Poem of the Day

I have to say that some of Williams’s poems speak to me more strongly than others. For example, what I like best about This Is Just To Say is the way other poets are inspired to parody. However, some of his longer poems resonate more with me and I admire that so much imagery and food for thought can be packed into such short stanzas. I discovered this one in Poetry on Record, in which the author read it. He also read The Red Wheelbarrow, but I think that To Elsie really came alive in his voice.

To Elsie
By William Carlos Williams

The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags—succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum—
which they cannot express—

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she’ll be rescued by an
agent—
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—

some doctor’s family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

For my dearest Jennifer, on her birthday, I always post an ESVM poem. This (untitled) poem is in the “Poems Which Have Not Appeared in Any of the Previous Volumes” section of her Collected Poems. I do love her (rather negative) commentary on the human race, with which (sadly) I often agree.

We have gone too far; we do not know how to stop
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

We have gone too far; we do not know how to stop: impetus
Is all we have. And we share it with the pushed Inert.

We are clever,—we are as clever as monkeys; and some of us
Have intellect, which is our danger, for we lack intelligence
And have forgotten instinct.

Progress—progress is the dirtiest word in the language—who ever told us—
And made us believe it—that to take a step forward was necessarily, was always
A good idea?
In this unlighted cave, one step forward
That step can be the down-step into the Abyss.
But we, we have no sense of direction; impetus
Is all we have; we do not proceed, we only
Roll down the mountain,
Like disbalanced boulders, crushing before us many
Delicate springing things, whose plan it was to grow.

Clever, we are, and inventive,—but not creative;
For, to create, one must decide—the cells must decide—what form,
What colour, what sex, how many petals, five, or more than five,
Or less than five.

But we, we decide nothing: the bland Opportunity
Presents itself, and we embrace it,—we are so grateful
When something happens which is not directly War;
For we think—although of course, now, we very seldom
Clearly think—
That the other side of War is Peace.

We have no sense; we only roll downhill. Peace
Is the temporary beautiful ignorance that War
Somewhere progresses.

This is another one from 180 More.

Writing on Not Writing
By Jack Myers

I can feel my ship about to come in.
A white ship in a snowstorm
moving in.

The ship is made of gulls
huddled together
in the shape of a ship.

When it arrives, they will fly out into the storm,
leaving a space inside it
clear as reason.

I can tell there’s going to be a blizzard
of being somewhere else
any minute

because of time’s noise eating itself up
that is the noise of listening
that looks like a seething, florid whiteout of wings.

In honor of Veterans Day…

Strange Meeting
By Wilfred Owen

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange, friend,” I said, “Here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said the other, “Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot—wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now…”

Now I know how I can post a poem in the morning… get up at 4:30am after tossing and turning for an hour…

I’ve posted a few of Dorothy Parker’s poems before and her tongue-in-cheek messages amuse me. I heard this one in Poetry on Record and it was great to hear Parker read it, especially when she barked out the last two lines. You can listen to this and other Parker poems at the Dorothy Parker Society. I found the text of this online in a couple places, but they all say “Be as delicate and as gay”, though Parker definitely doesn’t say delicate in the audio recording. The best guess I can make is trenchant. Thoughts?

The Lady’s Reward
By Dorothy Parker

Lady, lady, never start
Conversation toward your heart;
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean.
Show yourself, by word and look,
Swift and shallow as a brook.
Be as cool and quick to go
As a drop of April snow;
Be as trenchant and as gay
As a cherry flower in May.
Lady, lady, never speak
Of the tears that burn your cheek—
She will never win him, whose
Words had shown she feared to lose.
Be you wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you—
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You’ll be the first it ever did.

I read this one in 180 More. Perhaps I wish to post it tonight because I watched Wilde starring Stephen Fry and thought it was amazing and heartbreaking all at once.

Bedecked
By Victoria Redel

Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy
   store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.
He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star
   choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says
   sticker earrings look too fake.
Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a
   boy’s only a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping
   off tracks into the tub.
Then tell me it’s fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy
   who’s got some girl to him,
and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in
   the park.
Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son
   who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—
this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and
   prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows—made every
   shining true color.
Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once
   that brave.

