jock librarian

In the preface of Charlestown Blues, Marilyn Hacker writes, "Guy Goffette is one of the most unabashedly lyrical contemporary French poets, at a time when, for English language readers at least, contemporary French poetry is characterized, or caricatured, as abstract, more concerned with concepts than with human experience (including history) and feeling: resolutely difficult." As I am writing under deadline (for LJ), my plan of action is to appreciate the "unabashedly lyrical" and avoid the "resolutely difficult." Fortunately, my first dip into the volume has been divine. Here are a few lines from the poem entitled "Ducal Ducasse":

...Let me go
away a while in search of suns more drunk
than this makeshift Orient beneath the
market-stalls' blue awnings, let me bite in-
to the azure, and like the angel with
savage eyes, let me have my turn to drink
the heady wine of the Hesperides.

Our team has turned to drinking the "heady wine" of the open water. We raced in Coney Island one weekend and the Long Island Sound, the next. And we all have been richly rewarded for our efforts. Lake Michigan awaits!