I must have owned the book for at least five years, since it's a 1999 first edition, but I could swear I never read a word from Jaqueline Osherow's Dead Men's Praise until late last night. Wasted years. Here are a few lines from "Views of La Leggenda della Vera Croce," a long poem about a spur-of-the-moment trip to see a series of paintings including one in which a family of Jews—father, mother, two children—are burned alive when the father is accused of desecrating the Host:
I need—as in Arezzo—to close my eyes,
To stop these flames and likenesses from spinning
From the painted to the identical real landscape,
But it's worse with my eyes closed; now they're careening
Around my tight-shut eyelids' burning map—
That red you get when you shut your eyes in sunlight
Consuming the entire extent of Europe—
A continent notoriously profligate
Of knees, heads, fingers, elbows, thighs.
Wasn't this Uccello's greatest insight:
That if you gradually habituate the eyes
They will be capable of watching anything?
I wonder if this came to God as a surprise.
She has a new book available, With a Moon in Transit.
7:14:30 PM 
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