Ultimatum from Paradise

Poems

Jacqueline Osherow

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780807158067
• eBook ISBN: 9780807158081
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In this collection, Jacqueline Osherow gives us perfectly formed, musical poems that glide between the worlds of art, architecture, literature, and religion. Traveling through Europe, Tel Aviv, and New York, Osherow observes with a keen eye the details of objects -- beautiful buildings and ancient artifacts -- and of the conversations and interactions she has with others. Finely constructed and always engaging, her poems uncover the startling truths of memory and coax our own forgotten moments from the recesses of the mind.

II

Art Nouveau: Brussels to Nancy

Victor Horta and Louis Majorelle

I

It’s as if Goethe, on his deathbed,

were directing the not-too-distant future

of his dreamy continent’s dreamy adventure

in dressing itself up; builders obeyed

his famous last requirement, “more light,”

the very instant it became possible.

A New-World concoction—reinforced steel—

meant an architect could newly dictate

entire walls composed only of glass,

that a dim and stuffy bourgeois drawing room

in an always overcast city like Brussels

might suddenly unleash its smothered glow

and with it sweep away a millennium

of European darkness. Art Nouveau.

II

From then on: light in Europe. Art Nouveau

would abolish darkness of every kind;

its founders meant their luster to extend

to class and poverty, establish new

and principled arrangements of society.…

How I love and envy them for thinking beauty

had that kind of influence, that pull

even if, for the moment, only rich people

could afford to put their ideals into practice:

a house with each component made by hand

to mimic nature, so that even a hat stand

has hooks with leaves and petals so precise

you recognize their species at a glance,

whimsy mesmerized by diligence.

III

Because it is whimsy. That too I love.

Why have a line when you could have a curve?

Why not cover every unused surface

with a mural or mosaic or a frieze,

that is, once you’ve given sufficient leeway

to the necessary transparent reverie

for filling every room with tinted light:

a preening peacock, a swallow midflight,

wisteria, silver dollar, pinecone, lily,

even a stylized sprig of local parsley,

ubiquitous and more or less a weed.

Do what you want, they cry, and what you need

will follow. Ours is art for everyone.

This on the very eve of World War I.

IV

But I’ve reached war too soon. I meant to bask

in the thrill of Art Nouveau a little longer,

to borrow its initial joy, to linger

over each obsessive detail, every risk

embraced in giddy thrall to innovation,

internalize its retro grace as new.

As usual I lack imagination,

can’t pretend I don’t know what I know—

how the century would break its promise—

though, needless to say, for some of us

—me, for example—it meant life, not death,

albeit life contorted by the aftermath

of the unassimilable years before,

their conclusive proof of who we are …

V

what these lucky dreamers didn’t yet know,

which is why they could imagine that a window

in each internal wall within a house

would make light universally contagious.

Still, even Mister “More Light” himself

had understood the dark appeal of Satan;

perhaps his Faust was a premonition.

Though who could have foreseen what would engulf

his dimming homeland in a century’s time?

Maybe the trick is just to dream

in spite of what you guess, or even know

in increments: say, steps that seem to float

upward toward an ever-spreading halo

of captured? rescued? liberated? light.…

VI

I climbed that curving stair again and again

in Horta’s perfect house—now a museum—

but an embarrassment by nineteen fifteen

with all the corpses piling up in Belgium.

Excess and whimsy must have seemed obscene....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• I
• II
• III