Poetry Periodically #22

Monday's column featured formal pieces, a villanelle by Sylvia Plath and a terzanelle by your humble correspondent.  This time I've got some not-so-formal poems by David Wagoner, another modern American master that I was unaware of until recently.

I'll go ahead and start with one that should be posted above the door of any creative writing class.






THIS IS A WONDERFUL POEM

Come at it carefully, don't trust it, that isn't its right name,
It's wearing stolen rags, it's never been washed, its breath
Would look moss-green if it were really breathing,
It won't get out of the way, it stares at you
Out of eyes burnt gray as the sidewalk,
Its skin is overcast with colorless dirt,
It has no distinguishing marks, no I.D. cards,
It wants something of yours but hasn't decided
Whether to ask for it or just take it,
There are no policemen, no friendly neighbors,
No peacekeeping busybodies to yell for, only this
Thing standing between you and the place you were headed,
You have about thirty seconds to get past it, around it,
Or simply to back away and try to forget it,
It won't take no for an answer: try hitting it first
And you'll learn what's trembling in its torn pocket.
Now, what do you want to do about it?

- David Wagoner







Like James Wright, Wagoner's work has a certain emotional weight, a sense of melancholy nostalgia, that is always present even in the lightest of poems.  It's the same undercurrent of dark wistfulness that I've always loved and searched for in my own work, and that I see in the work that I most admire.

There are so many of Wagoner's poems that I would like to feature, but I'll give just this one more, and encourage you to seek him out, as his work is not widely anthologized and deserves better attention from the academic community.

I first noticed him in a weathered anthology from the '60s called "The Contemporary American Poets," which covered work from 1940-1968 or so, a very short window, but there is some amazing work in it, including Wagoner's "The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934," which is a masterpiece.  The book's editor was Mark Strand, who will probably appear in this column before long himself.  This poem is not from that anthology, but it makes me very happy.







THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL BAND CONCERT

When our semi-conductor
Raised his baton, we sat there
Gaping at Marche Militaire,
Our mouth-opening number.
It seemed faintly familiar
(We'd rehearsed it all that winter),
But we attacked in such a blur,
No army anywhere
On its stomach or all fours
Could have squeezed through our crossfire.

I played cornet, seventh chair,
Out of seven, my embouchure
A glorified Bronx cheer
Through that three-keyed keyhole stopper
And neighborhood window-slammer
Where mildew fought for air
At every exhausted corner,
My fingering still unsure
After scaling it for a year
Except on the spit-valve lever.

Each straight-faced mother and father
Retested his moral fiber
Against our traps and slurs
And the inadvertent whickers
Paradiddled by our snares,
And when the brass bulled forth
A blare fit to horn over
Jericho two bars sooner
Than Joshua's harsh measures,
They still had the nerve to stare.

By the last lost chord, our director
Looked older and soberer.
No doubt, in his mind's ear
Some band somewhere
In some music of some Sphere
Was striking a note as pure
As the wishes of Franz Schubert,
But meanwhile here we were:
A lesson in everything minor,
Decomposing our first composer.

- David Wagoner








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

Poetry Periodically #21

Two weeks rest and a basic rethinking later, here's a new start when a new start is needed.

The A Poem A Day column was a bit much to maintain every single day, so the new plan is to publish a few a week, probably three or four, more if I'm so inclined and have the time and less if I'm not and don't.  No schedule, just every couple days or so.

Today we're returning to form by exploring form, specifically the villanelle and its variations.  I personally find poetic form to be a liberating and fascinating challenge, a way of parsing my lines and images to their leanest and sharpest, by giving them a shape in which only the strongest parts fit.  It's always a step in my revision process, seeing if the poem can be given more energy and depth by reshaping it.  Some poets find formal writing unbearable, and feel it's an unnecessary construct that prevents their work from taking the shape it desires for itself.  The debate rages on.

The villanelle is a diabolical little form of French origin, consisting of 19 lines and two rhymes, with a very strict pattern of repetition, to wit:

A1  (refrain)
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1 (refrain)

a
b
A2 (refrain)

a
b
A1
A2 (refrain)

The 'a' and 'b' represent end rhymes, each 'a' or 'A' line ending with the 'a' rhyme and each 'b' line ending with the 'b' rhyme.  The 'A1' and 'A2' refrains are lines that are entirely repeated.

So, as you can see, with the repeating lines and the claustrophobic rhyme scheme, there isn't a lot of wiggle room in this form, and it's always listed as one of the most difficult to tackle (only the pantoum is harder, in my opinion).  Nevertheless, it's a form that has been the catalyst for some of the greatest poems of the last hundred years, including Roethke's "The Waking," Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," and Bishop's "One Art."

What I've got is a lesser known example, but one I find just as powerful, and in which the oppression of the two-pronged rhyme scheme is deflected by some excellent slant.




MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary darkness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

- Sylvia Plath





And if the villanelle isn't enough, there's a popular hybrid form called a terzanelle, which requires a double explanation.  The 19 line form and structure of the villanelle is intact, but the rhyme scheme and repetitions are taken from another old French form called terza rima.

Terza rima features an interlocking stanza scheme, where the middle line of one stanza is the last line of the next one, and each stanza introduces a new rhyme in the middle line, like this:

A 1
B 2
A 3

B 4
C 5
B 2

C 6
D 7
C 5

When this is applied to the villanelle form, it allows for more than two rhymes, but still maintains a pattern of line repetition, and the last stanza also features the first and third lines of the first stanza in a refrain, just like the villanelle.