There’s no point in saving this to post in the morning because I never seem to get the PotD up in the morning. I’ll read NSN’s poetry any time of day, though! My favorite line is Remember your deepest name.

Breaking the Fast
By Naomi Shihab Nye

1.

Japanese teacher says:
At first light, rise.
Don’t hover between
sleep and waking,
this makes you heavy,
puts a stone inside your heart.

The minute you drift back to shore,
anchor. Breathe.
Remember your deepest name.

2.

Sometimes objects stun me,
bamboo strainer, gray mug,
sitting exactly where
they were left.

They have not slept
or dreamt of lost faces.

I touch them carefully,
saying, tell me what you know.

3.

Cup of waves,
strawberry balanced
in a seashell.

In morning the water seems
clear to the bottom.

No fish blocks my view.

I heard Berryman read this one on Poetry on Record. I went and looked him up because I was intrigued by what the Dream Songs were and wanted to know a little more about him. I was sad to learn that he had a traumatic childhood (father committed suicide), battled depression and alcoholism, saw many of his friends and contemporaries die (naturally or by their own hands), and eventually committed suicide. Though clearly all those factors would impact his writing, I’m not making any assumptions because Berryman apparently did not consider himself a Confessional poet. Still, I will always think of his troubled life when I read his work.

Dream Song 36
By John Berryman

The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who’s there?
—Easy, easy, Mr Bones. I is on your side.
I smell your grief.
—I sent my grief away. I cannot care
forever. With them all again & again I died
and cried, and I have to live.

—Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.
That is our ‘pointed task. Love & die.
—Yes; that makes sense.
But what makes sense between, then? What if I
roiling & babbling & braining, brood on why and
just sat on the fence?

—I doubts you did or do. De choice is lost.
—It’s fool’s gold. But I go in for that.
The boy & the bear
looked at each other. Man all is tossed
& lost with groin-wounds by the grand bulls, cat.
William Faulkner’s where?

(Frost being still around.)

I discovered this poem (from Spoon River Anthology) on Poetry on Record, read by the author. Masters’s narration was a perfect complement to the stark simplicity of the speaker’s life. When all the hardships of life (apparently of which there were many for Lucinda Matlock) are distilled down to a few lines, they seem insignificant in light of the last line. I should read this when I’m feeling sorry for myself.

P.S. How is it that I’ve never read Spoon River Anthology?

Lucinda Matlock
By Edgar Lee Masters

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.

I’m nearly done listening to the audiobook of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (and I’ve loved it!). This poem was quoted a couple times.

As kingfishers catch fire
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself, myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more, the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

I read this one in 180 More.

From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Ogden Nash’s poems nearly always amuse me. He read this one on Poetry on Record and it was delightful. He brought the poem to life by pausing in the right places and stressing the right syllables. Also, I like the title mainly because I loathed Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man
By Ogden Nash

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
   and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
   Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as,
   in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don’t bother your head about the sins of commission because
   however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be
   committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven’t taken out and the checks you haven’t added up
   the stubs of and the appointments you haven’t kept and the bills you
   haven’t paid and the letters you haven’t written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn’t as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every
   time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn’t get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn’t slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let’s all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round
   of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven’t done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn’t do give you a lot more trouble than the
   unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
   sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

I heard cummings read this poem on Poetry on Record. I’m not sure I think that his reading shed more light on the poem and I’m sorry for that because he’s the kind of poet who makes me wonder about his life and motivation. At any rate, I think this poem is interesting, whether read aloud or not.

as freedom is a breakfastfood
By e e cummings

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
—long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
—long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and common’s rare and millstones float
—long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words by joy’s the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough

Only five lines, but it says a lot…

This is the solution
By David Ignatow

This is the solution: to be happy with slaughter;
to be confident in theft; to be warm and loving
in deception; to be aesthetically pleased
with unhappiness and, in agreement,
to lie down in the blood of our innocence.

When I read today’s poem in 180 More, I was reminded of this poem about dolls. Stephen Dunn has nothing on Margaret Atwood in the creepy doll contest, but that’s probably a good thing.

The Arm
By Stephen Dunn

A doll’s pink, broken-off arm
was floating in a pond
the man had come to with his dog.
The arm had no sad child nearby
to say it was hers, no parent to rescue it
with a stick or branch,

and this pleased the man to whom
absence always felt like opportunity.
He imagined a girl furious
at her younger sister, taking it out on her
one limb at a time.

