You all know how much vox poetica loves collaboration. And you’ve all read work by Julie and Stan (most recently found here and here). In this collaborative poem there are elements of both their style, yet the voice is truly blended. Julie’s imagery and Stan’s pacing create a poetic voice that can’t be teased into two, but rather stands on its own as a new entity. Consider yourself informed: vox poetica loves collaboration!!
Gazers
By Julie Ellinger Hunt and Stan Galloway
Inside a room, lying on the floor
like a drunk or stargazer
I feel insignificance swirling
forming protostars or stupors.
You walk in, take my hand
and beg for me to give in to you
my weakness, your invitation,
my vulnerability challenging your integrity
maybe just the heat from your skin
whatever it was, you felt it too
and I felt you feeling it
or was it me feeling too much for both of us,
enough to generate a new star below Orion’s belt.
So we left the room behind
the stars ahead
our lips hadn’t touched just yet
together sending a glimmer through the universe
unsure where the heat and light would wave
where the first kiss might occur
somewhere between Cassiopeia’s lap
or Taurus’ horns
or maybe just some distant telescope’s small view
without a name.
We laid on the grass
and let the sky hang above where it belongs
and let the stupor settle back to blackness.
So lovely! It is a seamless poem as if from one voice. Collaborating on a poem can be extraordinary – akin to making music – and I’m certain you two shared that wonderful expansion that solitary poetry writing may miss. The poem came alive for me, it is visually and emotionally strong.
Wow, what a great collaboration. It does seem as if one person wrote it.
Writing with Julie is a real pleasure, and I hope to do it again soon. The collaborative effort is something like a tug-of-war on a teeter totter. Just when I think I know where the momentum is going, the balance shifts, and I’m off-balance trying not to splat, finding words that will tie where the poem has shifted back to where I thought it was headed. Julie is such a great woman with words — her images are constantly catching me off-guard — and I have to keep reminding myself not to be so literal. I can see a couple seams still in the poem, but there are a number of lines I can’t attribute assuredly. And that’s the way it should be, where the words are “ours” instead of “mine” and “yours.” Thanks, Julie, and all of you.
Congratulations, Julie and Stan, on your nomination for Best of the Net!