January 14, 2006

• A cool link of the_boen's 'Cos I likes me some poems But writing them takes time 'Cos it's sometimes very difficult to get them to rhyme
• But before they can finish it, they have to wait for that Someone who is always looking to look away. Only then can they strike the million keys that spell humiliation and grief, which are the great subjects of Monkey Literature and not, as some people still believe, the banana and the tire. Sad indeed. I think I might do the 180 days - High School is about my level.
• Hail, Poetry! Thu heav'n-born maid! Thou gildest e'en the pirate's trade. Hail, flowing fount of sentiment, All hail! All hail, divine emollient! It'll take me a while to work through all those links, but it'll be a pleasure, too. I may do the 180 days meself, even though I'm disappointed to not see much older stuff on the list. I guess kids do get some of that in their regular curriculum, though, and having the newer work makes the point that it's still a living art.
• Bookmarked to enjoy for quite some time. Great link!
• Go, bone! The Poetry 180 link is rewarding.
• Poetry Archive has poets reading their own stuff (Real Player) - worth a visit if you haven't seen/heard it already.
• Teaching the Ape to Write Poems They didn't have much trouble teaching the ape to write poems: first they strapped him into the chair, thern tied the pencil around his hand (the paper had already been nailed down). Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder and whispered into his ear: 'You look like a god sitting there. Why don't you try writing something?' -- James Tate
• Koko banana kitty
• When You Go Away When you go away the wind clicks around to the north The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls Showing the black walls The clock goes back to striking the same hour That has no place in the years And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes In one breath I wake It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth I remember that I am falling That I am the reason And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy -- W.S. Merwin
• HOME TO ROOST Kay Ryan The chickens are circling and blotting out the day. The sun is bright, but the chickens are in the way. Yes, the sky is dark with chickens, dense with them. They turn and then they turn again. These are the chickens you let loose one at a time and small -- various breeds. Now they have come home to roost -- all the same kind at the same speed.
• The Poets March in Washington What do we want? Immortality! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Immortality! When do we want it? Now! What do we want? Immortality! When do we want it? Now! -- James Cummins
• How I Became Impossible I was born shy, congenitally unable to do anything profitable, to see anything in color, to love plums, with a marked aversion to traveling around the room, which is perfectly normal in infants. Who wrote this? were my my first words. I did not like to be torched. More snow fell than was able to melt, I became green-eyed and in due time traveled to other countries where I formed opinions on hard, cold, shiny objects and soft, warm, nappy things. Late in life I began to devlop a passion for persimmons and was absolutely delighted when a postcard arrived for the recently departed. I became recalcitrant, spending more and more time with my rowboat. All my life I thought polar bears and penguins grew up together playing side by side on the ice, sharing the same vista, bits of blubber and innocent lore. One day I read a scientific journal: there are no penguins at one pole, no bears on the other. These two, who were so long intimates in my mind, began to drift apart, each on his own floe, far out into the glacial seas. I realized I was becoming impossible, more and more impossible, and that one day it really would be true. -- Mary Ruefle
• This is from tonight's Writers Almanac. I lubs it! "Explaining Relativity to the Cat" by Jennifer Gresham Imagine, if you will, three mice. Contrary to what you have heard, they are not blind but are in a spaceship traveling near the speed of light. This makes them unavailable for your supper, yes. So these mice, traveling near the speed of light, appear quite fat, though there is no cheese aboard. This is simply a distortion of mass, because the mass of a mouse is nothing more than a bundle of light, and vice versa. I see how this might imply mice are in the light fixtures, undoubtedly a problem, so let me try again. If two people attempted to feed you simultaneously, no doubt a good situation, but you were on a train traveling near the speed of light, the food would appear unappetizing, falling to the plate in slow motion, an extended glob of protein that never smelled good, if you ask me, train or no. The affinity of the food for the plate, what we call gravity, is really just a stretch in the fabric of a space-time continuum, what happens when you have sat in a seat too long, perhaps on this very train. Oh kitty, I know how you hate to travel and the journey must have made you tired. Come now, lick your coat one more time -and let us make haste -from this strange city -of light and fantastic dream.
