Alarming Beauty of the Sky

I've been reading a book of poems, The Alarming Beauty of the Sky, by Leslie Monsour. Thank you, choriamb, for alerting me to this poet's existence.

I was very struck by the final poem of the book, Parking Lot.

There's a technical aspect of this poem I wanted to remark on, because you don't see it very often. I didn't recognize it right away, myself. Consider the end-words of her first 4 lines:

power
fire
prowl
aisle

Do these words rhyme? Of course, if you chopped the endings of the words off, they would rhyme just fine:

pow - fie - prow - ai

So you might think she was doing vowel-rhymes. Next you notice that those chopped off endings match up something like this:

er - er - el -el

So now you realize she has done what is known as an "analyzed rhyme":

power - fire - prowl - aisle

You hear the effect, but to see how it works you need to analyze it.

My favorite lines from the poem are these:

"I try to memorize impermanence:
The strange, alarming beauty of the sky,
The white moon's path, the twilight's deep, blue eye.
I want to stay till everything makes sense."

That reminds me of something I feel sometimes, when looking at something awesome and sensing that I'm on the verge of grasping deep truth.

I will admit that this particular poem exhibits an opposition between the ethereal heavens and actual life in its grasping and technological manifestations. This doesn't really resonate for me personally, but I think she captures it exquisitely.

Leslie Monsour
is the source
of many a tour
de force.