Yet the sun was glancing off
the arm’s little pink fingers,
and the pond’s heart-shaped lily pads
seemed to accentuate an oddness,
which he thought beautiful.

When he and the dog looked for
the doll’s body but couldn’t find it,
a different image came to him,
of a father who hated the fact
that his son liked dolls.
What was floating there
was a punishment that didn’t work,
for the boy had come to love
his one-armed doll even more.
The man was struck once again
by how much misery
the human spirit can absorb.

His dog wanted to move on,
enough of this already.
But the man was creating little waves
with his hands, and the arm, this thing
his wife was sure to question,
was slowly bobbing toward him.

This poem reminds me of a quote by Willa Cather from O Pioneers:

And now the old story has begun to write itself over there,” said Carl softly. “Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.
—Part II, Chapter IV

To Juan at the Winter Solstice
By Robert Graves

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

Yikes! Due to various visitors, craziness at work, and general exhaustion, I seem to have fallen off the wagon. Now I’m back to having my dog as sole companion and it’s nearly the weekend, so hopefully I can get back in the swing of things… Langston Hughes is a poet I don’t know much about, though I’ve read a number of his poems. Thus, I was interested to hear him read some of his poems on Poetry on Record. I hadn’t posted this poem before, but it sounded familiar so maybe I’ve read it. Incredibly, Hughes said it was one of the first poems he wrote, when he was right out of high school, inspired by crossing the Mississippi. I think it’s wonderful, and I was surprised that Hughes’s reading didn’t spark any emotion. It’s not that he read it badly, but it sounded so impersonal. A poem like this seems as if it sprang from deep in his soul and I guess I expected his voice to convey that. At any rate, I like the poem a lot.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
   flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
nbsp;  went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
nbsp;  bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I read this one in 180 More and it really amused me.

Blurbs
By Julianne Baggott

I don’t want to be a national treasure,
too old-codgery, something wheeled out
of a closet to cut ribbon. I prefer
resident genius, or for the genius
to be at least undeniable.
I’d like to steer away from the declaration
by far her best. Too easily I read,
and predecessors were weary immigrant stock.
The same goes for working at the height
of her powers, as if it’s obvious
I’m teetering on the edge of senility.
I don’t want to have to look things up:
lapidary style? I’d prefer not to be a talent;
as if my mother has dressed me
in a spangled leotard, tap shoes,
my hair in Bo-Peep curls.
But I like sexy, even if unearned.
I like elegance, bite. I want someone
to confess they’ve fallen in love with me
and another to say, No, she’s mine.
And a third to just come out with it:
she will go directly to heaven.

It’s not January (obviously), but I can relate to being alone with a pumpkin. In fact, I’m baking bourbon pumpkin pecan bread right now.

Solitude
By Kerry Hardie

It was January,
I’d hardly seen anyone for days, you understand.
The sheep were all sitting separate and silent,
a hard wind was coming in over the hill,
a white moon floated.

I’d bought the pumpkin for soup.
My arms had dropped with the weight of it,
dropped and come back, like the bounce back up into air
after the deep of the river.
I’d hefted it in from the car,
set it down on the table.
It was smaller and fiercer and redder than I’d expected.

I was out on the hill for the sake of the moon
and the ash trees, raking the way with shadow.
Where the road ran high the fields slid into the valley.
Cloud covered the slopes of the mountains,
laying down snow.
I carried the color, red fire on the dark of the table,
the color would bear me through till his return.

When I got home the phone was ringing,
I had the key in the door but it wouldn’t turn.
I heard the phone cease in the empty house.
And the dogs milled about.
And the pumpkin stared out at the moon.

Though I haven’t read a great deal of Stevens’s poems, some of what I have read really intrigues me. Also, one of my poetry pals is really inspired by him. This poem, read by the author, was included in Poetry on Record. I’ve never been all that into art because for me, words speak more than pictures. I don’t really want to invent a story about a painting or sculpture. I want someone else to do it for me. Perhaps for that reason, I quite like poems about art. Some examples that spring to mind are: Manet’s Olympia by Margaret Atwood, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams, and Musée des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden.

