This poem came about after a trip to the city to visit a friend. I remember walking through the Mission and having strange dystopian-gray images in my head that I wanted to paint on a paper canvas in a monochromatic style. It was like I was still caught in a pandemic dream as life danced around my dripping shadows.
Anuel Rodriguez on "The Mission in Grisaille" |
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"Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric"
"The pieces became a collection of movements in the historical present that I witnessed in my own life and in the lives of others in both very public and very private arenas. I went from thinking about the pieces as meditations on events to laments in real time. Eventually, I began to understand the writing as emotional expressions of moments in time and not so much records of a singular life. These were lyrics holding historical affect. Loneliness and violence were flooding our days, or so I felt."
via POETS & WRITERS |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Talin Tahajian on Language as Form
"All the affordances of the medium of language come together to realize the musical and narrative sequences of this poem, which taught me the fundamentals of rhythm and pacing. 'Half-Light' is one of the first poems I memorized. It is a 'pre-existing form,' as Bidart describes across his poetry and interviews, that I inhabit almost every time I try to write, mostly unbeknownst to my more conscious enterprises." |
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