Resurrection: The 2006 Poetry Thread

Wanting one good organic line
I wrote a thousand sonnets

Wanting a little peace,
I folded a thousand cranes.

Every discipline a new evasion;
every crane a dodge:

Basho didn't know a thing about water
until he heard the frog.

My Father Christmas passed away
When I was barely seven.
At twenty-one, alack-a-day,
I lost my hope of heaven.

Yet not in either lies the curse:
The hell of it's because
I don't know which loss hurts the worse -
My God or Santa Claus.

- Robert Service -

(just to show another side of him than Sam McGee and Dan McGrew)

-- Stephen Crane (poem 37, from The Black Riders)

The Holy Time

(1)

Like timid girls the shades are pacing down
The slopes of evening, trailing soberly
Their vestments grey:

Far, far away,
The last, red tinge
Is fading into brown;

So far!
So faint!
Seen but surmisingly!

And now the dusk of evening draws upon
That memory of light,
And light is gone!

(2)

The bee
Speeds
Home!

The beetle's
Wing of horn
Is booming by!

The darkness,
Every side,
Gathers around

On air,
And sky,
And ground!

The trees
Sing in the darkness,
Far and wide,

In cadenced lift of leaves,
A tale of morn!
And the moon's circle,

Silver-faint, and thin,
Birds lovely on the earth:
- There is no sin!

-- James Stephens

Note: Please try to overlook the overpunctuation of this poem, especially (!) the many (!) exclamation (!) marks! Ignoring these improves this poem immensely.

The Emancipators

When you ground the lenses and the moons swam free
From that great wanderer; when the apple shone
Like a sea-shell through your prism, voyager;
When, dancing in pure flame, the Roman mercy,
Your doctrines blew like ashes from your bones;

Did you think, for an instant, past the numerals
Jellied in Latin like bacteria in broth,
Snatched for by holy Europe like a sign?
Past somber tables inched out with the lives
Forgotten or clapped for by the wigged Societies?

You guessed this? The earth's face altering with iron,
The smoke ranged like a wall against the day?
- The equations metamorphose into use: the free
Drag their slight bones from tenements to vote
To die with their children in your factories.

Man is born in chains, and everywhere we see him dead.
On your earth they sell nothing but our lives.
You knew that what you died for was our deaths?
You learned, those years, that what men wish is Trade?
It was you who understood; it is we who change.

-- Randall Jarrell

"April 15, 2:30 pm. Experience Poetland — an experiment in poetic energy, featuring ten readings of ten poets. Arlo Voorhees presides over Brittany Bladwin, John Hogl, Lisa Steinman, Pat Hathaway, Jim Shugrue, Hazel Dodge, Geraldine Foote, Jeffrey Bershaw, and Tom Blood."

Are you a last minute stand-in, or have you changed your performing name to Tom Blood -- for artistic purposes, of course?

--------------

Anyways: Sarah Lawrence! I don't want to blab on too much, but some categories?

Famous old people of varying degrees of experimentalness: Eleanor Wilner, Gerald Stern, Marie Ponsot, Frank Bidart, Jean Valentine (http://www.jeanvalentine.com/poems.html).

Young Famouse semi-avants: Claudia Rankin, Martha Rhodes.

I don't know the other people as well. I'd say the best way is to just google or look at the Amazon "Look Inside" for these people and see who you'd like. If I were going, I'd check out Bidard, Valentine, and Rankin.

My reading went well. Or, at least, I think it did. I don't know if it was as shall-we-say "magical" as January's reading was but it was somewhat difficult and somewhat accessible material read very, very fast that people were able to get things out of. People seemed to especially like my emceeing, which is really what I'm known for. There was something of a fight at the end of the part I emceed, which was awkward and kinda fun and kinda not at all. It was "memorable".

In all, a reminder that I really have no clue what most people are thinking of when they talk about "poetry".

His poetry, to my mind, left something to be desired, perhaps because he thought that communication happened outside the space of the poem, or that a poem was something that one should be able to respond to immediately, intelligibly, and without your interruption doing damage to its sense or effect.

I have to say Chris that your emceeing was delightful, as were your 125 poems read with astonishing speed and dexterity. Also, thank you for putting us on to Lindsay Hill.

Yeah, I meant to post some of Lindsay's book here, but it was late. If there was a part you liked, feel free to post it...

Here I was able to read that The Poet Known to ILB as Casuistry...

