F. Daniel Rzicznek

I loved F. Daniel Rzicznek's poem "History of Awe" in Diagram issue 6.6 here. It's a great segmented, half-wide, long poem. The sections are great, each with their own great language. This poem straddles the two worlds of modernity and ancient, simple nature with grace acumen. It's about the modern world and yet is truly well done. Few poems achieve this.

I liked the opening a lot, so I'll excerpt it here--actually I want to highlight some middle lines and the ending, which is great. The middle parts are just so well done, I had to go back and put this up here:

The bedroom lies open to the wet vamp of night's continuous noise. 

The piano in the teeth is not awake, but a toothache, and I find 

myself there, the roof returned, my wife still asleep, undisturbed.

~

The decoration of the body. The decoration of the body against the 

iced treeline of the self, the winter birds at their brightest. The sun 

there bright as this one, and lowering like this one, lowering into 

the self. [...]

There is a moment when I refuse the wine, when the violet and 

blue buds in the yard seem angry with sun. [...]

At some point the stranger offers you the wine. At another, he 

swings a pistol in your face. The in-between is a falling of petals, a 

garden that grows in a day, a music like skates across weather-thick 

ice, like climbers on a slope.

~

The moon refuses to cease its cyclical gestures, eye that takes a 

month to close. My ribs ache in the shadow of roof, stair, peg, jamb. 

The moon anoints the grass into mercury if the clouds are right, if 

the mind wakes at such an hour.

~

Snow across the mask of night. The valley has no bottom, but I stand 

in it, the gurgle of a river ascending like saintly chatter somewhere 

behind my shoulder. I am deepened but immune, the night a non-

revelation, a non-symbol.

~

How the body speeds up to compensate for blood. How the silver 

resists tarnish until cast into weeds. How the trees are bare as 

organs, ready to sprint toward death, branches becoming other 

branches, leaves spilling from nowhere.