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

(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!