Sticky Monkey Flowers, Monterey Bay

 Blossoms scrambled in the eye of tomorrow, bright little fires outlining the shape of secrecy, actual light of measure wounded by consequence, given color against argument, in favor of remorse as the flower is handled without letting go of its green veins – fragile lines toward the surf hitting shore as if something was thrown out there long ago. When flight kept track of that line of pelicans, there was a roar across the bay, distant white specks in the sky vanishing like the seeds of this nourishment, their cold pardons a combination of infinite movement and the words for the kindest news. Sticky monkey flowers spreading into sunlit nerves, moving in the mist like a distant yellow horizon taking its time coming back. Blossoms lifting, small and untroubled, given their green moisture to fill the eye after the fever breaks, after sands drift into hidden coves of disaster, one lone pelican making it back in time to avoid the shape moving across the plants that twist sand with wind, flower scent with muscle, leaving the unknown out of the garden, the unspoken out of the rising drifts of what has been.

Ray Gonzalez is an American poet, essayist and editor whose work reflects his Mexican heritage and American upbringing. You may read more about him here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ray-gonzalez Sticky Monkey Flowers, Monterey Bay by Ray Gonzalez 

Even in poems that do not directly engage with the border, landscape becomes a palimpsest where no single narrative reigns. A number of poems focus on other writers, artists, and musicians, particularly the American tradition of writers who go west. Though distinct, these tributes resonate with Gonzalez's poetry of place, offering intimate engagements with subject matter that has meant many things to many different people at many different points in time. Such layered dynamics are central in Gonzalez's poetics, where "the riches of the city echo,/ like treason minus desire." (Oct.)

strong focus on immigration and the aggressive clashing of cultures at the Southwest Border.
political, environmental, and criminal issues surrounding immigration still make national headlines.

Sensorial Imagery: tying to the earth, sea (nature), flowers and conflict

visual; tactile; auditory; olfactory

COntext: a quiet bay 

Semantic fields for lexical cohesion: 

body; eyes, nerves, veins, muscle

Flora; blossoms, flowers, seeds, green, plants, scent, garden

conflict; secrecy, consequence, argument, remorse, cold pardon

PERsoNIFICATION; humanising plants, connection to humanity.fragility

Theme: Nature, time

Diction: visceral, deliberate choice of lexical cohesion in linguistics

Tone: brooding, mixed diction that shows a push and pull to amplify interpretation of conflict

structure-Flow: intriguing, a raw stream of consciousness focusing on the moving mind drifting from one concept to another. 

No lyrical line spaces nor isolation of individual words for new layers of meaning, Visual characteristics Dense narrative pretty much binds words into a block pattern keep the poem in place and in pace, which is why it flows like a stream. Cannot start from the middle, have to start from the top, prose-like in its cohesion, words expected to flow continuously.

So it Has to have a potent form of content for the poem to work.

closure to conflict, but not forgetting its significance and its history.  

prose poetry] has given poets the freedom to focus on detail, word choice, movement, fable, perception, and scene while keeping the various aspects of poetry—rhythm, deep imagery, sound, and ideas. Prose poems allow the poet to condense the world into a tiny paragraph that contains huge worlds trying to get out. If I am writing a prose poem, I don’t have to worry about line breaks or stanzas or emphasizing certain words all by themselves. The paragraph is a form itself that does all that for me and really allows the poet and the reader to be immersed in a complete experience that justifies poetic experience, the mysteries of language, and saying it without the distraction of manipulating lines and white space.”

This is what a prose poem does --joins the poetic shadows of deception and clarity with the sunlit, open windows of a nonfictional confrontation with what lies in front of the writer for any reader to see. At this point, I must repeat myself and demand that attention be paid to the fact, once again, that these things are being done in sentences and paragraphs and he prose poct has Said farewell to the line break and stanza in the same manner that Herbert's wall is lifted by the roots of the tree.

The immense waters that line the horizon of Monterey Bay blink toward a distant line of pelicans as they approach the beach. I stand in clusters of sticky monkey flowers and smell the fresh oblivion of a distance only a poet can imagine, capture, and realign on the page. These acts naturally condense into paragraph form because what I see across the bay and the affirming approach of the huge, white birds creates questions whose answers have woven a prose response even before I know I am going to react in that style. The prose poem is suited for this experience because the visual aspects of what I see are lay ers of perception, emotion, and detailed awareness whose weight collapses in carly attempts at the traditional poem. They fall into themselves, perhaps having entered through the little window have been given because the poet standing alone on the beach gathers the immensity of their being and recre ates how they fall upon each other in a coagulating syntax that wants nothing to do with the same, old poetic patterns.

