Hologlyphs II: Afterlight

By S.K. Yeatts

“In these poems, the physical becomes the emotional, coloring the terrain of towns, countrysides, and cities with the deep and enduring pleasures and pains of human love and loss.” --P.C. Scheponik, author of Psalms to Padre Pio and four more poetry books.

“...if you are looking for a collection of poems that surprise, challenge, and intellectually entertain in unexpected ways through classic as well as novel uses of poetic devices, then Yeatts’ book is for you.” --John Sweeder, a poet and memoirist, author of Untethered Balloons

“...The poet is like a strange relative who appears in a cassock unannounced, quietly regales the family with tales of the strange world in which he has travelled only to disappear before the dawn with no indication of when he will return.” --Peter Freeman, author of Elements: Twelve Stories and Growth: Poems

“The book Hologlyphs II Afterlight is magnetic and filled with lights, sounds and smells.” --David Dephy – A Georgian-American award-winning poet, novelist, multi-media artists, and author of poetry book Eastern Star

“In Hologlyphs II: Afterlight, his second book of poetry, visual artist and poet S.K. Yeatts, continues to explore the ineffable relationship between photography and poetry he began in his award-winning first collection, Hologlyphs: Twilight Fields” --J.R. Solonche, award-winning poet and authors of numerous poetry books, most recently of Selected Poems 2002-2021

“There is a haunting silence about these poems, the words on the page fill with deeper and deeper meaning as you read, and give each word the authority of an impassioned whisper in the dark.” --Martin Golan, Author of One Night with Lilith and A Note of Consolation for Lucia Jones

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781956635621

S.K. Yeatts

S. K. Yeatts holds a B.A. in English Literature from Baylor University in Texas, and formerly served as the Executive Director for a Fortune 50 Company leading UX design teams and software development. He now works full time on literature and art from his SkyStudios location in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Yeatts’ poetic direction aligns with the term ‘Hologlyph’. Hologlyph is a neologism, fused from the words ‘whole’ and ‘image’, and describes a poetic style centered in imagistic archetypes, aspiring to Ezra Pound’s vision of the “Luminous detail”. His award-winning literary work has drawn comparisons to T. S. Eliot, Po Chü-I, Robert Bly, James Wright, and Friedrich Hölderlin, as his poetry balances at the intersection of elegance, experimentation, tradition and the unexpected. S. K. Yeatts’ initial collection of poetry – “HOLOGLYPHS – Twilight Fields” was published by Kelsay Books and won the Independent Press Award, the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, the Big New York Book Award ‘Distinguished Favorite’ selection and was the winner of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Poetry.

Book preview

Stan_K._Yeatts_-_Hologlyphs_II_Afterlight.jpg

A collection of poems

by

Stan K. Yeatts

holo noun \hō-lə-\ or \hol\ whole; entire; complete

glyph noun \glif\ symbol or image that conveys information nonverbally

Hologlyph \hō-lə, glif\ whole image

Hologlyphs II

Afterlight

A collection of poems

By Stan K. Yeatts

Copyright © by Stan K. Yeatts

Cover design © 2021 Adelaide Books

Published by Adelaide Books, New York / Lisbon

adelaidebooks.org

Editor-in-Chief

Stevan V. Nikolic

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For any information, please address Adelaide Books

at [e-mail]

or write to:

Adelaide Books

244 Fifth Ave. Suite D27

New York, NY, 10001

ISBN-13: 978-1-956635-62-1

Contents

2:22 a.m.

