Les poèmes de janvier

Les poèmes de janvier viennent tout doucement. Commencent-ils dans les rues de minuit, dans les champs de trois heures du matin ou sont-ils toujours avec nous, sous la peau de l’imagination, respirant et soufflant comme les ours endormis? Osiris voudrait les lire, ces créations de janvier, ces créations qui glissent de l’ordinaire vers l’utopie de nos rêves les plus profonds.

From Sam Smith’s The Journal

Osiris 82

Languages in use this issue of Osiris, #82, (60 pages perfect bound $20.00, PO Box 297, Deerfield, Massachusetts 01342, USA. osirispoetry@gmail.com) are English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish. Not sure what the opposite of synaesthesia music-colour is, but in this instance Hanne Bramness claims that snow light is noisy. Andrea Moorhead herself seems to pick up on this in her prose poem pieces, Mutterings from the Source. Indeed many of the poems here, perceptions skewed, even strips of Robert Moorhead’s b&w photos being offset, appear to attempt an understanding of what is yet beyond understanding. And all is presented in the usual quality production.

Osiris 90

I had thought that, in these peculiar times, all that I would be talking of here would be these ‘peculiar times.’ That however was to underestimate the dedication of editors and publishers. For instance the latest crossborder, international issue of Osiris #90 (www.osirispoetry.com) 60 pages perfect bound, $24.00/€22.00). This issue opens with a prose poem of wonderful whimsy by Paul B. Roth. The next time I found myself brought to a halt was by the English translation from the German of Matthias Politski’s poems, conventionally spaced. Whereas Andrea Moorhead’s prose poem Vigil had a delightful, preposterous even, touch of magic realism. Similarly Astrid Cabral’s, translated from the Portuguese. The issue enlivened as usual by Robert Moorhead’s enthralling visual fantasies.

Ramblings on Poetry

Greek, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Polish, French, Romanian, English…

Swiveling points of view….a poem from under the tablecloth or next to the window, a poem from the dried blood of major catastrophes, a poem from dreamland or the labyrinth of daydreams, a poem chiseled from prose, from speech, from exclamations of wonderment, a poem-photo, a photo absorbed into words, a gaze, a glance, a profound silence.

Blue poems, rose poems, turquoise poems, translucent poems.

Printing the tongue on paper, the stuttering of air, the great deep murmuring of the throat… moving towards sharing the flickering of attention, the focus of attentiveness, drooping sorrow, ecstasy, contentment….

Eternal spring or looking behind the window….

for Simon Perchik

For Si

No one noticed the red petals, slipped off the table, onto the wooden floor, the vase still attractive, bold flowers with strong stems. It was sometime in the evening, before the light fell. Rustling, shaking in the woodpile outside. Investigating. No one, nothing. A jet passing, a distant storm. No vapor trail, no thunder. Walking around the cabin. Summer evening, warm, still. It’s been days and the petals have lost none of their color. Brilliant red. The vase disappeared, flowers tossed on the compost. Unconscious cleaning up after. But the petals persisted. No one noticed they had slipped onto the wooden floor. Passing by, scattering, moving aside. Perhaps it was late in the evening, when the light was dim and the wind had died down. Something in the night sky more compelling. But the slightest movement, somewhere, sometime, and the petals slipped to the wooden floor, leaving the vase and the bright, strong stems.

June 2022

Andrea Moorhead