National (USA) Poetry Month

[Tzara]

Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron is set during the period of the Black Death in the mid-1300s. It describes a group of ten young people, seven women and three men, who have sequestered themselves in a villa outside of Florence to shelter from the plague. The structure of the book is that various of the ten tell stories to the others over a number of days and nights.

One of the women sheltering in the house is Fiammetta ("little flame"), a name associated with an earlier Boccaccio novel The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta. Marie d'Aquino, an illegitimate daughter of the King of Naples, is typically identified with the character and is the woman often considered to be Boccaccio's muse (and, perhaps, lover).

The poet Rita Dove wrote a pair of poems on Boccaccio and Fiammetta and the plague, originally published in her volume Museum. I've chosen the second of these for today's poem:

Fiammetta Breaks Her Peace
Rita Dove

I've watched them, mother, and I know
the signs. The first day, rigor.
Staggering like drunks, they
ram the room's sharp edges
with the most delicate body parts
and feel no pain. Unable
to sleep, they shiver beneath
all the quilts in the house,
panic gnawing a silver path to the brain.

Day two is fever, the bright
stream clogged, eyes rodent
red. No one weeps anymore; just
waits, for appear they must—
in the armpits, at the groin—
hard, blackened apples.
Then, at least, there is certainty,
and odd kind of relief;
a cross comes on the door.

A few worthy citizens gather possessions
around them and spend time
with fine foods, wine and music
behind closed drapes. Having left
the world already, they are surprised
when the world finds them again.
Still others carouse from tavern
to tavern, doing exactly as they please. . . .

And to think he wanted me
beautiful! To be his fresh air
and my breasts two soft
spiced promises. Stand still, he said
once, and let me admire you.

All is infection, mother—and avarice,
and self-pity, and fear!
We shall sit quietly in this room,
and I think we’ll be spared.

Source: Selected Poems (1993)
​

This is both a kick-ass good poem, and a vitally relevant one as well. The coronavirus pandemic, however bad, is nothing like the Black Death. Still, Dove's poem speaks to what we are all going through: the surreptitious (or not) looking for signs of illness in neighbors or acquaintances, the various ways people react to the epidemic (fear, defiance, losing themselves in drink or drugs), the resignation, the hope.

What better definition of social distancing can one find than Dove's closing lines describing its fourteenth century version?

We shall sit quietly in this room,
and I think we'll be spared.​

There is, by the way, a truly great painting inspired by Fiammetta by the Pre-Raphaelite master (and poet) Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Check it out.

 

[AmericanTrash]

Today this was perfect

I promise dark gatherings of toadfish and comical shrimp
just when you think you are alone, hoping to stay somehow afloat.

Thank you Tzara.

 

[Tzara]

I promise dark gatherings of toadfish and comical shrimp
just when you think you are alone, hoping to stay somehow afloat.

Thank you Tzara.

You're most welcome, AT. Thanks for reading and for your comment.

 

[Tzara]

Today would have been my father's 94th birthday. Typically, my wife and I would drive over to my parents' house on the weekend to visit. Since my dad's birthday almost always (always always?) coincided with the Masters golf tournament, M and I would watch it, usually the Saturday third round, while playing Scrabble with my dad. He was irritating to play Scrabble with because he loved to put down three or four tiles all clogged together with whatever was already on the board, scoring points by making fifteen different words and leaving a traffic jam worthy of Los Angeles at rush hour for the rest of us to negiotiate.

And, yes, he usually won, leveraging such words as ba and ka and xu, all of which are the in The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. Dammit.

But I'm thinking about him today, particularly because there is no Masters tournament to watch this weekend. And because, with all the hundreds of poems I've spewed out over the fifteen years I've been more or less seriously trying to write poetry, I think I've only written one about him.

