The Invisible World Is in Decline Book IX

By Bruce Whiteman

The stunning conclusion to a 40-year poetic project

In the tradition of earlier modernist long poems like Ezra Pound’s Cantos and bp Nichol’s The Martyrology, The Invisible World Is in Decline: Book IX is full of startling poetic music and imagery while addressing concerns to which every reader will respond: the life of the heart as well as life during COVID-19, love as well as death, philosophy as well as emotion. The poems are deeply responsive to what an epigraph from Virgil calls “vows and prayers,” i.e., those things that we desire and promise. Like previous books of Whiteman’s long poem, Book IX is largely in the form of the prose poem. But the book also contains a moving series of translations in traditional form of texts taken from songs by composers like Schubert and Beethoven, songs that are by turns tragic, meditative, lyrical, and touching. The concluding section focuses on an obsession that poets have had for 2,500 years: inspiration, in the form of the nine Muses. At the heart of this book is what Whiteman calls “the bright articulate world,” something visionary but accessible to every thoughtful reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ECW Press
• Release date: Apr 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781773059587

Book preview

The Invisible World Is in Decline Book IX by Bruce Whiteman.

The Invisible World Is in Decline Book IX

Bruce Whiteman

Logo: ECW Press.

Contents

Dedication

Epigraphs

In Disgrace with God

Wörte ohne Lieder

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen(Rückert)

[from] Schicksalslied(Hölderlin)

Recueillement (Baudelaire)

Royauté (Rimbaud)

Soupir(Mallarmé)

La Captive (Victor Hugo)

But above all, when the breeze

Dans le noir (Messiaen)

Die Krähe(Müller)

Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder(Alois Jeitteles)

The Nine

1 (Clio)

2 (Calliope)

3 (Erato)

4 (Thalia)

5 (Urania)

6 (Euterpe)

7 (Polyhymnia)

8 (Terpsichore)

9 (Melpomene)

Indulgences: Notes

About the Author

Copyright

Dedication

In memory of my parents

Epigraphs

. . . ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur.

— St. Gregory, from the liturgy of the Mass leading up to Christmastide

Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti quai risonavan per l’aere sanze stelle . . .

— Virgil, Aeneid VI, translated by Seamus Heaney

Your vows and your prayers, why do you wait?

— Virgil, Aeneid VI, translated by Seamus Heaney

In Disgrace with God

I’m still not sure where this line is meant to take me.

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In failing light the tired birds withdraw to where they’ll sleep, marvellous in the shadows of the trees, traces of colour fading out to black. The emanations of the moon spill sloppily down, permanent for now.

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Once I would have said with pleasure that you kissed every inch of my body. Now I am in disgrace with God.

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I dreamt of Kiki de Montparnasse with her kayak lips and bottleneck hips, a green plaid car coat and nothing below her waist save CFMPs, striding Toronto’s November streets amidst naked trees and countless wild dogs she tames with her faithless moue. On a noté un collier de perles de 5 million $.

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