a new poetry thread, on being unable to find the old one

I'm very glad to see a new poetry thread. I'm sure I'll be contributing to it. But right now I am preparing to be incommunicado for much of August, so it may not be immediately.

Just for the sake of continuity, the previous poetry thread is here.

What the hey! I recently wrote this for a friend. I am not entirely sure about how it stacks up, so feel free to tell me if it lacks in grace of execution. I suspect it does but can't let go of liking it.

For Lloyd, On His Sixtieth Birthday

Geese journey far,
each wingbeat a shrug
of muscle and of will,
so many hundreds to the mile,
the miles sheaved and bound
in their many dozens
and shouldered aside
like water from a river rock.

Our journey is long,
not measured in steady beats, but
a multitude of little gestures
that wobble, weave and veer,
no matter how straight
the thought behind may seem,
for we are dream-led beings,
and dreams are never straight.

Upon our spread of lifelong years,
our many gestures lace together
in a tracery as intricate
as how the waters of the earth
converge upon the single sea;
wobbling, weaving, shouldered aside,
they stay well-knit, a whole
unknowable outside imagination.

Lloyd, you've traveled your
sixty flings around the sun,
done things both big and small,
unknowable outside imagination,
sheaved years and miles and
shouldered them aside,
still standing, but not standing still.
Well-dreamed, Lloyd! And well-begun.

A poem from Trimmings by Harryette Mullen (recently republished in her Recyclopedia anthology):

Duds, garbled garb. Misfits, women in breaches. Early bloomers or bluestockings, whose blue worsted wicked black dress, or a white none inhabits. Unholy Magdalene with her veil of tears.

does anyone here know anything much about elizabeth bishop?

Well I mean I've read her poems.

Hoboken Palace Gardens - John Yau

We sat beneath a webbed and vaulted sky,
listening to the mechanical mockingbirds

live up to their name.
A green and white cab came and waited

until the last bullet was swept up
and put in a transparent envelope.

The old driver puffed on a red cigar
which he said he found in the library.

Two nurses wrapped me in a pink blanket.
The fat one handed my sister a plastic bone.

After the bricks unraveled and the tornado
collapsed on the outskirts of town,

like an old man whose anger
has finally stabbed him,

the story gets progressively colder.
A man stood up and peed in his coffee cup.

Wanda got a job with the rodeo as an assistant cook,
and Purple Bill finally learned

why his neighbors called him "Esmerelda Desdemona"
when he started his fancy jalopy.

I could have told you another white lie.
I could have heaped it on the mountain

gathering before you. Perhaps it would have
even been the truth, the whole truth,

but I wouldn't have known it, not then and not now.
When the air gets thick and stuffy like this

my brain turns into a dog dish I circle,
my tongue hanging out like a wet flannel sleeve.

I wore your underwear to work the other day
but it didn't make me feel as sexy as I thought it would.

Why have you stopped tapping your foot?
I was just beginning to get in the mood

to swing down from my branch and sing.
That sweet smell is the soup starting to rot.

I am, as always, your disobedient servant.

(by stephen hines)

morning tea

through the steam of the kettle
(after the beds are made the
lunches packed the kids and husband
out the door the turkey from the freezer
and into the sink to thaw)
she tries to see herself on the horizon.

young love

just like that saying
if I knew then
what I know now
(young eager love,
pebbles thrown at a window
pane after midnight)
I would've used
bigger rocks.

I still haven't managed to buy the Tony Harrison and Elizabeth Bishop books that I started this thread in the full hopes of the three discrete goals of buying, and of reading, and of talking about.