Which brings me to my selection for today:

Thistles
Austin Smith

My father would wake early and calmly
go about the business of giving himself
cancer. Red, the color itself,
sloshing in the tank behind him,
he'd drive the fencerows all morning,
spraying thistles.
I've always loved thistles
for how they hold their beauty
apart from us,
their purple blossoms
more beautiful for being
pain's fountaining,
like the beauty of the pain of martyrs.
In this way also they are
like those rare creatures,
mountain lions, owls, you
never dream of seeing, much less
touching. Which is why
he had to kill them
from a distance, a spherical mist
hanging in the air, a tongueless
bell of poison. Because who scythes
anymore? I can still see my father
unmasked like an actor backstage,
breathing as deeply
as he ever breathed,
while behind him already they were
beginning to yellow
like old, old annals in a chest
of drawers no one opens anymore.

Source: Almanac: Poems (2013)
​

My reaction to this poem is much more personal than those I have posted to date. My dad grew up on a small farm, though following WW II he became an engineer like his brothers. It wasn't the kind of farm Smith describes, but his tone in the opening lines reminds me of what my father might have been like as a young man.

The red stuff sloshing in narrator's father's tank is, of course, Roundup (glyphosate), a chemical that is a presumptive carcinogen. An interesting aspect of Smith's poem is how he pivots from the image of his father spraying the crops to the weed itself and expresses his admiration, almost fondness, for the plant.

The close of the poem foreshadows both the death of the "purple blossoms / more beautiful for being / pain's fountaining" and the illness of the father, "breathing as deeply / as he ever breathed" the "spherical mist" of pesticide.

Interestingly Smith, who is also (perhaps primarily) a fiction writer, uses much the same imagery of the opening of the poem in his story, also titled "Thistles," though in the story the protagonist is the daughter of the farmer.

 

[Tzara]

I mentioned in an earlier post that I really like to wander around bookstores. I am fortunate in that I live fairly close to the Canadian border, so I occasionally get to wander around bookstores in Vancouver and Victoria. Munro's Books and Russell Books in Victoria are awesome and though the Chapters bookstore (Indigo now?) on Granville in Vancouver is great, I really miss the Duthie Books that used to be on Robson Street.

Anyway. Getting to browse books in excellent Canadian bookstores lets me break out a bit from the usual America-centric fare of the usual bookstore in the States. I'm guessing I bought the book I'm quoting from today in Victoria, but that's probably because I know that Patrick Lane taught for many years at the University of Victoria. (I nutured a fantasy for some years that I could perhaps get accepted to the MFA program there and study with Lane and his wife Lorna Crozier, but they retired and it was impractical anyway).

Here's my poem for today:

China White
Patrick Lane

He sat in the small room thinking of geraniums,
that crowded red as close to blood
as any flower is. It was after Archie offered her
to him, saying, Anything you want,
and her on the bed, nodding off, the exact particular
in her mind a shell she might ride on without menace.
Her blonde hair was another kind of light.
When he declined, Archie covered her again, his hand
hesitating just a moment as the blanket fell, a quietness
he tried to understand. All this for some China white.
Sometimes you can't imagine what it's like, given
such magic as occurs in time. What is in his mind
are geraniums, those bloody flowers
rising from their arms into the last syringe,
and the ones his mother grew so many years ago
beside the stones covered in red lichens.
Such textures as there are in the many
gardens we make from ourselves. Then, leaving,
going out into whatever beauty he can find.

Source: Witness: New & Selected Poems 1962-2010 (2010)
​

"China White is a slang term that was once used to refer to very pure forms of heroin. Today, many people say China White is fentanyl or a fentanyl derivative called alpha-methylfentanyl" (source: drugrehab.com).

During my walk this morning (another beautiful day here in Seattle), my wife and I passed a rhododendron bush in full bloom, covered with what can only be described as blood-red flowers. It was beautiful but also creepy, in a way.