I recently (as in, a couple of weeks ago) applied myself to the terzanelle form, and after several revisions over many days achieved the following.  The terzanelle allows for a very lush and dense poem with its additional rhymes and interlocking repetitions, and I gave myself the extra constraint of a generalized rhythm scheme of tetrameter.  Here's the unabashedly sentimental result:




BALLAD TIME

The ballad time has just begun;
The bass exhaling in our hair,
The steady breathing of the drum.

The solid darkness of the air
Inhales the words as they are sung,
The bass exhaling in our hair.

The world fills with a molten hum;
The floor under the dancers' feet
Exhales the words as they are sung.

There's a moment when our fingers meet,
Hearts fluid, lifted off the ground,
No floor under the dancers' feet.

The waxen room is coming down,
The seconds dripping down the walls,
Liquid souls pooling on the ground.

The air shimmers, quickening, and falls.
The ballad time has now begun;
The seconds dripping down the walls,
The steady breathing of the drum.

- John Phillips










Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #20

Quite a long poem today, but one of my favorites and quite worth the while.  I'll get right to it without comment.


SOUSA

Great brass bell of austerity
and the ghosts of old picnickers
ambling under the box-elder when the sobriety
was the drunkenness.  John,

you child, you drumhead, there is no silence
you can't decapitate
and on forgotten places (the octagonal
stand, Windsor, Illinois, the only May Day
of my mind) the fresh breeze
and the summer dresses of girls once blew
but do not now.  They blow instead at the backs
of our ears John,
under the pinon,
that foreign plant with arrogant southern smell.
I yearn for the box-elder and its beautiful
bug, the red striped and black-plated--
your specific insect, in the Sunday after noon.

Oh restore my northern madness
which no one values anymore and shun,
its uses, give them back their darkened instinct
(which I value no more) we are
dedicated to madness that's why I love you
Sousa, you semper fidelis maniac.

And the sweep
of your american arms
bring a single banging street in Nebraska
home, and your shock
when a trillion broads smile at you
their shocking laughter can be heard long after
the picnickers have gone home.

March us home through the spring rain
the belief, the relief
of occasion.

Your soft high flute and brass
remind me of a lost celebration I can't
quite remember,
in which I volunteered as conquerer:
the silence now stretches me
into sadness.

Come back into the street bells
and tin soldiers.
     *     *
But there are no drums
no drums, loudness,
no poinsette shirts,
there is no warning, you won't recognize anyone.

Children and men in every way
milling, gathering daily, (those vacant eyes)
the bread lines of the deprived are here
Los Alamos, 1960, not Salinas
not Stockton.

Thus when mouths are opened,
waves of poison rain will fall, butterflies
do not fly up from any mouth in that area.
     *     *
Let me go away,
shouting alone, laughing
to the air, Sousa be here
when the leaves wear
a blank radio green, for honoring without trim
or place.

   To dwell again in the hinterland
and take your phone,
play to the lovely eyed people in the field
on the hillside.

Hopeful, and kind
merrily, and possible
(as my friend said, "Why can't it be
like this all the time?"
her arms spread out before her.)
     *     *

John Sousa you can't now
amuse a nation with colored drums
even with cymbals, their ears
have lifted the chalice of explosion
a glass of straight malice, and
we wander in Random in the alleys
of their longfaced towns taking
from their sickly mandibles handbills
summoning our joint spirits.

I sing Sousa.

The desire to disintegrate the Earth
is eccentric,
And away from centre
nothing more nor sizeable
nor science
nor ennobling
no purity, no endeavor
toward human grace.
     *     *
We were
on a prominence through
so lovely to the eye eyes
of birds only caught
all the differences
of each house filled hill.

And from the window a spire
of poplar, windows
and brown pater earth buildings.

My eye on the circling bird
my mind lost in the rainy hemlocks of Washington
the body displaced, let it
wander all the way to Random and dwell
in those damp groves
where stand the friends
I love and left: behind me
slumbering under the dark morning sky

are my few friends.

Oh, please
cut wood to warm them
and stalk never appearing animals
to warm them,
I hope they are warm tonight --
bring salmonberries
even pumpkinseed.

Sousa, it can never be
as my friend said
"Why can't it be like this all the time?"
Her arms spread out before her
gauging the alarm,
(with that entablature)
and the triumph of a march
in which no one
is injured.

- Edward Dorn



Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #19

Today's poem is by Edward Field, whose poems are his biography.

Field tells stories of his life in his work, and shies away from "poetic" language and figurative devices, and he doesn't shy away from reality.  His poems are plainspoken, direct and honest. 

Here's one that's in a lighter vein than some of his confessional work, and shows off the sly and self-deprecating nature of many of his poems about himself.




UNWANTED

The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.

I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile

But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.

I wish someone would find my fingerprints somewhere
Maybe on a corpse and say, You're it.

Description: Male, or reasonably so
White, but not lily-white and usually deep-red

Thirty-fivish, and looks it lately
Five-feet-nine and one-hundred-thirty pounds: no physique

Black hair going gray, hairline receding fast
What used to be curly, now fuzzy

Brown eyes starey under beetling brow
Mole on chin, probably will become a wen

It is perfectly obvious that he was not popular at school
No good at baseball, and wet his bed.

His aliases tell his history: Dumbell, Good-for-nothing,
Jewboy, Fieldinsky, Skinny, Fierce Face, Greaseball, Sissy.

Warning: This man is not dangerous, answers to any name
Responds to love, don't call him or he will come.

- Edward Field








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #18

I don't have much to say about this poem by Louise Glück, except that it's really nice to read, earthy and full of great atmosphere and great sounds.

Glück is one of her generation's (my parent's generation) most honored poets, a Bollingen Prize winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, Academy of American Poets Award, US Poet Laureate and any number of other things in the last twenty years.  But this poem goes back farther than all that, 1967, before the awards, before the adulation of the academic world.  It's smart, unpretentious and deep, and its music is quiet but hard, hiding a little bit of truth, maybe even something profound.




COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.
And there were other signs
That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us
By land: among the pines
An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss
Reared in the polluted air.
Birth, not death, is the hard loss.
I know. I also left a skin there.

- Louise Glück






Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #17

Yesterday we had a poem by James Wright, who we will return to before long for some excellent translations of Herman Hesse and some more of his own work.  Today I've got a couple of poems by his son, Franz Wright.

Franz is one of those rare cases where the child is able to step out of the parent's shadow in the same field, and be taken on their own merit.  When his collection "Walking to Martha's Vineyard" won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004, it made him and his father the first father/son pair to have won that prize as poets. 

The following poems are from his 1995 collection "Rorschach Test."  The first feels almost like a response to his father's poem yesterday.  They take place in the same city, even.




REUNION

Movement of the hour hand, dilating
of the rose...
Once I could write those.
What am I?  A skull

biting its fingernails, a no one
with nowhere to be
consulting his watch,
a country music station left on quietly

all night, the motel door left open
to Wheeling's rainy main street, the river
and wind
and every whiskey-breathed

ghost in the family --
left open,
old man,
for you.

- Franz Wright






The next is a beautifully subtle piece, less confessional and more observational and quietly filled with the chill of memory.





ENDING

It's one of those evenings
we all know
from somewhere.  It might be
the last summery day --
you feel called on to leave what you're doing
and go for a walk by yourself.
Your few vacant streets are the world.
And you might be a six year old child
who's finally been allowed
by his elders to enter a game
of hide-and-seek in progress.
It is getting darker fast,
and he's not supposed to be out;
but he gleefully runs off, concealing himself
with his back to a tree
that sways high overhead
among the first couple of stars.
He keeps dead still, barely breathing for pleasure,
long after they have left.

- Franz Wright










Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #16

Here's a poem I stumbled across a couple years ago by James Wright, master of reinvention.

The assignment was a good one - we had to keep a commonplace book of poems we found in our reading (which, of course, meant that we had to be reading poems fairly often).  That project was, in a way, the genesis of this one.  There have already been a few poems from this column taken from that commonplace book, and I assume eventually all of them will end up here. 

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is about this poem that made me pay attention and put it in the book.  Maybe it's the subtle dark humor, maybe it's the melancholy rhythm of the language, or maybe I just really like the phrase "hobo jungle weeds."  I don't know.



IN RESPONSE TO A RUMOR THAT THE OLDEST WHOREHOUSE IN WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA, HAS BEEN CONDEMNED

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

- James Wright






Today the father, tomorrow the son.



Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #15

After a couple days off, I'd like to kickstart the column again by kind of ignoring my idea to do short poems on Mondays, and use one of my own instead, because I'm still tired from this weekend and don't feel like hunting through my books and writing much right now.

It's best not to talk too much about interpreting one's own poems. If the poem needs explanation to the reader, then it probably needs revision as well. The reader only has what is on the page, and the reader must interpret it without me. Once it's written, it's on its own and should explain or not explain what it will.

However, a brief note on the form of this poem is in order, I think. The ghazal (pronounced "guzzle") is an old form from the middle-east and Mediterranean region. It was a pretty common form of verse-play in Persian society, and is now found occasionally in Arabic poetry. The basic tenets of the form are that (1) it is syllabic verse, each line containing the same number, determined by the poet; (2) it is a chain of couplets, each one independent of the rest, the number determined by the poet; and (3) each couplet ends with the same word or phrase. I have ignored the rule against enjambment-- each of the couplets below is not independent of the others. I have also ignored the custom of the poet referencing himself by name in the last stanza. With those caveats, here is my short westernized ghazal. A "lyric ghazal" might be an appropriate label.





FIRE ALARM GHAZAL

I don't think it's ever been touched.
Instead it sits, redly waiting.

Perhaps one day it was set off
by some bored undergrad, waiting

for the bell, eyes ringing in their
sockets, before a nervous wait

in the trees near the parking lot.
Maybe. Or maybe it still waits

for that first red shrieking moment
when its arm is grasped from waiting

in the curling, blackening smoke,
and flashing in the dark, the weight

of its howling voice will press the
yellow air, warning: "do not wait."

- John Phillips









Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #14

I'll be in Tennessee for the weekend for a couple shows, and likely won't post another poem until Monday.  So, today we'll feature two poems by the astounding Elizabeth Bishop, which should be meaty enough to last several days.

The first poem is one of her lesser known works, a trio of similarly structured stanzas each with its own world, its own direction, all aimed at the moon, at the expanse of space, vast celestial images used for the simplest of descriptions of the simplest things.



THE SHAMPOO

The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.

- Elizabeth Bishop






The next is a well-anthologized and well-known favorite, and it's Bishop at her lushly descriptive best.  My favorite works of hers all realize the secret essence, the epic-ness of the routine, the small, the details of life.  A single event, be it stopping for gas, or the doctor's waiting room, or catching a fish, is painted wide and large, the smallest details made significant by attention and scale, laid bare by her magnificent descriptive eye.  You read Bishop the way you look at a painting.




THE FISH

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

- Elizabeth Bishop








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #13

This month so far, at least for me, seems to be governed by a strange serendipity. There are people I've met, places I've wound up going, people I keep running into, weird instances of chance that seem to be ruling my life even more than usual lately.

When these things happen, I like it best to just go with them. Often they lead to even more strange and interesting things. Thus the genesis of today's column.

