Barry Spacks

With Heart
 
      He strived to win at everything
             to be a God on earth,
 
    wishing for pleasures of elegance –
            that even an everyday teacup might fill
 
      in a dance of slowness, that body move
                  like an unfolding iris, and from such impulse
 
learn IKI, practice of classiness,
      avoidance of tawdry ostentation;
 
            reverence SHISUMI, astringency,
      no blur, no melting sweetness, rot
 
         on the spirit’s palate, and all composed
                  from the ordinary (KARUMI), from
 
            SABI (solitude): brushstrokes spare
      as a loved one’s single cry,
 
                        and hold
               precious YUUGEN, mystery;
 
            and use, in everything, USHIN
                                (with heart).
 
 
 
 
Barry Spacks, known mainly as a poet/teacher has published various novels, stories, three poetry-reading CDs and ten poetry collections while teaching literature and writing at M.I.T. & U C Santa Barbara. Over the years his poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review and hundreds of other journals. His most recent book of poems, FOOD FOR THE JOURNEY, appeared from Cherry Grove in August, 2008. In 2012 Cherry Grove will bring out A BOUNTY OF 84S, a collaboration ping-pong exchange introducing a new short form, “the 84.”
 
 
 
 
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