• Hysteria I know I know I took in too much but the tree was there with its enticing skins, the garden intolerably quiet, the snake so colorful, resolute, I thought I could just fondle the fruit ... but now, Please God, I want to go back to the beginning of the day so I can say no thank you: it's all considerably more than I can handle. -- Susan Hahn
• Examples The last Campbell's tomato soup can of the twentieth century is going to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh That is an example of a sentence Another is this from a CEO in Fortune "You die in either case, but this way you get to do it proactively," where the adverb makes the sentence I'm walking amid the tourists on Bleecker Street the riffraff the students with backpacks the bums and a good old-fashioned New York feeling hits me from head to toe a misanthropic snarl the urge to kick a stranger in the pants, and if you don't smoke you feel as if you do -David Lehman
• I May After Leaving You Walk Quickly or Even Run Rain fell in a post-Romantic way. Heads in the planets, toes tucked under carpets, that's how we got our bodies through. The translator made the sign for twenty horses backing away from a lump pf sugar. Yes, you. When I said did you want me I meant me in the general sense. The drink we drank was cordial. In a spoon, the ceiling fan whirled. The Old World smoked in the fireplace. Glum was the woman in the ostrich feather hat. -- Matthea Harvey
• Poem As the cat climbed over the top of the jamcloset first the right forefoot carefully then the hind stepped down into the pit of the empty flowerpot. -- William Carlos Williams
• a favorite: Sheepdog Trials at Bleinau Ffestiniog Deborah Warren At the bottom of the field, like woolly boats, three sheep appear. They're unaware, of course, that this is a race, and the first one's gently drifting off to the left, and another bobbles and floats the other way, when something-a gale? a force- tears at them-veers-its direction shifting, shifting- a black and white Hermes, fur and motion spurred by a single message, a single mission: To herd. A centrifugal ewe like a prodigal yacht sails out in a stately and leisured trot but huffily reconsiders, deterred by the scouring dog; and the second and third who are heading off-confronted, stop: he's there; and the trio slews around, jibing in unison, parallel. Then, in a climax of ecstasy-he drops suddenly, puddle-flat, onto the ground and sends the flotilla of sheep to the pen. And the lumbering trainer, rubber-shod, closes the gate with his crook and slogs across to the dog who, you could say, ran because he was told to. You could say the man created the dog. But no--the dog, who was made by the wind, is a little god.
• Heh. Friend o' mine who breeds them says a border collie is supposed to have obsessive-compulsive disorder. And this is one of two reasons why these dogs don't make good pets. The other reason is that in order to train a dog, it helps to be smarter than the dog.
• the trash can this is great, I just wrote two poems I didn't like. there is a trash can on this computer. I just moved them over and dropped them into the trash can. they're gone forever, no paper, no sound, no fury, no placenta and then just a clean screen awaits you. it's always better to reject yourself before the editors do. especially on a rainy night like this with bad music on the radio. and now -- I know what you're thinking maybe he should have trashed this misbegotten one also. ha, ha, ha, ha. -- Charles Bukowsji
• Oh my gosh, bees, I love that poem.
• Heh. The man's got a wickedly ironic glint in his eye. Pity I didn't spell his name right, though I think many monkeys probably know it's Bukowski.
• Yea, Bukowski is teh hots!
• Facing It My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, Dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way -- the stone lets me go. I turn that way -- I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair. -- Yusef Komunyakaa
• A Dog's Grave In thin sun that lifted its hands from my shoulders, leaving me cold, in a patch of tall grass that took hold of my legs so I stumbled, next to a bent little tree that tapped at my back with its twigs, I fought hard for a grave for my dog, chopping through sod, through a layer of ice, through snow-soaked topsoil that clung to the blade, and there unfolded the clay, the warm yellow brown of an old army blanket, and dry as a place by the stove. -- Ted Kooser
• Poem To Piss Everyone Off I had the feeling early this summer of discovering Gertrude Stein. I borrowed a copy of her selected writings from Dick and retired here to read them. I had this dazzling image of running through a wide empty field toward her as she rose from a white rattan chair during her garden tea. As I gradually drew within less distance of her I felt some of my initial exuberance give way & just as I came abreast of her I was stricken with such overwhelming boredom that I instantly kicked her cane out from under her and sped on by. -- Maureen Owen
• Bees: I laughed. OUT LOUD!
