(And as promised last week, here’s the third poem this month by brilliant Geraint Jonathan-Leila)
he was supernobody
a provincial jack
big on words
loaded with them
styled himself half-life
spun a tired line in self-deprecation
& all the while no self there
played phantom
(with a nod to phantoms everywhere)
on the offchance
phantoms don’t play themselves
in the popular imagination
being too absent abstracted
altogether too phantomlike
the world seemed
& those in it seemed unaware of it
seemed unaware of it that is
supernobodies can spot these things
the faces in a face
the suffering animal’s laughter
the engendering of toads in a petty dispute
being nobody helps
(makes anyone possible)
& with a wife & three kids 80 miles north
there was nothing for it but robes & wigs
& swords & the art of being somebody else
the word-load heavy but the money good
nobody par excellence
one shakescene of a country
disguised as himself
provincial jack
big on words
Saragun Springs 
Geraint
Such a lyrical piece. Like being a ghost in one’s own life. “Shakescene”–Richard Greene? I think that was the poet whose only remembered work was his jealous swipe at Will.
Leila
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Leila
What a ravishingly gorgeous photo of the deer this is, too. Two bucks with huge antlers surrounded by magical, multi-colored vegetation with no human signs around them.
They could almost be Shakespeare and Jesus side by side together in heaven.
Since many of David’s psalms begin with deer imagery, perhaps this connection is not really such a stretch.
Also, it takes courage to get that close to animals with antlers that big!
Dale
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Hi Dale
I was walking by a field in which Deer are common. It was odd seeing two bucks and no girls about. Maybe Alternative Lifestyle Deer, which is cool.
I was very surprised by how close they were and remained. The natural world survives no matter how hard we try to kill it. These two were in a field about a quater mile from yet another pointless mini mall.
That is an encouraging sign
Thank you, Leila
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Good job!
Read it twice.
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Geraint
This poem is a brilliant, utterly wonderful, genius piece of work. An entire book-length essay could be penned on this one piece, to say nothing of putting it together with the other two poems you’ve given to Saragun and the world recently.
This reader read this piece almost as if it were a crisis lyric of a poetic voice speaking about itself, until I got to the head-spinning ending of this piece, which makes the reader immediately, without pause, turn around, go back, and read the piece again a few more times.
And every time the piece is perused, it yields more, which shows that it’s not a poem dependent on a surprise ending, even though the “surprise” ending is wonderful and it does what a great poem is supposed to do, which is take the top of your head off, just like Emily Dickinson said.
So this is a poem many modern people will be able to relate to on a personal, felt level when considering their own poems (and lives, especially). And it relates the “average” person to The Bard in such a natural and calm, and confident and masterful way that the effect is, again, mind-blowing.
Every line, every word, and indeed even the placement of every word is perfect in this poem. “Easy to read” on one level, on another level this piece has complex metaphors and symbols in it that will haunt the attentive reader for a very long time, even unto the end.
For some reason, even though they have zero in common on the surface, this poem very much reminds me of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Roundly rejected by America for many years, the New Englander Frost finally went to the place the rock star Jerry Lee Lewis later called “the mother land” (the UK), where his writing was understood in a way that was beyond the ken of (almost) all Americans (until later). Frost’s work, very readable on the surface, haunts the reader’s mind and heart for a lifetime.
This poem has a Frost-like resonance, and that’s no hyperbole.
It could also, and should also, appear as the preface to an anthology which contains critical writings on Good Will. (Good critical writings, that is, not the so-called “theoretical” mumbo-jumbo and jargon-laden gibberish which is the reigning idiom of the American academy so far in the 21st century).
THANK YOU FOR THIS POEM! I can only imagine that there must be great literary satisfaction in having written this.
Dale
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Geraint
I also need to point out that in the last week or so, you’ve offered poems that give definitive, original treatments of the two greatest geniuses the Western World has to offer.
Herman Melville often pointed out similarities and drew parallels between Shakespeare and Jesus. Indeed, when he writes about either one of these, sometimes the reader can’t tell whether he’s referring to one or the other until much later.
Perhaps their biggest similarities somehow have to do with their understanding/s of humanity, which shall remain far out ahead of all of us for forever (or until the end).
To say the least, not just any writer can produce something of value on either of these figures, to say nothing of both of them.
Every new generation must wrestle with these two figures (or some of its artists must). Reading and writing have changed a lot in the world (and will continue to do so), but Shakespeare and Jesus are not going anywhere (perhaps Leonardo da Vinci makes a third with these, Michelangelo a fourth). They will remain EVEN AFTER homo sapiens have evolved into some new, related creature. To ignore these figures is to ignore the best of humanity.
Your ability to write about them shows a vitality of mind and spirit which makes me hang my head with gratitude!
Dale
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