Favorite Things --- Back to Poetry

It's been a long time ... swamped by the day-to-day nitty-gritty of life and earning a living, I've forgotten about poetry until I came upon this poem in high-schoolmates's blog.

This poem is supposedly by John Engels .... who taught at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, and one of his books was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hayden Carruth would write of his poetry that “Back in the noble days of modernism, when we had such fearless exponents of poetic form and language as Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, and Ted Roethke, Engels was an acknowledged master. His poems remain as strong and compelling as ever. His expressly demonstrative relationship to nature is entirely cogent and stimulating. Engels will always be an American treasure. His poems are a joy for all readers and a model for the young.” Here’s a sample of that joyful poetry.

Eve Overlooking the Garden
The garden has ignited.
It’s feverish.
Even the white clematisflutters with sun,
and the red lilies and coral bellsburn back at it.
Windblown petalsof cardinals flasha cross the buttery primroses: a good year for gardens.
Everything shines.
I write this standing at my window.
I don’t go down into the garden.
From here I see everythingat once,
all the flowers trapped in color,
in their showy, slow ignition — petal, pistil, leaf and stamen separating off.
Perhapsthere is a wayout of such fiery gorgeousness.
It must be wearing.
Even at night when I’ve gone blind

I hear a splendid confusion of harmonics,
what only can be the sharp yellowing of gloriosas ,
the speckle-throated orangingof the Canada lilies.
From Recounting the Seasons: Poems, 1958-2005, University of Notre Dame Press