Issue 2 – Summer 2002 – Jonathan Minton

Jonathan Minton

 

Landscape: On Charles Tomlinson

Not knowing where to 
               begin, the eye begins 
                             by chance.
A field opens, articulating 
              space. In a place un-named
                             the eye empties, then grips
shapes suggesting themselves-
              rock tips and slag heaps 
                             rise, and rising, dissolve
into cloud heads delineating
              bird skull and shell, a dispensation
                             not less hospitable
than an Eden, the clarity
              of change before madman 
                           Adam named it
into static certitude.
              In this shifting landscape-
                            exact as the sea, where water 
writes and rewrites shorelines,
              the eye 
                            relates each shape with 
all that it is not,
              distinctions 
                            of point and counter-
point, release, and replenishment-
                a chance to begin 
                             again.

 

 

Jonathan Minton is from Buffalo, NY and has recently published poetry in such journals as Sugar Mule, Moria, Seems, White Pelican, and Apples and Oranges. His chapbook Lost Languages was published by Longleaf Press in 1999. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the poetics program at SUNY-Buffalo.

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