- Literary Discourse
There are ways to cheapen (my) poetry
They have the rawness
to turn a creator’s hand
into material with a different identity.
Therefore, I do not need poets in my company.
Poetics is not
welcoming
to predefined audiences,
let alone those who worship it.
Poetics have few ways of embodiment:
In their heads when I was born a woman
with breasts, genitalia and ovaries.
A third of God does not converse with
poets
even with Him I do not share company.
There are ways to cheapen poetics
these “poetic people” themselves –
and their discourse
with prophets.
***
2. Had I not Redeemed Inspirations
Had I not redeemed inspirations
my inner situation would have been better / I would
increasingly use a “linguistic ruse”
My face would not have taken an elongated shape
like Modliani’s women/ or the nocturnal depersonalization
of a woman’s head separated from the body
reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s characterization
that dismantles an object into its elements
Had I not redeemed inspirations? My inner situation would have been better,
not every personal acquaintance
in retrospect
would have been made ‘by the way’ in parentheses:
Indirectness has direct ownership of the talking
body,
acquaintance with the margins has its own esteem —
Had I redeemed inspirations / The body would have adopted a form
that only Gustav Klimt knew to designate to
Jewish
women
in a way that most satiates me.
Something that
would
fill the emptiness
Others would have, already,
comprehended
my
language.
[Tali Cohen Shabtai was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and is an international poet of high esteem with works translated into many languages. She is the author of three bilingual volumes of poetry, “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick” (2007), “Protest” (2012) and “Nine Years From You”(2018). A fourth volume is forthcoming in 2021. She has lived many years in Oslo, Norway, and in the U.S.A. Tali is known in her country as a very prominent as a poet with a special lyric, “she doesn’t give herself easily, but subject to her own rules”. Tali is living in Chicago.]