O, Lydia!
Karl Constantine FOLKES 1935 (Portland)
Poet “El Cortés”
in courtship with “El Otro.”
Latina tango!
The tango of life
in search of knowing one’s Self;
the Self of psyche.
The Self of wholeness.
The Self of our completion;
of our body and our soul.
Body and one’s soul,
striving to find union;
dancing together.
A self-searching dance
of the body and the soul;
coming together.
Coming together,
in dance of exploration;
to discover Self.
A declaration,
like voice of an oracle;
reaching out to all.
“Poet, know thyself!”
That is a poet’s calling.
Self-exploration.
That is the appeal
that poets have for others;
to explore the Self.
It comes by writing;
the art of self-mirroring;
as self-reflection.
Poetry is search.
Poetry is therapy;
for the human soul.
The search for healing
of the body and spirit;
to come together.
So we delve within.
It is a chthonic search;
exploring psyche.
It is a tango.
A dance with one’s own psyche;
to find union.
Poet “El Cortés”
in courtship with “El Otro.”
Latina Tango.
About this poem
An Ode to Our Inner Taino Selves. “Un refrán: El que no tiene ‘dinga tiene de Inca.” This haiku poem, “O, Lydia!” is composed in honor of Lydia Cortés, a Puerto Rican educator and colleague of mine for many years and a trilingual poet (English, Spanish, Italian) who, like the Argentine poet, Jorge Luis Borges, employs the phrase, “El Cortés,” as an eponym to identify her criolla poetic persona, similar to Borges’s use of the phrases “El Otro” and “Borges y yo” to identify his literary muse in his essays and short-story writing. more »
Written on December 13, 2021
Submitted by karlcfolkes on December 13, 2021
Modified by karlcfolkes on April 26, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 175 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | aBC def xgh hgb xhB Bge gxx dig xxe iig jfh ixb xjf cfg aBC |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,012 |
Words | 222 |
Stanzas | 15 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
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"O, Lydia!" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/115727/o,-lydia!>.
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