Let’s Ask for Beauty
Phyllis Webb’s Vision Tree called to me from my bookshelf yesterday, and of course it pops open to this page:
“Listen. If I have known beauty
let’s say I came to it
asking”
It pops open to that page because I stared at it a lot when I was writing my book, Asking. Which if you haven’t read, and you like reading this blog, and if you liked The Flower Can Always be Changing, then I think you would enjoy it.
A few pages before those lines in the Webb book, she says:
“doubled up I feel
small like these poems
the area of attack
is diminished”
She also says,
“I have given up
complaining
but nobody
notices”
It’s interesting what happens when you live with poems for literally decades. The words hold you up, you circle back to them, they circle back to you. The body folds and unfolds, doubles up and stands up straight. Nobody notices, which is terrible, and then nobody notices, which is a gift. You ask for beauty, you stop asking, you wait for beauty, nothing. And then you insist on it, you ask and ask and ask for beauty. You will stand for nothing less than beauty. You feel small, you feel powerful, you feel very tall. Ah, look, in fact you are very tall. Excellent. Let them attack, let them complain. Sit quietly. Demand beauty.
Or, you know, some such riff on all of the above.
