"in the carnival of Orpheus lights dance unbowing" a poem by Richard Lance Williams publishe to Mythopoetry Scholar Ezine vol. 2 mythopoetry.com, publisher




	Mythopoetry Scholar
	Matter & Beauty in the carnival of Orpheus lights dance unbowing -Richard Lance Williams scanner art, "Collapsing Forms" first published to ricwilliams.com "Scanner Art: Bones and Stones"
	a photograph kills Barthes told us that the eye sees death Dylan wrong everything is (& in being so dies) Shiva creating with death dance with that my love nothing holds more & longing cannot cease in what passes thru for Heraclitus knew what Parmenides could not preserve unchanging with cutting things in half & half again as Xeno miscalculated the kids see a vastness & their egos shrink reduced to a math of sum zero but how souls push against time’s linearity deny one way signs gesture toward a quantum physics bodies matter with their wanting with their eyes that have a rounding lens how this poem turns on itself says yes to its suffering its unclaimed body photographs catching the glints of what cannot reach yet reach wanting want satisfied again (& not) with depthless surfaces “1. The world is all that is the case.” unmeasured unmeasurable seen in unseeing
	notes Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida; “He not busy being born is busy dying,” in Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright Ma ( I’m Only Bleeding)”; Shiva is the dancing creator, destroyer, and preserver of the universe; Heraclitus famously said you can never step in the same river twice; Parmenides claimed nothing changed; Xeno said an object could never reach its destination because it could only always get halfway there, then half again, ad infinitum—he was proven wrong; in this materialist age children see themselves as only bodies in an infinite universe and the smallness they experience (ants as it were seen from the Empire State Building of the universe and fodder for the titanic military / corporate / consumerist / faddist / fungible culture that eats energy & spits out shit) leaves them abject (the self left abject by the super-ego as Julia Kristeva has it—what matter if I do anything, I’ll just die); soul suffering is experienced as timeless & bodiless: this feeling is lent credence by the multiple universe/parallel universe hypotheses of quantum physics; wanting want (as in not having a want as well as being possessed by pothos (the want that cannot be fulfilled) can be seen paradoxically as the quantum physics/materialist path out of materialism); as above, so below—“Gotta gotta get up to get down” from Coolio’s “1-2-3-4 (Sumpin’ New)”; first proposition in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; one doesn’t need a light to see what is unseeable even as it is beyond blinding; Orpheus goes down (Don’t look now!)—fix not thy gaze upon the face of one for thus forsaking the many they will tear you apart. © 2010 Richard Lance Williams May 17 Author Bio Richard Lance Williams received his master’s degree in mythology with an emphasis in depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 1998. Ric has edited the Litera listings of The Austin Chronicle since 1988. He wrote the “Poet’s Beat” column (interviews with local poets) for The Austin Light from 1987-1991. He edited for Ed Buffalo’s poetry anthologies Aileron and Vowel Movement in the late 80’s and early 90’s and was the associate editor from 1997-1999 for Alchemy on Sunday, the literary journal of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has written and/or edited for the Austin Chronicle, Man! Magazine, and the Salt Journal. His interview with Larry McMurtry is included in Conversations with Texas Writers, published in March 2005 by UT Press. Publications: Secret Book of God read an excerpt from this book poetry, 104 pages, soft cover bookstore price: $14.95 December 2007 - Robert Bonazzi, critically acclaimed author and Poetic Diversity Columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, announced Ric Williams’ the secret book of god as the best book of poetry by a living Texas poet in his 2007 Poetic Diversity Awards. These awards intend to bring recognition to significant books that have been overlooked. Previous winners of the Poetry in Texas award are Paul Christensen (Hard Country, Thorp Springs Press) and Naomi Shihab Nye (You & Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd.). Purchase Here Woman In The Tower: Stories for the Wounded Child read an excerpt from this book read what people are saying about this book Fiction, 200 Pages, Hard Cover Bookstore Price $19.95 Richard Lance Williams reads from His novel: WOMAN IN THE TOWER Purchase Here Website: ricwilliams.com also in this issue finches with bellies full The Burden of Beauty Table of Content