THINKING OF RICHARD HOWARD IN THE BUCKET

Like Most Revelations

Richard Howard - 1929-

• 
• 
  

(after Morris Louis)

It is the movement that incites the form,
discovered as a downward rapture—yes,
it is the movement that delights the form,
sustained by its own velocity.  And yet

it is the movement that delays the form
while darkness slows and encumbers; in fact
it is the movement that betrays the form,
baffled in such toils of ease, until

it is the movement that deceives the form, 
beguiling our attention—we supposed
it is the movement that achieves the form.
Were we mistaken?  What does it matter if

it is the movement that negates the form?
Even though we give (give up) ourselves
to this mortal process of continuing,
it is the movement that creates the form.

When I  read this poem by Richard Howard it both pleased me and dismayed me. 

 I  began to read it again and first  I was stopped by the fact that the poet announces that it is "after Morris Louis."  I knew that Louis was a painter and an abstract expressionist but I did not know much more than  that.

The poem has always seemed to me to hold some profound truth-- LIKE MOST REVELATIONS.

The poem keeps declaring something about the relationship between movement and form and them questions or even negates  the declaration. 

The lines that I kept coming back to are in the  last stanza :

Even though we give (give up) ourselves
to this mortal process of continuing,
it is the movement that creates the form.
For the past month I have been thinking a  great deal about Richard Howard. I met  him  in the late 80s when I was teaching  at the University of Cincinnati and he was a visiting Elliston Poet.  We became  good friends and even team-taught a course together.
Richard is a sublime master of wordplay. 
Notice just in the lines I quoted .  He notes  that we both give and give up  in what he then characterizes as  "this mortal process of continuing."
 What a  deep way to characterize what life and time  do to us all --they  both  unfold and  mature us and  finally end us.