New poem: "The Promise of Literature"

 

The Promise of Literature

 

Literature is all about story, the more personal

the more satisfying the story, and it’s so easy to fall

in love with literature that it can become an obsessive

passion; but it’s not the stories of literature—

 

Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Jane Ayre,

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,”

the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, Dickinson’s “letter

to the world”— it’s the promise of literature that pulls

the inquiring mind deeper into literature; —

 

And story after story, the search continues for the sacred

piece of knowledge that will pull it all together; but

as obsessive seeker of story’s secret New Zealander short

story writer Katherine Mansfield came to see, as will

everyone obsessed with literature,

 

Literature is not enough to soothe soul’s longing for more

story. But where can one go to fulfill the promise of literature?

“Give me life,” said Sir John Falstaff, and as brilliant as he was,

even the immortal bard failed to resolve the mystery of story.

We live, we die, and “the rest is silence,” said Hamlet;

that’s the promise of literature.