Forum / Happy April 1st--30th

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 06:06pm

It's my favorite month of the year, National Poetry Month, and I disagree with Eliot's claim about April, even though itwas written in irony, but his Wasteland is one of my favorite poems of all.

I don't have a favorite poem because that would be like choosing which appendage would be best to keep, but if pressed, I could come up with a top ten, ranging from Homer to Billy Collins.

One of my top ten favorites for its staying power is Yeats' "The Second Coming." Unfortunately, its theme never seems to feel dated.

Here it is:

The Second Coming
by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

...and here's an interactive link to the poem at The Academy of American Poets, poets.org:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15527

Post one of your top ten poems here. I'd love to know which poets have touched the most people.

I hope all of you have a wonderful April, brimming with excellent words.

Dolemite
Apr 01, 06:13pm

In My Craft Or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

--Dylan Thomas

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 06:32pm

Matt: I purchased a copy of Dylan Thomas' Collected Poems in 1971 when I was 15, and it has moved with me through six states and countless incarnations of what it meant to be Joan Reese. His beauty never dimmed, and his words never disappointed. Thanks.

Bill Yarrow
Apr 01, 06:55pm

TO ELSIE
by William Carlos Williams

The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags—succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum—
which they cannot express—

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she'll be rescued by an
agent—
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—

some doctor's family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 07:18pm

Great, great forward tumbling motion, Bill. Wonderful poem. Haven't thought of this one in years. Thanks for posting it.

Sally Houtman
Apr 01, 09:15pm

Thanks, Joani, for this. For me, the collected works of Emily Dickenson were the 'what' I needed 'when' I needed it. Growing up in PA and surrounded by chaos, I discovered her poetry (or I'd like to think it discovered me)and, for the first time realized you could take pain, squeeze it, mold it, shape it into something meaningful and even beautiful. Words can do this. Seemed like the most beautiful revenge. This discovery, quite likely, saved my life. Thanks, Em. This one's for you.

I Have Never Seen Volcanoes
- by Emily Dickenson

I have never seen "Volcanoes"—
But, when Travellers tell
How those old—phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still—

Bear within—appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men—

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place—

If at length the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome—
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy "Pompeii"!
To the Hills return!

Robert Vaughan
Apr 01, 09:24pm

Joani, I know this is another favorite poem of yours, or at least I think it is? Most certainly one of mine- e.e. cummings' somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Joani Reese
Apr 01, 11:21pm

Love Emily, Sally--She and Whitman are the main branches of the American tree, and especially love this poem by e.e., Robert. It makes me wish I had known him. His memoir, The Enormous Room, is wondrously funny.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 02, 01:02am

In my top 3:

“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” / James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

#2: Emily Dickinson / #601, “A still – Volcano – Life”

#1: Elizabeth Bishop / “Crusoe in England”

Darryl Price
Apr 02, 01:13am

Beneath My Hands by Leonard Cohen ("In my hands, your small breasts ...") from "The Spice-Box of Earth"

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.
Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.
I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.
I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.
I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.
LC

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 01:14am

Teach that one to my 1302 students, Sam. The ending is a conversation starter.

One of my tops, probably three or four, is Bishop's "One Art," Sam. It and Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight" (two or three) are the two elegant poems that made me fall in love with form.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 02, 01:20am

You can never go wrong with Geography III, Joani. It's a perfect book.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 01:25am

DP: The last book of poetry I bought (besides my friends' books) was Cohen's. It is unique in a minimalist way. I liked many of his poems even though they felt phoned in over a static connection, and his drawings were very cool. Perhaps it was their utter strangeness and juxtaposition to my own aesthetic that intrigued me.

Robert Vaughan
Apr 02, 01:36am

Only the first day of NaPoMo and I am loving this thread already! Wheeee!

Gessy Alvarez
Apr 02, 01:50am

This poem never fails to inspire me...

The Panther
Rainer Maria Rilke

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Joani Reese
Apr 02, 02:11am

When my students complain that they could NEVER memorize or recite a poem, I simply show them this and hope their chagrin and amazement will stop their whining:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVu4Me_n91Y

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Apr 02, 03:44am

I wrote about this at my blog.

http://roxixmas.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/april-13-2/

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Apr 02, 03:48am

Joani....damn. And I thought my son was a genius for memorizing the first couple of pages of The Lorax when he was three. Ha!

