Notes From A Tribute To Allen Ginsberg By Sharon Olds She
places a shoebox on the table, undoing the string, & says she remembers the City Lights edition of Howl was small enough
to keep under her clothes. She spoke about the line, his use
of the long line, & how talking was not permitted by her family
at dinner. String
isn’t used much in this way anymore. It was the kind
of string kept for years and for which we one day find our heart’s bursting, the things inside
scattering out, almost forcing us
to return. His was the string she undid as she spoke of poetry introducing
itself to her. She
takes the lid off the shoebox, carefully lifting out a white
mask she had made of her face as a child. She lifts it out as
if she were someone removing from a big storefront window a
tiny white card that reads “Closed for mourning.” Tying the mask
behind her head, she says, “Whatever is written upon the
forehead of a mask, these are the words written in that per- son’s
heart.” She
sits a moment in silence, in memory of the person of
the mask on her face, and the words she had placed upon the
forehead of the mask, words she had written when she wore
that face. They were from “Supermarket in California,” a poem
he had written about the hunger of love that reaches beyond
the grave & the nectar of speech & unknowingly, a girl. What American did you have
when Charon quit poling his ferry and you stood watching the
boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe
were the words she had painted upon the forehead of
the mask of the girl she had been at
the table. It was the long line
of his poems, placed against her
skin, that made him, she said,
the first person she let be her. 8
July 1994 [Published in The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The
Ridge: Poems 1993-1997. © 1998 by Jim Cohn.] |
APPEARS IN The Dance Of Yellow Lightning Over The Ridge: Poems 1993-1997 |