Poem of the day-Katherine Larson

Here's a quirky offering from Katherine Larson, about whom Poetry Found has almost nothing to say. According to a review of her collection Radial Symmetry, her day job is molecular biologist, which you'll see makes sense when reading the poem.

Why I like it: what's not to like? Quirky, sciencey, funny, some memorable imagery, cameos from tequila and Norse giants.

Speaking of which, Aurvandil was a giant from Norse mythology. While Thor was carrying him across a river, his toe froze. Thor broke it off and put it in the night sky. Apparently, exactly which star inspired the story is up for debate.

Love at Thirty-two Degrees by Katherine Larson

I

Today I dissected a squid,

the late acacia tossing its pollen

across the black of the lab bench.

In a few months the maples   

will be bleeding. That was the thing:   

there was no blood

only textures of gills creased like satin,   

suction cups as planets in rows. Be careful

not to cut your finger, he says. But I’m thinking

of fingertips on my lover’s neck   

last June. Amazing, hearts.

This brachial heart. After class,

I stole one from the formaldehyde

& watched it bloom in my bathroom sink

between cubes of ice.

                               II

Last night I threw my lab coat in the fire   

& drove all night through the Arizona desert   

with a thermos full of silver tequila.

It was the last of what we bought   

on our way back from Guadalajara—

desert wind in the mouth, your mother’s   

beat-up Honda, agaves   

twisting up from the soil

like the limbs of cephalopods.

Outside of Tucson, saguaros so lovely

considering the cold, & the fact that you   

weren’t there to warm me.

Suddenly drunk I was shouting that I wanted to see the stars   

as my ancestors used to see them—

to see the godawful blue as Aurvandil’s frostbitten toe.

                               III

Then, there is the astronomer’s wife   

ascending stairs to her bed.

The astronomer gazes out,   

one eye at a time,

to a sky that expands   

even as it falls apart

like a paper boat dissolving in bilge.

Furious, fuming stars.

When his migraine builds &

lodges its dark anchor behind

the eyes, he fastens the wooden buttons

of his jacket, & walks

outside with a flashlight

to keep company with the barn owl   

who stares back at him with eyes

that are no greater or less than

a spiral galaxy.

The snow outside

is white & quiet

as a woman’s slip

against cracked floorboards.

So he walks to the house

inflamed by moonlight, & slips

into the bed with his wife   

her hair & arms all

in disarray

like fish confused by waves.

                               IV

Science—

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,

every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you.

Poem of the Day-Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) is famous of course as being perhaps the greatest poet of the Spanish language. I guess some people were turned off by him for his love of communism. Ezra Pound's boner for fascism keeps me from enjoying his work but the fact that it's not very accessible probably doesn't help.

No rhetoric here though, my droogs. Just an ode to his dog that is truly lovely. If dogs don't go to heaven then no one will.

A Dog Has Died by Pablo Neruda

My dog has died.

I buried him in the garden

next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,

but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,

his bad manners and his cold nose,

and I, the materialist, who never believed

in any promised heaven in the sky

for any human being,

I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.

Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom

where my dog waits for my arrival

waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,

of having lost a companion

who was never servile.

His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine

withholding its authority,

was the friendship of a star, aloof,

with no more intimacy than was called for,

with no exaggerations:

he never climbed all over my clothes

filling me full of his hair or his mange,

he never rubbed up against my knee

like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,

paying me the attention I need,

the attention required

to make a vain person like me understand

that, being a dog, he was wasting time,

but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,

he'd keep on gazing at me

with a look that reserved for me alone

all his sweet and shaggy life,

always near me, never troubling me,

and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail

as we walked together on the shores of the sea

in the lonely winter of Isla Negra

where the wintering birds filled the sky

and my hairy dog was jumping about

full of the voltage of the sea's movement:

my wandering dog, sniffing away

with his golden tail held high,

face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,

as only dogs know how to be happy

with only the autonomy

of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,

and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,

and that's all there is to it.

Poem of the day-Raymond Carver

Not actually from Poetry Found. I just happened to see it quoted somewhere and it's possibly my favorite Raymond Carver poem (as opposed to this one about how the dog being run over inspired him to write a great poem about how sad his daughter was about the dog. A lot of dogs seem to die in Chandler's stuff.)

