Naked Beauty

In John C. Goodman's oscillating, never still anti-tableau of shifting visions "horizons unfold/like paper birds." Constantly observant among glints of experience and language inserted into and evolving out of the italicized "I" of these poems, it seems the transient focus of "naked beauty" exists in flux (what the poet himself calls "stream of experience") even as life proceeds on a ravishing scale "looking under postage stamps." Anywhere word glitters against word, image against image, each apt metaphor more penultimate than the last. We experience the moment and move on, dazzled, exhilerated, perpetually standing at the threshold of a glad new existence. Goodman is surpassed by none when it comes to epiphanic indulgences. He succors the pathos of the "I" of the self accusatory, the joke of the self deprecating, as though life (much like these poems) was painted in swift impasto and never forgotten.