1.
Before there were visions,
the dawn was colorless and damp,
night was a tar pit of primeval confusion,
no one played harmonic blue notes,
and the palette was empty of words;
men grunted in caves during snow blinding,
endlessly waiting in harsh gray conditions
and fire created by accidental lightning,
a bloody handprint on the wall
then everything fell like dominos
someone drew the conclusions
and stylized bison leapt out
shadowed by possessed hunters
beginning the first community
and the end of everything
2.
we have forgotten:
how to mix paint with eggs;
simple structures like oranges are not round;
wars were won by the best mapmakers;
and we celebrated imperfect nudes
until we wove colored fabrics
3.
after we trapped rainbows into paint,
the radish of our innocence
exposed as turtle bellies,
our desperation was green sighing
of an impotent man broken as chairs
and discarded as extra striped socks
such immediate un-forgiveness
painted by brilliant arguments,
no two vanishing points meeting
until someone steps back
becoming lost
in the moment
4.
on the eighth day
god created communication
and man forgot
to write it down
he tried to accuse his hazy mind
after seeing the sharp burgundy
of woman’s fresh nipples
and how his feet melted into clay
teeth chattering nonsense
trying to impress her and failing,
his hands carving his feeling on stone,
no wonder creation is in every story
ISBN 1-59661-106-5
77 pages/$15
Review: http://www.languageandculture.net/review-willitts.html
Secret Language of the Universe by Martin Willitts, Jr.
reviewed by Connie Post
http://www.poetrypost.com
If one of the purposes of poetry is to explore our many journeys as humans, Martin Willitts, Jr's book, is an admirable effort in making this aspect of poetry come alive. In the 72 pages of free verse, the reader is taken through an exploration of nature, time travel, the before and after of the earth and language. I was drawn to the poems that highlight the human relationship with nature. For example, in his poem entitled Lacy Tansyater (a yellow Spiny Daisy) these are my fingertips/these are the days that were ashamed/these were the excuses, so weak/ so bristly, you wanted nothing to do with them. It reminds us of our complex relationships and bonds with gardens and nature.
While reading these poems, I was reminded of the many languages within and our universe, (our own) and the many sub universes we create in our world. Or, for that matter, in our own minds. The poem Before Letters is another example of the unique exploration of language; the alphabet is a bitten apple/its core already browning/ words are unruly, disobedient. I enjoyed the rhythm of this poem very much.
There are several poems in the middle of the book about the universe of Jackie Kennedy. I found it to be an interesting break in the flow of the poems, however, I saw it as another commentary on another kind of social universe in which we exist and create for ourselves.
There were some poems in Secret Language, that I would have liked to
seen end sooner. I feel that some of the poems would have had stronger meaning without some of the last lines. For example the poem Pacific Tree Frog, may have ended more eloquently without the last stanza.
I enjoyed the unique approach to the poems in this book. I felt I walked off the path of this earth, into the paths of the hidden worlds of nature, language and time.
In his poem Before Drama and Dance Mr Willits says before there was religion, there were storytellers”. These poems are the story tellers of what we have, (and most importantly) have not yet seen.
—Connie Post
I want people to take notice of Martin Willits, Jr. Some of his poems are among the best I have ever read. “Before Music” completely knocks me out. What a tour-de-force. He makes me think of a monk living in a dark cave for years, then staggering out into the sunlight and beholding all the world and universe lit up anew. He writes his poems in the secret language of mystery, beauty, tenderness, love, flowers, music, painting, all inside the violence and violation of the harder world that conspires against us.
—Susan Deer Cloud
I have been reading Martin’s work since around 1973. I knew right away that these were the work of a great poet. Now, over 30 years later, I still get that feeling of admiration and envy when I see his latest pieces. I put him in the same realm as Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, and Galway Kinnell. You’ll find Martin’s work accessible and extraordinary. I want the world to know it.
—Patty Mooney
In Martin Willitts, Jr.’s “Coyote and Bear,” Coyote becomes a ghost but cannot hide his smell. He manages to eat some of Bear’s salmon, but Bear takes a swipe at the smell “and Coyote went flying into next week,/belly-full and three teeth missing.” We might sniff in this primal comic story the second language of this poet’s universe: Willitts takes chances, finds sustenance in gulping the world—as in the suites of flower and bush poems, and creature poems, and even Jackie Kennedy poems—but as a man who has suffered and been there, takes an experiential hit for every foray, from the metaphysical to the domestic. He identifies with Coyote who in another poem kept howling and dancing as he fell from the sky, identifies with “Western Fence Lizard”: “I was tossed out on more than one occasion/and just like the lizard I would try again.” We’re glad that he keeps trying to use words to evoke meanings beyond words, and that he succeeds in such remarkable ways.
—William Heyen
I wondered why Martin called his book The Hummingbird when there is no mention of hummingbirds in this work. Is it because his mind knows every petal of the sound and meaning of the words that fly and hover above each poem? No one writes like Martin Willitts, Jr.:
Basho
He removed a piece of that blank sky
taking a cattail for a bamboo brush
pouring colors like water from his tongue
as swans separated slow ponds
with their necks pointed upward,
while he placed the missing fragment
where it belonged.
Each of his poems is like this: the intense focus, the presence to his own quicksilver reality, leaves one enchanted and delighted by the hummingbird. Archibald Macleish said, in “Ars Poetica,” “A poem should not mean, but be.” Willitts performs this alchemy in his writing. His words taste, smell, feel, and most of all sing.
—Carolina,
co-editor of hotmetalpress.com
Martin Willitts, Jr., cannot see a great painting without recognizing that there is more to its story. His poems here extend and broaden those visual appeals with poetic depths of imagination. If Monet, Seurat, or Wyeth read these poems, they would be gratified that their art touched the soul of this artist. Willitts is a poet of inspiration.
—Gary Metras,
author of Francis d’Assisi 2008 (Finishing Line Press)
Communing with art by Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Florin Mihai, Maxfield Parrish, Andrew Wyeth, Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne and more, Martin Willitts, Jr., offers us his own unique and intuitive view of their masterworks in his new book, The Hummingbird. Mr. Willitts looks beyond the frame, follows the artist’s details like a gestalt therapist examining the details of a patient’s dream. He takes us down the dark road as it leads away, considers what’s inside the minds of people pictured, inside the mind of the painter, finds the artist’s metaphor and extends it with his own. From the delicate hummingbirds in the opening plate right to the final poem, this is a book to savor, to ponder in the museum as you stand in front of the paintings that inspired it.
—Mistryel (Mar) Walker,
editor of Bent Pin Quarterly