So and So Reclining on Her Couch
By Wallace Stevens

On her side, reclining on her elbow.
This mechanism, this apparition,
Suppose we call it Projection A.

She floats in the air at the level of
The eye, completely anonymous,
Born, as she was, at twenty-one,

Without lineage or language, only
The curving of her hip, as motionless gesture,
Eyes dripping blue, so much to learn.

If just above her head there hung,
Suspended in air, the slightest crown
Of Gothic prong and practick bright,

The suspension, as in solid space,
The suspending hand withdrawn, would be
An invisible gesture. Let this be called

Projection B. To get at the thing
Without gestures is to get at it as
Idea. She floats in the contention, the flux

Between the thing as idea and
The idea as thing. She is half who made her.
This is the final projection, C.

The arrangement contains the desire of
The artist. But one confides in what has no
Concealed creator. One walks easily

The unpainted shore, accepts the world
As anything but sculpture. Good-bye,
Mrs. Pappadopoulos, and thanks.

I absolutely can’t believe I’ve never posted this poem. Granted, it’s not my favorite and I think its excessive usage around graduation is a little scary. Perhaps I always assumed I’d posted it? Anyway, when I can successfully remove all thoughts of trite greeting cards and read the poem, I do think it’s quite lovely.

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

All I can really say about this poem is WOW.

To be a Jew in the twentieth century
By Muriel Rukeyser

To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist; and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.
The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.

For Christmas my dear sister made me a gift of Poetry on Record: 98 Poets Read Their Work, 1888-2006. I have listened to a track here and there, but didn’t want to immerse myself until I had time to really savor. Perhaps I just needed to make time. I’m feeling lazy and it’s cold outside so I’m holing up to enjoy the poems. So far I’ve made it to tracks 5 & 6 on disc 1, and I have to post the PotD already. I may have mentioned how I love Yeats’s poetry (ha!), but I am blown away to hear him express his poems. I don’t merely say read because he gave an introduction, in which he said that he’s deliberately not reading them as prose because it was very hard to get what he wanted to say into verse form. There are recordings of The Lake Isle of Innisfree and the one below. His renditions are somewhere between speaking and singing and are really quite amazing, to me. I feel like I’ve taken something new and different from these poems now. I want to hear him read (only for lack of a better descriptor) all his poems!

The Song of the Old Mother
By William Butler Yeats

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their days go over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

I’m currently reading Anna Karenina for book club. Perhaps the Russian influence made me look for an Akhmatova poem. This one reminds me of Mrs. Lot by Vassar Miller.

Lot’s Wife
By Anna Akhmatova

And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed.”
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound…
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.

I read this one in I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You. I know I’ve probably said it before, but Linda Pastan is amazing. Ever since a wonderful conversation with my poetry pals, I’ve thought about what actually constitutes a poem. In the conventional sense, it’s something someone has written down. But maybe it can also be an object or an event. I like Pastan’s take on it.

Elegy
By Linda Pastan

Somewhere a poem
is waiting for me
to write it: in the jewelry box,
coiled into an old ring
or stopping the hands
of a watch;
in the vanishing barn, risen
to the top of the pail
to be skimmed off;
or in the tree outside
engraved in green ink
on the underside of a leaf.

In my old room
the white curtains blow
like ghosts of themselves
over the sill;
under the bed misplaced words gather
to grab my helpless ankle.
It is a poem
the child I was hides
in the ear of the woman
I have become: a poem
whose lines were the lines
of my father’s face.

This one was shared by a poetry buddy.

Crush
By Ada Limón

Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can’t
really eat them. Or you
wouldn’t want to. If you grab
the soft side with your fist
it somehow feels funny,
like you’ve been here
before and uncomfortable,
too, like you’d rather
squish it between your teeth
impatiently, before spitting
the soft parts back up
to linger on the tongue like
burnt sugar or guilt.
For starters, it was all
an accident, you cut
the right branch
and a sort of light
woke up underneath,
and the indelible fruit
grew dark and needy.
Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.

I read this one in (shockingly) 180 More. I couldn’t get past the first line just now, but I’m going to post it and then head right to bed.

