Gary often tells me he thinks American poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) is great writer--though he admits he's been trying to read Patchen'sThe Journal of Albion Moonlight (1941) for a decade and still hasn't finished it.
Yesterday he handed me a book of Patchen's Selected Poems published by New Directions in 1946. He said he thought I might enjoy it. I did, and I found this in it (from a poem called "For Whose Adornment"):
For whose adornment the mouths
Of roses open in languorous speech;
And from whose grace the trees of heaven
Learn their white standing