• escapade the end of grace, the end of what matters. the eye at the bottom of the bottle is ours winking back. old voices, old songs are a snake which crawls away. men go mad looking into empty faces. why not? what else is there for them to do? I have done it. the eye at the bottom of the bottle winks back. it's all a trick. everything is an illusion. there must be something better somewhere. but where? not here. not there. slowly one crawls toward imbecility, welcoming it like a lost lover. I weary of this contest with myself but it's the only sport in town. -- Charles Bukowski
• I need to find me a book of Bukowski's poems. Every one of his poems that you've posted, I've loved. Thanks bees.
• Bukowski left a sizeable body of unpublished work to be published after his death, so there'll be more new Bukowski for a while longer.
• Several of his poems here, tracicle.
• Wikipedia gives a decent list of Bukowski titles. Scroll down.
• From Wikipedia's page: Irish band, U2, dedicated a song, "Dirty Day," to Bukowski, and in this song use as lyrics the title of his poem "The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills." One of my few favourite U2 songs, too. Huh. Thanks for those links. :)
• Extinction of Silence That it was shy when alive goes without saying. We know it vanished at the sound of voices Or footsteps. It took wing at the slightest noises Though it could be approached by someone praying. We have no recordings of it, though of course In the basement of the Museum, we have some stuffed Moth-eaten specimens -- the Lesser Ruffed And Yellow Spotted -- filed in narrow drawers. But its song is lost. If it was related to A species of Quiet, or of another feather, No researcher can know. Not even whether A breeding pair still nests deep in the bayou, Where legend has it some once common bird Decades ago was first not seen, not heard. -- A.E. Stalling
• .
• Burlap Sack A person is full of sorrow the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand. We say, "Hand me the sack," but we get the weight. Heavier if left out in the rain. To think that the stones or sand is the self is an error. To think that grief is the self is an error. Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room. The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes. The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver. What would it be to take the bride and leave behind the heavy dowry? To let the thin-ribbed mule browse in tall grasses, its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs? -- Jane Hirshfield
• Yay! :)
• At Night it is best to focus your eyes a little off to the side; it is better to know things drained of their color, to fathom the black horses cropping at winter grass, their white jaws that move in steady rotation, a sweet sound. And when they file off to shelter under the trees you will find the pale circles of snow pushed aside, earth opening its single, steadfast gaze toward stars ticking by, one by one, overhead, the given world flaming precisely out of its frame. Jane Hirshfield
• They Have Riddles

  In the farmhouse passing another crock of apples, On the street car riding to the roller coasters, At picnics, clambakes, or the factory workbench They have riddles, good and bad conundrums:

  Which goes through the plank first, the bullet or the hole? Where does the music go when the fiddle is put in the box? Where does your lap go when you stand up? The same place your fist goes when you open your hand. What are the two smallest things mentioned in the Bible? The widow's mite and the wicked flea. Who are the shortest people mentioned in the Bible? Bildad the Shuhite, Knee-high-miah, and the man who had nothing but from whom even that which he had was taken away. What was the last thing Paul Revere said to his horse on the famous ride? "Whoa!" "Did you hear about the empty barrel of flour?" "No." "Nothing in it." What is there more of in the world than anything else? Ends.