What I Want
By George Bilgere

          for my marriage, 1996-2000

I want a good night’s sleep.
I want to get up without feeling
That to waken is to plunge through a trap door.

I want to ride my motorcycle
In late spring through the Elysian Fields
Of the Rocky Mountains

And lie once more with Cecelia
In the summer of 1985
On a blanket in the backyard of our house

In Denver and watch the clouds expand.
And it would be great to see my mother
Alive again, at the stove, frying a pan of noodles

Into the peculiar carbonized disc that has never been replicated.
I would like for my ex-wife to get leprosy,
Her beauty falling away in little chunks

To the disgust of everyone in the chic café
Where she exercises her gift
For doing absolutely nothing.

*   *    *

I want world peace.
I want to come home one evening
And find Julia, the new assistant professor

In the history department,
Has let herself into my apartment
For the express purpose of lecturing me

On the history of lingerie.
I don’t ask for much: a good merlot.
An afternoon thunderstorm cooling off

The city as I sit listening to Ella
Sing “Spring is Here,” so the air goes lyrical
And perhaps a stray bolt of lightening

Strikes my ex-wife as she steps from her car,
Setting her on fire, to the unqualified delight
Of the friends she has come to visit,

Who are thoroughly sick of her self-aggrandizing stories.
I want to spark a bowl of Maui Wowie
And spend the entire afternoon in my dorm room

*   *    *

With Corrine Spellman, trying to remember
What we were talking about, wondering
Whether, in fact, we had had sex yet.

I’d like to sit at the little outdoor restaurant
By the lake in Forest Park, talking with my aunt
In the humid summer twilight, as the hot

St. Louis day expires upon the water
And the moth-eaten Chinese lanterns
Glow like faded Kodachrome.

We would argue about the great tenor voices
Of the century, or causes for the dearth
Of poetry about the Gulf War,

Or why my father drank himself into an elegy
We never stop revising,
While couples on their paddleboats come in

From the darkening lake, as they’ve done
Since the beginning of time, and children
Call each other across the shadowy fields.

*   *    *

Yes, that would be nice.
I want a good woman
With a sweet bosom

And a wicked sense of humor.
I want to wake up in London on a spring morning
And read in the paper that my ex-wife

Has received a lethal injection, courtesy of the state
Of Ohio, as part of a citywide program aimed
At improving the civic pride of Cleveland,

But something went terribly wrong
And she’s been left in a persistent
Vegetative state

Which everyone agrees
Is nonetheless an improvement.
And it would be wonderful

To sit down with Maria
At our favorite restaurant in Madrid
With some good red wine

*   *    *

And listen to her Spanish
Caress the evening.
I want to read that a new manuscript

Of poetry by James Wright
Has been discovered in someone’s attic,
And someone I haven’t yet met,

In some future I have yet to despoil
Has bought it for my birthday,
And after the kids are asleep

We sit out in the backyard,
A little drunk, and read it
Aloud to each other,

Something we often do
In summer, before climbing upstairs to the bedroom
In the big old house we love so much.

This poem had me at the first line.

To Stammering
By Kenneth Koch

Where did you come from, lamentable quality?
Before I had a life you were about to ruin my life.
The mystery of this stays with me.
“Don’t brood about things,” my elders said.
I hadn’t any other experience of enemies from inside.
They were all from outside–big boys
Who cursed me and hit me; motorists; falling trees.
All these you were as bad as, yet inside. When I spoke, you were there.
I could avoid you by singing or acting.
I acted in school plays but was no good at singing.
Immediately after the play you were there again.
You ruined the cast party.
You were not a sign of confidence.
You were not a sign of manliness.
You were stronger than good luck and bad; you survived them both.
You were slowly edged out of my throat by psychoanalysis
You who had been brought in, it seems, like a hired thug
To beat up both sides and distract them
From the main issue: oedipal love. You were horrible!
Tell them, now that you’re back in your thug country,
That you don’t have to be so rough next time you’re called in
But can be milder and have the same effect–unhappiness and pain.

I read this one in 180 More and I was wildly amused. When I read a poem like this, I like to think the author just saw one little incident (someone spray-painting a message, or just the message) and invented a whole backstory. I think it’s wonderfully creative.