Lane was, earlier in his life, an alcoholic and cocaine abuser, though as far as I know did not use heroin. I find this poem oddly beautiful and at the same time depressing: the red flowers and red lichen contrasted with the bloom of blood drawn into the syringe as they inject the drugs, the stark offering of the woman to the narrator coupled with Archie's "cover[ing] her again, his hand / hesitating just a moment as the blanket fell, a quietness / he tried to understand."

Lane died just over a year ago, on 07 March 2019. A lengthy and fascinating obituary can be found here.

 

[AmericanTrash]

Such textures as there are in the many
gardens we make from ourselves. Then, leaving,
going out into whatever beauty he can find.

This is oddly comforting. The role of words in the service of image/meaning
as generative--as the life force.

 

[Tzara]

It's kind of odd, sometimes, what strikes me about a poem. It might be an especially intriguing title, an involving theme, something silly or sappy or sad about the tone of the poem. In the case of today's poem, it's a combination of two of these things: a rather startling initial image and the segue in the latter part of the poem to very human concerns:

Astronomers Locate a New Planet
Matthew Olzmann

Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline,
so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.
—Reuters, 8/24/2011

Like the universe’s largest engagement ring, it twirls
and sparkles its way through infinity.
The citizens of the new world know about luxury.
They can live for a thousand years.
Their hearts are little clocks
with silver pendulums pulsing inside,
Eyes like onyx, teeth like pearl.
But it’s not always easy. They know hunger.
They starve. A field made of diamond
is impossible to plow; shovels crumble and fold
like paper animals. So frequent is famine,
that when two people get married,
one gives the other a locket filled with dirt.
That’s the rare thing, the treasured thing, there.
It takes decades to save for,
but the ground beneath them glows,
and people find a way.

On Earth, when my wife is sleeping,
I like to look out at the sky.
I like to watch TV shows about supernovas,
and contemplate things that are endless
like the heavens and, maybe, love.
I can drink coffee and eat apples whenever I want.
Things grow everywhere, and so much is possible,
but on the news tonight: a debate about who
can love each other forever and who cannot.

There was a time when it would’ve been illegal
for my wife to be my wife. Her skin,
my household of privilege. Sometimes,
I wish I could move to another planet.
Sometimes, I wonder what worlds are out there.
I turn off the TV because the news rarely makes
the right decision on its own. But even as the room
goes blacker than the gaps between galaxies,
I can hear the echoes: who is allowed to hold
the ones they wish to hold, who can reach
into the night, who can press his or her
own ear against another’s chest and listen
to a heartbeat telling stories in the dark.

Source: Contradictions of the Design (2016)
​

Olzmann's poem is a great example of what just reading the newspaper (or its digital equivalent) can provide in terms of inspiration for a poem. The weirdness of a planet made of diamond is striking enough, but then the poet ups that with the image of how valuable soil would be on such a planet: So frequent is famine, / that when two people get married, / one gives the other a locket filled with dirt. This image gives him a pivot point to swing the focus of the poem to terrestrial and human themes, and in particular to the tragic pettiness of some of our entrenched social conventions.

I find this poem especially moving at this time, when we as a species should be drawn together regardless of our differences because of the species-wide threat of coronavirus. To read about attacks on Asian Americans or medical personnel (!) because of the virus is really depressing.

I hope you all are well and staying safe.

 

[Tzara]

I wanted to post Jenny Johnson's poem "Dappled Things," which consists of several Hopkinsesque curtal sonnets strung together, but given the length and the formatting requirements to properly represent the poem(s) on the page, it seemed impractical to me. (I would, though, strongly recommend you find a copy of her book In Full Velvet and read it in its entirety;"Dappled Things" is the first poem in the book.)