Mr. Cogito's Soul
by Zbigniew Herbert

Earlier
we know from history
she'd leave the body
when the heart stopped

at the last breath
she'd go off
to heavenly pastures

Mr. Cogito's soul
behaves in a different way

she leaves his living body
without a parting word

for months for years she's a guest
on other continents
beyond his bounds

it is not easy to find her address
she doesn't report her whereabouts

she avoids contacts
writes no letters

It is not known when she'll come back
maybe she's left him forever

Mr. Cogito wants to overcome
his base feelings of jealousy

he thinks well of his soul
he thinks of her tenderly

perhaps she must live
in other bodies as well

the number of souls
is insufficient for Mankind anyway

Mr. Cogito accepts his destiny
he has no alternative

he thinks of his soul with feeling
with a tender solicitude

and when all of a sudden
she returns
he doesn't greet her with the words
-it is good you are back

He just watches out of the corner of his eye
how she sits by the mirror
and combs her hair
-tangled and gray

Translated by Roman Turovsky and Sean Monagle

(For Bishop just get the Collected Poems. Don't get that newer book of unpublished stuff, the reviews all said it was not very good. You can still get Geography III as its own book but it's in the Collected.)

"The Truth The Dead Know" Anne Sexton

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

On Death, Without Exaggeration

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plummage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees far away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

Postscript by Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

The Tony Harrison was sort of disappointing. I am failing to read the Elizabeth Bishop, and so disappointing myself.

I'd never read any Tony Harrison, so I read that little collection of new poems put out as one of the Penguin 70s last year. Not very good, unfortunately. Won't be going back to him.

"I often remind my students that, despite their belief that they have important knowledge to communicate to the world at large through their poetry, their status as poets already suggests that they have failed to make any momentous discovery that might have otherwise contributed to the history of knowledge; otherwise, the students might have exploited this insight in far more lucrative vocations, like the sciences or even business. I remind my students that they are probably taking my class in poetry because "math is hard"—and since they have no other worthy skills, they have chosen to accept their demotion to a lowly caste of literate nobodies. I get a few nervous giggles from the students after these waggish tirades—but then I underline my argument by saying that, if students really do believe that they are communicating, heretofore undiscovered, revelations to the public, then the proper genre for transmitting such a discovery is definitely not a poem, but a press conference...."

Christian Bök, here.

I like the sentiment, but that is too narrow a definition on the motivation to write.

Yes, but it's clearly meant as a corrective, and one too often needed.

(Christian and I have argued about whether Eunoia had something important to communicate to the world, compared to, say, La Disparition, and so he seems to think he did actually have something important to say or to remind the world of, so this is clearly a bit tongue in cheek or something.)

Just to stir the dust around here, here's a poem I wrote in college, circa 1978.

Jack and All

I tell you, the man had a voice
to inveigle the lollipop
out of a toddler’s hand.
It was grand just to listen
for, when he’d a mind to it,
Jack had a knack that
could make a hag blush
like a bride of three days,
or, what’s more, keep a lawyer
in stutters the day long,
like I snap my fingers – like so!

Old Solomon says in the Bible
the tongue has a deal of life in it,
solemnest secrets and all,
but Jack had the power and strong,
and he’s dead as a stone these eight years
and more. It makes a man think,
if he has any thinking inside him.

I tell you I envied that man
as you’d envy a king in his glory,
but now his keen tongue runs to moss,
or to worse – surely nothing to envy.
There are days when I think I am cured of it.
But if, this fine day, you should ask me?
Aye, my heart as it sits in my chest
couldn’t summon the mettle
to sidestep a long sigh.

I missed the screening of a movie about Charles Olson last month. Anybody here into the big galoot?

I'm in love with a girl I've never met. I've
only read her soft sad stories. I let my
book rest over my eyes -- with pages spread,
I smell the fine cut paper and words that
line my heart. I take it in with a sigh --
I have found love, euphoric bliss guiding my
mind's eye to the girl who took my breath
away -- gave me wings -- lifting my whole
existence to her estate, where I can forever
be with her and without my worries. She
loves me so much, I can't forget it but hold
her as close as humanly possible. She took
my breath away and left me with a placid
smile -- glued to her heart -- please let me
hold you forever -- I enjoy this too much

Oh Teresita, this one's for you
I hope this poem is good enough for you
I love you

-me

I've heard good things about the Olson movie, I think.

