Notes to the Beloved

Notes to The Beloved is full of the physical world, illuminated by a dynamic narrative sensibility, a vision of down-to-earth love, an active yearning to understand the world, and plenty of kick-ass images, metaphors, and similes: You make a matchstick of your finger, /dunk the tip in Bombshell Red./Then your lips are two flickers, /in the shadows of your ears, smoldering/ flowers. You draw a smoky line/ between lid and lash and dash out./ After reading this book not only did I understand the physical world in a more intimate and immediate way but I felt more a part of it. And what's more I wanted desperately to be the beloved, the other that an artist reaches for. Isn't this what we want from poetry? At least, isn't it one of the great desired experiences? To be turned around, made newer, have been blown up, by a collection of poems? To be like Johann Sebastian/on the banks of the Rhine, letting notes fill the rivers/of his hands, then turning back/to compose the world, /map the road/aright with song, so/we could keep time/like this, getting high?