I’m loving this poem: J. Estanislao Lopez’s “Meditation on Beauty.” I admire it for a number of reasons, but chief among them is its wild willingness to turn. This relatively short poem (20 lines) is chock full of twists.
The poem opens with a concessional turn: it’s true, I thought we were done with beauty, but… And then, at “[s]o maybe there’s room…,” the asserted beauty shifts into a kind of emblem’s meditation or moral. The poem, however, is unwilling to rest content here, and challenges its own conclusions, becoming, at “[o]r maybe such beauty…,” ironic, or else entering the condition of negative dialectics. And then the poem turns directionally, to the South, and then it goes deeper, further South and under the Gulf, to end somehow on an image that’s beautiful, and then suddenly, and finally, disconcerting.
What a journey! Check out the poem, and take the ride!
Structure & Surprise 