Never read much Olson before; just reading the Maximus poems now. They're a blast - was expecting something more unapproachable (like Cantos, only more so); but a really great surprise.
Would love to see the movie, but doesn't look like it's making a trip to England anytime soon. Have just enjoyed the Paris Review interview tho':
http://www.theparisreview.org/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4134

gary snyder. Discuss. I think I would like him: kinda beat? check. environmentally? check. stark? check.

Oh. Sure, you might like him. Try Philip Whalen while you're there.

"Beauty" by Stephen Dobyns

The father gets a bullet in the eye, killing him
instantly. His daughter raises an arm to say stop
and gets shot in the hand. He's a grocer from Baghdad
and at that time lots of Iraqis are moving to Detroit
to open small markets in the ghetto. In a month,
three have been murdered and since it is becoming
old news your editor says only to pick up a photo
unless you can find someone half decent to talk to.

Jammed into the living room are twenty men in black,
weeping, and thirty women wailing and pulling their hair—
something not prepared for by your Episcopal upbringing.
The grocer had already given the black junkie his money
and the junkie was already out the door when he fired,
for no apparent reason, the cops said. The other daughter,
who gives you the picture, has olive skin, great dark eyes
and is so beautiful you force yourself to stare only

at the passport photo in order not to offend her.
The photo shows a young man with a thin face cheerfully
expecting to make his fortune in the black ghetto.
As you listen to the girl, the wailing surrounds you
like bits of flying glass. It was a cousin who was shot
the week before, then a good friend two weeks before that.
Who can believe it? During the riots, he told people
to take what they needed, pay when they were able.

Although the girl has little to do with your story,
she is, in a sense, the entire story. She is young,
beautiful and her father has just been shot. As you
accept the picture, her mother grabs it, presses it
to her lips. The girl gently pries her mother's fingers
from the picture and returns it. Then her sister with
the wounded hand snatches the picture and you want to
unwrap the bandages, touch your fingers to the bullet hole.

Again the girl retrieves the picture, but before she
can give it back, a third woman in black grabs it,
begins kissing it and crushing it to her bosom. You think
of the unflappable photographers on the fourth floor
unfolding the picture and trying to erase the creases,
but when the picture appears in the paper it still bears
the wrinkles of the fat woman's heart, and you feel caught
between the picture-grabbing which is comic and the wailing

which is like an animal gnawing your stomach. The girl
touches your arm, asks if anything is wrong, and you say
no, you only want to get out of there; and once back
at the paper you tell your editor of this room with fifty
screaming people, how they kept snatching the picture.
So he tells you about a kid getting drowned when he was
a reporter, but that's not the point, nor is the screaming,
nor the fact that none of this will appear in a news story

about an Iraqi grocer shot by a black drug addict,
and see, here is his picture as he looked when he first
came to our country eight years ago, so glad to get
out of Baghdad. What could be worse than Baghdad?
The point is in the sixteen-year-old daughter giving back
the picture, asking you to put it in your pocket, then
touching your arm, asking if you are all right and
would you like a glass of water? The point is she hardly

belongs to that room or any reality found in newspapers,
that she's one of the few reasons you get up in the morning,
pursue your life all day and why you soon quit the paper
to find her: beautiful Iraqi girl last seen surrounded by
wailing for the death of her father. For Christ's sake,
those fools at the paper thought you wanted to fuck her,
as if that's all you can do with something beautiful,
as if that's what it means to govern your life by it.

Loving Poets.Org Need a William Carlos Williams anthology. Recommendations?

How many options do you even have with WCW anthologies? The old "selected" is nice because it has some selections from his prose as well. But perhaps you can find his two volume collected on the cheap. Though you might also want "Imaginations" or whatever it's called for "Kora in Hell" etc.

Thanks!