I am tired of darkness.
Let's bring light,
immerse it on canvas, feel
immediacy.
Courbet's bold palette knife
and Manet's flat-tones
gave intimacy.
At first
I was too poor to buy paints
and my works were rejected.
While painting a bathing spot
with Monet, we discovered
shadows are not brown or black
but are colored
by their surroundings
and that local color
of an object is modified
by light, seen by reflection
from other objects by contrast
with juxtaposed colors.
Although Impressionism
was ridiculed, I was patron.
I want to show men
and women, together, openly
and casually, enjoying society
diffused with sunlight
figures blending into one
and into surrounding space
endowed with feeling human.
I became dissatisfied,
the direction was wrong, no,
not wrong, it was not in my hands,
it was too loose, forms
lost distinction, I needed
inspiration, distance.
I stopped, did not paint,
my hands wanted the brush,
wanted colors, I did not dare
return to certain aimlessness.
I worked tight, outlining
figures, clarity. Nudes
and landscapes. Then, arthritis.
I had fallen from a bicycle
and my arms and legs
were paralyzed. I could not hold
brushes, my hands, useless.
I taped brushes to my wrists,
an extension of my heart, mind, arm.
Now I can never die. Now
the light is clearly
in my hands. I think
I am beginning to understand
something about it.
ISBN 1-59661-055-7
72 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