“Rain” 
by Raymond Chandler

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

Poem of the day-Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Today's poem comes from Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869). It sounds pretty contemporary to me but evidently he was a Mughal Empire poet. Maybe this is due to the translation by poet Vijay Seshadri. He wrote in Urdu and Persian. During his life, he saw the end of the Mughal Empire, replaced by the British Raj. He apparently was a cool guy: a Sufi mystic, gambler and womanizer and proud of it. He has been portrayed in Indian and Pakistani cinema, although not always accurately of course.

Why I like it: how is this poem over 100 years old? It's sad but it's funny. Is he serious? I think he's pulling my leg.

“No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved”

By Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

Translated By Vijay Seshadri  

Read the translator's notes

 

No, I wasn’t meant to love and be loved.   

If I’d lived longer, I would have waited longer.   

Knowing you are faithless keeps me alive and hungry.   

Knowing you faithful would kill me with joy.   

Delicate are you, and your vows are delicate, too,   

so easily do they break.   

You are a laconic marksman. You leave me   

not dead but perpetually dying.   

I want my friends to heal me, succor me.   

Instead, I get analysis.   

Conflagrations that would make stones drip blood   

are campfires compared to my anguish.   

Two-headed, inescapable anguish!—

Love’s anguish or the anguish of time.   

Another dark, severing, incommunicable night.   

Death would be fine, if I only died once.   

I would have liked a solitary death,   

not this lavish funeral, this grave anyone can visit.   

You are mystical, Ghalib, and, also, you speak beautifully.   

Are you a saint, or just drunk as usual?   

Poem of the day-Terrance Hayes

Today's poem is from Terrance Hayes (b. 1971.) Poetry Found doesn't have much to say about him. He's from South Carolina originally and teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon. I would be about 5000 times more interested in his class after reading this poem.

Why I like it: it's always dicey (for me) to read about sex and romance in poetry. It gets too....goopy and mopey-eyed. But put that sex and romance inside a gay boy bar and now you've got my attention. Other than my love for all things homosexual and male, I like the unexpected juxtaposition of his childhood memory.

(I'll admit though I can't decide if the wet and holy bit at the end is a bit too uncomfortable and I'm not sure why. Too vivid? Those words don't belong together? But that's also part of what makes it great.)

At Pegasus

By Terrance Hayes

They are like those crazy women

    who tore Orpheus

            when he refused to sing,

these men grinding

    in the strobe & black lights

            of Pegasus. All shadow & sound.

“I’m just here for the music,”

    I tell the man who asks me

            to the floor. But I have held

a boy on my back before.

    Curtis & I used to leap

            barefoot into the creek; dance

among maggots & piss,

    beer bottles & tadpoles

            slippery as sperm;

we used to pull off our shirts

    & slap music into our skin.

            He wouldn’t know me now

at the edge of these lovers’ gyre,

    glitter & steam, fire,

            bodies blurred sexless

by the music’s spinning light.

    A young man slips his thumb

            into the mouth of an old one,

& I am not that far away.

    The whole scene raw & delicate

            as Curtis’s foot gashed

on a sunken bottle shard.

    They press hip to hip,

            each breathless as a boy

carrying a friend on his back.

    The foot swelling green

            as the sewage in that creek.

We never went back.

    But I remember his weight

            better than I remember

my first kiss.

    These men know something

            I used to know.

How could I not find them

    beautiful, the way they dive & spill

            into each other,

the way the dance floor

    takes them,

            wet & holy in its mouth.

Poem of the day-Mary Robinson

Catching up here. This selection is from Mary Robinson (1758-1800.) She was a mistress of the man who would become King George VI but don't look down on her as some royal hanger-on. Besides being a poet (called "The English Sappho"), she was also a Shakespearean actress and advocate for women's rights.

The King guy (then the Prince of Wales) also treated her pretty badly. She died fairly young after spending several years in poverty and poor health. Poor baby.