Darryl Price
Apr 03, 03:18am

WHAT I'M DOING HERE BY LEONARD COHEN

I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi

Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess

Darryl Price
Apr 03, 03:26am

By the way, I love,and I mean LOVE, everything on tap here so far; one of my favorite poets, James Tate, is missing but I know someone will come up with him sooner or later. But, I mean Yeats and Dylan Thomas and Cummings and Emily and Rilke--these are all essential poets in my life.What about Neruda? What about W.S.Merwin? Robert Creeley? I'm only sticking to Leonard Cohen because no one else would probably include him in this company, but I will.Still if we're going to go hardcore--someone should bring in a little Shakespeare. And what about early Margaret Atwood? Just saying.

Dolemite
Apr 03, 04:20am

At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
Elizabeth Bishop

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Apr 03, 08:56am

Darryl, I LOVE James Tate. I bought my first James Tate collection during a hurricane evacuation. Shroud of the Gnome.

Joani Reese
Apr 03, 12:22pm

My favorite poet of all:

La Figlia Che Piange
by T.S. Eliot

O quam te memorem virgo

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

Robert Vaughan
Apr 03, 01:22pm

Here is one of my favorite poetic moments in film: Alan Rickman (Jamie) and Juliet Stevenson (Nina) recite Pabole Neruda's "The Dead Woman." He in Spanish, she translates into English. Have tissue handy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAS8LhgYp2M

Joani Reese
Apr 04, 11:53am

Another favorite I did not heed, alas:

This Be the Verse

By Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 04, 12:12pm

William Stafford

Report from a Far Place

Making these word things to
step on across the world, I
could call them snowshoes.

They creak, sag, bend, but
hold, over the great deep cold,
and they turn up at the toes.

In war or city or camp
they could save your life;
you can muse them by the fire.

Be careful, though: they
burn, or don't burn, in their own
strange way, when you say them.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 04, 12:13pm

Jane Hirshfield

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

Susan Tepper
Apr 04, 01:38pm

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Joani Reese
Apr 04, 03:07pm

Sam--Thanks for the Stafford poem. I'd never read it.

Susan: The pathos of the seemingly throw-away penultimate line followed by the reserved dignity of the final line gets me every time.

Susan Tepper
Apr 04, 04:30pm

Joani: ditto for me. I die with this poem.

Joani Reese
Apr 05, 12:56pm

It's not often I have the pleasure of reading a poem by someone I know and realizing that I am reading a profound work. My friend Shara McCallum writes such poems. She has three books available, and her latest is This Strange Land, published by Alice James Books. She has been asked to put together a book of selected poems for publication in the near future. Her success was hard won and deserved, and I hope I am introducing her to a wider audience. Here's a poem of Shara's that moved me:

History is a Room

The study of History is the study of Empire.
—Niall Ferguson

I cannot enter.

To enter that room, I would need to be a man who makes History, not a girl to whom History happened.

Mother to two daughters, I guard their lives with hope, a pinch of salt I throw over my shoulder.

To enter that room, I would need to wield a gun.

Here, I brandish weapons that serve an art my mother and grandmother knew: how to make of plantain and eggs a meal.

To enter that room, I would need to live in the past, to understand how power is amassed, eclipsing the sun.

Beneath my children's beds, I scatter grains of rice to keep duppy at bay.

To enter that room, I would need to live in the present: This election. This war.

Beneath my children's pillows, I place worry dolls to ensure their peaceful sleep.

To enter that room, I would need to bridge the distance between my door and what lies beyond.

Standing in my foyer at dusk, I ask the sea to fill the crevices of this house with its breath.

History is recounted by the dead, returned from their graves to walk in shriveled skins.

In our yard, I watch my daughters run with arms papering the wind.

History is recounted by children in nursery rhymes, beauty masking its own violence.

In my kitchen, I peel an orange, try to forget my thumb must wrest the pulp from its rind.

History is recounted in The Book of Explanations: AK-47 begat UZI, which begat M-16 ... and all the days of their lives were long.

Pausing at the sink, I think of how a pepper might be cut, blade handled so the knife becomes the fruit slit open, its seeds laid bare.

History is recounted in The Book of Beginnings: the storey of a people born of forgetting.

In our yard, I name the world for my children—praying mantis, robin's egg, maple leaf—words for lives they bring me in their palms.

To enter that room, I would need to look into the mirror of language, see in collateral damage the faces of the dead.

In our yard, I sow seeds, planting myself in this soil.

To enter that room, I would need to uncover the pattern of a life woven onto some master loom.

Here, I set the table, sweep the floor, make deals with the god of small things.

To enter that room, I would need to be armed with the right question: is History the start of evening or dawn returning the swallow to the sky?

Here, I light candles at nightfall, believe the match waits to be struck.