"...began the 5 p.m. session at New American Art Union gallery, a block from East Burnside in inner Southeast. His piece compiled 125 poems, each five words long. No. 41: "Now now now no now" [others presented greater transcription challenges]."

Thus endeth the lesson. Sorry I wasn't able to make it.

do you have it written down?

"The Light Above Cities"

Sitting in darkness,
I see how the light of the city
fills the clouds, rosewater light
poured into the sky
like the single body we are. It is the sum
of a million lives; a man drinking beer
beneath a light bulb, a dancer spinning
in a fluorescent room, a girl reading a book
beneath a lamp.

Yet there are others—astronomers,
thieves, lovers—whose work is only done
in darkness. Sometimes
I don't want to show these poems
to anyone, sometimes
I want to remain hidden, deep in the coals
with the one who pulls the stars
through a telescope's glass, the one who listens
for the click of the lock, the one
who kisses softly a woman's eyes.

--Jay Leeming

For some folks "poetry" might mean words
that rise up corbelled and corniced,
elaborately carven as Corinthian capitols,
a sort of awful edifice of frozen music
or the death mask of a majestic thought.

For others "poetry" might mean words
that fall all pat and neatly done
patterned in rows as do the pleats
in a schoolgirl uniform's skirt,
which repeat, repeat and repeat.

For others "poetry" might mean words
dark, static, stark and few,
croaks, barks and stutters, bitter as gall;
not dead (you understand) because still jerking,
and yet too dry and hard to have much life.

With the best luck "poetry" means words
that turn and turn and turn about again,
continuing to describe a shape
the mind and lips and heart accept
as easily as leaves drink of the sun.

-- Aimless

Under the eglantine
The fretful concubine
Said, "Phooey! Phoo!"
She whispered, "Pfui!"

The demi-monde
On the mezzanine
Said, Phooey!" too,
And a "Hey-de-i-do!"

The bee may have all sweet
For his honey-hive-o,
From the eglantine-o.

And the chandeliers are neat...
But their mignon, marblish glare!
We are cold, the parrots cried,
In a place so debonair.

The Johannisberger, Hans.
I love the metal grapes,
The rusty, battered shapes
Of the pears and of the cheese

And the window's lemon light,
The very will of the nerves,
The crack across the pane,
The dirt along the sill.

-- Wallace Stevens (The Cat With the Mouse's Tail Between His Lips)

Although 'the window's lemon light' wow.

My skin is pemiced to fault
I am down to hair-roots, down to fibre filters
Of the raw tobacco nerve

Your net is spun of sitar strings
To hold the griefs of gods: I wander long
In tear vaults of the sublime

Queen of night torments, you strain
Sutures of song to bear imposition of the rites
Of living and of death. You

Pluck strange dirges from the storm
Sift rare stones from ashes of the moon, and rise
Night errands to the throne of anguish

Oh there is too much crush of petals
For perfume, too heavy tread of air on mothwing
For a cup of rainbow dust

Too much pain, oh midwife at the cry
Of severance, fingers at the cosmic cord, too vast
The pains of easters for a hint of the eternal.

I wiould be free of your tyranny, free
From sudden plunges of the flesh in earthquake
Beyond all subsidence of sense

I would be free from headlong rides
In rock seams and volcanic veins, drawn by dark steeds
On grey melodic reins.

--Wole Soyinka

I do think Aimless's poem about what poetry means to people doesn't address the people that the original poet might have been confused by. All those meanings make sense.

'Pomology', Anselm Hollo

An apple a day
is 365 apples.
A poem a day
is 365 poems.
Most years.
Any doctor will tell you
it is easier to eat an apple
than to make a poem.
It is also easier
to eat a poem
than to make an apple
but only
just. But here
is what you do
to keep the doctor
out of it: publish a poem
on your appletree.
Have an apple
in your next book.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I thought this hovered very nicely between the formal language of traditional sonnetry and the informality of speech, which nicely suits the non-traditional approach to the traditional theme of love. It has a very Cavalier feeling to it and would snuggle up beautifully next to anything written by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.

1.

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2.

We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3.

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4.

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Enda really likes those monosyllabic words.

The following is a poem by a German Minnesinger named Hess von Rinach. If you have a fair idea of how modern German sounds, you can probably figure out how this Middle German ought to sound:

Klageliche not
klage ich von der minne,
daz si mir gebot,
daz ich minne sinne
dar bewante da man mich verderben wil.
hey minnen spil,
durch dich lide ichsende kumbers alze vil.