Why I liked this it: despite the obviously historical setting, the poem feels very contemporary. It's a rich sensory experience, with the insects eying the baked goods and the cool feeling of the pavement after being splashed with water. This poem was published in the Morning Post the year Mary Robinson died

London’s Summer Morning

By Mary Robinson

Who has not waked to list the busy sounds

Of summer’s morning, in the sultry smoke

Of noisy London? On the pavement hot

The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face

And tattered covering, shrilly bawls his trade,

Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door

The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell

Proclaims the dustman’s office; while the street

Is lost in clouds impervious. Now begins

The din of hackney-coaches, waggons, carts;

While tinmen’s shops, and noisy trunk-makers,

Knife-grinders, coopers, squeaking cork-cutters,

Fruit-barrows, and the hunger-giving cries

Of vegetable-vendors, fill the air.

Now every shop displays its varied trade,

And the fresh-sprinkled pavement cools the feet

Of early walkers. At the private door

The ruddy housemaid twirls the busy mop,

Annoying the smart ’prentice, or neat girl,

Tripping with band-box lightly. Now the sun

Darts burning splendor on the glittering pane,

Save where the canvas awning throws a shade

On the gay merchandise. Now, spruce and trim,

In shops (where beauty smiles with industry)

Sits the smart damsel; while the passenger

Peeps through the window, watching every charm.

Now pastry dainties catch the eye minute

Of humming insects, while the limy snare

Waits to enthrall them. Now the lamp-lighter

Mounts the tall ladder, nimbly venturous,

To trim the half-filled lamps, while at his feet

The pot-boy yells discordant! All along

The sultry pavement, the old-clothes-man cries

In tone monotonous, while sidelong views

The area for his traffic: now the bag

Is slyly opened, and the half-worn suit

(Sometimes the pilfered treasure of the base

Domestic spoiler), for one half its worth,

Sinks in the green abyss. The porter now

Bears his huge load along the burning way;

And the poor poet wakes from busy dreams,

To paint the summer morning.

Poem of the day-Billy Collins

And another one, this time by Billy Collins (b. 1941.) This isn't one of his best but I love Billy Collins who seems to me like the poet you might give someone who thinks they hate poetry. There is zero pretension in his writing and his work always feels very welcoming to me.

Collins is famous, insofar as you can say that about a contemporary poet. He was the Poet Laureate from 2001-2003.

Why I like it: typical Billy Collins style here, almost but not quite folksy. Also, I love the references to Cherry Ames and Vicky Barr.

Canada

By Billy Collins

I am writing this on a strip of white birch bark

that I cut from a tree with a penknife.

There is no other way to express adequately

the immensity of the clouds that are passing over the farms   

and wooded lakes of Ontario and the endless visibility   

that hands you the horizon on a platter.

I am also writing this in a wooden canoe,

a point of balance in the middle of Lake Couchiching,   

resting the birch bark against my knees.   

I can feel the sun’s hands on my bare back,   

but I am thinking of winter,

snow piled up in all the provinces

and the solemnity of the long grain-ships

that pass the cold months moored at Owen Sound.

O Canada, as the anthem goes,

scene of my boyhood summers,

you are the pack of Sweet Caporals on the table,   

you are the dove-soft train whistle in the night,

you are the empty chair at the end of an empty dock.   

You are the shelves of books in a lakeside cottage:   

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh,   

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson,   

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery,

So You’re Going to Paris! by Clara E. Laughlin,

and Peril Over the Airport, one

of the Vicky Barr Flight Stewardess series

by Helen Wills whom some will remember

as the author of the Cherry Ames Nurse stories.

What has become of the languorous girls

who would pass the long limp summer evenings reading

Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse,   

Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse, and Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse?

Where are they now, the ones who shared her adventures   

as a veterans’ nurse, private duty nurse, visiting nurse,   

cruise nurse, night supervisor, mountaineer nurse,   

dude ranch nurse (there is little she has not done),   

rest home nurse, department store nurse,   

boarding school nurse, and country doctor's nurse?

O Canada, I have not forgotten you,

and as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision   

of a bookcase, I pray that I remain in your vast,

polar, North American memory.

You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines.   

You are Jean de Brébeuf with his martyr’s necklace of hatchet heads.

You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on the wall.

You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp.   

You are the dust that coats the roadside berries.   

But not only that.

You are the two boys with pails walking along that road,   

and one of them, the taller one minus the straw hat, is me.