But I did really want to post one of her poems today, so I picked this one which is about something most of us are missing right now--a trip to the barbershop/salon--which then segues into something more:

Pine Street Barbershop
Jenny Johnson

Sliding back in the basin, I let him
rub my skull, rinse

the eucalyptus suds out of my ears,
wrap my tee in a great black cape,

ask without needing an answer:
The usual? Captain of this noonday helm,

Cupid stands tall on an apple crate,
a lift from which he reaches to snip

every stray, wet pinch of hair.
Since last time I visited, his stubble

filled in, a close neat beard. Eyeing
the hem of my Levi's,

he says he's been searching
for a suit, bespoke for someone

our size. Says he's found a shop that'll
tailor him a jacket made of wool

Italian milled, Bemberg lining,
with a notched lapel.

We speak through the mirror;
the glass is larger than we are.

In it, I see my father, rubbing
his head dry with a towel,

whispering softly to my mother:
Which tie? Lost in his undershirt,

unsure how to proceed,
Where would you wear it? I ask.

Everywhere, Cupid says. Dipping his shears
in a jar of blue Barbicide,

he drifts; I follow him out the door
into a streaming metropolis of

masculinities vested in
tweed, plaid, velvet, seersucker,

surgeon's cuffs unbuttoned.
Bound like backstiches

and long staple cotton, we level
suede elbows. We promenade

through Southern streets. We alter
nothing. We alter everything.

Source: In Full Velvet (2017)
​

Feeling comfortable with one's appearance is such an important element to self-worth, it's almost impossible to overstate its value. How one's hair is cut or styled is damn near paramount in one's feeling of attractiveness and presentability, but it also helps define how we think of ourselves and what we value about appearance. (Just think of the importance DJT puts on his absurdly Byzantine coiffure, for example.)

The same is true, of course, for our clothing and probably especially true for anyone socially or culturally marginalized, for whatever reason. For someone who does not identify with the conventions of local society, hairstyle and clothing choices can help them to assert their individuality.

For me, I'd just like to get my hair cut.

 

[Piscator]

Tarza, thank you for these posts and your introduction to a range of American and sometimes even Canadian poets. In this time of self isolation they are delightful gilimpses.

My hair is ok so far, I usually get a quarterly shearing and it is mostly wash and wear for the next three months, my mother even complimented me on it during our Easter video chat (another welcome technology in this era of dispersed families). If it goes on too long however, I'll end up looking like an elderly and somewhat disrespectful Wierd Al.

 

[Tzara]

Tzara, thank you for these posts and your introduction to a range of American and sometimes even Canadian poets. In this time of self isolation they are delightful gilmpses.

My hair is ok so far, I usually get a quarterly shearing and it is mostly wash and wear for the next three months, my mother even complimented me on it during our Easter video chat (another welcome technology in this era of dispersed families). If it goes on too long however, I'll end up looking like an elderly and somewhat disrespectful Weird Al.

Thanks, Piscator. As I said earlier, I like writing these, though coming up with a poem a day isn't all that easy, especially when I'm trying to avoid really famous poems.

I had planned to get my hair cut on a Friday, but because I'm a little socially anxious, decided to wait until the next week, when I might run down to the shop at a time there might be fewer customers. Our governor ordered hair salons closed over that weekend, and I ended up missing out on getting it cut.

What's strange is that I really dislike getting my hair cut.

I may have to end up doing the Old Deadhead Ponytail thing. That will not be pretty.

 

[Tzara]

I had intended today to post a different poem by Kim-An Lieberman, one that spoke to how poetry can be a form of counterpunch, if not comfort, in the face of disease, but I decided the poem was overall too depressing to copy out. It's a very good poem, but I wasn't really up to the work of posting and commenting on it.

Besides, this poem ("Wings") is an even better poem, though even it isn't ultimately all that cheerful. Anyway, decide for yourselves what you think:

Wings
Kim-An Lieberman

It had been three years, maybe longer, and the map of his body
........was etched
in her palms. The stretch of his legs. The stiff, clean-shaven line of
........his jaw.
His left ring finger, curved slightly inward. So of course she made
........the discovery.

