ROSARY POETICS

Squeezed in some work today to work on the forthcoming THE ROSARY OF THORNS: SELECTED PROSE POEMS 1998-2008. I keep thinking about whether I want to use "The Rosary of Thorns" in the title.

I'm not Catholic but I have never forgotten reading about a rosary of Imelda Marcos made out of diamonds. My memory may be wrong -- maybe it was a rosary of pearls instead -- but what sticks in said faulty memory is that diamond rosary -- I can't think of anything more that captures the hypocrisy of religions abdicating what had been entrusted to them.

And the other reason I'm captivated by referencing rosary is this from Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

"The rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next. The power of the rosary is beyond description."

I adore this, which for me captures an ideal poetic experience as one engages a poem -- that is, just substitute "poem" for "rosary" in the above.

I didn't know much about Archbishop Fulton Sheen (tho one can google). So far, I haven't uncovered anything that might make me reluctant to have the association. But I don't know how far I want to go with researching him. I'm not averse to text being authored by others. I first typed, in a significant error, text being authored by text ... when, really, there's always someone behind any decontextualization. Such, of course, brings Moi back full circle to the form of the prose poem -- its unmitigated bastardliness, its thorniness, its holy humanity. For it is perfection that would be inhumane.