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Charles Alexander’s “Pushing Water 52″
Charles Alexander’s poem “Pushing Water 52″ is gorgeous. Over and over as I read it, I pause, my mind empties of distractions. The lines take me way within myself and so far into the world that nothing at all is worrisome and gathering beauty is as easy as giving it away.
When I heard him read the poem, 1 phrase in particular held me for days and still does. I say held, because I couldn’t let it go, yet I’m letting it free me, like a loved one’s spacious embrace, from fear of stasis and endings: “a stop is an invitation.” Stop as a gentle measure. Stop as an opening to pleasure, for we generally extend invitations to happenings that pleasurably engage or sometimes enlighten us, such as celebrations, cultural events, and quiet dinners. Hearing Charles speak the phrase, I thought of how a period at the end of a sentence invites another sentence, of how the quiet after someone has spoken invites another person to speak or invites both parties into loving silence or invites an action, and mostly of this: when we stop an action or a series of actions, we invite others to act, to feel, to relax. Stop, as an invitation, is itself a generous act.
“Pushing Water 52″ is part of Pushing Water, which is a long sequence to be published in Charles’s next book–he says that may be a year and a half away. The poem will also appear in an anthology of contemporary American poetry which is a special issue of the Duke University Press journal boundary 2.
Besides being a poet, Charles is the director and founder of Chax Press, which, as its website, chax.org, states, publishes poetry that is “experimental” and “humanist.” See the website and also chax.org/blog.
- October 25, 2009
- Filed under: Bookshelf and media, Pleasure
- Comments 2
It sounds wonderful. I’ll check out the website. Thank you!
I imagine that Charles would say very different things about the poem than I do. I’m responding emotionally and experientially and not at all as a literary critic.