Oh this poem--gorgeous and big and sad and lovely.
AMERICAN SUBLIME by Elizabeth Alexander
(At the same time, American paintings wherein
the biodynamic landscape explodes in flames,
ice, violent sunshine that seems to burn the canvas,
apolcalyptic nature that roils and terrifies.
The Beautiful: small scale, gentle luminosity.
Sublime: territorial, vast, craggy, un-
domesticated, borderless, immense, unknown,
awful, monumental, trascendent, transcending.
Go West and West young man, to blinding snowstorms. Leave
shark-infested waters, shipwrecks without slaves.
Miraculous black holes of color large enough
to blot out the sun, obliterate the unending moans,
to exalt, to take the place of lamentation.)
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