  They have Irish bulls timeworn and mossgrown:

  You are to be hanged and I hope it will prove a warning to you. I took so much medicine I was sick a long time after I got well. I can never get these boots on until I have worn them for a while. One of us must kill the other -- let it be me. We were boys together -- at least I was. If all the world were blind what a melancholy sight it would be. This will last forever and afterward be sold for old iron. They would cut us into mince-meat and throw our bleeding heads on the table to stare us in the face. On the dim and faroff shore of the future we can see the footprints of the unseen hand. We pursue the shadow, the bubble bursts, and leaves in our hand only ashes. -- Carl Sandberg
• Fancy Cortex reading Jayne Cortez I'm using my plain brain to imagine her fancy cortex. As if my lowly mollusk could wear so exalted a mantle as her pontifex pallium. As if the knots and tangles of my twisted psyche could mesh with her intricate synaptic network of condensed neural convolutions. As if my simple chalk could fossilize the memory of her monumental reefs of caulifloral coral. As if my shallow unschooled shoals could reckon the calculus of her konk's brainwave tsunami. As if the pedestrian software of my mun- dane explorer could map as rounded colonies the terra incognita of her undiscovered hemispheres. As if the speculative diagno- sis of my imaging technology could chart the direction of her intuitive intellect. As if the inquisitive iris of my galaxy- orbiting telescope could see as far as her vision. As if the trained nostrils of my narco-bloodhound could sniff out what she senses in the wind. As if my duty-free bottle of jerk sauce could simulate the fire ant picante that inflames her tongue of rage. As if the gray matter of my dim bulb could be enlightened by the brilliance of her burning watts. As if her divergent universifica- tion might fancy the microcosm of my prosaic mind. -- Harryette Mullen
• The Words The birds with bones of glass: perhaps the terror will end in a flowering tree in July. The book lying open in the light, the book with mottled spine, all possible information inside: Riemann hypothesis resolved, the zeta and zeros, entry 425; The Paradox of the Archer on the succeeding page; the lost language of moths a little further along. Slow wingbeats of owls down the book's corridors. Sky a cadmium yellow from the fires to the north. They seem to follow us, the fires, as page follows page. The bones, the birds, the glass, the light, the primes; books, words, zeros, fires, spine. -- Michael Palmer
• To a Frustrated Poet This is to say I know You wish you were in the woods, Living the poet life, Not here at a formica topped table In a meeting about perceived inequalities in the benefits and allowances offered to employees of this college, And I, too, wish you were in the woods, Because it's no fun having a frustrated poet In the Dept. of Human Resources, believe me. In the poems of yours that I've read, you seem ever intelligent and decent and patient in a way Not evident to us in this office, And so, knowing how poets can make a feast out of trouble, Raising flowers in a bed of drunklenness, divorce, despair, I give you this check representing two weeks' wages And ask you to clean out your desk today And go home And write a poem With a real frog in it And plums from the refrigerator, So sweet and so cold. -- R.J. Ellmann
• Loved the last one...
• Seconded. I dug the Williams reference at the end.
• Glad ye liked it. Contemporary American poetry is wonderfully varied. The Improvement Is that where it happens? Only yesterday when I came back, I had this diaphonous disaffection for this room, for spaces, for the whole sky and whatever lies beyond. I felt the eggplant, then the rhubarb. Nothing seems strong enough for this life to manage, that sees beyond into particles forming some kind of entity -- so we get dressed kindly, crazy at the moment. A life of afterwords begins. We never live long enough in our lives to know what today is like. Shards, smiling beaches, abandon us somehow even as we converse with them. And the leopard is transparent, like iced tea. I wake up, my face pressed in the dewy mess of a dream. It mattered, because of the dream, and because dreams are by nature sad even when there's a lot of exclaiming and beating as there was in this one. I want the openness of the dream turned inside out, exploded into pieces of meaning by its own unasked questions, beyond the calculations of heaven. Then the larkspur would don its own disproportionate weight, and trees return to the starting gate. See, our lips bend. -- John Ashbery
• Slow Children at Play All the quick children have gone inside, called by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home -- and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering, pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children, thinking, Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone? -- Cecilia Wolloch
• RIP To live as a poet in this culture is the aesthetic equivalent of a major political statement.... Poetry is the medium of choice for giving our most hidden self a voice -- the voice behind the mask that all of us wear. Poetry says, 'You are not alone in this world: all your fears, anxieties, hopes, despairs are the common property of the race.'... In a murderous time the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. -- Stanley Kunitz
• Man Writes Poem This just in a man has begun writing a poem in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now to our man Harry on the scene, what's the story down there, Harry? "Well Chuck he has begun the second stanza and seems to be doing fine, he's using a blue pen, most poets these days use blue ink or black ink so blue is a fine choice. His curtains are indeed blowing in a breeze of some kind and what's more his radiator is 'whistling' somewhat. No metaphors have been written yet, but I'm sure he's rummaging around down there in the tin cans of his soul and will turn up something for us soon. Hang on -- just breaking news here Chuck, there are 'birds singing' outside his window, and a car with a bad muffler has just gone by. Yes ... definitely a confirmation on the singing birds." Excuse me Harry but the poem seems to be taking on a very auditory quality at this point wouldn't you say? "Yes Chuck, you're right, but after years of experience I would hesitate to predict exactly where this poem is going to go. Why I remember being on the scene with Frost in '47, and with Stevens in '53, and if there's one thing about poems these days it's that hang on, something's happening here, he's just compared the curtains to his mother, and he's described the radiator as 'Roaring deep with the red walrus of History.' Now that's a key line, especially appearing here, somewhat late in the poem, when all of the similes are about to go home. In fact he seems a bit knocked out with effort of writing that line, and who wouldn't be? Looks like ... yes, he's put down his pen and has gone to brush his teeth. Back to you Chuck." Well thanks Harry. Wow, the life of the artist. That's it for now, but we'll keep you informed of more details as they arise. -- Jay Leeming