Poem of the day-Taha Muhammed Ali

Today's poem from Poetry Foundation is by Taha Muhammed Ali (b. 1931.) He's interesting for a few reasons. He is Palestinian and self-taught. He is also a short story writer. His day job is running a souvenir shop in Nazareth. Rather than writing in Fus-ha like the classic poets he studied, he blends Fus'ha with colloquial (what a headache that would be trying to decipher it unless you were a native Levant speaker or very fluent.)

This poem is from his collection So What.

Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower

By Taha Muhammad Ali

In his life

he neither wrote nor read.

In his life he

didn’t cut down a single tree,

didn’t slit the throat

of a single calf.

In his life he did not speak

of the New York Times

behind its back,

didn’t raise

his voice to a soul

except in his saying:

“Come in, please,

by God, you can’t refuse.”

 

               —

 

Nevertheless—

his case is hopeless,

his situation

desperate.

His God-given rights are a grain of salt

tossed into the sea.

 

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury:

about his enemies

my client knows not a thing.

And I can assure you,

were he to encounter

the entire crew

of the aircraft carrier Enterprise,

he’d serve them eggs

sunny-side up,

and labneh

fresh from the bag.

Bernadette Mayer's potty mouth

On the Poetry Foundation "Poetry Off the Shelf" podcast, they talked about the poetry of Bernadette Mayer (b. 1945.) She's an avant-garde poet and artist. Apparently, she's been compared to 20th century titans from Gertrude Stein to James Joyce. She's well loved especially by younger poets for her experimentation.

I really liked this poem which was written in 1968 but you'd never know it:

[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up

By Bernadette Mayer

You jerk you didn't call me up

I haven't seen you in so long

You probably have a fucking tan

& besides that instead of making love tonight

You're drinking your parents to the airport

I'm through with you bourgeois boys

All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts

Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch

By a soporific color cable t.v. set

Instead of any arc of love, no wonder

The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night

You can either make love or die at the hands of

                               the Cobra Commander

_________________

To make love, turn to page 121.

To die, turn to page 172.

Poem of the day-Jane Miller

Jane Miller (b. 1949) worked as a painter before her career in poetry. I liked what she had to say about her poetry, “I use and have brought forward many of the reasons why I was attracted to painting into my poems. For example, I make use of color and design, so the structure of poetry, that’s related, and it’s a lot like making the underpainting for a painting.”

I'm not sure this poem makes a lot of sense in places ("may your desire always overcome your need"? Is that really a good thing always? I'd own 5000 comic books, seven pairs of Prada shoes and be homeless.) However, it sounds lovely when read out loud, which the Poetry Foundation recommends you do to really get the full effect of a poem. This really works better when you live alone, of course:

May You Always be the Darling of Fortune

By Jane Miller

March 10th and the snow flees like eloping brides

into rain. The imperceptible change begins

out of an old rage and glistens, chaste, with its new

craving, spring. May your desire always overcome

 

your need; your story that you have to tell,

enchanting, mutable, may it fill the world

you believe: a sunny view, flowers lunging

from the sill, the quilt, the chair, all things

 

fill with you and empty and fill. And hurry, because

now as I tire of my studied abandon, counting

the days, I’m sad. Yet I trust your absence, in everything

wholly evident: the rain in the white basin, and I

 

vigilant.

Poem of the day-Sharon Olds

After a streak where I wasn't that excited by any, I enjoyed this poem from Sharon Olds. Per the Poetry Foundation, she is one of our leading contemporary poets. She published her first book of poetry, Satan Says, at the age of 37.

What I liked: I like that she had this relationship with her father. I've seen many a diary with this type of lock but now I'll look at them anew and think of scarabs.