Robert Vaughan
Apr 05, 03:19pm

Marie Howe “The Boy” from What the Living Do

My older brother is walking down the sidewalk into the suburban 
summer night: 
white T-shirt, blue jeans— to the field at the end of the street.  

Hangers Hideout the boys called it, an undeveloped plot, a pit 
overgrown 
with weeds, some old furniture thrown down there,  

and some metal hangers clinking in the trees like wind chimes. 
He’s running away from home because our father wants to cut his hair.  

And in two more days our father will convince me to go to him— you know  where he is— and talk to him: No reprisals. He promised. A small parade 
of kids  

in feet pajamas will accompany me, their voices like the first peepers 
in spring. 
And my brother will walk ahead of us home, and my father  

will shave his head bald, and my brother will not speak to anyone the next  month, not a word, not pass the milk, nothing.  

What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk  down a sidewalk without looking back.  

I was the girl. What happened taught me to follow him, whoever he was.
calling and calling his name.

Joani Reese
Apr 05, 03:32pm

Great poem, Robert. I never read this one before. I love this thread--It's introducing me to excellence. Thanks!

Joani Reese
Apr 06, 01:19pm

Here's one by my first poetry professor Dick Allen. Since I sat in his classroom at The University of Bridgeport in 1977 he has gone on to become Connecticut's Poet Laureate and a grand old man in poetry circles. I still picture him in his brown suede jacket with the wishbone tear on its shoulder, flicking cigarette ashes into an ashtray perched on his desk in the classroom. Times were different then:

If You Get There Before I Do
by Dick Allen

Air out the linens, unlatch the shutters on the eastern side,
and maybe find that deck of Bicycle cards
lost near the sofa. Or maybe walk around
and look out the back windows first.
I hear the view's magnificent: old silent pines
leading down to the lakeside, layer upon layer
of magnificent light. Should you be hungry,
I'm sorry but there's no Chinese takeout,
only a General Store. You passed it coming in,
but you probably didn't notice its one weary gas pump
along with all those Esso cans from decades ago.
If you're somewhat confused, think Vermont,
that state where people are folded into the mountains
like berries in batter. . . . What I'd like when I get there
is a few hundred years to sit around and concentrate
on one thing at a time. I'd start with radiators
and work my way up to Meister Eckhart,
or why do so few people turn their lives around, so many
take small steps into what they never do,
the first weeks, the first lessons,
until they choose something other,
beginning and beginning their lives,
so never knowing what it's like to risk
last minute failure. . . .I'd save blue for last. Klein blue,
or the blue of Crater Lake on an early June morning.
That would take decades. . . .Don't forget
to sway the fence gate back and forth a few times
just for its creaky sound. When you swing in the tire swing
make sure your socks are off. You've forgotten, I expect,
the feeling of feet brushing the tops of sunflowers:
In Vermont, I once met a ski bum on a summer break
who had followed the snows for seven years and planned
on at least seven more. We're here for the enjoyment of it, he said,
to salaam into joy. . . .I expect you'll find
Bibles scattered everywhere, or Talmuds, or Qur'ans,
as well as little snippets of gospel music, chants,
old Advent calendars with their paper doors still open.
You might pay them some heed. Don't be alarmed
when what's familiar starts fading, as gradually
you lose your bearings,
your body seems to turn opaque and then transparent,
until finally it's invisible--what old age rehearses us for
and vacations in the limbo of the Middle West.
Take it easy, take it slow. When you think I'm on my way,
the long middle passage done,
fill the pantry with cereal, curry, and blue and white boxes of macaroni, place the
checkerboard set, or chess if you insist,
out on the flat-topped stump beneath the porch's shadow,
pour some lemonade into the tallest glass you can find in the cupboard,
then drum your fingers, practice lifting your eyebrows,
until you tell them all--the skeptics, the bigots, blind neighbors,
those damn-with-faint-praise critics on their hobbyhorses--
that I'm allowed,
and if there's a place for me that love has kept protected,
I'll be coming, I'll be coming too.

Robert Vaughan
Apr 12, 10:57pm

I love that poem by Dick Allen, Joani! Here is one by a lesser known poet, James L. White whose collection, The Salt Ecstasies, was long out-of-print. But Graywolf Press has this series now where various editors can select an out-of-print book and have it re-published. So this came to me courtesy of Mark Doty.

This poem is called Sleep, by James L. White:

Let me sleep for us all
further than our aging.
To the elmed season,
sun found and cradled
within the browning shell.

We'll sleep tonight
who've tightened nerves into years
with our faces of electricity.

