and twenty; and into this poetry it came to stay

This too, a repetition. Words inverted for an other I to see, warped to see to another tongue’s caprice

In the half-light of some other country, some other shore, around one o’clock or maybe one thirty.

Who can be sure in this half light in this half life

One image is ever incomplete

Duplicate me into completion.

See me into existence.

I crave beauty

And beauty craves repetition

And repetition craves itself.

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