Scarecrow

By Robert Fernandez

Taking Dante and other catalogers of failure and ruin (Baudelaire, Trakl, Rimbaud) as its guiding lights, Scarecrow charts situations of extremity and madness: "Are you / insistent? Are you dead? / Are you guilty? Has your / name been lifted, a vein / of earth from earth?" It also charts the insistence of time's passing and with it the awakening to both new and foreclosed possibilities. What will remain for us after the disaster? How will we rebuild? To whom will we address ourselves and with what voice? Also a love poem, one of desire and hope, Scarecrow aligns a tragic sensibility with a faith in the other and in the redemptive power of forgiveness. Within the beauty and strangeness of this work rests an imperative that captures the directive of poetry at its best: "Present yourself / in the full radiance of captivation." In its mystery and defiance, Robert Fernandez's collection does precisely this. An online reader's companion will be available at robertfernandezsite.wesleyan.edu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Release date: Feb 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9780819576514

Robert Fernandez

Robert Fernandez is the author of We Are Pharaoh, Pink Reef, Scarecrow and the co-translator of Stéphane Mallarmé's poetry for the collection Azure: Poems and Selections from the 'Livre.' Selected as a New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America, Fernandez has won a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Poetry and a grant from the Andrew W. mellon Foundation. In 2006, he founded, with Mary Hickman, the chapbook press Cosa Nostra Editions. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Book preview

scarecrow

Bring your servants close.

Nesting is not a time.

There is no damage here.

The brain is fine. The leaves,

fine. The wine is as black as ever

—

There is a pace

and it slows

and it sees

and it

lows

—

One slickens up to you, all

oil, to assure you of your substance.

This is all all all. Make a note

of it. Herein lies a balance

for yellow birds with black heads

and black moths with yellow heads

and all detritus of coming near

the realm of the dead—namely,

yellow and black leaves softened parting

—

So I am a pairing—I know my rules:

let sheep eat sheep and lions, lions.

Let Latins meet Greeks under patch-

work quilts. Let the vision plaid

for a bit

—

I bit

and the grapefruit had a bit

of death’s black and from my tear ducts

came grapefruit seeds, black

as hor-

nets. Pity

them Lord for they know not

what they do. Pity the lions and the locusts

—

Pity the animals—the day is a raze,

heat and wheat gathered into airy combines

of thrashing. The noise spins lions

in the air. My fair one falls

down to me on black ropes. No

one can see me, and hope is a thing

for birds and fools. I drool

on locust bouquets and steps

of honey. Come

—

Meet your master

in the dust; with his

one tooth, he drains

you dry. May you spin

here, scarecrow, among

the other straw-like things

planted in the dark earth,

swollen with light and time

when for a moment

When for a moment

you eat through

the air to swallow

syrupy red letters

Poe

Poe

Poe

—

And bells could be

jasmine and gold,

bone and soap,

seaweed and ivy

—

Crack dread’s

red egg on

the burning rock

and let your eyes

speak, your hands

walk

—

The lake

unveils its planks;

you find your way

to the red