Sunday, November 5, 2023 Three Poems by David C. Tirrell
Should a Flower Beset
As much as the dying rose
Would open up
It stands to sink nearby
Without the holding,
Variant inside
Impossible with thorns
The striking too
Severe to leave
A heart of earth
To find a human day
Untitled
So long as when it was
the first just trying
To convey beginnings
to or end
With nothing in sight
Except the
plumed bird
Who’s always there
as much as the
other, wind
That carries him
Past the city out
Upon the open
earth
they decided not
to speak of it as
Though it was
Beauty over them
through & through.
While She Might Sleep
Rest lightly love,
For I have nothing else to mind;
Rest lightly on the times we left behind
Since there is nothing here
To be but you
& Nothing else to love but vagrant pulses
Of this night, this hour.
If I were the wind
I would not care to move
As such; but take the kiss to bed again
Or have such as does a thing like this,
And is so far as farther and now more than much,
The faster that we go from where we are,
The firmer that we prove.
About the Poet
David C. Tirrell was a widely-respected poet in Buffalo and on the University at Buffalo poetry scene beginning in his undergraduate days during the Charles Olson/Robert Creeley era at UB the mid to late 1960’s, when he was primarily a writer of lyrical sonnets. During the 1970’s, he transitioned to more avant-garde work, though largely retaining his lyricism and his classic meter and diction. He did his Master’s thesis under Leslie Fiedler and Jack Clarke, published work in Further Studies Magazine, Inc. & Ink, Farthar, intent, The Buffalo News and House Organ. During his life, he self-published three chapbooks, “The Dublin Sonnets,” “The Lion and the Rose,” and “Pieces of Eight”; and had a full-length collection called “The Half House Poems” published by Michael Boughn’s Shuffleoff Books in 1990.
His critical studies of Keats and Blake, and his lifelong reading of linguistic philosophers—especially Jacques Derrida—informed David’s practice of poetry in its awareness that language is pliant and chaotic, and meaning is never fixed in a way that is final and determinative.
Tirrell died in 2012, leaving behind a considerable body of unpublished poems and drawings, three sets of which he had configured into chapbook form.
In October, Buffalo Legacy Publications published those three chapbooks—”Phantoms of the Mirror,” “Once Past Eden,” and “The Darker Choruses”—in a set of limited editions featuring Tirrell’s own drawings for the covers. The entire three chapbook set is available for $15 and an additional $3.50 shipping and handling if ordered by email from buffalolegacypublications@gmail.com.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.