My most recent facebook status is: John is wandering and wondering. This is facebook status chaff, a pleasant placeholder until I have something worthwhile to say, but it led to an excellently serendipitous email from friend and fellow drummer Steve Scott. Steve had a story about a poet from Birmingham discussing his feelings about the loss of wonder in our society at a local reading a couple months ago, and this fellow's poem on the subject.

Steve also included the following clever bit of humorous verse of his own, his response to the situation above, and a fine example of the kind of straightforward popular ballad verse that I think has had a mostly unfair snubbing by the New Critics of the 20th century and beyond.






THE WONDER OF IT ALL

My wife has said, she wanted me to see,

The Columbus Live Poet, Society.

They’re learned folks, from all around

Including six “experts” from out of town

“Our wonder hath wandered,” quoth a cryptic man,

A goateed Sage from Birmingham.

After endless wonderment of misspent youth,

From wonder, we now remain aloof.

His words rang true! Everything he said,

and set up fresh wondering, in my head.

In youth I’d spy a twinkling star,

And wonder aloud, “just what you are?”

Now with aches and gray hair flowing,

I wonder just, where am I going.

I wonder ‘bout the stars above,

I wonder who?, wrote the “Book of Love.”

I mourn the loss of Pepsodent,

And wonder where the yellow went.

With so much wondering in my head,

I’m even wondering, ‘bout Wonder Bread.

And I guess it’d be, a social blunder,

Not to ponder, about Stevie Wonder

I listen to these poems profound,

Witty, sophisticated, urbane, uptown.

And from all this wondering, one thing comes clear,

Just what the hell, am I doing here?

- Steve Scott





Tomorrow: well, who knows what we'll have tomorrow?




Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #12

WHY FLOWERS CHANGE COLOUR

These fresh beauties (we can prove)
Once were virgins sick of love,
Turn'd to flowers. Still in some
Colours go and colours come.

- Robert Herrick



Robert Herrick, noted Royalist and vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire, was the earthiest and easily the most accessible of Ben Jonson's many 17th century followers.  His lines have been a staple of the wooing repertory for nearly 400 years, and his poems, though laden with the allusions and archetypal figurations expected of poets of the time, are still vibrant in their language and directly communicative to the modern reader.  Any collection of Herrick's work is sure to be boldly romantic, possibly lusty, and probably quite funny.

Here's one of his best and most well-known (and most anthologized) works.




DELIGHT IN DISORDER

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction :
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat :
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

- Robert Herrick








Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #11

"Do not go naked into that good night..."

Today's poem is a humorous and thoughtful piece from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, legendary owner of the City Lights bookstore and one of the leaders of the Beats.

I've always been kind of ambivalent about the Beat movement.  To me their work seems inextricable from its place and time, and generally more concerned with the revolutionary fervor of the writer than with the technical achievement and quality of the finished works.  Which is all well and good in the author's mouth, spoken with relish at a reading or performance, but on paper, alone, seems empty and pretentious.

But, in its defense, empty pretentiousness can be an awful lot of fun, and I am totally in favor of it.  I often engage in the practice myself.  I just want to acknowledge its presence, and for things to be called what they are.

So here's one that I think knows what it is, and revels in it.






UNDERWEAR

I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
You have seen the underwear ads
for men and women
so alike but so different
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
and three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don’t be deceived
It’s all based on the two-party system
which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can or can’t do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?
And that spot she was always rubbing—
Was it really in her underwear?
Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don’t worry
Everybody’s still hung up in it
There won’t be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults
in the geological sense—
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
If I were you I’d keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy
Don’t shout

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti






Tomorrow: the Way-Back Machine.




Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #10

Every writer I know has a favorite Theodore Roethke poem.  One that they know well, that they've studied and poked at and that has crept into a corner of their own style.  Most have several.  His poems are accessible, beautiful, direct, subversive, and indelible, so influential they have become a part of nearly everything since.

This is my favorite Roethke, at the moment (these things are known to change).  It's not as elegant or technically perfect as "The Waking;" not as rich and laden with image as "Root Cellar;" not as lucidly moving and somber as "Elegy for Jane;" but I love it for its voice, and for its humor.  Think of it as another scene in the world of yesterday's poem, taking place across town.




THE GERANIUM

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine--
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--
And that was scary--
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

- Theodore Roethke







Tomorrow we'll get out of noir-world for a while, go somewhere with colors.




Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #9

Today's poem is an atmospheric, secretive piece by Henri Coulette.  His work calls to mind Columbus poet Will Dockery for me, as both of their work seems to exist in a shrouded other-world: for Dockery it is Shadowville, which we'll address in another column; for Coulette it is the smoky noir Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler, full of spies and madams and detectives and liars, people with secrets hanging out in scuzzy hotel rooms and putting out cigarettes in empty bottles of cheap beer.  He only published two books, and nearly every copy of the second was accidentally pulped and destroyed by the printer.  He lived in L.A. all his life, and worked in the publicity department at RKO before he became a professor (he is often credited with being the one that saved all the publicity stills from Citizen Kane, which otherwise would have been discarded).

This poem, from his first book "War of the Secret Agents and other poems," is so deep in Coulette's dark alternate world that you can see Philip Marlowe sitting by himself down at the other end of the bar, with his hat pushed back on his head, looking at his drink, thinking.  But it's the voice of the poem's speaker that's most interesting.  The character is drawn in a few nasty strokes, just a few lines from inside his head, and yet there's a sense of who he is, and where he's going, and how bad things will be when he gets there.






AT THE TELEPHONE CLUB

We sit, crookbacked, at the bar,
each of us with his own telephone,
all of us with the same itch.
The tight-assed operator
in the opera stockings
--the only one worth having--
hovers, wisely, out of reach.
She has got all our numbers.