60

762 AD

Afterlife

After Reading a John Ashbery Poem on a Terrace Outside

Castellina in Chianti

At Chaco Canyon

At Cologny II

At Rocca di Asolo

At Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri

At the Funeral

At Villa Eyrie

Aural Silhouettes

Autumn Eventually Came

Awakening at Dusk

Azrael

Banshee

Bell of Geese

Benediction

Berlin – October

Between

Between Us – The Small Slow Ghosts

Beyond the Blue Cliff

Borrowed

Cempasúchitl

Churches are Empty

Closing

Coming Night at Mathais Gardens

Cornfields and Graves

Corona – 1947

Cuckoo at Deià

Darkness Across the West

Death Poem

Déjà vu III

Desvelado

Dreamers

Driving at Night

Eikon

Eikon II

End of Days III

End of Evening

Enlightenment

Enlightenment II

Enso

Entangled

Evensong

Exile

Face in Evening Clouds

Fall

Faux

First and Only

Forecast

Foreshadowing for a Desert Night

Fortune

Garden of White Clouds

Ghost Dance

Ghost House II

Ghosts

Glass Angels

Going Down

Hearing a Clock Somewhere Down the Hall

Hegira

I Have Seen you in the Darkening Garden

Icon

Irrational Numbers

Isle of the Dead

Kyrie for the End of Spring

Lacrimosa

Late October

Listening to a Crow at Lake Biwa

Long Count

Los Endos

Lost Image

Lure

Magdalene

Mallorca - Autumn

Mary in the Night Room

Masque

Mendocino 1979

Metaphysical

Meteor Fall over the San Juan Mountains

Ministry

Mnemonic

Moon and Star Over Île de la Cité

Morning at St. Magdalena

New York Evening – Autumn 1984

Nightscape

Nineteen Pictures from an Exhibition

Nocturne

Oracle

Oubliette

Out of Alfacar

Pentimento

Plight and Premonition

Prayer After the Canon

Predator

Premonition

Quincunx

Realization

Reconsidered on Night Streets Around Piazza Navona

Red Wing Blackbirds at Jalama Beach

Revelation

Setting a Clock

Shadows at the Harbor

Simulation

Small Bridges

Snow Garden

Snow in the Desert

Sound Without Fury

Spiegel im Spiegel

Storm

Sunset Tint

Swans at Vitznau

Ten Views of a Moment

Tenebrae

Terrace

Theater of Man

Three Figures at Blue Mesa

Three Views of the Evening

To a Minor 21st Century Poet

Traveling in the Mountains

Tuscan Dusk

Union Station – 10 p.m.

Valle di Cadore

Vespers

When it is Time

Whispered in the Evening

Winter Garden

Winter Morning

Zen and Chan Redux

2:22 a.m.

I have noticed the clock at 2:22 before –

Something repeated against sleeping silvered windows.

There was no one on the empty streets.

Everything was held in place by not looking.

It was not a shadow down the dark hall of Autumn,

Or some near waking –

It was only luminous remainders of our unwilling return.

Before –

Spirals of ravens traced Mandelbrot-eternities over miles of golden larch.

It could have been the end,

Or just the end of Summer.

A few clouds twisted into chalk equations of black-poppy skies.

It was not a shadow down the dark hall of Autumn,

Or some pale found-light –

It was only scrawled numerals written in vapor -

Passing memories of wind and night.

Motionless,

Everything was rushing by,

Held in place by not looking:

A coincidence of purpose -

A premonition of aligned hours beyond a single life.

After –

Perhaps it was the end of Summer,

Some near-waking of found light,

Or our shadows down the dark hall of Autumn -

Coming again at 2:22 to sleeping silvered windows.

60

Under a cold scripture of closing heavens,

I could not wait for you.

In the luminous dust of hill towns,

You walked dark streets of Spain –

An abstract figure in Siguirya of poems.

In anticipation of yesterday,

Summers ran out.

It was at the edge of balance,

And a great height from the terrace of memory,

Where I could only see you from outside the illusion –

Shadows of what would come and what had long been completed.

Under a cold scripture of heavens,

Everything was closing.

And I could not wait for you.

762 AD

Night falls in apricot blossoms,

Where snow will come again.

After we left,

Dusk brushed your cold hair

In a scent of silver winter.

Afterlife

In early light before the dark sails of summer,

The garden filled with a wind of iris in a last cold breath of spring,

From this remote village,

Hours flew in owls of sleep,

As a mausoleum of stars slowly opened around some remaining time.

It is your empty hands

That keep me here.

After Reading a John Ashbery Poem on a Terrace Outside

Castellina in Chianti

After reading a John Ashbery poem on a terrace outside Castellina in Chianti,

She said: "…L’Imperatore è nudo…".

The summer was over,

And Bougainvillea leaves littered the garden path in phrases of red light.

I said nothing,

And kept listening to a pale sparrow out in the darkening vineyard.

At Chaco Canyon

Our twilight

Echoed on the stone stairs of summer,

Where one August,

We walked all the way to the Jackson Staircase

Under a distant warning of storm light.

It was a Chronos of wind following –

Voices from rocks – an inland tourniquet and