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One Beauty

 

whereof

made

 

millions

strange

 

every

every

 

one

every

 

describe

the

 

is

you

 

all

of

 

&

you

 

speak

spring

 

one

beauty

 

other

bounty

 

you

every

 

you

part

 

like

none




Michael Schiavo

levelheaded: One Beauty

 

Visually, Michael Schiavo’s “One Beauty” is reminiscent of a double helix, or, from another angle, a series of small waves. In the opening couplet, two simple words lend themselves to several complex interpretations. Read as a continuation of the title, the first two lines suggest that this “One Beauty” is that which “made” “millions strange”—the way, say, a romantic love might make all other potential mates pale in comparison, or how a striking visual image can reshape one’s view of the world.

 

Alternatively, if we split the poem’s first word into its component words (“where” “of”), these lines suggest that whenever something is “of” another thing, the process of creation has occurred. This is a strange concept when we really think about it; to what extent is creation even possible if everything is made up of other things that already exist in some form?

 

Over and over again, Schiavo challenges us to think about words and how they mean. Because of the attention called to language by these one-word lines, the poem can be read as commentary on the art of poetry itself. In stanza five, for example, the lines “describe / the” read as a command impossible to carry out.

 

While these lines show the shortcomings of poetry as a language-based art form, they make wider metaphysical suggestions about the nature of art, beauty, and existence in a world of recycled, re-contextualized, and reused parts. “[E]very / every” exists in relation to “one” thing and in relation to “every[thing].” A line later, being itself is embodied by a “you” in the line “is / you.”  In the next line, we’re reminded again that everything in existence comes from somewhere (“all / of”).

 

Perhaps the goal of all poetry, the goal of living itself is to “speak / spring”—to be organic, ever blooming, natural. Schiavo reminds us though that when there is “one / beauty” it is in some way related to the “other / bounty.” The double helix is the product of two parents’ DNA. Even so, a wave, as closely as it resembles the one before and after it, is in some way “like none.”

 

 

– The Editors