The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Bill Van Buskirk serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2025.
SPELL FOR ENCHANTING AN AUDIENCE
In the rustle of our gathering
I see myself in you, feel
the hard throb buried in my neck,
listen for yours. This syncopated silence,
rising from our bodies like a scent,
thickens in the ear as the house lights dim.
Tonight, we meet as shadows, seek
to find ourselves in something grand,
feel our way to a common promontory,
a shared abyss—closer than breathing,
fading like echo. Your gaze
fixes me, blinds me, makes me real—
here, we find our stake in darkness,
lose ourselves in all we chant about:
stars that burn through time whether or not we name them,
song-wrought faun let slipped in the mystery of our common air,
the body’s ceaseless cry for the myth of its death.
For these we tear our careful minds
to shreds, dissolve into an evening,
ripple, vibrate as our thousand-year-old
language rises up—
incarnate, muscular, dangling
back into the black hatchery of myth…
tentacle, root, tail,
curl, grope, grasp
old woman in the woods begins to chant—
new moon, old moon, blood on fire!
The space between us opens up—rushing wind…
This poem is not about a spell. This poem is a spell (or tries to be). It relies on poetry’s capacity to mesmerize, hypnotize, transport—to draw poet and listeners into a magical world of talk that lies outside their day-jobs. Its ambition is to evoke a shared trance that alters the senses and scrambles the mind.
In the rustle of our gathering: The poem starts out with the audience arriving in the theatre and the poet on stage. Immediately, a kind of sense-play kicks into gear. The poet hears their rustle, and he sees himself in it. For him this is not just any audience. It is a kind of mirror or echo chamber in which he sees himself, hears and feels his heartthrob, and listens for the heartthrob of the audience. He aspires to a most intimate connection—to join these new arrivals in the music of the beating heart.
This syncopated silence rises from our bodies like a scent/ thickens in the ear as the house lights dim. This is the poem’s first impossibility, the first of many to follow. The poet, in fact, cannot see the collective heartbeat of the audience. He certainly cannot hear it. Neither can he smell it. It does not actually touch his ear. But through its diction—the throb in the neck, the syncopation of silence, and its thickening in the ear—the poem transforms physical senses into imaginary presences. If the magic is working, if the presences it evokes are immanent enough, the poem will draw the audience into a trancelike (hallucinatory?) moment that opens it into a heightened sense of life. Thus, the mere moment becomes more than itself. It becomes a spell that joins reader and poet in a way that is imagined, felt, embodied, real—and (perhaps) impossible.
So, the poem takes aim at something big. As the reader continues on, perhaps a doubt arises. Perhaps this poem is a strange duck that makes no sense beyond its quacking. But to doubt is better than to reject. It will be a test of the poem’s strength if it can pull the reader more deeply into itself, into a mind state lost to a culture that rushes past the dreams and possibilities inherent in its poems.
Tonight we meet as shadows: The poem’s next job is to define the audience as a community, to instigate a meeting that’s beyond a mere gathering of bodies. It is a gathering of seekers who have come to the reading to find new versions of themselves, souls maybe, or shadows. And in this meeting, there is a common purpose—we seek to find ourselves in something grand. But this meeting, this transit into shadow, is not without risk. Participants are feeling their way to a common promontory, a cliff that overlooks an abyss. Audience and poet share this risk—of falling over the edge of who they think they are. Yet this too is part of their intimacy. It is closer than breathing. It fades like echo. It is embodied yet out of reach.
Your gaze fixes me, blinds me, makes me real: Here the poet testifies to the poem’s power. It takes hold of him. Its trance changes him as well as the audience. He takes shape in their gaze. It fixes him, blinds him. It is only in their gaze that he can be real, that he can be the poet he longs to be. Together then, audience and poet find their stake in darkness—lose themselves in a common 3-fold chant: stars that burn through time, song-wrought faun, body’s ceaseless cry.
For these we tear our careful minds to shreds: Poet and audience cherish this chant. It provides a reason to tear their careful minds to shreds. Together, they dissolve into an evening. This dilution is part of a joint performance. Poet and audience are claimed by the mystery embedded in a thousand-year-old-language that is incarnate, muscular, dangling back into the black hatchery of myth. In the end there is no poet, no audience—they have de-evolved into animal gesture and chant (tentacle, root, tail / curl, grope, grasp).
So who is speaking? Somewhere there is an old woman (a witch?). There is always a question when it comes to witches—good witch? Bad witch? The poem does not explain. Yet its passion carries us into new territory where risk and mystery hover in the space between its lines. And in the end, it comes back to the present moment with a thud. There is, once again, only poet and audience, and the space between them—rushing wind. The spell is cast. The performance begins.
Bill Van Buskirk’s poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Mad Poets’ Review and many others. His chapbook, Everything that’s Fragile is Important, received honorable mention in the Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook contest sponsored by the Comstock Review (2007). His book, This Wild Joy that Thrills Outside the Law, won the Joie de vivre contest sponsored by the Mad Poets’ Review. (2010). His latest book is The Poet’s Pocket Guide to Steady Employment (2023).