I may never send this on, yet the subject persists:
If I were to copy here only the high-lighted parts of a poem,
would the result be an edited, slimmer version?
Would the last line count as the explanation point?
Could the poet have written that last line so edited?
Let’s try it and see:
“I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other.
If only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.”
………………….LISEL MUELLER,
excerpts from the poem, “Monet Refuses the Operation”
The poem is 46 lines long, and I have copied 11 lines.
Would I have known it was about the artist Monet? I don’t believe so.
Would I have missed this line:
” that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it ” ?
Yes, my dears, I would have missed so much. My monthly calendar
this year has been made up of prints of paintings by Claude Monet.
So, when I found the whole of this poem in the “PANHALA” email
from Joe Riley, on Sept. 5th, last month, I was enchanted.
Whole poem can be found in “Sixty Years of American Poetry”,
the Academy of American Poetry.
Always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
(Painting by Katie Kindilien)
