Gregory Orr also has a whole theory
about the beloved in poetry and the meaning
of a beloved in a poem.
That goes back to the myth of Orpheus,
which is very important to him and to his thinking
on the subject.
So if you've read, if you read, certainly his book,
Orpheus and Eurydice.
But you could also read this book, Poetry as Survival, which
is a wonderful book on craft.
And he talks a lot about that.
This is the last one I'll read from him from Hymn
for the Black Terrific.
It's called "The Terrible Test of Love."
"If you were scrimshaw and this, the Arctic
loop, with miles to climb.
If I had feet unslippered and a knife.
If, in busted crenelations of my teeth, there kept a knife,
such knife there kept, such colored
if that knife, if kept the colored if of knife,
the colored feet, and kept a folio behind a door outsized.
"My will to touch outsized that colored if.
My will outsized to touch the naked sea bass of such knife.
My colored teeth, my swarms.
If you, my scrim, my all behind a door should sleep,
and then, if I should come in swarms of dark,
oh love, to climb that Arctic loop of dark,
to best that door, to swarm.
If I should cross that only door, my only love, my best.
If you should wake from tuneless dark
and call, oh, best, best, oh, most best,
my knife unslippered at the door, my naked will outsized.
"What answer then?
What seabass clangs in tuneless eye?
Pull back.
Pull back my crenelated arms.
Pull back my naked feet, out-swarmed.
My Arctic will behind a seabass door
creeps back inside, the clanging room of loops,
where sleeps my only love.
Keep I awake with crenelated cry,
where loop, loop, loop, loop, is tuneless
in the folio of night."