• Seawall I'm going to make a sea wall with my small happiness .... I don't want the sea to know that pains go through my breast. I don't want the sea to touch the shore of my earth ... I have run out of dreams, crazy from shadows in the sand. I don't want the sea to look as blue mourning in my path ... (My eyelids were auroras when the storm crossed!) I don't want the sea to cry a new rainstorm at my door ... All the eyes of the wind already cry me as dead. I'm going to make a seawall with my small happiness, light happiness of knowing myself, mind the hand that closes. I don't want the sea to arrive at the thirst of my poem, blind in the middle of light, broken in the middle of an absence. -- Julia de Burgos
• It was recently announced that the late Jane Kenyon's widower and fellow poet Donald Hall, will become the 14th US Poet Laureate. Here's a sprinkling of biographical data about him. In the US, a new Poet Laureate is appointed every year. And of course, one Poet Laureate can scarcely suffice for a land as large and poet-crowded now as the US: many states and cities also have poet laureates of their very own; this is probably an efficient way to democratize poet laureateship, which, to be candid, even in Britain was never much of a tribute to the intrinsic worth of the poetry written by those gentlemen holding the position. (Interestingly, England's never had a woman as a poet laureate; the reasons for this I tactfully leave to your powers of investigation and imagination.)
• **frantically flipping pages looking to be first to post a Hall poem **feels dumb that she can't find any
• If only he was Jane Kenyon instead.
• February: Thinking of Flowers Now wind torments the field, turning the white surface back on itself, back and back on itself, like an animal licking a wound. Nothing but white -- the air, the light, only one broken milkweed pod bobbing in the gully, smallest brown boat on the immense tide. A single green sprouting thing would restore me.... Then think of the tall delphinium, swaying, or the bee when it comes to the tongue of the burgundy lily. -- Jane Kenyon
• Very nice!
• The Beautiful Lawn Sprinkler What gives it power makes it change its mind At each extreme, and lean its rising rain Down low, first one and then the other way; In which exchange humility and pride Reverse, forgive, arise, and die again, Wherefore it holds at both ends of the day The rainbow in its scattering grains of spray. -- Howard Nemerov
• A Song of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize. - Walt Whitman
• "Autobiographia Literaria" by Frank O'Hara When I was a child I played by myself in a corner of the schoolyard all alone. I hated dolls and I hated games, animals were not friendly and birds flew away. If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree and cried out "I am an orphan." And here I am, the center of all beauty! writing these poems! Imagine!
• Visiting the Ruins at Chaco Canyon We saw the place where the Anasazi lived. They weren't There any longer. But the fitted stone walls were, And the wind, and those kivas sunk in the ground Where the men sang to the belly of the earth. To sing like that must have quieted them. It would have quieted me. After hours like that In the kiva, when I came up the little ladder, I would have turned to my mother, maybe bowed, Brought her a basket and some gifts from the hills. You could tell they liked earth by the way they set The kivas so close to each other, like egg cups, And the way they put windows into the stone walls In such a way you see through four or five houses. These people weren't tired of carrying rocks And they weren't tired of being people either. -- Robert Bly
• Boys They jiggle it, fidget it, Twist it, poke it, Pound it, beat time on it, Stomp all over it; They cannot turn up the volume on even a book - Spine goes squack Pages flabble flabble flabble If it won't at least chirp When you smack it on the head You can never be quite sure about it: Boys, banging on the world, make it sing. -- Bill Bly
• Oddjob, a Bull Terrier You prepare for one sorrow, but another comes. It is not like the weather, you cannot brace yourself, the unreadiness is all. Your companion, the woman, the friend next to you, the child at your side, and the dog, we tremble for them, we look seaward and muse it will rain. We shall get ready for rain; you do not connect the sunlight altering the darkening oleanders in the sea-garden, the gold going out of the palms. You do not connect this, the fleck of the drizzle on your flesh, with the dog's whimper, the thunder doesn't frighten, the readiness is all; what follows at your feet is trying to tell you the silence is all: it is deeper than the readiness, it is sea-deep, earth-deep, love-deep. The silence is stronger than thunder, we are stricken dumb and deep as the animals who never utter love as we do, except it becomes unutterable and must be said, in a whimper, in tears, in the drizzle that comes to our eyes not uttering the loved thing's name, the silence of the dead, the silence of the deepest buried love is the one silence, and whether we bear it for beast, for child, for woman, for friend, it is the one love, it is the same, and it is blest deepest by loss. it is blest, it is blest. -- Derek Walcott
• Thoreau's Journal: 28-Aug-1851 The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse. I omit the usual—the hurricanes and earthquakes—and describe the common. This has the greatest charm and is the true theme of poetry. You may have the extraordinary for your province, if you will let me have the ordinary. Give me the obscure life, the cottage of the poor and humble, the workdays of the world, the barren fields, the smallest share of all things but poetic perception. Give me but the eyes to see the things which you possess.
