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From section 3, Lover, of Saltian
Desire
By Alice Shapiro
A friend is a second self
–Aristotle
The cries of Lois
the dearth of shame
the help of brothers
the force of disdain
the books of poets
the poems of rain
–post meridiem
I cannot tell whether
diamonds appeared in his eyes
or mine
as the shine of adoration
became the icon
one values in history
a Byzantine sparkle
Medieval armor against all odds.
We stand on stages
act our play
sometimes alone in our heads
(before the mating)
sometimes in platitudes and lies
(after years together).
I recognize the dew
and the frost.
Can you come to me innocent
each day, each moment
where a diamond’s glint
appears as highlights
between your words
between our silences
as we lie down
in fields of smiles?
Critique
By Harrison Solow
“Betwixt” is the figure that appears most prominently in what seems at times a lament, at times an abbreviated Song of Songs, that ultimate chronicle of Desire, in Alice Shapiro’s poem of the same name. The use of the word, betwixt, rather than “between” is deliberate, both as a symbol and a reference.
Symbolically, the word stands for the space between the words and silences, between the frost and the dew, between the stage and the performer, as perceived by the speaker. Betwixt is what lies between the I and Thou in these stanzas, both as barrier and corridor, almost another voice in the cry for connection.
As a reference, this wedged word hearkens generally back to Shakespeare’s time, when its use was common, and specifically to his Sonnet 47, of which an echo (of the first line) is heard in Ms. Shapiro’s poem above:
“Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other:
When that mine eye is famish’d for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother …”
Desire is dichotomous poem – of uncertainty and distance in relational tension with (or to) its own desire and attachment. It affords a richness of speculation and a palette of questions. If I were to make an emendation, it would be to remove the italics from the second line and find an alternative for “our values” which has become a stock phrase in political campaigns and rather jars with the dreamy, speculative nature inherent in the poet’s elegiac questions of art and reality, uncertainty and stance, aloneness and coupling.
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Harrison Solow has received many awards for her literary fiction, nonfiction, cross-genre writing, poetry and professional writing, most notably winning the prestigious Pushcart Prize for Literature in 2008. She is one of the two best-selling University of California Press authors of all time (at time of publication) and a notable alumna of Mills College where she earned her MFA and of the University of Wales where she earned her PhD in English Letters. She lectures at universities, colleges, arts and cultural institutions in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. A former faculty member at UC Berkeley, she accepted a lectureship in the English Department of the University of Wales in 2004 and was appointed Writer in Residence in 2008. She returned to America for 2009-2011 to write her third and fourth books and her PhD Dissertation.
Solow is a strong proponent of the traditional Liberal Arts, the Fine Arts and the Utilitarian Arts as separate and equally respectable entities, an advocate for Wales and a patron of literary endeavors.
She lives in the United States and Wales with her husband, Herbert F. Solow, the former Head of MGM, Paramount and Desilu Studios in Hollywood. She has two sons. Her latest book is Felicity & Barbara Pym, A genre-defying book about reading, writing, the love of literature and incidentally, Barbara Pym.
For more information, please see:
http://lamp.academia.edu/HarrisonSolow or http://redroom.com/author/harrison-solow