My phone rings: it's the matron
with lost eyes and a horse jaw.
I get rid of her: I have
an ugliness within me,
whole as I am not, a kind
of sleeping cancer.  Who needs more?
I listen to the broken
English of an Amsterdam

blonde, seduced in her twelfth year--
it was summer!-- by a man
in a Silver Cloud, but I
can have her now for the price
of a taxi ride.  I can
have her in a Murphy bed,
while the roaches on the sink
stiffen their fine antennae.

I would, I would, dear lady,
but I have a plane to catch,
one piloted by a sly
Tibetan.  I have a date
with some porters in the snow.
I buy her a Grasshopper,
and slip out into the night.
How cold the stars are, how clear!

- Henri Coulette










Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #8

Here are a couple from one of my favorite books of poetry, a slim paperback volume published in 1966 by Scholastic, compiled by Dunning, Lueders and Smith, called "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle... And Other Modern Verse."  It contains some of the sharpest and most luminous short poems of the middle 20th century, by almost all of the midcentury imagist masters, and is geared toward young people getting into poetry.  It is one of the most fun, startling and perfect introductions to modern poetry one could have, and it's still in print: http://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Watermelon-Pickle-Stephen-Dunning/dp/0688412319

My copy is a beat up fourth edition from '68.  The pages are warped and orange, the cover dog-eared and stained and shredded around the edges.  The name "Vilma Salaveria" is written in crabbed cursive all down the inside cover, in different inks and pencils, and over to one side the name "M. Jane Collins" signed in an adult's practiced hand, and the first page has ".50" marked in the top right corner.  It's clearly been around.  Several poems have words circled in pencil or a underlined in pen.  I love books like this.  There's more input than just that of the editor or collector; there are other hands, unknown, that have something to say, that pass on part of their experience with this book; that show me what they were into when they read it whenever ago.

These two poems are pretty representative of the book's contents.  The first, by Beatrice Janosco, was the linchpin of my understanding of metaphor, and a perfect example of a poem that throws two shadows.




THE GARDEN HOSE


In the gray evening
I see a long green serpent
With its tail in the dahlias.

It lies in loops across the grass
And drinks softly at the faucet.

I can hear it swallow.

—Beatrice Janosco





The second is a gorgeous list poem by Elizabeth Coatsworth, which in its meditations gains a rolling, sure-footed rhythm and a broad expanse of visual power, expressed in the lightest and most graceful of ways.




SWIFT THINGS ARE BEAUTIFUL

Swift things are beautiful:
Swallows and deer,
And lightning that falls
Bright-veined and clear,
Rivers and meteors,
Wind in the wheat,
The strong-withered horse,
The runner's sure feet.

And slow things are beautiful:
The closing of day,
The pause of the wave
That curves downward to spray,
The ember that crumbles,
The opening flower,
And the ox that moves on
In the quiet of power.

- Elizabeth Coatsworth






So, that's a week so far.  How is this working?  Let me know if you folks are reading this, and if it's doing anything for you.  More tomorrow.




Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #7

That's enough of this seriousness.  Let's have a silly poem.

One of my all-time favorites will be making an appearance here today, and there are so many ways to appreciate it.  It first appeared in lines from the great comic strip "Pogo," and appeared in several collections of Pogo strips and Pogo merchandise in its present form.  It was also recorded in song form on the excellent album "Songs of the Pogo" by Walt Kelly and Norman Monath.  They Might Be Giants did a fine cover of it.  Seek it out in any of these forms and you'll find some other treats worthy of your attention as well.

I have little to say about the poem itself; it's a moment of crystallized genius.  The final couplet has been a front-runner for my personal motto for years.




LINES UPON A TRANQUIL BROW

Have ever, while pondering the ways of the morn,
Thought to save just a little bit, just a drop in the horn,
To pour in the evening or late afternoon
Or during the night when we're shining the moon?
Have you ever cried out, while counting the snow,
Or watching the tomtit warble hello...
"Break out the cigars, this life is for squirrels;
We're off to the drugstore to whistle at girls."
?

- Walt Kelly




Tomorrow: serious business.



Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #6

Today there are a couple new things.  This is the first column to feature a woman.  It's also the first column to feature "new" works, in that they are from the last couple of years.  Also, this is the first column to feature a poet that isn't canon, that is to say, that those outside certain communities will not have heard of.  These are good things.

I'll be using two poems by Chelsea Bullock today.  Chelsea is a young fashionista and writer and lives in Oregon with her husband.  She was in a couple of creative writing classes I took at CSU, and these two poems really stuck with me after the class was over.  They both also saw publication in the CSU Arden.

The first is an exercise in sound and image, and also stars everybody's favorite CSU professor, Dr. David Schwimmer, who is also a fine guitarist and collector of folk songs.  I don't know if anyone has pointed this poem's existence out to Dr. Schwimmer, but someone should.  This is one to read out loud, and have the pleasure of making the sounds yourself.




GEOLOGY 1121

flint, jasper, jet
coquina, chalk, micrite
diorite, gypsum, and scoria,
volcanos, shards of mineral and rock --

he says, "there's no mystery in how it formed!"

swears at the whiteboard marker then
heaves it toward his pet granite by the door
hikes up his antique Levis--
sighs at his steel box of gems

- Chelsea Bullock





The next is another vignette, this time chilling as well as lovely.  It takes on one of the hardest of forms, the pantoum, a form created by the devil for inducing cranial hemorrhaging in writing students.  It's a rotating repetition form, where the entire line is repeated, such that if the first stanza is ABCD, the next must be BEDF, and the next must be EGFH, and so on, the second and fourth lines of the previous stanza becoming the first and third of the next.  And the last stanza must feature the return of the A-C from the first, completing the circle.  "Firestuffs" is only three stanzas, the shortest form in which all the principles of the form are at work.  It's a fine example, and the swinging of the axe is of a piece with the form, the repetition making a steady, gently rocking pace that gains tension as it progresses, until the chill of the last turnaround descends and there us just the sound of the axe in the hollow air.