Let's sleep into a flesh fall nearly innocent
where warmth is brought by skin and breath.
We'll wrap our hair into the swirled white
of hill line and fur.

Traveler,
gone too far,
return and rest.

Joani Reese
Apr 12, 11:04pm

This is lovely, Robert. Thank you for introducing me to White.

Joani Reese
Apr 12, 11:14pm

Here's one by my friend John Oliver Simon for his friend, the poet Donald Schenker, who died from cancer. I "met" John years ago on a raucous poetry workshop board at AOL. We have kept in touch for over a decade. He will be celebrating his 70th birthday in May. John spent his youth hanging around with poets in Berkeley and San Francisco such as Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Lew Welch I want to think John is one of the best poets no one knows. This poem made me fall in love with his work:

ALL OVER THE PLACE

for Donald Schenker

Don says there's poems all over the place
it's practically embarrassing, and I nod
without enthusiasm, driving into downtown
Oakland thinking yeah, those two pigeons
squatting on the blue-gray sign HOTEL MORO,
how the part of it that's a poem could fall out
between the word and the bird, or the word Moro
all the way back to the reconquest of Spain
and all the bloody hemisphere ending up
on this block I don't care if I see again.

Don says he could just stop anyone
and look at them, they're all so deep
and beautiful, and I say what's interesting
is the stories they all carry around
stranger than fiction, stronger than truth
all these gente waiting to cross the street
each one forgetting their great-grandparents
each one forgetting to tell their children
and I'm no novelist, I can't move a
character across the room, much less two guys
to lunch at a Vietnamese place on Webster.

Over bowls of translucent noodles and odd meat
Don says he always felt like the other poets
were the big boys, and I see how the grand
famous names of his peers, now pushing sixty
have turned into the padded artifacts
of their own careers, while Don's obscurity
has kept him fresh and sweet, and Don says
he loves his tumors, the big one that hurts
in his left hip, the one that's hammering out
among sparse hairs inside his baseball cap,
and though it's his own death that gives him truth
I'm stuck in my heart without any words
while poems in Vietnamese are fluttering up
from all the restaurant tables around us
and escaping into so much empty light.

Here's a link to an interview with John about his poetry, his teaching of poetry in the schools, and his journeys through South America, intent on the art of translation: http://www.thiszine.org/interviews/simon-interview-full

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Apr 12, 11:35pm

WHEN YOU BIT
by Adam Fieled

I knew every Dracula-like whim
I felt every pulse of salt-water
I screwed every screw into wood
I was with you in Atlantis

you were daft, exalted, pinkish
you were drunk on Margaritas
you were dark, pliant, rakish
you were ready to be examined

by my hands, twin detonators
by my tongue, laid on a half-shell
by my teeth, rabid officers
by my torso, raw, wave-flecked

this is not merely afterthought
this is as first-time sparks

***
I love the masculinity and sensuality of this poem by Adam Fieled. I carry a copy in my moleskine. He has a book of poems by the same name, and you can read this and four more poems from the collection here: http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2008/02/adam-fieled-five-poems-from-when-you.html

Peace...

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Apr 12, 11:54pm

Wow, Linda. I love that poem.

Gessy Alvarez
Apr 13, 07:26pm

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
by Adrienne Rich

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid

later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

Syntax of rendition:

verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action

verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb disgraced goes on doing

now diagram the sentence

Sam Rasnake
Apr 13, 08:12pm

I Saw Myself
by Lew Welch

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
“ring of bone” where
ring is what a

bell does

Jim V
Apr 13, 08:56pm

For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy

Susan Tepper
Apr 13, 09:55pm

This poem came out in POETRY (November 2001).
It was the "black issue" with the Brooklyn Bridge on its cover, the commemorative issue for the September 11 destruction of the World Trade Center.

EXILE! EXILE! by Eavan Boland

All night the room breathes out its grief.
Exhales through surfaces. The sideboard.
The curtains: the stale air stalled there.
The kiln-fired claws of the china bird.

This is the hour when every ornament
unloads its atoms of pretense. Stone.
Brass. Bronze. What they represent is
set aside in the dark: they become again

a spacious morning in the Comeraghs.
An iron gate; a sudden downpour; a well in
the corner of a farmyard; a pool of rain
into which an Irish world has fallen.

Out there the Americas stretch to the horizons.
They burn in the cities and darken over wheat.
They go to the edge, to the rock, to the coast,
to where the moon abrades a shabby path eastward.

