A poet who has dropped off my radar is the wonderful Janet Gray. I have her book A Hundred Flowers in my smallest, most intimate bookshelf atop my escritoire. It's one I like to return to. She takes O'Keefe's paintings of flowers and turns them into these weird, sci-fi type poems or beautiful Steinian orgasms of language. I used to publish her when I had poetry mags and always enjoyed corresponding with her. Her critical acumen was astonishing, and I had the (editorial, no less) bumptiousness of your typical poet'ing twentysomething, and yet she never felt the need to ego-check me. The same generosity of spirit (and again amazing acumen) I encountered when I rather abrasively (and callowly) reviewed a book by Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Two very gifted writers. One is now rather roundly celebrated and the other not....I haven't Googled her....she's probably taken off into another art form and in Art News or something right now. Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Anyway, here's a poem from that collection...an interesting goddess image....
XXXI.
At the border she turned.
Beyond were blue
mountains & storm clouds collecting.
Wings
unhinged, white cape hooked
under a swatch of mane. We were
watching her body swell
in the cold until
she was everything we saw.
Stranger
who regularly brought us gifts.
Acolyte
despiser of the ordinary
drudgery
& indulgence of our lives. Delicate
exile--dumb but dear
to us, dangerous
for nothing but the pure
regard we had for
things feathered & colorless.
She nodded to us from the rise
& we thought
we saw a split (below white hair) between her two
enormous yellow eyes.
Oh, one more...
XXIV.
She is wearing
an elephant helmet
at the wedding.
While she's sitting there all
lips and ears
waste is leaking;
the fibers in her
extravagant dress
are yellowing;
here where the yellow
lightbulbs
are meant for warmth,
smoke, waste, light, age,
everything
is gilding
her face obscure
over a tight collar
shouting.
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