Poem by Quinn Latimer

Quinn Latimer is a poet and critic based in Basel, whose first book, Rumored Animals, won the 2010 American Poetry Journal Book Prize, and will be published in 2011.

Mineral Violence

The vast sadness of my family

is an ocean rehearsing its sorrow

against the intractable night.

By light we are careful, bruised and

beautiful as script, hair tangled

from evening’s beating. We stoop

to inspect the night’s debris

and do not recognize black

half-hearts of shell (that are ours),

wool of kelp. The jetty’s battered

knuckles count the endless waves

rolling in. Watching birds drawn

as graphite on sky, we forget

our night deaths. I do not understand

this, nor our strange thick hair, only

that I am of it. Wheat of my mother,

father’s beard of bees: I am their

provided. O mineral violence

release their salt traffic, their

hovering at sea. I will exist.

Give them what they want.

This poem first appeared in Prairie Schooner. It's reprinted here with permission of the poet, Quinn Latimer.

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

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