My Father's Diary

By Sharon Olds, b. 1942

I get into bed with it, and spring

the scarab legs of its locks. Inside,

the stacked, shy wealth of his print—

he could not write in script, so the pages

are sturdy with the beamwork of printedness,

WENT TO LOOK AT A CAR, DAD

IN A GOOD MOOD AT DINNER, WENT

TO TRY OUT SOME NEW TENNIS RACQUETS,

LUNCH WITH MOM, life of ease—

except when he spun his father's DeSoto on the

ice, and a young tree whirled up to the

hood, throwing up her arms—until

LOIS. PLAYED TENNIS, WITH LOIS,

LUNCH WITH MOM AND LOIS, LOIS

LIKED THE CAR, DRIVING WITH LOIS,

LONG DRIVE WITH LOIS. And then,

LOIS! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! SHE IS SO

GOOD, SO SWEET, SO GENEROUS, I HAVE

NEVER, WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE

TO DESERVE SUCH A GIRL? Between the dark

legs of the capitals, moonlight, soft

tines of the printed letter gentled

apart, nectar drawn from serif, the

self of the grown boy pouring

out, the heart's charge, the fresh

man kneeling in pine-needle weave,

worshipping her. It was my father

good, it was my father grateful,

it was my father dead, who had left me

these small structures of his young brain—

he wanted me to know him, he wanted

someone to know him.

Wallace Stevens, the Emperor of Smarty Pants

Poetry Foundation had a podcast dedicated to deciphering just one of Wallace Stevens poems, "The Idea of Order at Key West." People have different ideas about having a poem explained to them but I like it, particularly in Stevens' case because his poetry is lovely (look at some of these fragments: "fragrant portals", "tragic-gestured sea",  "meaningless plungings of water and wind.") but not the most accessible stuff in the world. All of this is fitting for the poet that Harold Bloom called "the best and most representative American poet of our time."

I'm trying to say that if Harold Bloom digs him, I probably won't understand it.

Jennifer Michael Hecht (whose book Doubt is buried somewhere on my to-read list), joined Curtis Fox to explain this poem and it was actually fantastic. First the poem, then some of her observations that I scribbled down.

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 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.

The universe is real but the mind of art is real too. Between these poles, how is man-so small in the universe-to discern what is real and what isn't? And while the universe is big and vast, it is the mind that creates the moment.

Neither the woman nor the sea are illusions. Neither made the other and yet it is the listener's experience of hearing the woman sing that colors his perception of this moment at the seashore. What is the world? What is real when so many perspectives are shaped by thought, chance and circumstance?  One day the woman and listener will be gone, later on so too the trees and much later the ocean. So did it really happen? (Hecht says she gets this because it's the Kilgore Trout in her. You have to read literature to get literature.)

"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" can be read as an expression of transcendentalist philosophy. The human mind and creative impulse was greater than nature. Her singing forges his experience of the sea.

When you look at the ocean at night, it's black. The lights on the boats give it order. Why do we need as humans need order (and art) and the universe doesn't? We demarcate our lives like the lights do on the ocean.

Bishop Berkeley once declared, in a nutshell, that the world is composed by our imagination. The philsophy is called immaterialism. Samuel Johnson famously kicked a rock and said "Thus I do refute it." This poem plays with those ideas.

Who the heck is Ramon? Apparently, Stevens just wanted a Hispanic name to plug in there. 

This is maybe the best explication of a poem I've ever heard or read. I get it. Well, kind of.

Poem of the day-Rhina P. Espaillat

Today's poem of the day from the NPF is from Rhina Espaillat (b. 1932) who is originally from the Dominican Republic. Her family was exiled to the US for opposing the Trujillo regime. That bit of history may or may not add an extra dimension to this poem.

I like how so much back story and emotion is delivered with such an economy of words and images. It's also kind of rare to find contemporary poetry that rhymes, at least in my experience.

“Find Work”

By Rhina P. Espaillat

 

I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life's little duties do—precisely
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—
—Emily Dickinson, #443

My mother’s mother, widowed very young

of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,

moved through her father’s farm, her country tongue

and country heart anaesthetized and mute

with labor. So her kind was taught to do—

“Find work,” she would reply to every grief—

and her one dictum, whether false or true,

tolled heavy with her passionate belief.

Widowed again, with children, in her prime,

she spoke so little it was hard to bear

so much composure, such a truce with time

spent in the lifelong practice of despair.

But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,

her dishes, and how painfully they shone.

Poem of the day-Rabindranath Tagore

From the Poetry Found, here is a sweet selection. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was from Calcutta and was an embarrassing overachiever. He wrote poetry in his native Bengali which he frequently translated into English himself, he was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in 1913 and he decided to become a painter late in life and painted around 2500 paintings.

Being read indeed around 100 years later, I like the way he bridges the gap between us in one sentence.

The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?

I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.

Open your doors and look abroad.

