Burt Kimmelman's work in Musaics blends the agelessly classic with the immediate contemporary. In this poetic consideration of paintings and sculptures, somehow, still life absorbs the living essence of people and places around him.
With this review I'm changing my usual routine of quoting parts of several poems. Instead, I chose one poem that exemplifies Kimmelman's work. But regardless of title or topic, whether he writes of Paris, people, Notre Dame, Nantucket, or the Pacific Northwest, Kimmelman gives readers sensual moments, graceful pirouettes into a distant past, poetic brush strokes that shatter and soothe, and those tender parts of life we cherish.
In its entirety, here is "Franz Marc's The Fate of the Animals 1913 / Boston 1991" written for his brother, Seth:
Among the dangerous shards
the breathing animal turns,
nervous and bright, and looks
into the dead wind. The act
is simple -- yet the world's
structures abandoned, to find
a place in the wreckage
incalculably complex. You
lie on your couch in your
"living room," your useless
spindle legs rest on my
visitor's lap. What will
become of us all, living
and dead. You say it's not death's
mystery but the details
of disaster, the new
illnesses each day, which
overwhelm -- and the sane
tubes, their clear liquids, their
unforgiving order; they
are sleepless, without any
musculature -- they are
here while you, incredibly,
disappear before our eyes.
Strange enough, there's no longer
confusion. We speak softly,
brother to brother, now
of all the things we'll miss.
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