Author: Patty Seyburn
Patty Seyburn has published four books of poems: Perfecta (What Books Press, 2014), Hilarity (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002), and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She is a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and coeditor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry (www.poolpoetry.com).
Simultaneity
Scott Joplin died in a mental institution the year my father was born in Toronto, the final card in his parents’ hand, almost enough for a game of gin. King of ragtime, Joplin suffered a breakdown when his opus work, “Treemonisha,” met with no success. Another genius depressive, Rachmaninoff, felt stifled by being asked to …
Sand Reckoner
Defendit numerus Though we cannot be sure how Archimedes died, it’s rarely debated:a Roman soldier cast a shadow on the old man’s sand diagram andwhen he asked the soldier to move, the latter ran him through with a sword. Or the …
Comfort
Leaden days, stratus clouds gauze the sky. A sphere of hot plasma thaws the sky. Belief is a phase, I said and shrugged. Sans intervention, what could cause the sky? Constellatory creatures lure the gaze. When ursa shows up, canus paws the sky. July and October fall in love, wed. When crab appears, scorpion claws …
No Ideas
Things, they are no fools. They tableau. The trees pose, too, as the yogini know. And my trousseau of objects rearrange themselves each night. They want to be still- lives, to be of record. The time they change changes because letting me watch would sacrifice their modesty. The slender jug switches shelves with the Bakelite …
Nocturne: Riffs
Each night at midnight, a northern wind finds the bedroom window and strikes the harp’s strings to awaken King David. He calls God, “midnight.” Chopin wrote 21 of them. Ignace Leybach remembered only for his fifth. Faure, Scriabin, Satie, Poulenc. Debussy. Shostakovich. Mendelssohn. Have a secure grasp of the long phrases. Whistler painted a series …