From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

Poem of the day-Matthew Rohrer

Here's another NPF poem of the day, from Matthew Rohrer.He teaches writing at NYU and was a finalist for the Griffin in 2005. The judges said his poems "“present us the sideways view of the world of a young American not able to assume the mantle of hero.” Maybe this is why I like this poem so much.

What I like: as usual, vivid imagery that sets my cortex ping-ponging. And the humor.

You can hear him read the poem if you follow the link to the website.

The Amaranth

By Matthew Rohrer

is an imaginary flower that never fades.

The amaranth is blue with black petals,

it’s yellow with red petals,

it’s enormous and grows into the shape

of a girl’s house,

the seeds nestle high in the closet

where she hid a boy.

The boy and his bike flee

the girl’s parents from the tip

of the leaves, green summer light

behind the veins.

The amaranth is an imaginary flower

in the shape of a girl’s house

dispensing gin and tonics

from its thorns, a succulent.

This makes the boy’s bike steer

off-course all summer, following

the girl in her marvelous car,

the drunken bike.

 

He was a small part of summer,

he was summer’s tongue.

Poems of the Day

Two I liked. Both about man's dread of nature.

The first is by Connecticut poet (and NEA/Guggenheim Grant recipient) Russell Edson, who specializes in the kind of surreal dark humor you see here:

The Difficulty with a Tree by Russell Edson

 

A woman was fighting a tree. The tree had come to rage at the woman’s attack, breaking free from its earth it waddled at her with its great root feet.
         Goddamn these sentiencies, roared the tree with birds shrieking in its branches.
         Look out, you’ll fall on me, you bastard, screamed the woman as she hit at the tree.
         The tree whisked and whisked with its leafy branches.
         The woman kicked and bit screaming, kill me kill me or I’ll kill you!

         Her husband seeing the commotion came running crying, what tree has lost patience?
         The ax the ax, damnfool, the ax, she screamed.
         Oh no, roared the tree dragging its long roots rhythmically limping like a sea lion towards her husband.
         But oughtn’t we to talk about this? cried her husband.
         But oughtn’t we to talk about this, mimicked his wife.
         But what is this all about? he cried.
         When you see me killing something you should reason that it will want to kill me back, she screamed.

         But before her husband could decide what next action to perform the tree had killed both the wife and her husband.
         Before the woman died she screamed, now do you see?
         He said, what...? And then he died.

 

Should I be rooting for the tree? This is all J.R.R. Tolkien's doing.

 

The second one is by Jane Hirschfield, who is also an essayist and translator of Japanese poetry. It says she was a graduate of Princeton's first class to include women in 1973. (wait-1973? Apparently, yes. They first admitted women in 1969. Jive Ivy League motherfuckers.) Anyways, no humor here but there is a still a dread of nature.

 

Tree by Jane Hirshfield

 

It is foolish

to let a young redwood   

grow next to a house.

Even in this   

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.   

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

W.S. Merwin-speaking of poetry

W.S. Merwin is the current Poet Laureate of these United States. Here is an interview he did with the great Bill Moyers in 2009.

He did an interview for the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast (by the National Poetry Foundation) about how to make our culture value poetry more. He gave Latin America as an example of a culture that doesn't view poetry as alienating (definitely he should add the Middle East to that list and Russia I would guess.) His first book of poetry was praised by no less than W.H. Auden.

In the course of the interview, he read his poem "Vixen" which is gorgeous. As with some of the best nature poems, the poem is more about how nature changes the observer. Then it turns into a profoundly melancholic rumination on how to remember and honor this moment as the natural world shrinks.

Anyways, here is a link to Merwin reading it which is great to experience while reading the poem. And here is the poem:
 

Vixen

By W. S. Merwin b. 1927

Comet of stillness princess of what is over

       high note held without trembling without voice without sound

aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets

       of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences

never caught in words warden of where the river went

       touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished

window onto the hidden place and the other time

       at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting

in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born

       you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me

you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you

       even now you are unharmed even now perfect

as you have always been now when your light paws are running

       on the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you

when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer

       when I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars

from the creeds of difference and the contradictions

       that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications

as long as it lasted until something that we were

       had ended when you are no longer anything

let me catch sight of you again going over the wall

       and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures

guttering on a screen let my words find their own

      places in the silence after the animals

Poem of the Day-Amy Uyematsu

From the National Poetry Foundation, as usual.