The first feathers appeared in a pair. She was facing him in the grey
........wash of morning,
stroking the knoll of his shoulder blade, when twin quills broke
........suddenly through the skin.
He locked himself in the bathroom for hours, cursing blankly
........at the mirror.

They grew quickly, eclipsing his back like snowfall. In the moonlight they
........were lustrous.
she would brush them gently with a damp washcloth, gather loose
........feathers in a basket.
Under their spreading canopy his muscles formed tight knots, pulsing
........like fists.

He complained about their aching weight, how they poked holes in his
........favorite sweater
and sometimes, of their own accord, began to flap and pull his feet
........from the ground.
Just think of all the usefulness, she said, fan on a flaming night or extra
........warmth in winter.

But he became sullen, took long walks alone after dinner, absolutely
........refused to see a doctor.
He would not go to the beach anymore, even when she promised
........a three-color sunset.
Can’t trust these things, he told her, and I’m not stupid. I know
........my mythology.

When he asked her to leave, it was another grey morning. He lay
........sprawled on his stomach
at the opposite end of the bed. He gave no reason, but she knew it was
........another woman
because their beauty was blinding. Even fully clothed he leaked
........gallons of light.

In time she moved on, ripped up his pictures and set the ridiculous
........basket of feathers on fire.
But some mornings she woke drenched in jealousy. Half-believing
........she heard a rustle,
she would stare at her husband’s empty back and wonder if anything
........would change.

Source: Breaking the Map (2008)
​

Poems are made memorable in various ways--by the intimacy of their confessions, by their verbal and technical cleverness, by their abilities to articulate responses to national or global issues.

Or they can simply build on astonishing imagery.

The detail of Lieberman's poem ("when twin quills broke / suddenly through the skin," "eclipsing his back like snowfall," "how they poked holes in his / favorite sweater") makes concrete the weirdness of the transformation, which makes the ending so oddly empathetic.

Lieberman died at a very young age (39) from gastric cancer, leaving only two books of poetry published by a local press which has since apparently ceased business. I expect every community of any size has poets like her--poets of great talent who never quite reach the level of recognition they deserve.

This is where should I suggest you Support Your Local Poets, but I'm hoping you're all doing that already.

Be well, everyone.

 

[Tzara]

As I said yesterday, I had originally intended to post a different poem by Kim-An Lieberman than the one I actually ended up posting. The poem I had originally intended to post was titled "Ars Poetica" (Latin for the art of poetry).

By an odd coincidence, the poem I am posting today, by Kelly Cherry, is titled "Ars Poetica." Even weirder, it was not my first choice; I would have liked to post her poem "On Translation" from the same volume, but that one's five pages long and I don't really feel like typing that much, copy editing it, etc. You probably don't want to read that long a post either. (Though I would strongly encourage you to do so—it's a really good poem.)

Anyway, here's "Ars Poetica," a villanelle by Kelly Cherry:

Ars Poetica
Kelly Cherry

No dog, the muse cannot be leashed or trained.
The poem depends upon a willing muse.
Nothing is guaranteed or foreordained.

The poem is providential—a blessing gained
in bars and bordellos as often as in pews.
The poet knows the poem is not ordained.

Words upon a page are barely restrained
by form, twist like dust devils to get loose.
Nothing is guaranteed or foreordained.

Like the four winds, words will not be chained
down in stanzas merely to amuse.
The poet knows the poem is not ordained.

Even your life is not your own, feigned
as it is to please the gods—a futile ruse.
Nothing is guaranteed or foreordained.

From time to time, the mercurial muse has deigned
to breathe a poem for a poet’s temporary use.
Not faithful dog, the muse—nor leashed nor trained.
Nothing’s guaranteed. Nothing’s foreordained.

Source: The Life and Death of Poetry (2013)
​

I love the villanelle, with its obsessive repetitions of the first and third lines. Those of you who know the form, though, will note that Cherry doesn't exactly follow it accurately. In the classic villanelle, the first and third lines of the first stanza repeat as the end lines of the next four stanzas, alternating A1 A2 A1 A2, and then close the last, four-line stanza as a closing couplet in either order.