• A Strange Disorder A strange disorder rules the house where lately slender method scared papers into files neat as hedgerows and caution laid its dropcloth everywhere. Now books lie slaughtered on the rug, the telephone rings, old letters dune among bills and maps and coffee spoons in a room spontaneous as a compost heap where you work the oracle of my thoughts and haunt the prison of my sleep. Diane Ackerman The Massachusetts Review Special Issue: The Messy Self Guest Editor: Jennifer Rosner Volume XLVII, Number 2 Summer 2006
• a room spontaneous as a compost heap It's my house! how did she get into my house?!
• A Contribution to Statistics Out of a hundred people those who always know better -- fifty-two, doubting every step -- nearly all the rest, glad to lend a hand if it doesn't take too long -- as high as forty-nine, always good because they can't be otherwise -- four, well, maybe five, able to admire without envy -- eighteen, living in constant fear of someone or something -- seventy-seven, capable of happiness -- twenty-something, tops, harmless singly, savage in crowds -- half at least, cruel when forced by circumstances -- better not to know even ballpark figures, wise after the fact -- just a couple more than wise before it, taking only things from life -- forty (I wish I were wrong), hunched in pain, no flashlight in the dark -- eighty-three sooner or later, worthy of compassion -- ninety-nine, mortal -- a hundred out of a hundred. Thus far this figure still remains unchanged. -- Wislawa Szymborska, trans C. cavanagh & S. Baranczak
• Lament for the Makers Not bird not badger not beaver not bee Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make My father's ring was a B with a dart through it, in diamonds against polished black stone. I have it. What parents leave you is their lives. Until my mother died she struggled to make a house that she did not loathe; paintings; poems; me. Many creatures must make, but only one must seek within itself what to make Not bird not badger not beaver not bee • Teach me, masters who by making were remade, your art. Frank Bidart Star Dust Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Wine Water I shared a bed. Some man came and said he hadn't slept all his life. I gave him some of my night hours without even thinking. Wish someone would have warned me. Now I dream a man's blue- shaven visions. I can't tell if I'm a woman or a man in the dreams, but it doesn't matter. What happens when they mix: soil, Sister. That's all we've become. Man plus Woman equals Ditch Dirt. And this is supposed to be beautiful, the strongest tonic. Stephanie N. Johnson Beloit Poetry Journal Volume 57, Number 1 Fall 2006
• I, Hermes, have been set up Where three roads cross, by the windy Orchard above the grey beach. Here tired men may rest from travel By my cold, clean whispering spring. -- Anyte c 390-350 BC, translated by Kenneth Rexroth
• I, beeswacky, am now set up Where three threads cross, the Greek and Rexroth Almost deleted by a grey-purple ground. A baffled monkey rests from pondering Why the front page keeps on maundering. Should I swill a cold beer about now I daresay I'd probably drown.
• What happened, beeswacky? A long, long internet connectivity glitch? Hopefully nothing worse than that. It was feared that you had died, you know. Maundering panegyrics were said somewhere in the archives. Lost now. Unless BlueHorse keeps track of these things.
