Mythopoetry Scholar
Matter & Beauty
Painted Perceptions
-Dennis Patrick Slattery
The following poem, first published to A Hudson View Poetry Digest Fall, 2009 (vol. 4, no. 3) and The Beauty Between Words (New York: Waterforest Press, 2010) was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009 by Skyline Publications. Mythopoetry.com has nominated the poem again for Pushcart Prize consideration in 2010.
He went among the blue river
casting it in the summary of a
brush stroke
then stepped back, gazed with one
eye at the mountain and
knew that it existed only in
space given by the mind
where numerous dolphins
could swim just below its
summit, nuzzling the blue
of mountain air with their
hard snouts, then
diving deep into air swirling
in eddies and fathomless
without bottom
skeletons swam in swirls
and paints mixed, creamy
with impressions of where
mind and matter spent
themselves in arias
of noble smells that
baked into one another
full of nakedness of form
with no gaps, no fissures
or fingered groves.
No,
the world came to a
cunning conclusion
in paint the color of
perception.
Completed was its death
so he stepped back
for lunch and left it
to dry into itself
with a firm conviction
of its empty fullness.
The painting came to rest
in a gallery brimming with
galaxies of other palettes
that carried their own pastel fictions.
"The Beauty Between Words"
...................******* ******* *******
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Author BioDennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D. has been teaching for 36 years, the last 8 at PacificA Graduate Institute. While the majority of his teaching is done through courses in the Mythological Studies Program, Dr. Slattery also teaches in the MA Counseling Program and the Depth Psychology Program. He is the author of over 200 articles and book reviews in newspapers, magazines, journals and chapters in books. His own books include: The Idiot: Dostoevsky's Fantastic Prince (Peter Lang, 1984); The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh (SUNY .Press, 2000);four volumes of poetry, Casting the Shadows (Winchester Canyon Press, 2002), Just Below The Waterline (Winchester Canyon Press, 2004, Twisted Sky (Wincester Canyon Press, 2007) The Beauty Between Words (Waterforest Press, 2010); co-edited with Lionel Corbett Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field (Daimon-Verlag, 2001); Psychology at the Threshold (PGI Press, 2002); a memoir, Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life (Jossey-Bass, 2004). With Charles Asher a novel, Simon's Crossing (iUniverse, 2010), and Harvesting Darkness: Essays on Literature, Myth, Film and Culture (iUniverse, 2006).
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