O land of opportunity, you are
not the suppers with meat, nor
the curtains with lace nor the unheard of
fire in the grate on summer afternoons, you are

this room, this dish of fruit which
has never seen its own earth. Or had rain
fall on it all one night and the next. And has grown,
in consequence, a fine, crazed skin of porcelain.

Joani Reese
Apr 13, 11:58pm

Love all these poems, some familiar, some new to me. Why can't we celebrate poetry every day? Would it mean less somehow? No, it wouldn't. Those of us who write it try, in our hesitant and halting way, to keep the love of the art (and craft) alive. Thanks to those of you who keep posting these gems.

Jim V
Apr 14, 08:47am

Here's another for you, Joani. This might be my favorite poem. It has everything you want in a poem. It's clear, meaningful, and powerful. Only a master can write like this.

Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In

--Raymond Carver

You simply go out and shut the door
without thinking. And when you look back
at what you’ve done
it’s too late. If this sounds
like the story of life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had
a key were away. I tried and tried
the lower windows. Stared
inside at the sofa, plants, the table
and chairs, the stereo set-up.
My coffee cup and ashtray waited for me
on the glass-topped table, and my heart
went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,
or something like that. After all,
this wasn’t so bad.
Worst things had happened. This
was even a little funny. I found the ladder.
Took that and leaned it against the house.
Then climbed in the rain to the deck,
swung myself over the railing
and tried the door. Which was locked,
of course. But I looked in just the same
at my desk, some papers, and my chair.
This was the window on the other side
of the desk where I’d raise my eyes
and stare out when I sat at that desk.
This is not like downstairs, I thought.
This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,
from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.
I don’t even think I can talk about it.
I brought my face close to the glass
and imagined myself inside,
sitting at the desk. Looking up
from my work now and again.
Thinking about some other place
and some other time.
The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.
Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.
Even though a wave of grief passed through me.
Even though I felt violently ashamed
of the injury I’d done back then.
I bashed that beautiful window.
And stepped back in.

Joani Reese
Apr 14, 12:51pm

Great poem, Jim. Bashed that beautiful window...

Robert Vaughan
Apr 14, 06:04pm

I love that poem, Jim! Haven't read it in years, thanks!

David Ackley
Apr 16, 03:00pm

STANDING AMID THE EXECRATIONS OF TIME

ten years after Tiananmen

Liu Xiabo

1

Ten years ago this day
dawn, a bloody shirt
sun, a torn calender
all eyes upon
this single page
the world a single outraged stare
time tolerates no naivete'
the dead rage and howl
till the earth's throat
grows hoarse

Gripping the prison bars
this moment
I must wail in grief
for I fear the next
so much I have no tears for it
remembering them, the innocent dead,
I must thrust a dagger calmly
into my eyes
must purchase with blindness
clarity of the brain
for that bone-devouring memory
is best expressed by refusal

2

Ten years ago this day
soldiers stand at attention
poses dignified and correct, trained
to uphold a hideous lie
dawn is a crimson flag
fluttering in the half-light
people crane and stand on tiptoe
curious, awed, earnest
a young mother
lifts her baby's hand
to salute that sky-eclipsing lie

And a white-haired mother
kisses the image of her son
delicately pries his fingers apart
and washes the blood from his nails
she can find no soil, not even a handful
in which her son may rest
she has no choice
but to hang him on the wall

Now she walks among unmarked graves
hoping to expose the lie of a century
from her sealed throat she exhumes
the long-stifled name
lets her freedom and dignity be
a denunciation of amnesia
police listen on the wiretap
and dog her footsteps

3

The world's largest square
has been given a new face

When the peasant Liu Bang became
Han Gaozu, founder of a dynasty
he invented a tale about his mother and a dragon
to inflate his family history
this ancient pattern continues
from the Ming tombs to the Memorial Hall
butchers lie in state
in resplendent underground palaces
across millennia, tyrants and autocrats
exchange tips of dagger technique
while their entombed vassals
offer obeisance

In a few months time
amid glorious pomp
murder weapons will roll once again across this square
and the corpse in the Hall
and the butchers dreaming their imperial dreams
will look on with approval
while beneath the earth the Emperor of Qin
reviews his clay troops

Still that old ghost
mulls his past glories
while his heirs glut themselves
upon his legacy
with his blessing they wield scepters of bone
and pray the next century
will be even better

Amid tanks and flowers
salutes and daggers
amid doves and bullets
jackboots and expressionless faces
a century concludes in blood-reek and darkness
and a new era begins
without a glimmer of life

4

Refuse to eat
refuse to masturbate
pick a book out of the ruins
and admire the humility of the corpse
in a mosquito's innards
dreaming blood-dark dreams
peer through the steel door's peephole
and converse with vampires
no need to be circumspect
your stomach spasms
will give you the courage of the dying
retch out a curse
for fifty years of glory
there has never been a New China
only a Party.

