Marginalia by Gary Glauber

Marginalia

The museum’s long cast iron windows

let in streams of refracted light;

these golden arrows point the way

to glass display cases that reveal 

the cursive precision of

one romantic poet from centuries past

who composed sonnets full in his head

long before ever touching quill to paper:

lines of perfect iambic pentameter,

well wrought and committed

with meticulous care to an ideal page 

in a pretend world without flaws.

The next book is its direct opposite,

chaotic meanderings of the wild jocular Irishman

whose obsession with language led to

scribbles, doodles, lines crossed out and more.

This sorry mess of ink-stained genius,

a hectic collage of ideas struggling

to find order and expression,

captures the ongoing discontent

of one dedicated beyond reason

to achieving precision of meaning,

striving for years toward a particular vision,

a flawless Fibonacci sequence of sentence.

Standing on metaphorical shoulders

of these literary giants,

I take in the long view,

knowing my college-ruled notebook

is full of pastiche and borrowed phrases,

trite and hackneyed emotions

that my adolescent angst feels

as full of import, moving and real. 

Perhaps some muse’s magic

might yet transform them

from cave painting

to studied Dutch master. 

It was there in that cavernous hall

that I flew above the polite crowd

of paying spectators, riding the particles

of  the dusk’s dying light unnoticed.

That cold afternoon I also committed

to a life in art, a silent self’s promise

to keep at the simple and complex process

of transforming thought and feeling

into some memorable combination

of graceful heartfelt intelligence,

some phantasmagoric cavalcade

greater than the sum of its parts.

(first published in Verse-Virtual Magazine)

BIO:

Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist.  His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations.

His two collections,Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) andWorth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire(Finishing Line Press), 

are available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from the publishers.