Study for the World's Body

Study for the World’s Body is a 1994 collection of poems by American poet David St. John. Alongside selections from the author’s first four collections—Hush (1976); The Shore (1980); No Heaven (1985); and Terraces of Rain (1991)— Study includes new poems in a section entitled “Merlin.” The poems of “Merlin” pay homage to the work of the symbolist poets, particularly French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé, a change of direction which reviewers judged “likely to surprise St. John’s readers, new and old” (Los Angeles Times).

Reviewers of Study also noted that the chronological organization of the book has the uncanny effect of seeming to move backward in historical time, as St. John’s style becomes increasingly influenced by the great poets of the nineteenth century and less preoccupied with the stylistic innovations of twentieth-century poetry. The collection opens with a selection from St. John’s 1976 debut collection Hush. Like much of the poetry of that era, Hush revels in obscurity and circularity, in leading the reader on a fascinating journey to nowhere in particular. Nevertheless, themes emerge, particularly sex and desire, parenthood, and grief. The collection’s title poem mourns the death of a child:

“Nights
Return you to me for a while, as sleep returns sleep
To a landscape ravaged
& familiar. The dark watermark of your absence, a hush.”



The selection of poems from 1980’s The Shore single out the themes of sex and grief, refining them into a tone by turns erotic and elegiac. These themes are united by loss: the loss of love and the loss of the beloved. Although stylistically the poems are playfully postmodern, they are unrelentingly melancholic. Not only the title poem but all of the poems in this selection are shot through with coastal imagery, emphasizing the sea as a symbol of boundless sadness and longing: “Even the sea sings one octave in the past.”

The poems from No Heaven mark the emergence of a new theme in St. John’s poetry: Europe, and particularly the cultural heritage of Italy. Love and desire remain the central theme however: the collection obsesses over women and beauty. The title poem opens in an Italianate church, “walking the curved white stucco arch,” before becoming a bedroom scene: “I’ll smooth the delicate line & lace of sweat/That trims your hair’s damp open fan/Along the folded pillow.”

Terraces of Rain continues the poet’s interest in Italy (the collection is subtitled “An Italian Sketchbook”), focusing on Italian modernism. Grief and desire are present here too. The title poem is an elegy for Italian modernist filmmaker (and poet) Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was murdered during an encounter with a prostitute in the impoverished district of Rome where he grew up.



Study’s final section, “Merlin,” comprises new poems. The first of these sets the tone for the rest with an epigraph from Paul Valery’s essay on Mallarmé: “The definition of beauty is easy; it is what leads us to desperation.” The poem that follows is steeped in Mallarmé’s style:

“I know the moon is troubling.
Its pale eloquence is always such a meddling,
Intrusive lie. I know the pearl sheel of the sheets
Remains the screen I’ll draw back against the night.
…
I know the orchid smell of your skin
The way I know the blackened path to the marina,
When gathering clouds obscure the summer moon,
Just as I know the chambered heart where I begin.
I know too the lacquered jewel box, its obsidian patina.”

Another poem in this section, “A Fan Sketched with Silver Egrets” bears the subtitle “Hommage a Mallarme.”



Rome re-appears in several poems, trailing Catholic symbolism, notably “Lucifer in Starlight”:

“And Nico
Pulled herself close to me, her mouth almost
Touching my mouth, as she sighed, “Look . . . ,”
And deep within the pupil of her left eye,
…
At the small aperture of the black telescope of the pupil,
A tiny, dangling crucifix—
Silver, lit by the ragged shards of starlight, reflecting
In her as quietly as pain, as simply as pain.”

However, the author’s native California is a setting for these poems too. “Los Angeles, 1954” deploys the melancholy tone of the symbolists “at a place/Called Club Zombie,/A black cabaret that the police like/To raid now and then.”



Desire and mourning remain central. The collection’s final two poems are laid out side-by-side, as if each is a commentary on the other. The first, “The Body of Desire,” is the collection’s most straightforwardly erotic poem:

“Seven
Turns to me, lips
Lit in the reddish dawn light—
Wild mouth of a fallen poppy—
Ash-scarlet, brash. Naked
Beneath the sky’s low dome
Of shadow. Her fingers solemnly
Tunneling my hair, my own mouth
Working the hymn of her ribs.
…
Some nights she’d rub
My body raw with limes, with myrrh.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the page is an elegy, “Of Time & the Body,” written for a friend of St John’s, a dance critic:



“The presence of a death
So much our own
It wears a lover’s face,
The landscape of the lover’s
Worldly body; where even
The sunlight, as they say,
Dances along the water
Of the fountain”

Ultimately, the poet’s two great themes lie side by side, unreconciled. Study for the World’s Body has been praised as an ideal introduction to the work of David St. John, an acclaimed poet who also teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. It has also been celebrated in its own right, securing a nomination for the National Book Award in the year of its publication.