FIRESTUFFS

The axe's dull weight scared me--
Its blunt might no matter of reckoning.
You swung rapidly, with force,
Almost every cut splintery clean.

Its blunt might no matter of reckoning,
The wood gave every time,
Almost every cut splintery clean.
Log met dirt, hollowing the air around it.

The wood gave every time.
You swung rapidly, with force and
Log met dirt, hollowing the air around it.
The axe's dull weight scared me.

- Chelsea Bullock





I'll let the poet have the final word, from a 2007 interview:

How do you know when a poem is finished?
"A ray of sunlight warms my face, and then a bluebird comes and lands on my right shoulder."









Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day #5

On Mondays this column will feature several very short poems. Today we'll start this series with a sampler of the ultimate in short poetry, the haiku.

The word "haiku" is a relatively new invention which came into vogue in the 20th century. Before that it was known as "hokku," which means "starting verse." Originally the hokku was the first part of a two-part stanza called the haikai (it is by combining these two words that modern critics coined the term "haiku"), which means "unusual" or "offbeat." Haikai was a social activity, similar to some drinking songs or the hoedown at the end of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?," in which the participants each improvise a verse of a collective poem. The resulting haikai-no-renga poems were often hilarious and scatological, and the style was a popular alternative to the austere formality of the waka/tanka poems of the Court nobility, or the powerful Shoguns. Around the end of the 17th century, Basho and his followers began to take the hokku section on its own, and turned it into something entirely its own, which retained some of the wit and surprise of the haikai poems, but took on a new sensitivity and gravity.

Everyone knows the haiku form, which in its traditional form is a single poem of 17 syllables, typically divided into three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. Additionally, strict tradition demands that the poem be on the subject of nature and contains a seasonal reference word, or kigo, to establish a context in the time of year. This could be the actual name of a season, or something more subtle, like a mention of birds' nests to indicate late spring/early summer. And, almost uniquely among poetic forms, traditional haiku is impervious to revision. The poem is to be written at the moment of inspiration, without conscious filtering, and once committed to paper is indelible, not to be changed.

These are fairly stringent requirements by the standards of modern poetry, and there are many things on the internet and off that ignore some or all of the rules and call themselves haiku. I will not disagree, but I will note that there is another relatively new word that was created specifically to address this new breed of poems that do not contain 17 syllables, or present kigo, or address a subject other than nature, or use the first person. The word is "senryu," and it generally connotes more comic verse, but traditionalists will apply it to anything that doesn't meet the above criteria.

I'll devote this column to a selection of traditional period haiku (or rather, hokku) poems. Future columns will address other traditional zen forms, as well as senryu, tanka and others. Attention will also be paid to Western short forms and short poems. But for now, here are some haiku. Keep in mind that translators of Japanese verse often ignore the 17 syllable rule in pursuit of representing the image in a way that is as sharp and beautiful in English as in the original form.




Green willows
paint eyebrows on the face
of the cliff

- Arakida Moritake (1472-1549), trans. Cheryl Crowley



What a beautiful moon! It casts
the shadow of pine boughs upon the mats.

- Takarai Kikaku (1661-1707), trans. Asatoro Miyamori



Under the rainclouds
The plum blossoms seem like stars
Despite the daylight

- Uejima Onitsura (1661-1738), trans. Cheryl Crowley



Even after waking
From the dream
I'll see the colors of irises.

- Ogawa Shushiki (1669-1725), trans. Alex Kerr



The evening breezes -
The water splashes against
A blue heron's shins.

- Yosa Buson (1716-1783), trans. Donald Keene



Under cherry trees
there are
no strangers

- Kobayashi Issa (1763-1867), trans. Lucien Stryk



The tree cut,
dawn breaks early
at my little window.

- Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), trans. Janine Beichman




Tomorrow, something modern.

A Poem A Day #4

As promised, today I have a poem from the star of yesterday's piece, Charles Baudelaire.

This also presents an opportunity to examine an angle that has always interested me, and that I'll come back to whenever possible: translation. Baudelaire wrote primarily in French, as is the case with this poem, and whenever we read his work in English, we're actually reading a kind of de-facto collaboration, or in some cases we're actually reading the work of another poet, the translator. Here, for reference, is Baudelaire's original pseudo-sonnet, in French:


LE REVENANT

Comme les anges à l'oeil fauve,
Je reviendrai dans ton alcôve
Et vers toi glisserai sans bruit
Avec les ombres de la nuit;

Et je te donnerai, ma brune,
Des baisers froids comme la lune
Et des caresses de serpent
Autour d'une fosse rampant.

Quand viendra le matin livide,
Tu trouveras ma place vide,
Où jusqu'au soir il fera froid.

Comme d'autres par la tendresse,
Sur ta vie et sur ta jeunesse,
Moi, je veux régner par l'effroi.

— Charles Baudelaire



I know a piddling amount of French, but I could hardly claim to be able to make proper sense of his complex, poetic phrasing, certainly not enough to be able to read it as a poem and not a strenuous exercise. So we'll start with two translations from 1952 and 1954, respectively, that seem to be fairly literal, in a basic match-the-word sense. They seem closest to the actual French of those I found, with a few notable changes. Personally I prefer the first, by Roy Campbell, for its dedication to the meter and rhyme of the original and the form, and I believe the juxtaposition of the last lines in Aggeler's translation was ill-advised, and takes away the power of the last line. Campbell's is not without it's oddities, however ('brown delight,' anyone?).


