Letter from an Aging Aesthete to the Gentleman from Venice Who Complains That "The World Is Deceived with Ornament"
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Letter from an Aging Aesthete to the Gentleman from Venice Who Complains That "The World Is Deceived with Ornament"
Hiss if you will, and doubtless youshall, at its gloss and its baubles,how awful its paint, how tawdrythe lack of restraint in its drapingand fringes, its froth of immoderategauderies—however, that said, I likeI admit it, the lustrous, undulant tossat times of a cloth over some dullish,more corrugate bit and cannot help but praise a displayso expertly placed at front of a stigmaor on top of a mottle, a plushwash of gilding thatlivens a leaden veneer. These verseson beauty unvarnished which rouges [End Page 564] with roses and rinses with dew-drops baring all of allpossible flaws to the lightare hatched up by liars disguisinga pageant of pock-marks and cockles, then gobbleddown whole by those whose discernmentcontinues unburdened by fact,and so I contend that there isbillet and berth still in thisworld for the mercy, un- slurred, of acomfortable ruffle or lappetedmantle or tassel or two andI defy you to find lawfulcause for alarm or to prove contrecoupthat ever arose out of damaskor sequin or of crystalline thing. Therefore Iimplore you for peace and for gracein such your future speech andwill answer these terms with nose un-upturned when faced in your [End Page 565] presence with explicitpimple or stippled façadecomely only to the sightof a sparing and mosttolerant God. [End Page 566]
HAILEY LEITHAUSER's debut collection, Swoop (Graywolf, 2013), won the Poetry Foundation's Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature. She has recent or forthcoming work in Agni, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry, and The Yale Review. She lives in Silver Spring, MD, where she occasionally teaches at the Bethesda Writer's Center and the West Chester Poetry Conference.
