DEMANDING BEAUTY DEMANDS

Beauty betrays; yet it's the most important thing to me for poetry. Because Beauty also sings! And I'm thinking of that again when I read one of the most moving blogs posts I've encountered HERE. Here's an excerpt from the never neutral, gentle man:

I have changed, and I am conscious of these changes. Suddenly I have reached a state of semi-paralysis. This is not a physical paralysis, but a spiritual, intellectual one. I realize I am stuck in a process of mourning. “The flesh is sad”, and I have not read all the books. I remember a time in which I had the drive to believe in what had to be done; I remember a time in which I had the ability to commit. As time passes I read more and experience the world more, and I think that a profound fascination with the possibility of beauty (”possibility” as in the ever-present virtuality of the never-ending becoming) is what keeps me waking up in the mornings. I have changed, though, because I am possessed by a most-serious disenchantment; it is not “depression”, but a mourning for a lack of engagement with what the bard phrased as “the dreary intercourse of daily life”.
--Ernesto Priego

And, for some reason, this also fortifies me this morning to try to squeeze one more review into the forthcoming issue of Galatea Resurrects; I'ma gonna tr7 to do that today. That review is of Michael Kelleher's HUMAN SCALE (BlazeVOX Books, 2007), one of the lovelier poetry collections I've engaged with. If you don't see my review in the next GR, please consider this post a recommendation nonetheless for this really brilliant and lucid book. And simply a BEAUTIFUL project.

You walk around in days of daze and, sometimes, Beauty stops you. Beauty demands.