• *waves to Dan Folkus* to speak in metaphor is what I'm for Notice This evening, the sturdy Levis I wore every day for over a year & which seemed to the end in perfect condition, suddenly tore. How or why I don't know, but there it was -- a big rip at the crotch. A month ago my friend Nick walked off a racquetball court, showered, got into his street clothes, & halfway home collapsed & died. Take heed you who read this & drop to your knees now & again like the poet Christopher Smart & kiss the earth & be joyful & make much of your time & be kindly to everyone, even to those who do not deserve it. For although you may not believe it will happen, you too will one day be gone. I, whose Levi ripped at the crotch for no reason, assure you that such is the case. Pass it on. --Steve Kowitt
• *Waves back, happy*
• Poetry And it was at that age ... poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a a river. I don't know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, not silence, but from a street it called me, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among raging fires or returning alone, there it was, without a face, and it touched me. I didn't know what to say, my mouth had no way with names, my eyes were blind. Something knocked in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire, and I wrote the first, faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing; and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating plantations, the darkness perforated, riddled with arrows, fire, and flowers, the overpowering night, the universe. And I, tiny being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, felt myself a pure part of the abyss. I wheeled with the stars. My heart broke loose with the wind. --Pablo Neruda, trans Ilan Stavans
• Locking the barn door should have been the title of that chapter of our lives. Our horses were always running away, leaving us with the dusty smell of hay and regret. We knew we couldn't alter the past but we kept locking that damn door anyway, feeling more foolish each time, straining to hear the hoofbeats in the distance, confusing them with the pulse in our ears and kicking ourselves for our failures. Still, we kept getting more horses and better locks but in the night the wind or something picked the locks and by morning the new horses were always gone. And this is just one lesson we've never managed to learn. And oh the sad stories we could tell you of the spilled milk! --Vern Rutsala, "The Dusty Smell of Hay"
• Very nice!
• Seed Savers - Talvikki Ansel Impossible to catalogue them all because half are gone the numbers of beans, speckled and mottled, or how they’ve been carried, sacks bags and barrels, more numerous than earthstars, the stone called “sheep’s nose,” you lift them in your sleep. Scrounged from grocery store’s split bags, slipped between glass and damp construction paper to watch them grow, Jacob’s Cattle, Calypso, Pinto against bright paper send down their one question.
• We are the time. We are the famous metaphor from Heraclitus the Obscure. We are the water, not the hard diamond, the one that is lost, not the one that stands still. We are the river and we are that greek that looks himself into the river. His reflection changes into the waters of the changing mirror, into the crystal that changes like the fire. We are the vain predetermined river, in his travel to his sea. The shadows have surrounded him. Everything said goodbye to us, everything goes away. Memory does not stamp his own coin. However, there is something that stays however, there is something that bemoans. --Jorges Luis Borges, "We are the time. We are the famous"
• Evening The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star. --Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell
• We need more Rilke!! The Unicorn The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness the unbelievable: for there before him stood the legendary creature, startling white, that had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes. The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a body wrought of finest ivory. And as he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight. High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign of his uniqueness: a tower held upright by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait. The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth, whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly: he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose. His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure, reflecting vistas and events long vanished, and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend. Rainer Maria Rilke
• Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. --Anon.
• Daddy Fell Into The Pond Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey. We had nothing to do and nothing to say. We were nearing the end of a dismal day, And there seemed to be nothing beyond, THEN Daddy fell into the pond! And everyone's face grew merry and bright, And Timothy danced for sheer delight. "Give me the camera, quick, oh quick! He's crawling out of the duckweed." Click! Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee, And doubled up, shaking silently, And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft And is sounded as if the old drake laughed. O, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond WHEN Daddy fell into the pond! --Alfred Noyes
• And the days are not full enough And the nights are not full enough And life slips by like a field mouse Not shaking the grass. --Ezra Pound, "And the days are not full enough"
• A haunting poem about grass: Grass Carl Sandburg Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass.
• An invalid since time began, he goes on little green crutches stitching the countryside. Incessantly from five o'clock the stars stream through his pizzacato voice. Hard worker, his antennae, dragging like fish lines, troll the high floods of air. At night a cynic, he lies inert in his grass house, songs folded and hung up. Furled like a leaf, his folio preserves the records of the world. --Jorge Carrera Andrade, "Life of the Cricket"
• Never heard of Andrade before--very nice. A blade of grass Brian Patten You ask for a poem. I offer you a blade of grass. You say it is not good enough. You ask for a poem. I say this blade of grass will do. It has dressed itself in frost, It is more immediate Than any image of my making. You say it is not a poem, It is a blade of grass and grass Is not quite good enough. I offer you a blade of grass. You are indignant. You say it is too easy to offer grass. It is absurd. Anyone can offer a blade of grass. You ask for a poem. And so I write you a tragedy about How a blade of grass Becomes more and more difficult to offer, And about how as you grow older A blade of grass Becomes more difficult to accept.