Sticky Monkey Flowers, Monterey Bay is a prose-poem by Texan writer Ray Gonzalez, depicting a raw, personalised sensorial experience of Monterey Bay, overlooking the Californian coastline. The lens utilised by the poet leads to a tangle of moods imbued in flowing prose, influencing the depiction of the otherwise unassuming, innocent scenery. Consequently, the tinted perspective draws attention to an exophoric (and possibly ambiguous) theme of conflict, which also stems from the choice of imagery in diction and magnified through the cohesive form of prose. 

Although the poem paints a serene picture of nature by outlining a landscape with calm visual imagery of flowers (‘blossoms…flower scent’) and slow-flying birds disappearing beyond the horizon (‘line of pelicans…distant white specks in the sky vanishing’), there is a sense of weight and melancholy present in the text. This evocation can be found in select words leaning towards negative connotations, amplified with the usage of lexical cohesion weaving across multiple semantic fields. The phrases in first two sentences: ‘shape of secrecy’, ‘wounded by consequence’, ‘cold pardon’, ‘against argument’, ‘favor of remorse’ invokes traditional implications of strong, mostly unpleasant emotions attributed to the semantic field of conflict. However, this sense of conflict is lifted in an act of healing or recovery at the turning point when ‘blossoms (are seen to be) lifting’, ‘small and untroubled’, after the experiential ‘fever breaks’.

On a less perceptible level, conventionally soothing imagery is worded to evoke dissonancy; the auditory and tactile imagery of waves do not just wash the shore. Contrastingly, the ‘surf hitting shore’ is used, emphasising a harsh imbalance striking to the ear, leading to a more violent representation of nature. This level of subtlety crafts a poem that can feel ambiguous because of its contradictory nature; it does not only have words ascribing to negativity—as said, little pieces of beauty in nature can be seen. With this in mind, the push and pull of diction can be interpreted as a medium to bring forth the overarching plot of a somewhat reluctant closure to conflict, tying into an explanation of the poem’s tonal complexity. 

On a similar note, words in the semantic field of the body are paired or personified with delicate words of floral nature. Words such as ‘Blossoms’ are paired with ‘the eye’ (in ‘eye of tomorrow’…‘fill the eye’), ‘flowers’ with ‘green veins’ (accented with ‘fragile lines’) while also ‘spreading into sunlit nerves’, its ‘flower scent with muscle’. This deliberate juxtaposition of images provides an intricate perspective, illuminating the link between the frailty of both mother nature and human nature.

Moving into structure, the poem takes the form of a condensed paragraph on the page, which complements and builds on the compounding interpretations of conflict and reconciliation. The narrative in paragraph form binds words into a block pattern, keeping the poem in place and in pace, which is why it flows from scene to scene; the reader is attracted to read through in a linear fashion from the top.

Intriguingly, there are no lyrical lines, typographical spaces, nor isolation of individual words for a more comprehensive approach to layered meaning. Instead, the paragraph utilises its lack of stanzas and line breaks (that further defines ideas), inviting readers to re-evaluate the plethora of meanings from the source—Gonzalez’s perception of nature. In this manner, its prose flows like a raw stream of consciousness, as if the poet is focusing on both the moving eye and moving mind, providing readers with the smooth drifting from one concept to another, e.g. tying ‘green veins (to the idea of) fragile lines’, and ‘flowers’ linking to a ‘distant yellow horizon’ by the bridging of ‘sunlit nerves’. 

With lexical interweaving and transitions for a cohesive experience, this style of structure helps to represent visual characteristics in a way that allows readers to leap into the poet’s creative process of composing the narrative, allowing them a chance to resonate in a personal level with the piece. In essence, the poem’s prose form is an effort to reduce the filters of structure, getting close as possible to the rawness of the creative process—a commendable pursuit of truth in poetry.

Indeed, the poet’s dexterity at permeating an entire plot of conflict into the text is evident in his masterful usage of structural cohesion paired with selective diction. Though the exact source point of conflict stays untouched throughout the text, the emotions Gonzalez evokes are strongly felt. In effect, the story of change and thus, the story of conflict, stays forever present in nature.