All that morning’s scenes recurred to his mind,
not with the precision of everyday reality nor with the sharp outline
of things seen, but with the peculiar intensity of things felt.
Georges Simenon, The Evidence of the Altar Boy
* * * * *
I spent a sizable chunk of the Sam Ragan Poetry Festival peering through a camera lens. Mostly waiting. Angle, composition, exposure, they were all displayed right there in the viewfinder, but I was waiting for something else. That tilt of the head, the outstretched hand, the merest curl of the lip — expression. Something personal in the personality.
Has anyone ever asked you what some certain poem is about? Has your answer ever been anything other than inane? Not only is a poem more than the sum of its words, the true poem doesn’t really fully exist until it has been assimilated by the reader. The poem’s expression and the reader’s impression combine to create the poem’s meaning. What it’s about. In one reader that peculiar intensity may produce a slight tilt of the head, in another an outstretched hand, in the third a gradual curl of the lip.
Every photo records and preserves a moment, its expression. The matrix of pixels may be technically perfect, but is it interesting? Does it create an impression? A good photograph may have something in common with good poetry. The viewer doesn’t merely remark, “Oh, I was there.” Some novel synapses fire, some new cortical amalgam is forged — “I am here!” In fact I’m in a new place that wasn’t obvious until I connected with this image.
Does this photo connect? I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I will say Sammy Osmond is standing at the lectern and his mom is listening:
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Joseph Bathanti was Sammy Osmond’s mentor through the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. I was Joseph’s student in a workshop series lo these many years ago and my lasting impression of him as a teacher and a person is someone whose enthusiasm is contagious. Literally. You catch it, it incorporates itself into your genome, and you’re never cured. You just don’t get over being enthusiastic for words, verse, stories. (Sorry, Joseph, for the retrovirus analogy.) Maybe Sammy was becoming a poet before he met Joseph, but after listening to Sammy read his wonderful poems at Weymouth on March 21 and after watching the relaxed bond of friendship he and Joseph shared throughout the day, my diagnosis is that Sammy has caught a bad case of poetry, real bad.
* * * * *
Anson County – Joseph Bathanti
(for Joan)
You come off the bed
as if expecting me,
take my hand, the morning
of your thirtieth birthday.
Not quite light, perfect
for the movie we’ve talked of making.
We bicycle the 8 ½ mile loop –
the dogs, one of them blind, lope
ecstatically – gravel
the first two miles,
the ruined church on Savannah Creek,
in a cottonwood swamp that floods
every spring; then a long tar road:
abandoned farmsteads. The last crop –
corn, give-out haggard, by late July,
left to hang into Advent – down
by the Pee Dee, the Ingram Plantation
where Andrew Jackson stopped
to have his hair cut by a slave girl.
The light is like Petrified Forest.
You’re Bette Davis. I’m Leslie Howard.
You read Francois Villon
and work in a diner in the middle of the desert.
I arrange my own murder
at the hands of Bogart, so you, Davis,
can cash in on my insurance policy.
Tragic beauty.
We avoid making a sad film,
Instead ride into the rising sun
among the regal bucks,
their unfathomable
algorithmic racks, gathered
in homage to you, roaming
McAllister land –
what I had wakened
you so early to witness.
* * * * *
Vividity – Sammy Osmond
I want to paint vivid pictures,
You close your eyes to see,
Use your ears to smell,
Empty air to taste
And your mind to hear.
I want you to feel like you’re touching it.
A rainy day –
Just slightly cool
Caresses your face
And, even though you stand under shelter,
The breeze carries the rain to you
So your cheeks bear a watermark.
A rainy day –
Heavy drops landing from eaves around,
A bass drum beneath the light hiss of misty droplets.
A car rattles by.
People pass you, feet splashing into inch-deep puddles,
They chatter to their phones.
A day of rain-
Cold air,
A hint of sharp gasoline rides in the wake of a taxi.
A rainy day –
Light fog whirls and curls
Around grey figures.
Red and blue “Open” signs lay distorted in puddles,
Flashing a message up to you.
The ground glistens,
As if the black tar wants to be crystal.
And oil rainbows glide, like boats, across the street,
Then fall through rusty brown grates.
A day of rain-
You drink the air
As though it is fresh ground coffee
From the cafe you pass by,
Letting it rest on your tongue,
Before the cool condensation crowds it out.
Pictures,
To touch,
hear,
taste,
smell,
to see.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Books by Joseph at Press 53
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* * * * *
V E R S E and I M A G E 
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