THE GHOST

Like angels fierce and tawny-eyed,
Back to your chamber I will glide,
And noiselessly into your sight
Steal with the shadows of the night.

And I will bring you, brown delight,
Kisses as cold as lunar night
And the caresses of a snake
Revolving in a grave. At break

Of morning in its livid hue,
You'd find I had bequeathed to you
An empty place as cold as stone.

Others by tenderness and ruth
Would reign over your life and youth,
But I would rule by fear alone.

- trans. by Roy Campbell




THE GHOST

Like angels with wild beast's eyes
I shall return to your bedroom
And silently glide toward you
With the shadows of the night;

And, dark beauty, I shall give you
Kisses cold as the moon
And the caresses of a snake
That crawls around a grave.

When the livid morning comes,
You'll find my place empty,
And it will be cold there till night.

I wish to hold sway over
Your life and youth by fear,
As others do by tenderness.

- trans. by William Aggeler



But there's another style of translation, where the translating poet allows his or her own personality a freer reign over the writing, and the original work is thus transformed somehow by the will of the translator into a kind of collaborative poem, one poet's vision seen through the haze of another's. The following two translations are this kind of thing. The first is still similar in shape and rhythm to the original, but the translator demonstrates a much more colorful and idiosyncratic approach to choosing words and phrases (a grave becomes a cistern, 'phantom-wise,' etc). The second is even more of a break from the original. The four stanzas become two claustrophobic blocks of text, and the language is more urgent and ominous. It increases the effect of the poem quite nicely, but how much of that is Baudelaire, and how much is the translator?


THE REVENANT

Like angels with bright savage eyes
I will come treading phantom-wise
Hither where thou art wont to sleep,
Amid the shadows hollow and deep.

And I will give thee, my dark one,
Kisses as icy as the moon,
Caresses as of snakes that crawl
In circles round a cistern's wall.

When morning shows its livid face
There will be no-one in my place,
And a strange cold will settle here

Others, not knowing what thou art,
May think to reign upon thy heart
With tenderness; I trust to fear.

- trans. by George Dillon



THE GHOST

Like angels that have monster eyes,
Over your bedside I shall rise,
Gliding towards you silently
Across night's black immensity.
O darksome beauty, you shall swoon
At kisses colder than the moon
And fondlings like a snake's who coils
Sinuous round the grave he soils.

When livid morning breaks apace,
You shall find but an empty place,
Cold until night, and bleak, and drear:
As others do by tenderness,
So would I rule your youthfulness
By harsh immensities of fear.

- trans. by Jacques LeClercq




That's quite a bit of Baudelaire for one weekend. Tomorrow, something else.

A Poem A Day #3

Since it's Saturday, and I've got some time, a couple little departures.

First: I'm not tagging anyone on these anymore. It takes almost as long to go through the list and pick out people than it does to type the article. Plus, I don't want to pollute everybody's profile with one of these every day, until your entire wall is just a bunch of my notes. That's just uncalled for. So, I'll just post it, and hope that those who are interested will find it on their own, now that they know where to look.

Second: the poem today is a fairly long one, but it's a well-built machine and generates a fantastic return on your investment for reading it. Our poet is Richard Brautigan, better known as a novelist, but I prefer his poems for their linguisic brutality and lissome wit. He was of the more journalistic imagist school, relying for effect on pure images, and letting the connotations and meanings be inferred from the resulting mental tableau, a style of which yesterday's poet Robert Bly sternly disapproved (to his loss, perhaps).

The following poem is an extended play on this style, each image a vignette-style mini-poem within the whole. There's very little in the way of meaty poeticisms, the language is plain and unobtrusive, and the entire success or failure of the pieces, and of the whole, rely on the absurdity, humor, or poignancy of the vignettes. It succeeds for me, but perhaps I am tricked, so amused by the idea of taking already absurd, hippy-dippy situations and anachronistically inserting Charles Baudelaire that I miss that there is no poetic endoskeleton under the absurdity. What do you think? Is it a cosmic joke or just cosmic? Is Robert Bly right?




THE GALILEE HITCH-HIKER

The Galilee Hitch-Hiker
Part 1

Baudelaire was
driving a Model A
across Galilee.
He picked up a
hitch-hiker named
Jesus who had
been standing among
a school of fish,
feeding them
pieces of bread.
"Where are you
going?" asked
Jesus, getting
into the front
seat.
"Anywhere, anywhere
out of this world!"
shouted
Baudelaire.
"I'll go with you
as far as
Golgotha,"
said Jesus.
"I have a
concession
at the carnival
there, and I
must not be
late."


The American Hotel
Part 2

Baudelaire was sitting
in a doorway with a wino
on San Fransisco's skid row.
The wino was a million
years old and could remember
dinosaurs.
Baudelaire and the wino
were drinking Petri Muscatel.
"One must always be drunk,"
said Baudelaire.
"I live in the American Hotel,"
said the wino. "And I can
remember dinosaurs."
"Be you drunken ceaselessly,"
said Baudelaire.


1939
Part 3

Baudelaire used to come
to our house and watch
me grind coffee.
That was in 1939
and we lived in the slums
of Tacoma.
My mother would put
the coffee beans in the grinder.
I was a child
and would turn the handle,
pretending that it was
a hurdy-gurdy,
and Baudelaire would pretend
that he was a monkey,
hopping up and down
and holding out
a tin cup.


The Flowerburgers
Part 4

Baudelaire opened
up a hamburger stand
in San Fransisco,
but he put flowers
between the buns.
People would come in
and say, "Give me a
hamburger with plenty
of onions on it."
Baudelaire would give
them a flowerburger
instead and the people
would say, "What kind
of a hamburger stand
is this?"


