Emily Holmes Coleman - 4 Short Poems (1927-28)

Forgotten Poems #95 || Reissue #12

    
              — Poem :—

       love of the silent twilight
                      the benediction
                   that is in your hands

moving waters of tenderness
on the burning glitter of my madness

                              quiet hands
asylum for my bewilderment
     when phantoms of other worlds seek after me
peace to my spent spirit

    come to me when the day is sleeping
    still my conflict with your aloofness
                 and I shall be a burst of star-dust
                         to rend the weary curtain
                                            of your monotony
      

    
              —: Paris Roofs :—

       the tops of roofs
       over a misty city
       bring to me
       faint regrets

       things lost
       glimmering
       that came not to the end
       but left before
       it was finished
       spires of hopes
       that died strangled

       and love lost in the fog
    

     
               —: Invocation :—

        Sun,
        come down upon the ground
        and spread your feet upon its chill.
        Let them drink you to dregs
        the cold mountain streams,
        and the frozen reeds in the river
        let them
        bend to your power.
        Come into the houses of people
        fill them with heat
        and with stress.

        And flow into the pores of the indifferent,
        energize their meekness—
        who look for rain
        and are not content with cloudburst.

        Sun,
        do not mistake the indifferent, 
        who walk with loose hands—
        beat upon them, scorch them
        and bring to their attention
        fire
        and tropic darkness
        and childbirth under a southern sky.
     

     
              —: The Liberator :—

       Keys turning
            rattling in the loose locks
                 opening high the doors
       that close again
       like death-hours coming faster

       the walls are white
       and the line of beds is staring
       all the bars go up and down
       and none of them lead outward

              and leaping eyes
                         and stiff limbs
               follow the crunch of the keys

       I am powerful now
       and I will break those that carry the keys
              with little hammers
              small hammers
              which you will make for me
                     and hide in the porridge

       I will break all their heads
              and lay them in neat rows
              and we shall wave high the keys
              and open wide a million doors
       and all of us shall dance in the snow

       and that poor woman in the spiral casket
       shall warm a wooden doll to her dress
              and lean her hair in the fire
       the grating shall be taken from about the fire
           and the woman and the keys shall go within
               all of us
                   shall
                      dance
                          within
    

Emily Holmes Coleman (1899-1974) was born in California, and attended Wellesley College. Moved to Paris in 1926; began publishing poetry in the experimental poetry magazine Transition, and wrote a novel—The Shutter of Snow (1930)—based on her experiences of being institutionalised. Society editor and staff-writer for the Paris Tribune, and at one time secretary to anarchist writer and political-activist Emma Goldman.

Goldman, in Living My Life (1931), recalls: “I started for Saint-Tropez, a picturesque fisher nest in the south of France, in company of Emily Holmes Coleman, who was to act as my secretary. Demi, as she is familiarly called, was a wild wood-sprite with a volcanic temper. But she was also the tenderest of beings, without any guile or rancour. She was essentially the poet, highly imaginative and sensitive. My world of ideas was foreign to her, natural rebel and anarchist though she was. We clashed furiously, often to the point of wishing each other in Saint-Tropez Bay. But it was nothing compared to her charm, her profound interest in my work, and her fine understanding for my inner conflicts.”

“Writing had never come easy to me, and the work at hand did not mean merely writing. It meant reliving my long-forgotten past, the resurrection of memories I did not wish to dig out from the deeps of my consciousness. It meant doubts in my creative ability, depression, and disheartenings. All through that period Demi held out bravely and by her faith and encouragement proved the comfort and inspiration of the first year of my struggle.”

During the summers of 1932 and 1933 Coleman spent time at Hayford Hall in Devonshire, England, rented by arts patron Peggy Guggenheim, and home to numerous poets and artists, including Djuna Barnes, who wrote the novel Nightwood (published in 1936) while staying there.

       A Note on “Poem” (1927) by Emily Coleman . . .
    

The use of blank space in the composition: the “page” comes to life, energising the words. The arresting depths of expression. The use of fragmentation, each stanza both woven into the tapestry and entirely capable of standing-alone as a complete poem in its own right. The haiku-like opening tercet;

    
      love of the silent twilight—
           the benediction
               that is in your hands
    

The rhymed-couplet;

    
           moving waters of tenderness
      on the burning glitter of my madness
    

The quatrain;

    
           quiet hands
      asylum for my bewilderment
      when phantoms of other worlds seek after me
      peace to my spent spirit
     

And the cinquain;

    
      come to me when the day is sleeping
      still my conflict with your aloofness
      and I shall be a burst of star-dust
      to rend the weary curtain
           of your monotony
    

Due to Coleman’s play on the structure of growth, gradually building the stanza lengths (3, 2, 4, 5), there is no end-stop, but a suggestion instead: for the reader to “become poet” and continue the pattern . . .

    
              —: After Emily Holmes Coleman :—
                               by Dick Whyte

                   envoi:
      wind is the wind is the wind
      and the night is alive
      as any of us
      joyously singing
      in a language so old
      only the earth understands
    

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