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    The Face: A Novella in Verse
    The Face: A Novella in Verse
    The Face: A Novella in Verse
    Ebook98 pages48 minutes

    The Face: A Novella in Verse

    By David St. John

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    About this ebook

    A haunting and inventive book length sequence of poems from the distinguished author of Study for the World's Body.

    The Face is both fiercely lyrical and intimately conversational. Coming to terms with the failure of a great love, the speaker descends into his own dark night of the soul. Here are poems that explore the drama of the shattered self in a variety of voices, calling on memory to speak and imagination to make beauty from the shards. Slowly, the speaker reassembles his life and again finds faith in himself and the world. These poems reveal a swirling cinematic poetry of visionary scope; meditative and confessional in some moments, ironic and playful in others.

    Deeply passionate and raw in its candour, The Face may be for this generation of poets what Lowell's Life Studies and Ashbery's Self–Portrait in a Convex Mirror were.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJul 19, 2011
    ISBN9780062105929
    The Face: A Novella in Verse
    Author

    David St. John

    David St. John is the author of eleven collections of poetry (including Study for the World’s Body, nominated for the National Book Award in poetry) as well as a volume of essays, interviews, and reviews titled Where the Angels Come Toward Us. A chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he is University Professor and chair of the English Department at the University of Southern California, and lives in Venice Beach, California.

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      Book preview

      The Face - David St. John

      I.

      I.

      I used to live there, but that was

      Before yesterday. Yesterday is so boring, don’t you think?

      Even my black trench coat thinks so, & it’s very sophisticated,

      Having once belonged to Dennis Hopper before I found it

      On the used rack at Animal House. Ron the owner says, fingering

      The shiny ink of the lapels, Dennis Hopper. Cool, I say.

      So into the bright day I walk out like the night. Face it,

      Toni says when she sees me later

      At the sushi counter at Hama, Dennis Hopper you’re not. OK, I say—

      But the spicy tuna’s terrific today. Which is why today

      Is better than yesterday, don’t you think? I said that to myself, not

      To Toni or Ron or anybody. I said to myself, Yesterday is still so boring;

      When I used to live there it was boring & even before yesterday

      It was boring—I mean, even before I knew it was boring,

      Before yesterday—& if I still

      Lived there I would probably think it was boring. But today…

      Today, here with you standing right in front of me like

      The body of a shadow or like a shadow naked as a body,

      Like a woman dressed in a body naked

      As a shadow, like a shadow undressing before a mirror, like yesterday,

      Like a mirror with a shadow & a trench coat…. Well, here, today, as

      We both undo the loose belts of

      Our shadows, our trench coats, our bodies, here with you…

      It’s really never boring. Not today, no, & not even before yesterday.

      II.

      Where was I in the world? I’m not so certain

      Anymore. Assembling & dissembling. The pane of circumstance

      Broken always by one’s own reflections. Inscriptions of the you.

      Think about it long enough, & you really start to seem

      Like somebody. Really, anybody. Maybe

      That’s who I’ve been all along, just this restless anybody

      Assembling the reflections along the windows of drugstores, dress shops,

      Fruit sellers, hair stylists, stationery specialists & health food/

      Supplement wizards on Main Street—no, it really is

      Called Main Street—walking as I always walk with all of

      The beautiful & bored, all of us waiting for our cell phones to ring

      With that new identity, any new identity, offered us by editors,

      Family friends, lovers, or even our lovers’ lovers, fated enemies,

      Former companions now in exile in Connecticut, or really anybody

      Who sees right through the somebody we are. So I always hate

      Those calls, from anybody who tries to tell me something

      About the somebody I might be or should be or could be

      In the new movie they’re making about the story of my life,

      Or the new version of the old movie of my life, the one I was so

      Good in acting as myself, so good in fact that nobody really knew

      I was acting. Of course (I say modestly) anybody, really anybody

      Could have played that role. Still, Infanta, the producer, calls to say,

      "This is the chance of a lifetime, don’t pass up this part! This

      Movie I’m making starring you (& well, starring me, too, who

      Knows you better than anybody—if anybody knows anybody,

      Though, of course, I do, I mean, know you…!)…So in this movie

      I’m making there’s nobody but us, it’s an us-against-the-world

      Kind of movie, & I know from all of your old work

      It’s just the part you’re made for, & not just anybody could do it,

      So—I’m telling you—it’s a killer role. In fact, I can say

      Right now that I’d stake my life on it, but

      So would, well, I mean, so would anybody…Sweetheart, this is

      The role you’ve always dreamt of & were always meant to play."

      III.

      Whisper, fister. Call out the cold from the body. Call up

      The silence from the bones, unclench that final personal pronoun.

      Where were you last night? I didn’t hear you come in…

      I must have been dreaming of Portugal again, those breezy days

      Of late May near the crooked shore where you lay naked

      Beneath the shifting, scraping wheel

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