The Hour of Eternity
Part 5

"The Chinese
read the time
in the eyes
of cats,"
said Baudelaire
and went into
a jewelry store
on Market Street.
He came out
a few moments
later carrying
a twenty-one
jewel Siamese
cat that he
wore on the
end of a
golden chain.


Salvador Dali
Part 6

"Are you
or aren't you
going to eat
your soup,
you bloody odd
cloud merchant?"
Jeanne Duval
shouted,
hitting Baudelaire
on the back
as he sat
daydreaming
out the window.
Baudelaire was
startled.
Then he laughed
like hell,
waving his spoon
in the air
like a wand
changing the room
into a painting
by Salvador
Dali, changing
the room
into a painting
by Van Gogh.


A Baseball Game
Part 7

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the
whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.


Insane Asylum
Part 8

Baudelaire went
to the insane asylum
disguised as a
psychiatrist.
He stayed there
for two months
and when he left,
the insane asylum
loved him so much
that it followed
him all over
California,
and Baudelaire
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat.


My Insect Funeral
Part 9

When I was a child
I had a graveyard
where I buried insects
and dead birds under
a rose tree.
I would bury the insects
in tin foil and match boxes.
I would bury the birds
in pieces of red cloth.
It was all very sad
and I would cry
as I scooped the dirt
into their small graves
with a spoon.
Baudelaire would come
and join in
my insect funerals,
saying little prayers
the size of
dead birds.


San Fransisco
February 1958

-Richard Brautigan





Tomorrow there might be Baudelaire himself.

A Poem A Day #2

Yesterday's first column featured a translation of Basho by Robert Bly, which got me wondering about Bly himself. Turns out Robert Bly is one of the great 20th century American poets, founder of the Mythopoetic Male movement, and is still writing and lecturing today. If we were to meet, I would have much to ask. There are so many differences in his opinion and aesthetic philosophy and my own (his famous essay "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry" denounces the sleek beauty of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams in favor of the anguished and overwrought work of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, for example) that it would seem unlikely that his work would appeal to me. But in just less than an hour's search through some anthologies and his own website, I have already found it difficult to narrow down the field of excellent pieces to just one that I want to post. There was one from the book "Silence in the Snowy Fields" that is about Wallace Stevens that would have made a strange double-connection to yesterday's column, but that will have to wait, because this poem just muscled its way to the front of the line after reading it a couple times. And 'muscled' is the term for it - this poem is direct, rippling, while still remaining effortlessly lithe.




THE EXECUTIVE'S DEATH

Merchants have multiplied more than the stars of heaven.
Half the population are like the long grasshoppers
That sleep in the bushes in the cool of the day:
The sound of their wings is heard at noon, muffled, near the earth.
The crane handler dies, the taxi-driver dies, slumped over
In his taxi. Meanwhile, high in the air, executives
Walk on cool floors, and suddenly fall:
Dying they dream they are lost in a snowstorm in mountains,
On which they crashed, carried at night by great machines.
As he lies on the wintry slope, cut off and dying,
A pine stump talks to him of Goethe and Jesus.
Commuters arrive in Hartford at dusk like moles
Or hares flying from a fire behind them,
And the dusk in Hartford is full of their sighs;
Their trains come through the air like a dark music,
Like the sound of horns, the sound of thousands of small wings.

- Robert Bly






It's also interesting that today's poem should namecheck Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It's Goethe's birthday.




Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights to be taken down, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.

A Poem A Day - First Edition

I've decided that since I'm home sick tonight, and reading lots of interesting things, I'd come up with a way to share some. I've been meaning to do something along this line for a while, and why not? So I will start a regular, daily column, and provide you with a poem or two I've discovered, or an old favorite, for your reading enjoyment, and perhaps with a brief discussion. Also, we will see if I am able to maintain this daily practice for any length of time. I give it until this weekend, but nevertheless I'll try to post daily.

I will choose freely from any and every source I can find, including famous and not-so-famous poets, people I know and myself, and try to offer as broad a selection of styles as I can gather, keeping in mind that the collection is governed by my own taste. I will tag anyone that I think might be interested.

The inaugural poem is by noted insurance salesman Wallace Stevens, not my favorite of his but a nice one to start on, as there is much going on. Keep in mind also that this was written back in the glory days of sexism, and Stevens, for what we know, was Don Draper. And that's interesting, but the thing that draws me to this poem can best be experienced thus: read it aloud. Feel the sounds in your mouth.




THE EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

-Wallace Stevens




And since it's the first column, I'll do another, one of my very favorite pieces ever and a real treat the first time you read it. It's the frontispiece of Mary Oliver's "A Poetry Handbook," which is a masterpiece in itself. The poem is the embodiment of what great haiku is capable of, great leaps of imagination and broad expansions of visual power using the very smallest and subtlest of tools. Great haiku is like a great magic trick: there's the first stroke, a brief setting up; the second stroke, things that are not are shown to be, the reader is not deceived but directed; and the third stroke, the entire context of the piece's perception is altered, subverted, simply and quickly and without pretense. It's even referred to as the "aha!" moment. Take a deep breath, and go:




The temple bell stops -
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.

-Matsuo Basho, trans. by Robert Bly




More tomorrow.



Legal notice:
Some may feel that the inclusion of works not in the public domain is a violation of the fair-use doctrine of US copyright law. I obviously do not agree, but I will gladly defer to the wishes of the rightsholder, and if anyone wishes for a post of their work or work for which they own the intellectual rights, they may ask for its removal and it will be so. I claim no ownership and have no rights as to the works I will be posting, save for any that were written by me.