Sunnylyn Thibodeaux also sets her work against Wordsworth, but this time the old bard is riding the wave of a different hyperbole, the elements of which make cameos in Thibodeaux's piece. Proteus wears a mask (the idea itself is interesting) of a crisply creased dandy (and over tipper?) posing as a model of integrity, and Triton becomes the series of trumpeters playing "Miles to go" down the American highway perhaps. Sunnylyn, a San Francisco poet, stands on her "pleasant lea" imagining a quite different consolation for modern indifference to the dynamic possibilities of imagination and the spirit. Instead of a gesticulated exaggeration, she seems to find the long song of America yet blowing in the distance, Cassidy & Kerouac still shifting through the gears, Snyder thumbing the horizon. "There is no error in imagining." You bet.
Exceeding Humanity
--Sunnylyn Thibodeaux
technology has no part
in the poem. machines
generations can’t settle on
in seconds that keep moving
side to side
my left ear has been numb
since April. the summer fog
lives there with a raven & an elm
this is a battle of integrity—
a shoe shine, a vertical crease
a fifty doused in Canoe
I wrote out the inconsistencies
in post cards, sounds
that recognize the daydreams
we are not looking for technology
but it brings us dinner & info
we cannot live without. I prefer
blind windows and Thursdays
a summer that burns my skin
There is no error in imagining—
surrender to prized truths
the language of sunsets
bleached out driftwood washing
ashore just south of the Triangle
through myth & text
the highway lines with trumpeters
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The World Is Too Much With Us
--William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
*****************************************
Sunnylyn Thibodeaux is from New Orleans and has lived in San Francisco for the past decade. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Palm to Pine, was just published by Bootstrap Press in April. She is the author of many small books including 20/20 Yielding (Blue Press, 2005), Room Service Calls (Lew Gallery, 2009) and United Untied (Private Edition, 2008). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Amerarcana, Back Room Live, Big Bell, Big Bridge, Blue Book, Drunken Boat, Generación, Greetings: Everyday Magic, Lit, Polis: Resistance, and Try!. She co-edits Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions.
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