Humoresque

"Humoresque" is a chapbook by E. Tracy Grinnell, published by Blood Pudding Press. (Tracy is the publisher of Litmus Press.) It's a series of Sapphic quatrains circling around Moreau's painting of Sappho. It's a quick and beautiful read that also deserves a second reading right away. It made me smile the "archaic smile" that Grinnell refers to (doubling the title of A. E. Stallings's first book, Archaic Smile), with its "tangled" music:

Betrayed or awash in a mere while tides are
Slow to tempest, slower unleashing songs of
Tangled instruments and the faceless cries for
Precision, collapse

The sequence's "operatic I" puts a new spin on Descartes: "I think therefore I cannot see undoubtless."