R.D. READING GUIDE #6
BLACK PEAK (p.8)
This poem has a nightmarish, abortive quality. So many indecipherable personal references that one could make the argument it fails as a work of art. But perhaps it stands as a kind of boundary marker, a warning of some real difficulties which lie ahead. This poem was published in the journal West Branch.
“crows” and “oaks” : recurrent images
“Woods-Gerry” : the Woods-Gerry Mansion on Prospect St., in Providence, a couple blocks from the Brown University Library. Imposing Victorian mansion on the crest of the hill, now housing offices and galleries of the RI School of Design.
“Persephone’s bee-day” : bee-day, birthday. Bees of Persephone an image drawn from poems by Mandelstam
“Italianate” : we are back in the sphere of Ravenna
“archivo-kisses” : Orphic librarian-poet, with backward glance (fateful for Eurydice/Persephone)
“Marshland...” etc. : Ravenna pine-swamps
“Porta Aurea” : ancient ruins in both Ravenna and Constantinople – translates as “Golden Gate”
“twin black / brows” : a kind of montage of beloved faces sharing this feature of black eyebrows, mirrored/merging in a guilt-ridden occhio terzo (third eye)
sliver-orecchio : odd image of “sliver-ear” (wooden ear? moral deafness?)
“black omelet” : the eyebrows and the third eye merge in this apocalyptic sign of the “black sun”, with pun on OM – Osip Mandelstam, who wrote a poem alluding to the Pushkinian “black sun” of Russian (and Jewish) history.
“ghost of a memory” : the kiss in the Italianate mansion has multiple emotional strata for poet (ex-husband of an Italian-American, one dimension of many)
“who lifts / twin wings” : are we back to the redemptive owl-flight of Minerva/Sophia? or something else? “six, eight” wings signals a “seraph” (also a recurrent image in Mandelstam)
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