Saturday, September 19, 2009

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.

Friday, September 18, 2009

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.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

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.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

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.

Monday, September 14, 2009

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.

Friday, September 11, 2009

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.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

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.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

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.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

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.

Friday, September 4, 2009

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.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

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.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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.