THE CRITIC WRITES POEMS

{ . . . from HOMO SENTIMENTALIS : A GUIDE IN VERSE
TO MODERN EMOTIONAL INTIMACY}
By Nicholas Manning






*

toiling
subtle litotes
out the last threadbare
strings of hue * which do not cling
but wrap the last limited light
in their own suggestion
embedded . . .
for colour is unethical !
reference * meeting scale halfway
anatomy here its own agency
in the palest garment *
you are rapt
in reason
in
all invisible apertures
are insights of naked epistemes :
fingers * folding blindly
the translucent logic
of lace


*










*

cased *
within the goldening
massed fiction’s fioritures of gestural
life . . . what’s called * your « persona »
peoples out * no progenitors :
it’s a childless lesson
of beguiled beauty
bought
and sold *
-ered in a steel
face . . . thus buried ?
all the eyes’ * wetted wanderings
across * the mirrored entries
pause at these reflected
futures’ sentries
of my
descending
dead * goodbye . . .

*
















*

breaking *
the stitches which stole discovery
from the skin : beating
the crisscross
mist’s
metronome : these
reflections * on covering
give geometric gauzings of lush
lighted matter to the dated
touch : cream building
in the higher *
clearness
buys what nakedness ?
an enveloping * of history
push past the stone’s still draperies
to a personal renouncement
of * what « cedes » in
the sublime ?

*














*

in
make
-up * are you made
different * than your own
likeness ? semblance resembles
what it assembles
only
in
a face’s inborn
forms . . . while before
the mirror * your mind’s its own
lover ! its likenesses live in a stillness
such that it becomes * the smile
of itself . . . while the farce
of blush
by forging « false »
faults * forces a giving in to
forgiveness . . . as the textures of
your architectures are
in this way *
traced :
as your thoughts
around * your endless ends
are laced

*










*

there
are (only) so many
configurations to such contours
in your face . . . I wonder what mathematics
makes in its markings *
invisible
beyond the show ? whether
which was still basis breaks its borders
proves in its « proofs » all the love
lacking * in my life . . .
let me dream
by
this geometry
’s precincts * that same similitude
unites us : as though * in the perfect
most suggestive of these curls
the ultimatum had ended
and * there began
no new war

*




*****

Nicholas Manning teaches comparative poetics at the University of Strasbourg, where he is currently completing his PhD. His first full collection, entitled Novaless, will be released in August 2008 from Otoliths. A chapbook of new poems is also forthcoming from Ypolita Press. Editor of The Continental Review, his poetry and criticism may be found in such places as Jacket, Verse, Fascicle, The Argotist, Free Verse, among others. He maintains the weblog The Newer Metaphysicals, where readers are invited to rebuke him for his negative reviews.