Sunday, October 12, 2014

Lawrence Schimel

We have to highlight Lawrence Schimel's great piece "But I, daughter of my daughters" at FishhousePoems, from 2001, which he translated from the Galician into Spanish and English. It's a great intense, long, compact work--like Thomas Pynchon's books, a type of long, stuffed block poetry. It's a great moody, atmospheric, rich work. It makes you think of the Baroque wildness of Neal Stephenson's books as well.

Here's an excerpt:

But I, daughter of my daughters, will dismantle by sheer dazzle this unfortunate conformity of a yolanda émigrée. 
[...]
It is me in the crypt and my name etched inside with chalk. Concentric rooms. That my intellect may not bribe my sense. The touch, the privilege, the need to hurl oneself. Nor will my head pander to my pride. Yolanda the soldier, the trader. Because neither am I she who waits. I am the driver of the flaming chariot. 
[...]
I will proclaim: “I am the sole scion of Adnaloy, she who will stretch her flaming fingers over the horizon, who will descend, discard her gown, clothe herself in sackcloth, and thereafter lie down, rendering her heart to the appetite of beasts.” 

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