• A Winter Ride Who shall declare the joy of the running! Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight! Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather, Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light. Everything mortal has moments immortal, Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright. So with the stretch of the white road before me, Shining snowcrystals rainbowed by the sun, Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows, Strong with the strength of my horse as we run. Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight! Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one. --Amy Lowell
• The First Horses Were Made of Sea Foam David Day The first horses were made of sea foam. The rode their waves to the beaches Then broke loose and dashed for the shore. Wild horses, raging with pride-- Look how much of the untamed sea Is within them still.
• My Beloved In the fine print of her face Her eyes are two loopholes. No, let me start again. Her eyes are flies in milk, Her eyes are baby Draculas. To hell with her eyes. Let me tell you about her mouth. Her mouth's the red cottage Where the wolf ate grandma. Ah, forget about her mouth, Let me talk of her breasts. I get a peck at them now and then And even that's more than enough To make me lose my head, So I better tell you about her legs. Whe she crosses them on the sofa It's like the jailer unwrapping a parcel And in that parcel is a Christmas cake And in that cake a sweet little file That gasps my name as it files my chains. --Charles Simic
• Lamento He put down his pen. It lies inert on the table. It lies inert in space. He put down his pen. Too much that can neither be revealed nor concealed! He's blocked by what's happening elsewhere, apart, although the magic satchel is throbbing like a heart. Outdoors it is early summer. From the greenwood come whistles -- of humans or birds? Cherry boughs in blossom tap the tops of trucks that have come home. Weeks go by. Night slowly comes. Moths settle on the windowpane: small pale telegrams from the world. --Tomas Transtromer, trans May Swenson with Lief Sjoberg
• For the Chipmunk in My Yard I think he knows I’m alive, having come down The three steps of the back porch And given me a good once over. All afternoon He’s been moving back and forth, Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs, While all about him the great fields tumble To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky To be where he is, wild with all that happens. He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows Living in the blond heart of the wheat. This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots, Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter On which he fastens like a small, brown flame. --Robert Gibb
• The New Poem It will not resemble the sea. It will not have dirt on its thick hands It will not be part of the weather. It will not reveal its name. It will not have dreams you can count on. It will not be photogenic. It will not attend our sorrow. It will not console our children. It will not be able to help us. --Charles Wright
• Lines on Reading Too Many Poets Dorthy Parker Roses, rooted warm in earth, Bud in rhyme, another age; Lilies know a ghostly birth Strewn along a patterned page; Golden lad and chimbley sweep Die; and so their song shall keep. Wind that in Arcadia starts In and out a couplet plays; And the drums of bitter hearts Beat the measure of a phrase. Sweets and woes but come to print Quae cum ita sint.
• Long Afternoons Those were the long afternoons when poetry left me. The river flowed patiently, nudging lazy boats to sea. Long afternoons, the coast of ivory. Shadows lounged in the streets, haughty manikins in shopfronts stared at me with bold and hostile eyes. Professors left their schools with vacant faces, as if the Iliad had finally done them in. Evening papers brought disturbing news, but nothing happened, no one hurried. There was no one in the windows, you weren’t there; even nuns seemed ashamed of their lives. Those were the long afternoons when poetry vanished and I was left with the city’s opaque demon, like a poor traveler stranded outside the Gare du Nord with his bulging suitcase wrapped in twine and September’s black rain falling. Oh, tell me how to cure myself of irony, the gaze that sees but doesn’t penetrate; tell me how to cure myself of silence. --Adam Zagajewski, trans Clare Cavanagh
• How To Be a Poet Wendell Berry (to remind myself) i Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment. ii Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. iii Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.
• This always tickles hell out of me: American Poetry Whatever it is, it must have A stomach that can digest Rubber, coal, uranium, moons, poems. Like the shark, it contains a shoe. It must swim for miles through the desert Uttering cries that are almost human. --Louis Simpson