Patricia Fargnoli (born 1937) graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, CT, The Hartford College for Women, and the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. She is a retired psychotherapist. Her first book of poetry, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press, 1999), was chosen by Mary Oliver for the May Swenson Poetry Award and published when she was 62 years old. This was followed by four other collections, including Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005) which won the Jane Kenyon Literary Book Award and, most recently, Then, Something (Tupelo Press, 2009). She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and the Robert Frost Literary Award and was Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from December 2006 until March of 2009.,She says her real work of learning to write came in her mid-thirties when she enrolled in a graduate class with poet Brendan Galvin. She teaches both privately and in the Lifelong Learning Program at Keene State College.
When asked "What is most difficult about poetry for you", she replied, "To write the next poem."
When asked "What is most difficult about poetry for you", she replied, "To write the next poem."
In the wake of Easter and Passover, her poem "Prepositions Toward a Definition of God" asks the most aching and ineluctable questions that have risen in all hearts. Rainer Maria Rilke could not ask them so beautifully -- which says a lot about the power of Fargnoli's poetic gift, and why Mary Oliver, considered one of America's best poets, picks her out for honors. But Rilke might answer her question differently ---
"...Because if not God, then what in place of
near the firebombed willow,
beneath the quilt that tosses the dead to the sky,
beside the still waters and the loud waters
and among the walking among??"
He might say: "Adam chose to leave, not stay, in the Garden and remake the world with his own labor; He chose Eve, whom God barely noticed, and birth, for immortality."
Prepositions Toward a Definition of God
Beneath of course the sky,
in the sky itself,
over there among the beach plum hedges,
over the rain and the beyond and
beyond the beyond of,
under the suitcases of the heart,
from the back burners of the universe.
Here inside at the table, there outside the circus,
within the halls of absence,
across the hanging gardens of the wind,
between the marshland sedges, around the edges
of tall buildings going up
and short buildings coming down.
Of energy and intelligence,
of energy-- and if not intelligence then what?
Ahead of the storm and the river, behind the storm and the river.
Prior to the beginning of dust, unto the end of fire.
Above the wheelbarrows and the chickens.
Underneath the fast heart of the sparrow,
on top of the slow heart of the ocean--
against the framework of all the holy books.
Despite the dogmas that rain down on the centuries.
Concerning the invisible, and unnamable power,
in spite of the terror
considering the spirit,
because of something in the body that wants to be lifted.
Because if not God, then what in place of
near the firebombed willow,
beneath the quilt that tosses the dead to the sky,
beside the still waters and the loud waters
and among the walking among?
first published in "The Massachussets Review"
