Blue Rock

By Jnana Hodson

As a synonym for diamond, “blue rock,” promises marriage and an engagement ring. The phrase also evokes music, spanning both the blues and hard-driving rock. “Blue rock” also holds an element of fire, as in anthracite, or “hard coal,” as well as a fiery pounding, as happens with a ritual hammer-stone. Like the process of forming diamonds itself, these 80 love poems compress passion and betrayal, with results resembling fossilized ferns in bedrock as well as the protracted metamorphosis into crystalline jewels or flames.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jnana Hodson
• Release date: May 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310421549

Jnana Hodson

It’s been a while since I’ve been known by my Hawaiian shirts and tennis shoes, at least in summer. Winters in New England are another matter.For four decades, my career in daily journalism paid the bills while I wrote poetry and fiction on the side. More than a thousand of those works have appeared in literary journals around the globe.My name, bestowed on me when I dwelled in a yoga ashram in the early ‘70s, is usually pronounced “Jah-nah,” a Sanskrit word that becomes “gnosis” in Greek and “knowing” in English. After two decades of residing in a small coastal city near both the Atlantic shoreline and the White Mountains northeast of Boston, the time's come to downsize. These days I'm centered in a remote fishing village with an active arts scene on an island in Maine. From our window we can even watch the occasional traffic in neighboring New Brunswick or lobster boats making their rounds.My wife and two daughters have prompted more of my novels than they’d ever imagine, mostly through their questions about my past and their translations of contemporary social culture and tech advances for a geezer like me. Rest assured, they’re not like any of my fictional characters, apart from being geniuses in the kitchen.Other than that, I'm hard to pigeonhole -- and so is my writing.

Book preview

Our setup

. . . . .

Blue rock, as a synonym for diamond, promises an engagement ring and marriage. It also evokes music — both the blues and hard-driving rock.

Why you or anyone else becomes romantically, even desperately, attracted to certain individuals but not others, is a central mystery of the human condition.

No less puzzling are the events that follow when our object of affection responds, so that the two of us interact, even bewitch each other and initiate our own mating dance.

Blue rock holds an element of fire, as in anthracite, hard coal, as well as a fiery pounding, as happens with a hammer-stone. Like the process of forming diamonds itself, these poems look hard at passion and betrayal, compressing their events into fossilized ferns in bedrock and the protracted metamorphosis to crystalline jewel.

But is romance truly unique, as many typically, even obsessively believe, or merely variations on a universal theme?

Repetition is an essential compositional key. Repetition, like the insistent rhythm of hot hits continuing in later numbers. Even years later.

And then, to thicken the plot, just what happens when one party surreptitiously responds to a third party as well?

Blue Rock poems

I

. . . . .

As I was catching my breath, whatever intimacy

I shared with you turned against me. As I was

catching my breath, you tenderly implored me

to keep the door open. As I was catching my

breath, I glimpsed behind your golden facade. As

I was catching my breath, the yoga was having

its effect. As I was catching my breath on that windy

boardwalk, I proposed marriage. As I was catching

my breath, she phoned me twice, first to spoil

my day, and then to pump me for information.

II

. . . . .

Crawling into faces on the cover, we probably

could settle on one place I thought you resided. Crawling

into obvious signs of amateurism, I am original

by default. Crawling into a lasting monument

you will smile on me, please. Crawling into cow skulls

and elk vertebrae, speak only what will bring us

closer. Crawling into seashells and antique crockery,

she wonders if there will even be a birthday card

in her mail. Crawling into her pickup or '60s Mustang,

you encounter limestone walls lined with leatherbound

books resplendent in gold trim and lettering.

III

. . . . .

Let's say we've no business trying

to govern larger bodies. We'll volunteer

nothing unless asked. Let's say prophecy

rarely survives near centers of clout so we'll

type resumes for positions we don't want

but dare not refuse. We'll thus bow for the applause

befitting ambition. Let's say you