Wengel rosenvar,
wolgestellet kinne,
ougen luter klar,
minneclichiu tinne
hat si, diu mir krenket leben unde lip.
hey saelic wip,
dur din besten tugende mir min leit vertrip.

Sueze troesterin,
troeste mine sinne
dur die minne din.
in der minne ich brinne,
von der minne fiure lide ich sende not.
hey mundel rot,
wilt du mich niht troesten, sich, so bin ich tot.
--

Since I certainly can't expect any one here to understand that Middle German, I append this clumsy prose translation:

From love I bemoan my pitiful state, that she has disordered all my senses, so as to wreck me. Hey, love's passion! For your sake I feel love's pain all too much.

Rose red cheeks, full-formed chin, and a lovely brow she has, who weakens me in my life and limb. Hey, blessed woman! With your best strength banish my sickness.

Sweet consoler, comfort my senses through your love. In love I burn. In love's fires I suffer from yearning. Hey, mouth so red! If you don't comfort me, then (you'll see) I'm dead.
--

Finally, here is my verse translation:

I sing a lament,
love's message set twisted,
since I've become bent
and my senses misted
by a passion that misled me into ruin.
Hey, love's tune!
I sing its sorrowed service late and soon.

Cheeks of petal red,
soft by a lovely chin,
with faultless forhead,
and lucid eyes set in.
At her bypassage I breathe faintly.
Hey, so saintly!
Use your beauty to restore, not pain me.

My one consoler
consent to heal me,
cure me of dolor.
I am burned with love's heat
and my song's warmth comes from an ember bed.
Hey, lips of red!
Send no kind of comfort and you pronounce me dead.

-- Aimless

At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages
Matte and glossy on the thick black pages!
Too much confectionery, too rich:
I choke on such nutritious images.

My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose --
In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat;
Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate;
Or lifting a heavy-headed rose
Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat

(Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) --
From every side you strike at my control,
Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll
At ease about your earlier days:
Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.

But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards,

But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades
A chin as doubled when it is, what grace
Your candour thus confers upon her face!
How overwhelmingly persuades
That this is a real girl in a real place,

In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.

Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry
Not only at exclusion, but because
It leaves us free to cry. We know what was
Won't call on us to justify
Our grief, however hard we yowl across

The gap from eye to page. So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,

In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.

-- Philip Larkin

Your luna moths bring poems to my eyes,
Your oriflamme brings banners to my slums;
You are fat and beautiful, rich and ugly,
A boiler with gold leaf floral decorations;
You are a hard plush chair with sloping shoulders
In which Victoria, like a kangaroo,
Raises her blazing arms to a poem by Mr. Tennyson.

In the sewing machine of your mind you mend my flags,
Under your forehead fatted sheep are feeding,
Falcons are climbing at unwritten speeds,
Adding machines are singing your arias,
Your motor playing chess with continents,
With Quincy, Illinois, with Hell, New Jersey,
Halting on Oriental rugs in Fez.
Beautiful are your fine cartouches,
Your organ pipes externalized like tusks.

If only I could put my arm around you,
If only I could look you in the eye,
I would tell you a grave joke about turtles' eggs,
But there are always your ostrich plumes,
The hydrangeas drooping between your breasts.
I am afraid of your prosthetic wrists,
The mason jars of your white corpuscles.

For Christmas I will send you Maeterlinck's Life of the Bee.

Priests are praying for your beautiful passengers;
Sacraments are burning in your barley-sugar lighthouses;
You carry wild lawyers over yellow bridges;
Your soul as slow as honey coils in vats.

Voluptuous feather-plated Pegasus,
You carry the horizontal thoughtful dead
To gold greens and to sculpture yards of peace.
On leafy springs, O Love, O Death,
Your footfall is the silence that perfects.

I see you everywhere except in dreams.

-- Karl Shapiro --

[Several wonderful images (tusks!) and a quite deft demonstration of the proper use of irony.]

They will chitter to attract mates
And offer tasty meals of rot.
Crows kiss with clacking
And though feathers are well spit-slicked sleek
Their stubby little wings can't hug.

From those high up separate carrion nests
They perch and observe this Saturday night.
Monocled heads cocked and sporting suede vests--
On the watch for rotten food,
They'll ignore the bewildering plumaged sights
As people, idiot creatures, flock.