Atlas - by larry jordan
larry jordan May 11, 2010 at 2:55AM Using a lens flattened by his heel,
Mercator imagined the world
after Giotto’s eye-trick for round and deep,
back to front. Grolier, Hammond and Oxford
drew, by extending his lines, their guess at Troy,
their tabulations of tea, rubies and gin.
I pass my hand over sketchy borders,
treaties and pacts, incursions of painted faces.
A red line hashed by blue dotted labels,
crosses over pools of ink to the rims of country,
domain, even realms under reign, highlighting tallies
of skeletons with arrows of GDP.
I’m getting crumbs in the margin. That’s a 2
in millions of Vietnamese who died
from the convolutions of rescue.
Underlined dollars graph their score since 1946,
a carousel of color spinning off the title page.
Little notes of previous wars conspire
for jurisdiction, wag little truces, splay
bright arrows of gold, tin, B52s.
Little parachutes sewn into sails
luff from the masts of liberated isles.
Such art, such flamboyance, He is giddy
over a wedge lifted notably, an appropriate
slice, larger than others,
balanced, pertly, on his shoulder.
larry jordan
Along the pages, I chase down a line
easterly for tea, marjoram and ginger root
spreading pinpoints by the width of my thumb.
Hellespont, Troy, Persia before the war,
from Perth to the Pribilofs, I veer at the lines
gathering way, tacking blue arcs that intersect
similes of fences, flags, and treaties.
Following my finger’s meandering dash,
I cross-reference truce with ores and mills.
In north and southerly legends of color
my finger lingers in an arrow’s path
of gold and tin, rubies and gin.
Stretching from pole to pole, one line
or another overlaps Shackleton, Drake, De Soto
stirring blue to wind-churned foam, cresting into ice.
Distance blurs in the whirl of oscillating days.
Trekking along roads with Rommel, I can feel
the concussion of helmets stacked in August
from Cherbourg to Caen. Their ears are plugged,
they duck the shadows of metal wings.
I’m getting crumbs in the silhouettes
of dreadnoughts, parachutes, airplanes.
Nineteen forty five smears its ink across the border,
the realms fading into gray-scaled hues
blur country, domain, even those under reign.
Skeletons, tallied with the GDP, chime
from air stirred by the pages fanned by my thumb.
Reader Comments (10)
Very fine Larry. A couple of thoughts: would you consider removing the "I" and how about ditching the line breaks? Lends itself nicely to a prose form, for me.
Much enjoyed.
B.
~
also, do you need a comma at end of line 2?
Thanks B. Yes. This is struggling on a couple of fronts. I like the idea of scrapping line breaks. I've been playing around with illustrative stuff without a narrator. Can't seem to find a metrical bearing.
larry
DOn't think you need the first comma of the second stanza either. I love this:
'I’m getting crumbs in the margin'
and that imagined disaster is fantastic! maybe write 2 as two and get rid of the 'a'.
Stanza three loses it a bit for me, but overall this is very good. Also, 'sketchy' rubs against me in stanza one. Excellent work.
Enjoyed a lot. Isn't luff a great word?
James and Ros, Thanks for the notes.
I worked this into prose and back, in and out of Point-of-Views that ranged from none to a mad man. I’ve become obsessed with the process of illustrating from something that informs but keeps its distance to avoid being “about”. I am amazed how information and facts can overpower an image with its baggage. The sentence; “Two million Vietnamese dies in the act of being saved.” is so full of echoes that it drives a truck into the middle of the poem, strips down to its undies, and says, “I dare you.”
Not sure this is better but it seems to pace in the cage without banging on the bars.
larry
Now that's a revision! Glorious Larry, a real feast of sound, image, ideas . . . The first six stanzas a fantastic ride. Things get a little bumpier after that, for me.
"Their ears are plugged, they duck the shadows of metal wings" --- this line is weak I think, so much looser than the rest: the passive voice and the verb to be really leap out at me, metal wings is too easy, the whole sentence too literal. In the following line, I don't like the "I'm getting" construction, though what follows that is as strong as the earlier stanzas. The last five lines sound like too many syllables being squeezed in the jar, makes the reading a little messy, convoluted.
Definitely worth a bit more spit and shine this Larry. Some sections are to die for:
I cross-reference truce with ores and mills.
my finger lingers in an arrow’s path
of gold and tin, rubies and gin.
Distance blurs in the whirl of oscillating day.
Excellent.
B.
~
Brian, Thanks so much for the careful read and notes. I think you are absolutely right about 'metal wings' and am a bit puzzled why I allowed that to remain since I had researched and settled on "Lancasters and Glosters."
I need some distance from this, still vacilating over the noise element, have become very suspicious of S8 altogether.
larry
This is a spectacular poem, larry. B's mention of the metal wings line is appropriate. The weakest point for me is here:
Nineteen forty five smears its ink across the border,
the realms fading into gray-scaled hues
blur country, domain, even those under reign.
There's an unpleasant confusion between realms, domains, reigns; 'even those under reign'; aren't all countries under reign?
I also very much liked the vietnam idea in the earlier version, that your movements are causing a human catastrophe. Just crumbs for thought,
james
link to Portfolio version