Amy Uyematsu was a math teacher prior to her retirement. She based this poem on photos of rural Japan.

Why I like it: once again, the visuals suck me in. Especially the image of the sleeping flower. The lotus has special significance in buddhism (and in hinduism.) And I can hear the sound the crispy daikon makes when it's eaten.

Inside

By Amy Uyematsu b. 1947 

                      based on photographs from Rural Japan:
                      Radiance of the Ordinary

/ afloat

two boats with no riders

still moving on water

the hulls barely touching

each with a single oar

safely propped

so it won’t fall

/ lotus leaves

close into themselves

at night

on their wide folded backs

water beads

inside, their sleeping

flowers

/ inside

do the carp

just below the water’s stillness

see the pines

/ fall daikon

just pulled from the soil

these pungent roots

hang from bamboo poles

their white tubed bodies

bend as if slightly aroused

each ripe radish will

be drenched

in salt

then eaten raw

all winter

/ lone pine

ancient tree

with so many tongues

how long this throated stem

this stillness before rain

Haiku of the day-Kobayashi Issa

Also from the Poetry Foundation, here is a haiku from Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828.) He lived a fairly tragic life as you can see from his bio and studied haiku in Edo. Edo, btw, is the original name for Tokyo and was the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate which would still have been going strong during Issa's life-the Meiji Restoration occurs in 1868. Edo was one of the largest cities in the world at the time. The name means "bay entrance", appropriately.


Before the actual haiku though, a little about haiku because despite it being so simple, I can never remember the exact syllable count. It's 5, 7, 5. This site also tells me that Masaoka Shiki really created the form in the 1890's (haiku means "cutting") and Edo Period writers such as Issa are more properly called hokku. It looks like people also just refer to it as Classical versus Modern Haiku. 


Anyways, enjoy and evidently you can just ignore the 5,7,5 rule here:

[even with insects] by Kobayashi Issa

Even with insects—

some can sing,

    some can’t.

Poem of the day-Carolyn Kizer

If you are at all inclined to like poetry, you should consider subscribing to the National Poetry Foundation's poem of the day email.

Here is Friday's poem from Carolyn Kizer (b. 1925.) Although I hadn't heard of her and apparently she isn't terribly prolific, she won the Pulitzer in 1985 for her collection Yin: New Poems.

What I liked: the flow, the meticulous web of words and imagery and the sadness and disquiet I experience reading it. And it's a reflection we'll all have to make at some time or another.

The Great Blue Heron

By Carolyn Kizer b. 1925
 

M.A.K., September 1880-September 1955

As I wandered on the beach

I saw the heron standing   

Sunk in the tattered wings

He wore as a hunchback’s coat.   

Shadow without a shadow,   

Hung on invisible wires   

From the top of a canvas day,   

What scissors cut him out?   

Superimposed on a poster   

Of summer by the strand   

Of a long-decayed resort,   

Poised in the dusty light   

Some fifteen summers ago;   

I wondered, an empty child,   

“Heron, whose ghost are you?”

I stood on the beach alone,

In the sudden chill of the burned.

My thought raced up the path.   

Pursuing it, I ran

To my mother in the house.

And led her to the scene.

The spectral bird was gone.

But her quick eye saw him drifting   

Over the highest pines

On vast, unmoving wings.

Could they be those ashen things,   

So grounded, unwieldy, ragged,   

A pair of broken arms

That were not made for flight?   

In the middle of my loss

I realized she knew:

My mother knew what he was.

O great blue heron, now

That the summer house has burned   

So many rockets ago,

So many smokes and fires

And beach-lights and water-glow   

Reflecting pinwheel and flare:   

The old logs hauled away,   

The pines and driftwood cleared   

From that bare strip of shore   

Where dozens of children play;   

Now there is only you

Heavy upon my eye.

Why have you followed me here,   

Heavy and far away?

You have stood there patiently   

For fifteen summers and snows,   

Denser than my repose,

Bleaker than any dream,

Waiting upon the day

When, like gray smoke, a vapor   

Floating into the sky,

A handful of paper ashes,

My mother would drift away.