Cup of Reeling by Lawrence Cottrell

Cup of Reeling by Lawrence Cottrell

$21.00

J.B.S. Haldane said that “the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose,” which has not, of course, deterred poetic excavations of the “queer,” there being nothing more odd than the encounter of thought with the terms of its existence, mentation’s gloss of God’s intention or its ecstatic leap down the rabbit hole in existential angst concerning the inexplicable appearance of Is and Is’s ain’ts, of interstellar vacuum and the formulary of a rose.

Cup Of Reeling is affection’s meander along the marches of yes and noh, goblet into which has been poured a past’s variegation: people, places, the anguished joy of mortal grace, where one damned thing after another…then nothing…is transmuted into where dawn sun and a stream become “a risen gloriana in the musics of a river,” home being not merely that utilitarian place of vittles and sleep and protection from the 2 plus 2 of nature’s laws, but is of the sacred, or, if not that, crèche for cosmic foundlings, with their need for rootedness and belonging, a deeper nexus within and without time, an appointing of souls with the settees and bric-a-brac of emotional affinity and estrangement the odeon of our would-be dramas require.

We are the cosmos apprehending itself, dead stars’ dust “aggregated ’to lyrist takings of a rain hid once within a shrouded universe,” a keeping of its stases and divagations, its subtleties and bluntness’ of ado…it remembers, weeps, laughs, is haunted and a haunting, loves and hates…but always, always would be more than the sum of its parts; eternity has become aware of solitude and loss, the dying of those-or-that from which purpose flows, and the rounding on time’s law of indifference by some fierce and gentle sweetness, a madness even, a prophet, say, but fate nailing fate to the door of this pattern of force, remonstrance by that which cannot bear the stolid fortune of enigma cap-a-pie.

The last poem in Cup Of Reeling, “Grail,” where a boy is running away from home, on railroad tracks, in a winter spate, concludes by asking (as senescent ripen of the child) what it was he sought, concluding that he found then what he finds now:

Some grail to pour my restless, shapeless feelings in…
They and I alone, looking back(from time to time)
along the way…
Finding always nothing but the past upon a rainy day —

Sing rivulets toward Andromeda, poets might say, knowing that hearts can not find succor in facts devoid of hymns, which may be, finally, that gift and curse the macrocosm gave itself via its primal logic and scatter toward entropy. We, of stardust on the outward billow of creation’s mise en scène, would be evensong and aubade, expectant notes awaiting divine counterpoint, melodic wine, that is, for our chalices, but God’s voice (if God is) dwells in wild descantings of thrushes, or the absent-minded cries of Christmas winds, which to our fathers sang of this, that and nevermore, on the hours of their nativities and pausings beneath lych-gate roofs. Rightly quaffed, a day is a cup of reeling, and we’re inebriates.

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Description

  • Kind: Perfectbound
  • Pages: 102
  • Language: English
  • Date Published: September 2025
  • ISBN 978-1-962847-32-2

Excerpt

FRACTALS

As child, I noticed springs (of course), when time seemed
right-side-out again…
Coats forsaken to closets, mittens to who knew where.
Renascence was mere way of things, like having ten toes,
or hating oats for breakfast…
Not ineffable gush of law, just jonquils crowding crypts,
geese in gossip retrocede…
As if, say, an absent-minded joy was borne by tidal bore
up Fundy Bay.
I felt what luvvies feel, one foot astage, the house eager,
hushed,
In act-one-scene-one of an oft-told tale, familiar lines of
restoration,
Days passing, like shooting stars, through witted fractals
of a stripling…
When from want I fashioned make-believes, and poverty,
transmuted thus,
served its liege as guinea gold a golden boy —

Author

I’m an almost octogenarian, which proves, I guess, that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, but, then, I don’t like opera, so perhaps she has. Since no one told me, I’ve made yet another poetry collection.

At my age, where one clings to the cliff with an unseemly whimper, self grasps for the light, even though so much of one’s literature is alloyed by the sable sinuosities of time bending toward…well…you know…dread possessing a Mona Lisa smile which, I’m sure, becomes a belly laugh behind my back. One doesn’t want to be “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” but suspects he is. Still, one writes on, rather like a rill in rain, or a Nile wandering north through interminable desert…just because one was meant to flow, I reckon, a peculiar streaming through a universe, anonymous motion, perhaps, within the larger whole of cosmic gush, child of that parti pris of the primal Yes. So, dear reader, we are, whether we like it or not, affirmations, essentially, spelled sometimes Noh; one loves or hates life, but emotions’ satellites orbit the cynosure of Yes, be it cherished, disdained or kept in attic trunks for rainy days.

In any case, I’m a poet, a soul blessing, while
remonstrating with, enigma, sort of like a prioress fan dancing.

—Lawrence Cottrell

Additional information

Weight 6.9 oz
Dimensions 9 × 6 × .25 in

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