Liu Xiabo, presently serving an eleven year sentence in a Chinese Prison for crimes of thought and word.

The poem here was written when he served a previous sentence in a labor camp, June, 1999.

Bill Yarrow
Apr 17, 06:17pm

One of my favorite volumes of poetry EVER is Peter Handke's "The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld." Essential reading as far as I am concerned.

Here's one poem from the volume.

"Changes during the Course of the Day"
by Peter Handke

As long as I am still alone, I am still alone.
As long as I am still among acquaintances, I am still an acquaintance.
But as soon as I am among strangers—

As soon as I step out on the street— a pedestrian steps out on the street.
As soon as I enter the subway— a subway rider enters the subway
A soon as I enter the jewelry shop— a gentleman enters the jewelry shop.
As soon as I push the shopping cart through the supermarket— a customer pushes the cart through the supermarket.
As soon as I enter the department store— someone on a shopping spree enters the department store.

Then I walk past some children— and the the children see an adult walking past. Then I enter the off-limits zone— and the guards see a trespasser enter the off-limits zone. Then I see children running away from me in the off-limits zone— and I become a guard whom the children flee because they are unauthorized persons in an off-limits zone.

Then I sit in the waiting room as an applicant. Then I write my name on the back of the envelope as a sender. Then I fill out the lottery ticket as a winner.

As soon as I am asked how one gets to Black Road— I become someone who knows his way around town.
As soon as I see the incredible— I become a witness.
As soon as I enter the church— I become a layman.
As soon as I don’t ignore an accident— I become a busy-body.
As soon as I don’t know how to get to Black Road— I am again someone who doesn’t know his way to Black Road.

I have just consumed the meal— already I can say: We consumers!
I have just had something stolen from me— already I can say: We proprietors!
I have just placed the obituary— already I can say: We mourners!
I have just begun to contemplate the universe— already I can say: We human beings!

I read the novel in the mass publication— and become one among millions.
I don’t fulfill my duties toward the authorities— and am no longer a dutiful citizen of the state.
I don’t run away during the riot— and I’m an inciter of riots.
I look up from the novel I’m reading and observe the beauty opposite me— and we become two among millions.

Then someone does not leave the moving train— someone? — A traveler.
Then someone speaks without an accent— someone? — A native.
Then someone has a vis-à-vis— and becomes a vis-à-vis.
Then someone no longer only plays by himself— and becomes an opponent.

Then someone crawls out from under a thicket in the park and becomes a suspicious subject.
Then someone who is being discussed becomes an object of discussion.
Then someone is recognized on a photo— and becomes an X.
Then someone takes a walk in the country— someone? A wanderer.

And when the car makes a sudden stop in front of me— I become an obstacle.
Then I am seen by a figure in the dark— and become a figure in the dark.
And when I am then observed through binoculars— I am an object.
Then someone stumbles over me— and I become a body.
And when I am then stepped upon— I become something soft.
Then I am wrapped up in something— and become a content.

Then one notices that someone has run barefoot over the dirt road and that a right-hander has fired the shot and that someone whose blood group is O has lain there and that I, judging by the my shabby looks, must be a foreigner.

As soon as someone challenges me then— the one who’s been challenged doesn’t stop when challenged.
As soon as I am then far enough away from the observers— the object is nothing but a dot.
As soon as I, as an observer, challenge someone— I give the one who has been challenged quite a fright.

Then, finally, I meet an acquaintance— and two acquaintances meet.
Then, finally, I am left alone— and a single person remains behind alone.
Then, finally, I sit down next to someone in the grass— and am finally someone else.

--From The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld by Peter Handke, translated by Michael Roloff

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Apr 17, 06:32pm

After years of reading and writing poetry I have finally found, via serendipity, the lines I want engraved on my tombstone. The poem is The Idea Of Order At Key West by Wallace Stevens:

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

(I want these lines: And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.)

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Apr 18, 02:19pm

not my favorite Plath (Fever 103 is my favorite) but I am feeling the fuck out of this one these days...

Lesbos

Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear.
You say you can't stand her,
The bastard's a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio
Clear of voices and history, the staticky
Noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two.
The baby smiles, fat snail,
From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.
You could eat him. He's a boy.
You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.

Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap.
I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.
The smog of cooking, the smog of hell
Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,
Our bones, our hair.
I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.
The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.
Once you were beautiful.
In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through?
Gee baby, you are rare.'
You acted, acted for the thrill.
The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.
I try to keep him in,
An old pole for the lightning,
The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.
He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,
Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.
The blue sparks spill,
Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon
Dragged its blood bag, sick
Animal
Up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies,
I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black,
Then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door,
Sad hag. 'Every woman's a whore.
I can't communicate.'

I see your cute décor
Close on you like the fist of a baby
Or an anemone, that sea
Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.

(Sylvia Plath)

Joani Reese
Apr 18, 05:10pm

Loving all these offerings to the poetry gods. Thanks, all, for giving everyone else a little sugar.

Susan Tepper
Apr 19, 01:16am

Fading Light by Robert Creeley

Now one might catch it see it
shift almost substantial blue
white yellow light near roof's edge
become intense definition think
of the spinning world is it as
ever this place of apparent life
makes all sit patient hold on
chute the sled plunges down ends
down the hill beyond sight down
into field's darkness as time for
supper here left years behind waits
patient in mind remembers the time.

from "Just in Time: Poems 1984 - 1994"

Susan Tepper
Apr 19, 04:17pm

Wendell Berry's 'SABBATHS 2001' was written in 8 parts. Here is part one of his masterpiece:

SABBATHS 2001

1

He wakes in darkness. All around
are sounds of stones shifting, locks
unlocking. As if some one had lifted
away a great weight, light
falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
gone. He has known a long suffering
of himself, himself shapen by the pain
of his wound of separation he now
no longer minds, for the pain is only himself
now, grown small, becomes a little growing
longing joy. Something teaches him
to rise, to stand and move out through
the opening the light has made.
He stands on the green hilltop amid
the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all
opened doors. Half blind with light, he
traces with a forefinger the moss-grown
furrows of his name, hearing among the others
one woman's cry. She is crying and laughing,
her voice a stream of silver he seems to see:
"Oh, William, honey, is it you? Oh!"

Appeared in POETRY 90th Anniversary Issue
Oct/Nov 2002

Susan Tepper
Apr 20, 03:43pm

Wendell Berry
Sabbaths

II

Surely it will be for this: the redbud
pink, the wild plum white, yellow
trout lilies in the morning light,
the trees, the pastures turning green.
On the river, quiet at daybreak,
the reflections of the trees, as in
another world, lie across
from shore to shore. Yes, here
is where they will come, the dead,
when they rise from the grave.

Susan Tepper
Apr 21, 09:48pm

Wendell Berry
Sabbaths

111

White
dogwood flowers
afloat
in leafing woods
untrouble
my mind.

Susan Tepper
Apr 22, 10:48pm

Wendell Berry
Sabbaths

1V

Ask the world to reveal its quietude-
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

Joani Reese
Apr 23, 01:16am

I love Wendell Berry, Susan. He is one writer who should never pass away. He's far too good a human being. Thanks for posting these. They're beautiful.

Joani Reese
Apr 23, 01:18am

Home is so Sad

by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Sam Rasnake
Apr 23, 03:14am

Jane Mead

"Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty"

What struck me at first was their panic.

Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars —

and could not get them in again.
Some hung there like that — dead —
their own feathers blowing, clotting

in their faces. Then
I saw the one that made me slow some —
I lingered there beside her for five miles.

She had pushed her head through the space
between the bars — to get a better view.
She had the look of a dog in the back

of a pickup, that eager look of a dog
who knows she’s being taken along.
She craned her neck.

She looked around, watched me, then
strained to see over the car — strained
to see what happened beyond.

That is the chicken I want to be.

Gessy Alvarez
Apr 23, 03:35am

Constantly Risking Absurdity
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

Gone
Apr 23, 08:24am

take a look
it's quite an eyeful

over cambers topographic
petrified yet reaching higher
a secret world of integration
glimpsed in flickering vaulted carmine
a mansion built on one equation
soaring with the feral flyer
unconcealed and autographic

a towering convex erection
an obelisk of slant desire
franked with an organic presence
impressed upon a bowed horizon
stippled with an oestral essence
soaring with the feral flyer
craving an astute connection

journey through this curious aspect
as variegated shades require
singing steeples puzzling mazes
touch the parabolic axis
recognise the points he raises
soaring with the feral flyer
above the visionary prospect

it's quite an eyeful
take a look

by jack semmens

Robert Vaughan
Apr 23, 09:45pm

This poem, "True Stories," by Margaret Atwood, has stayed so monumentally with me through all the years since college.

