SEEDS OF BEATITUDE: Poems 2019-2021

As a spiritual son, Patrick offers the service of asking ultimate-like questions; while at the same time learning that, poor wretch, he cannot save himself. Compared to 2018, this anthology has been written in more darkness and pain. Patrick was then still asking the ultimate-like questions, but with more gusto, for himself, family and friends, and society at large. A close reading suggests that Patrick began identifying with CL, drifted away somewhat after other Presences, inherited a more divided mind, but always sought, in hope, homeostasis. The comparison yields then that the homeostasis required cannot be manufactured; it can only be cried out for. Over the three years, Patrick eventually gravitates towards two forms of poetry. The first is what I call a “royal sonnet” which is a sonnet except in rhymed couplets (AABBCCDD…), just as “heroic verse” was in epic poetry. The second “form” is no set form, just a short poem that is its own form. So eventually the poems begin to take one of these two options. In reading poetry, if you discover the form of the poem, then you also discover much more meaning, for every adherence or deviation from the form is another detail of the meaning (hopefully, please be charitable). The “form” follows the “function” of the poem: the way the poem is written corresponds to what the poem is trying to say or ask. Have fun!