Sunday, July 27, 2014

Geoffrey Nutter

We definitely have to feature the great work by Geoffrey Nutter in his piece "The Constant Critic" in Pinwheel, vol. 3, Summer 2013. I rarely see someone with the type of elegant languor of Tennyson. He's got it in spades. He's also got a hint of Edna St. Vincent Millay in him, but he's very fresh and his own at the same time.

Here's an excerpt of some of my favorite lines, but really the whole thing lives up to this standard of almost Emily Dickinson-esque movement--her greatest strength. I think he emulates the best in American voices without reverting to the folly of antique style-overload or too cute a tone:

[...]

Here is a lone eye
in the cubit stone
for venerating Makepeace
Thackeray, and garlands
of white violets. What
do they mean when they say
that they were carried
through centuries of meditation
as through the frozen, months-old
snow, as if through and against
an exile? In summer it was
green pillars of fresh grass
between the silos, the sky’s
tropes concerning multiplicity,
the hills adorned with gentians
of finality. 
[...]

1 comment:

  1. absolutely love this excerpt, one of my all time favorites. the imagery alone is enough to entrance a reader. i hope more excerpts like this get posted in the future, i love this<3

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