Shared in three parts over the course of three weeks, Theodora Allen offers a series of readings of selected poems by Oscar Wilde, James Tate, and Richard Brautigan. From notions of reckoning, introspection, eternity, and temporality, these poems share themes with Allen’s own painting practice.
This week Allen reads Consumed (1970) by James Tate, a poem on introspection and reckoning. Tate reflects on the strangeness which results from isolation, during which mundane tasks and fleeting hopes can produce a moment of existential inquiry.
Consumed
James Tate, 1970
Why should you believe in magic,
pretend an interest in astrology
or the tarot? Truth is, you are
free, and what might happen to you
today, nobody knows. And your
personality may undergo a radical
transformation in the next half
hour. So it goes. You are consumed
by your faith in justice, your
hope for a better day, the rightness
of fate, the dreams, the lies,
the taunts. —Nobody gets what he
wants. A dark star passes through
you on your way home from
the grocery: never again are you
the same—an experience which is
impossible to forget, impossible
to share. The longing to be pure
is over. You are the stranger
who gets stranger by the hour.