Fauvism

I, humbly logical though I

am, find myself guilty of sentimentality –

unable, it seems, to render life as a Hopper,

to shred my mind’s natural blurring of detail.

distinguish, I am told, between aesthetic and substance,

between event and effect. easily done, if

the jumbled brain with which I was endowed, separated

feeling from logic or reaction from analysis.

I, however, am not gifted in ordinary ways. nor

have I ever known details that did not matter,

for example; thus, have not adequately filtered my

life to include only details

and exclude  my reactions to them. dissonant colors of

my overt emotionalism paint their garish

way, unbidden into my art. but it is the broad green stripe

of passion that matters. poets should not be

expressing life – always – as if Wyeth had painted

it. surely there is room in poetry for a milieu des fauves, for

– Matisse