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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
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Subject: Re: PPB: Silk Diamond / George Sulzbach
Date: Sat, 24 May 2025 01:12:31 +0000
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General Zod wrote:
>
> george...@yahoo.ca wrote:
>>> H C wrote:
>>>> On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 7:51:42 AM UTC-4, George J. Dance
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > On Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 6:07:48 PM UTC-4,
>>>> genera...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> > > On Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 5:18:01 PM UTC-4, George J. Dance
>>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> > > > Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
>>>> > > > Silk Diamond, by George Sulzbach
>>>> > > >
>>>> > > > Silk diamond
>>>> > > > September golden bullet
>>>> > > > The leather horse
>>>> > > > Rider
>>>> > > > With bad news.
>>>> > > > [...]
>>>> > > >
>>>> > > >
>>>> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2021/09/silk-diamond-george-sulzbach.html
>>>> > > I thank you G.D.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Looks great..!
>>>> > Thanks. I'm glad it's on.
>>>> >
>>>> > As someone else put it, not as diplomatically, some people have
>>>> challenged my judgement in including it. So I'd like to take a few
>>>> minutes, and talk about why I included it.
>>>> >
>>>> > First of all, I'll admit, SD would not have been included if it hadn[t
>>>> mentioned "September." But while referencing the month was necessary, it
>>>> was hardly sufficient. I read over a dozen poems about "September"
>>>> Saturday morning, and rejected all of them as being unsuitable for the
>>>> context (where it appeared in the monthly archive).
>>>> >
>>>> > It's very much in the Beat (or post-Beat) genre, of disjointed,
>>>> swirling, "fragmented" images that so many people were writing (and so
>>>> many were parodying) in the '70s and '80s, when I first got interested
>>>> in poetry. As such, it fits with the selection that comes before it
>>>> (today's), which is by a recognized Beat (but very light-hearted).
>>>> >
>>>> > Post-Beat poetry is very much written in what Northrop Frye calls the
>>>> second stage of a lyric poet's evolution, the 'private language' phase;
>>>> so I've got to admit that I have no idea what story and theme you
>>>> intend; I had to read the poem myself and make up my own. The first
>>>> phrase that struck me and I had to interpret was "September golden
>>>> bullet": I imagined a single yellow leaf blowing by in the wind, the
>>>> first sign of the end of summer and the coming of winter. That gave me a
>>>> story: because winter's coming on, the speaker has to leave his lady
>>>> (whom he calls "Silk Diamond" - your "Picture of the Lady" reinforces
>>>> that idea), because he has to "cross the pass" before winter.
>>>> >
>>>> > He has to leave her and cross the pass because of the "bad news";
>>>> there is a "desperado / With a taste for murder" loose in the land. That
>>>> gave me two interpretations. On the first, he has to leave her to go
>>>> fight against the
>>>> > desperado; which reminded me of Richard Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going
>>>> to the Wars." On the second interpretation, "crossing the path" was an
>>>> allegory, for dying: he's leaving her by dying, and the desperado is
>>>> simply Death itself.
>>>> >
>>>> > That last interpretation made it a great lead into Wilcox's poem about
>>>> the "September of her Life," her good days being over and her death in
>>>> front of her. It fit, in a way that no other poem did fit.
>>>> >
>>>> > As I say, I could have completely misunderstood your poem; that's a
>>>> hazard of "private language" poetry. But most of your poetry is "private
>>>> language". Which brings me to my last reason for including it. It is
>>>> representative of your work; and while you already have two poems on the
>>>> blog, neither are representative: "Expecting Inspiration" was in a whole
>>>> different vein, which is what attracted me to it initially. And
>>>> "Dandelions" was (1) specifically written for a poetry challenge, ie not
>>>> a topic you chose, and (2) changed by an editor into a format that owes
>>>> more to Stevens than to Sulzbach ("Four ways of looking at dandelions").
>>>> Adding SD gives a fairer picture of your work.
>>>
>>>> Someone challenged my judgement last night,
>>>> and it might have caused a huge family fight
>>>> had I not simply said, "Alright!
>>>> You win! I'm in no mood to write!"
>>>>
>>>> I lost the argument. I'm told
>>>> that happens more as we grow old,
>>>> so without words, our truths unfold.
>>>> Silence is worth its weight in gold.
>>> Very nice, even if off-topic. Definitely a keeper for your blog and your
>>> own book (should you decide to do one).
>>> I'd encourage you to post it in it's own thread, where I'd like to say
>>> more.

Good find.