Stephen Jonas

THE CELIBATE

my ole uncle so & so

(now w/God) had

(among other things I

hesitate to touch upon—)

the (so help me God) biggest

piece (‘Scuse the Xpression) in

the town athletic (unmaled)

assoc. Christ! he was al-

ways (between workouts w/bar-

bells & the like) beating it (and

at the mirror yet) outsized (and

no exaggeration) down to

his knees

what can I tell you

he was (a boy I played w/it

in bed) hung (my hand ta’ god) like

a horse & could have

(had he turnd pro & stopd

playin’ w/hisself) kept

ole Christian Science ladies

(w/fat dividend checks

from husbands mostly dead) happy

DILEMMA II

if you come right down to it the

hemmed-in Proteus the

lopsided whale

stranded on a California

beachhead, people

milling about all

phenomena –

critical poem

saying the

upside-down cake

not in the sky that

canvas of surprise

no, hidden within sub-

terranean

remoteness of human

integrity

To save? again no

to venerate this

dastardly;

(that’s innovation

without right.) the

minute is found within

the narrow confines of space

where the ever lurking

presence of Time: the

myriad colors with

grounded principles like

as Michael Angelo down

on all fours mixing

the Sistine ceiling with

universal dirt. unity? you say

yes, but where will you

find unity unless you

sacrifice space

that diction of rhetoricians

like a backslider with

double barrel’d nerve.

we lend encouragement after

the fact.

known? who

knows the Eternal outlaw

can safely say he

knows nothing.

INVOCATION

O generation gone

thoroughly to seed

yr. legislators, yr. heads

of state

a great informal

racket without in-

struction in-

capable of re-

capitulation & no

distinction between

subject & object

suffices anymore

to distinguish time &

place

Long gaps appear in the

contours of the language

(as tho’ a mere pencil could

Indicate so much grief.)

A language whose word

of true meaning has been

severely lost.

envoi

O lady carved in rosewood

or set in alabaster

I pray you

make us again

the tall grasses

to bend & part

before your football.

teach us to sin

and not to sin.

Since his untimely death in 1970, Stephen Jonas’s SELECTED POEMS, edited by Joseph Torra (Talisman, 1994), has been on the shelves of many serious poets, and off the shelves more than on the shelves by most of those. The SELECTED not only includes an excellent 12-page introduction by Torra, but includes the complete version of Jonas’s astonishing 100-page poem “Exercises for Ear,” which also includes a preface to the sequence by Gerrit Lansing, who is the executor to Stephen Jonas’s literary estate. Here’s to hoping that the sampling in this anthology leads those of you who are new to Stephen Jonas to seek more.

“be you also mindful

Love lest you

forget i too come from

the sea scum the

phosphorus lumi-

nosity”

-- “No. LXVI” of “Exercises for Ear”