3 Sections (Vijay Seshardi)
3 Sections by Vijay Seshardi
Despite the title, this book has no defined sections. It does have one poem, Nursing Home, divided into three sections which mirrors the book in a way:
A short, stanza-ed poem.
A longer prose section.
A medium length sequence of lines with no stanza breaks.
These are the three forms employed in the book (including a long prose entry about Pacific Ocean fishing out of the Pacific Northwest where the narrator of that section grew up).
I copied down some lines and language that particularly caught my eyes and/or ears:
the retrospective, maskless rage of inception.
How few, how paltry few, of all the beautiful apparitions pulverized to earth
were resurrected as a tulip or a rose.
the ah-weary-of-time sunflower
Don’t even get me started on our co-workers,
whose sinuosities are instinct with a prevaricating design;
or on the subway in the sand;
or on the reason why I forget what I should remember
and remember what I should forget;
or on the flamingos that dart like sparrows
and soar and dive and congregate
in this our city, birdless until now since time began.
A shimmering, as in a mirage. A darkening, as in an aftermath.
A white light, then a red light, then a black light,
and then the meaning I mean, the meaning, and its meaning,
which I am just about to grasp.
Governments are falling as we speak.
Brain scans done on her show
her perisylvian pathways and declivities
choked by cities,
microscopic mercurial cities
made from her memories
the penciled-in figure on the painted-over mural of time
Another National Book Award winner that impressed (I’ve been working my way through the winners for Poetry in the last decade-ish).