Girls, Look Out For Todd Bernstein
By Jason Bredle

Because after sitting out for a spell
he’s back with a degree in accounting and a high
paying position in one of the leading pharma-
ceutical corporations in the country
and aspirations of owning that exotic
yellow sports car, license plate
EVIL. And like Dennis Meng at Sycamore
Chevrolet stakes his reputation
on his fully reconditioned used cars,
I stake my reputation on telling you
Todd Bernstein means business this time,
girls. No more of this being passed
over for abusive alcoholic football
stars. He’s got a velour shirt now.
No more of your excuses—if he wants you,
you’re there. None of this I’m washing
my hair Friday night nonsense—come on,
you think Todd Bernstein’s going to fall
for that? He knows you’re not studying, not
busy working on some local political
campaign, not having the guy who played
Cockroach on The Cosby Show over
for dinner, not writing any great American
novel. He’s seen your stuff for God’s sake,
and it’s simply nothing more than mediocre,
long prose poems with titles like
“The Falling” and “Crucible” and “Waking
to Death” that force impossible metaphors,
despairing about love and womanhood
and how bad your life is even though
you grew up happily in suburban America,
or at least as happily as anyone can grow up
in suburban America, which normally, you know,
consists of the appearance of happiness while
your dad is doing three secretaries
on the side and your mom pretends not to know
and brags to the entire town about how you’re
an actress about to star in a sitcom about the mis-
adventures of a cable TV repairperson
who, while out on a routine installation
one day, accidentally electrically blasts
herself into the living room of a family
of barbarian warloads on a planet near
Alpha Centauri who force her into slavery
before sending her on a pillage mission
to a planet of cloxnors who capture her
and place her in a torture institution
where she meets a vulnerable meeb whom
she convinces, because of her cable TV
repairperson skills, to let her become nanny
to its impressionable meeblets just before
it’s about to rip off her limbs with its ferocious
abnons and devour her. The results,
according to your mom, are hilarious, but
come on, you and I both know the story is
just so predictable. And Todd knows damn well
your writing doesn’t pull off
any metaphors for the happiness that was
taken from you by some dude who played
bass and called himself a musician
when all he could really do was play
a couple of chords and sing about true love
and alligators and how the alligator
represents true love which somehow
explains why somebody cut open
an alligator one time in Florida
and found a golfer. There’s just no fooling
Todd. Sure, he’ll act like he’s interested,
that’s Todd Bernstein, and he’ll make
remote claims that he too has written
or been artistic at some point in his life,
but Todd Bernstein knows all you girls
really want is a piece of good old
Todd Bernstein. No longer will any
strange auras enter the bedroom
during sex and keep him from maintaining
an erection, no longer will any women
walk out on him repulsed. If anybody’s
walking out after sex, it’ll be
Todd Bernstein, I can assure you.
He won’t be humiliating himself by falling
down a flight of stairs in front of a group
of Japanese tourists anymore, but rather
coaxing entire masses of women into his bed-
room. Because that’s Todd Bernstein. He’s on
the move. And he wants you to know, girls,
that he’s well aware you certainly can’t learn
Korean sitting around here which is why
he’s out there right now, preparing
for the slew of women just beyond his sexual
horizon, spray-painting GIRLS, LOOK OUT
FOR TODD BERNSTEIN on the side
of a Village Pantry.

I never really thought about Chapter One this way. I’m so impatient that often I just want to get on with things. I think I may have a new appreciation after reading this poem. I usually love books which totally involve me emotionally, but they can be tiring. Chapter One is often comfortable.

Chapter One
By Mark Aiello

I love how books begin; those passages
that lead us by the hand across
the luxurious lawns, that portage us
gently up the gravel drive,
toward the manor house.

The author is still a kind host here,
anxious that we mingle
with the other weekend guests, that we note
how even the banisters are polished for us,
that we feel free to walk out
with the lady of the house and smoke
a cigarette, down the grand alley of elms.

We’re not expected to have things down pat
yet, like the family tree, or the route to the old Abbey.
Nothing really happens now,
beyond the delivery of breakfast trays.
It’s not scheduled to rain
for two more chapters, and no one
who matters to us has died yet.

I realized when posting yesterday’s poem that I had never posted this one. Sorry about the white chickens, indeed!

The Red Wheelbarrow
By William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.