I am deeply moved and humbled: I am deeply moved and humbled by your thrilling insights into this very personal expression, and it's incredibly encouraging to know that it helped you "live your life". That makes it all worth while.
I'm also gratified by your reference to Stevens. That made my day coming from a gifted word sculptor and scholar such as yourself. Endless gratitude, luminous Poet!
For the record, I have: I appreciate your recognition that I have written under the screen name, Starward, and I thank you for the mention in your comment. I don't expect everyone to like my "Blue Muse," as you call him, but really, he wears stockings only rarely (and, a couple of years ago, an excellent and published graphic artist depicted him thus clad).
I am so very grateful for: I am so very grateful for this beautiful comment and analysis of my poem. Coming from you, this is the highest form of validation. Thank you so much.
This poem is like a fugue: This poem is like a fugue that develops out of a single key phrase which our Poet, like the great Wallace Stevens, only discloses in the poem's mid-region---the distillation of life to a single note. All the other phrases, approaching that mid-region or moving away from it are, essentially, variations on that key phrase. And in this poem, she particularizes what is, I believe, a universal experience that many cannot or will not articulate for themselves. During the worst year of my life, 1981, a poem like this would have helped deflect some of the emotional agony that I---then a twenty-three year old nerd with an unmarketable degree, a first job that I had failed in already, and a mistaken but dreadful burden of hopelessness---was going through. Stevens said that a chief vocation for Poetry was to help people live their lives. In that aspect, as well as the sense of artiistry, this poem proves that Patricia is a true Poet.
On so many levels, this: On so many levels, this plaintive remembrance cracks open the heart and stirs the deepest emotions. First, it paints a portrait of both body and soul of the deceased so that we know him well enough to mourn, inconsolably, with the Poet. With poetic sleight of hand, you swept us into the memory of Didymus.
Much more than a blossoming, alluring partner showcased in various milestones of his life, he was an endearingly capricious, passionate, blithe and peaceful spirit, untainted by the brutality of the era, aloof to hate and drawn only to the most beautiful things in this world.
Fate appears particularly cruel when the Poet has no choice but to accept an Imperial appointment, knowing that it would put his beloved at risk if he refused, and this very separation resulted in tragedy.
The description in this one scene that tells such an amazingly compressed story spanning decades (Compression is one of your literary superpowers.) grinds the heart into dust, and such pain would provoke many others to revenge, but Didymus’ memory and his wishes were too precious for that. The speaker’s clemency is a tribute to their love.
And finally the crushing reveal at the end . . . Breathtakingly sad.
One for the ages, my friend!
That internal memory library: That internal memory library is a wonderful thing. Too bad as I get older, I increasingly return memories to the wrong shelves and can't find them later. Nice poem.
You write like who Staward: You write like who Staward writes about, his blue muse, a boy with stockings on. I don't mind, I find it better this way, fresher than ever etc.
This poem is excellent, and I: This poem is excellent, and I do mean excellent. The language is beautifully deployed, with no verbs weakened by the insidious "do/does/did" attachment.
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