'Like an endless film'

 

“I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph.” – Robert Bringhurst 

 

Born in Los Angeles on Oct. 16, 1946 Bringhurst makes his home in Canada where he has authored 23 books of poetry and 20 books of prose, including the definitive The Elements of Typographic Style.   His most recent works are 2023’s This Wisp of a Thing Called Civilization and a collection of poetry The Ridge.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Bringhurst’s,

 

                                    These Poems, She Said

 

    These poems, these poems,
    these poems, she said, are poems
    with no love in them. These are the poems of a man
    who would leave his wife and child because
    they made noise in his study. These are the poems
    of a man who would murder his mother to claim
    the inheritance. These are the poems of a man
    like Plato, she said, meaning something I did not
    comprehend but which nevertheless
    offended me. These are the poems of a man
    who would rather sleep with himself than with women,
    she said. These are the poems of a man
    with eyes like a drawknife, with hands like a pickpocket's
    hands, woven of water and logic
    and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These
    poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant
    as elm leaves, which if they love love only
    the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
    of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said,
    and not a beginning. Love means love
    of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing.
    These poems, she said....
    You are, he said,
    beautiful.
    That is not love, she said rightly.