Troy Casa, poet: A Hard & Noble Patience

CasaChapBio

:
An accomplished classical guitarist, lover of all things Joan of Arc and late night scholar of Henry David Thoreau, poet Troy Casa, has lived in wonderfully strange places like Reno, Nevada, Gahanna, Ohio and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, all the while, poem writing. Currently, he lives with his partner "George" and their two sons, Keats & Kincaide, in Merrimack, New Hampshire. :
:

A Hard & Noble Patience

by David St. John

There is a hard & noble patience

I admire in my friends who are dead

Though I admit there are none of them

I would change places with

For one thing look how poorly they dress

Only one is still beautiful

& that is because

She chose to drown herself in a Swiss lake

fed by a glacier said in local myth

to be a pool of the gods

& when her body was found she was so

Preserved by the icy currents

That even her eyelashes seemed to quiver

Beneath my breath

Though that was only for an instant

Before she was strapped to a canvas stretcher

& loaded into a blue van

Soon I was the only person still standing

At the lake’s edge A man made lonely

By such beauty

A man with less than perfect faith in any God.

from Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems.

Harper:

New York

, 1994

CasaChap1

:
"Casa's work has continued to impress me with its ability to weave together disjointed images and symbols, creating a cohesive and complex tapestry of emotions. The emotional space of the first line becomes an entryway with an unknown destination. It is his unpredictability with imagery that keeps me interested." --Alissa Hall:

Troy Casa, poet