So often when called upon to introduce, teach or even just paraphrase a poem to oneself in isolation, an emphatic illusion returns. It’s the one that says that we can, even should, be able to reduce a poem to a few summary sentences, if only to help us pay closer attention to the marvels of language and melody, of shaping and contour that a poet’s logic, world view, imagery or feeling has made. In Edwin Torres’ new, ambitious lyric, I find myself letting go of the need to summarize just where I begin or am brought to. Specific words and associations recur, and the sense of family and lineage, as well as the central imposing image of the house being built, repeat and reinforce one another. A ghost narrative is almost there, waiting to be told. But letting go, I feel soon readers are able to enter another way; a movement of drifting, a melancholic kind of knowing that is also a mind speaking to itself about the ultimate efficacy of language, imagination, perhaps poetry itself. To surrender to Torres’ open lyric is to remember poetry is foremost a journey of making meaning by other means, at the margins, familiar, familial, migratory, beautifully upended.
—Adam Fitzgerald, Poetry Editor
MY MOTHER’S BROTHER-IN-LAW NEVER LEFT THE SHACK HE WAS BORN IN THE WORLD OUTSIDE NO MATCH FOR THE ONE INSIDE
Saul — pronounced sa-ool
blue eyes of ice fire, canyon-bronzed crevices, folded
on a sheared face, coffee mountain beard, bright notes
interspeckled philosopher raconteur — couldabeen poet —
he states, confirming the non-title
before I get any big ideas —
don’t ever feel that loco is what makes you a poet — his lesson starts —
don’t ever feel crazy because you feel
listen — he says — let’s say there’s a house you pass every day
you see it as sure as I’m seeing that house right there,
I pass it every day but do I know it, can I imagine that house,
what it believes in, how it frames my day
there’s the beginning, and there’s the end, and then there’s this house,
my house, the one I live in,
this is a house I do know, a house I built with my hands
the sort of house, one could say, with a certain amount of logic,
that knows me in return, you see, how can an object have the same feelings
as a person of flesh and bone, that’s where imagination comes in
where you can let your poetry feel for you — as if to affirm the awakening
he continues — you know there are songs that have real meaning
but also follow a logical path, for instance, and I only say this
because you need to understand — and here
is where the rest of the attack surges without me, I need to understand
he tells me, I am semi-left alone, to balance thought against action
as our eyes walk over insular blinking, reminded by waterless roads
that anything you touch, will touch you back, my mother’s brother-in-law
ancient in his nurtured isolation, upon hearing
that he was to have an audience with a poet, a real poet
in his words, unleashed a lifetime of torment embroidered
by entry, his demonic shell, outside the shack he was born in
a fitting metaphor, of a house encased by a home
a world of his own making, versus a world outside, no match
for the man who believes he has dreamed his life
is the one who will choose to wake up when it’s gone,
the man who laughs at his first breath
will swing himself to sleep on the wings of his night
his moon, a suspension against natural intention
his landing, a forced reckoning
starved by the false never-come, he pauses
and sees an opening — the imagination is important you see, the way you can go
outside your house, the way you see what is across your street, that tree over there, for example,
do I know it sees me every day, just because I see it, how can that be, you say
how can a tree have the feelings of meat, if I chop it down for fire or to live in,
who is to say that what I live in, is not having feelings every day, the more I stay inside it
the more I wake up every morning, and see these walls, made of wood, from a tree, that feels,
who is to say that what sees me sleeping, is also not sleeping but watching me, while I sleep
the feeling of the tree I killed, is the same one that protects me from the storm,
what I killed is what loves me, you see, how can I say the same thing
about a thing that I destroyed, because it makes me warm and protected,
that’s where the mind comes in, you see
if you are using your mind in your words, your words will protect you,
if you destroy words
with your moon, did I say, it was mind I meant, if your mind is destroyed
you know your words will protect you —
what it is I think I want
could be a walk along the now
underneath the low clouds
a skip aligned by direction
the ground as wet as a long rest
— let me experience belonging to a wish
