Doc Holiday

By Blake Townsend Romanov

Doc Holiday is a book of love poems like my previous books. Like them, it is a book of metrical and rhyming poetry, more or less. The muse this time is Ashley Wednesday, a devout Catholic and a figure of cold and ethereal beauty, shimmering copper hair, skin like fresh milk, and a narrow aristocratic countenance, an antitype to my own broad features and hulking clumsy gait.

It is a book that applies mythological characters both from American Hollywood mythology as well as characters from classical antiquity, but it is not only these but also biblical mythology, if we can so name it without blasphemy. It is a book that delves into the philosophy of aesthetic contemplation of pictures and also of words, but all with an eye to the erotic blend of the sensual and spiritual, all the while dealing with the uniquely Christian question as to whether such blending ought to be.

The book also delves into what I would like to call my personal mythology that is my childhood and the connection between erotic love and that time in life that would seem most separate from such love and sensation and the uncanny connection, unexplained at all, between the erotic and childhood memory.

That said, why the title? Doc Holiday is both a factual character of the old American West and the Hollywood film Tombstone (of which I am a fan). He is a Middle-European aristocrat by lineage, a child of the Antebellum South. The thing about him that is alluring and representative of this work of poems, mostly sonnets, that I have written is the way he is wracked between the most basic of lifestyles and the highest of ideals, erudite in his love of Chopin and refined in taste in general, but wasting his life in crippling sensualism, only to find himself a hero at the side of his friend Wyatt Earp. So it is a book about redemption as well as love. It is also a book about unquenched aspirations and quotidian nature of our condition that lays a hand on even the most determined romantic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543476941

Blake Townsend Romanov

I am only going to divulge a little biography because I value privacy (enough so that I publish under a pseudonym). I am in my thirties, born and raised in New York City. I am more or less caucasian, a mixture of Irish, Scottish, Russian, Austrian, French Canadian and Swedish. My parents are not native New Yorkers, and I have roots in the West, the South, including New Orleans, and also in Boston. I am to some extent a scion of privilege, having gone to private school, though politically I defy privilege. I am Christian, more or less liberal tolerant Christian, but with some Evangelical fervor behind it all. My favorite metered poet is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and my favorite free verse poet is Wallace Stevens. I also love Emily Dickenson and Edna Saint Vincent Millay is certainly an inspiration. I also love Dylan Thomas, owe a lot to Shakespeare, and am lately given to Robert Lowell. My favorite novel is The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence. I love fantasy novels, such as the Lord of The Rings, and the Earthsea series (I have never outgrown my love of magic and fairy stories). I love nature and have benefited in this respect from my parents' house in the country as well as time spent in communal organic farm settings. I love animals and children and all things that have not been through the assembly line of social consciousness.

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Copyright © 2018 by Blake Townsend Romanov.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 04/20/2020

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Contents

Doc Holiday

Anthropology

The Morning News

Paint

Free Verse

Holiday

Holiday In The Sun

Forbidden Fruit

Pan

The Skeptical Empiricist

Dream-Memory

Psychology

Three Sparrows In Winter

Easter Meditation

Ice Queen

Refiner’s Fire

State Of Affairs

Nativity

House-Cat

Words

The Ashes of Effusion

Romantic Doctrine

Quiet Diner

Tugboat

Hegel

Light Horse

Eros

Women In Love

Woman In Love part two

Evensong

Entry

For My Friend and His Tragedy

A Moment of Doubt

Limerick of the Pop Film Junkie

The Stolen Dream

Sheep-Geist

The Act

Grace In The Asylum

The Flood Of Dreams

Selves

Just Friends

Rigor Mortus

Diary

Belated Valentine

A Hurricane In Montauk

The Bright Sun and The Dark Pond

Daylight

Washing

Lesson

Pep Talk

Icon

Gong

Night in The City

Word Cycle

Poem

Refuse

Serat

Person

Haiti (for another woman)

A Work

Faith

Soul

Word and Echo

Me

Van Gogh

Threadbare

Medley

Leftovers

The Speaker

Mixed Feelings

Passing The Word

To Cry

View

The Open Heart

Trophy

A Quiet Beauty

To Join

The Candle

Conjoinment

Looking For Love

A Question

No Matter What Anyone Says

Pleasure

Eden

Clarity

The Heart Opening

To Plato

A Pretty Thing

Intimation

Afterlife

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

Song, by John Donne

Business men, they drink my wine;

Ploughmen dig my earth.

None of them along the line,

Nobody of it is worth.

All Along The Watchtower, by Bob Dylan

To Ashley Wednesday

Doc Holiday

He’s a Hollywood hero, a cowboy,

Aristocrat with a southern accent,

Wyat Earp’s demure right hand side show boy,

The ringer, who’s pistols are a defense,

The draw at the speed of light, the thunder

And flash of nimble dexterity, death

To the rustler, the cutpurse, a wonder

Of speed and skill, pulls a gun in a breath,

The final breath for the desperado,

Yet he is most at home, this foppish gent,

With a glass of claret, his piano

At his finger-tips, the tune a sad bent,

His heart retreating, sole, no more open

As he explains Frederick fucking Chopin!

Anthropology

I love people much more than principles

For when someone says, 'I’ll do anything

For you,' the rising phrase is so simple,

ʻDo what you got to doʼ, and one’s love-sting

Is more pure when loving those who’r wicked.

Love is a muscle; stretch it and it grows;

And the body is a heart on a stick;

Open your blouse and