True Stories by Margaret Atwood

i.
Don't ask for the true story;
why do you need it?

It's not what I set out with,
or what I carry.

What I'm sailing with,
a knife, blue fire,

luck, a few good words
that still work and the tide.

ii.
The true story was lost
on the way down to the beach, it's something

I never had, that black tangle
of branches in a shifting light,

my blurred footprints
filling with salt

water, this handful
of tiny bones, this owl's kill;

a moon, crumpled papers, a coin,
the glint of an old picnic,

the hollows made by lovers
in sand a hundred

years ago: no clue

iii.
The true story lies
among the other stories,

a mess of colors, like jumbled clothing,
thrown off or away,

like hearts on marble, like syllables, like
butchers' discards.

The true story is vicious
and multiple. and untrue

after all. Why do you
need it? Don't ever

ask for the true story.

Joani Reese
Apr 23, 11:19pm

Robert--This is a great one. I hate fiction writers who can write poetry seemingly so effortlessly. : )

Susan Tepper
Apr 24, 04:02pm

Wendell Berry
SABBBATHS 2001 (continued) (there are VIII in total)

V

A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares
Inhabit it, and daily evidence
Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,
Of freedom slack and dull among the free,
Of faith subsumed in idiot luxury,
And beauty beggared in the marketplace
And clear-eyed wisdom bleary with dispraise.

Susan Tepper
Apr 26, 04:11pm

Wendell Berry
SABBATHS 2001

VI

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

Robert Vaughan
Apr 28, 07:17pm

Both Sam's poem by Stafford and this Hayden poem are just perfect for this gloomy, chilly Saturday afternoon. Thanks, poets/friends! What an inspiring month it has been so far!

Robert Vaughan
Apr 30, 02:59pm

April 30, 2012

Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl by Dorianne Laux

Death comes to me again, a girl
in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.
It's not so terrible, she tells me,
not like you think, all darkness
and silence. There are windchimes
and the smell of lemons, some days
it rains, but more often the air is dry
and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living. I like it,
she says, shaking the dust from her hair,
especially when they fight, and when they sing.

Joani Reese
Apr 30, 03:33pm

A fitting final poem for National Poetry Month. Thanks to everyone who posted poems and commented here. It's been great. You are all marvelous, darlings! Off to eat some words....

Eating Poetry
Mark Strand

I

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Robert Vaughan
Apr 30, 04:55pm

I made a list of all the poems/poets collectively that we posted for the National Poetry Month 2012!!! Thanks, Joani, and everyone for making poetry so special!

The Second Coming- W.B Yeats

In My Craft or Sullen Art- Dylan Thomas
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight- Dylan Thomas

To Elsie- William Carlos Williams

I Have Never Seen Volcanoes- Emily Dickenson

somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond- e.e. cummings

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota- James Wright

Crusoe in England- Elizabeth Bishop
One Art- Elizabeth Bishop
At the Fishhouses- Elizabeth Bishop

Beneath my Hands- Leonard Cohen
What I’m Doing Here- Leonard Cohen

The Panther- Rainer Maria Rilke

La Figlia Che Piange- T.S. Eliot

The Dead Woman- Pablo Neruda

This Be the Verse- Philip Larkin
Home is so Sad- Philip Larkin

Report from a Far Place- William Stafford

For What Binds Us- Jane Hirshfield

Those Winter Sundays- Robert Heyden

History is a Room- Shara McCallum

The Boy- Marie Howe

If You Get There Before I Do- Dick Allen

Sleep- James L. White

All Over the Place (for Donald Schenker)- John Oliver Simon

When You Bit- Adam Fieled

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve- Adrienne Rich

I Saw Myself- Lew Welch

For the young who want to- Marge Piercy

Exile! Exile!- Eavan Boland

Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In- Raymond Carver

Standing Amid the Execrations of Time: ten years after Tiananmen- Liu Xiabo

Changes During the Course of the Day- Peter Handke

The Idea of Order at Key West- Wallace Stevens

Lesbos- Sylvia Plath

Fading Light- Robert Creeley

Sabbaths 2001: in 8 parts- Wendell Berry

Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Empty- Jane Mead

Constantly Risking Absurdity- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

take a look it’s quite an eyeful- Jack Semmens

True Stories- Margaret Atwood

Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl- Dorianne Laux

Eating Poetry- Mark Strand

Joani Reese
Apr 30, 05:02pm

Thomas, Bishop, Cohen, and Larkin. Could the favorite works and poets be any more diverse? Love the choices here, and I love that so many people played NaPoMo Favorites. Thanks, Robert. You rock!
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