Cherry's poem drops the first line (A1) completely between the first and last stanzas, replacing it with "The poet knows the poem is not ordained." The original line reappears, slightly modified, as the penultimate line of the poem.

Altering the strict form of the villanelle isn't all that unusual, though it is more typical for the poet to slightly change one or both of the repeating lines as they move through the poem rather than replace it completely. It's really, really hard to keep the poem fresh if you robotically repeat the lines in their proper places simply because "that's how the form works." In any case, I think Cherry's tweak of the form makes for a better poem.

And I certainly agree with the thematic content of the poem. My poetic (writing) muse has been absent for some time—probably off sheltering in place with David Geffen in the Grenadines or something.

Anyway. Hope the rest of you are keeping sane with your jigsaw puzzles and oversized bottles of wine the way I am.

Be safe.

 

[Tzara]

When I first discovered the poetry forum at Literotica (not quite the hundred years ago it sometimes feels like), I realized pretty early on that what especially appealed to me about poems about sex was something like the poet approaching the topic with ambivalence or at least some kind of nuanced presentation of the subject. Life is complex and poems that treat sex as an ecstatic combination of a heroin high crossed with the most mind-blowingly ecstatic LSD trip ever just don't feel right to me. Yes, of course, good sex can be pretty awesome, but it's also a pretty evanescent experience. I guess I prefer to read about the fabulousness of it in some kind of context, be that love, or lust (and its necessary letdowns), boredom, jealousy, etc. That just seems more real to me.

Francesca Bell's first volume of poetry, Bright Stain, struck me as spot on as what I was looking for. Many of the poems are about sexual relationships, but they don't focus on the prurient aspects of them so much as on their aftermath. Many readers would probably find that kind of a downer, but, again, for me addressing the surrounding aspects of the sexual relationship are what make the poems interesting to me.

Here's an example:

The After Sorrow
Francesca Bell

Sometimes you set fire to my body,
licking like a flame
what it will reduce to ash,

while I shift and moan—
a pile of carefully laid wood
as its base begins to burn.

Wherever you put your hands
is a point of detonation, fingers
pulling tiny triggers again and again,

and you enter me as dynamite,
enters a mountain, sliding precisely in
until bliss demolishes us.

After, you soften into sleep
and slide from my body
the way a person on a steep slope

loses the struggle to stop.
Then I see we are rubble, still and separate,
and grief washes over me like pleasure.

Source: Bright Stain (2019)
​

Bell is kind of an unusual figure in the contemporary poetry community in that she doesn't have an MFA. In fact, she doesn't have any college or high school degree at all. Yet she's been a poetry editor and translator and built a literary career. All very cool, in my opinion.

I could point to aspects of this poem I particularly like—her use of metaphor, alliteration, the conversational quality of the poem—but I'd rather simply mention how much I like the closing, where the narrator admits to how, even after the ecstasy of the encounter, she feels disconnected from her partner. The closing line—and grief washes over me like pleasure—is just killer.

As a bonus, check out this video of Bell reciting a very different (and quite funny) poem.

 

[Tzara]

Brevity in poetry is a very difficult thing to achieve, if the poem is to be of substance. This isn't always obvious, in part because of how the term "haiku" has been so degraded or simplified in common usage to the point that pretty much anything written in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables is considered to be poetry.

And it is poetry, in a way, but it is also something of an insult to those masters of the various short east Asian forms such as haiku and tanka.

The poem I've chosen for today has the characteristics of good compact poetry. The book this poem is taken from, Eye Level, was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and one reviewer said of it that the poems often seem like "extended haiku."

Here's the poem:

Hardwired
Jenny Xie

A misfortune can swell
for a long, long time in the mind.

While goodness shrinks
down to a hard shell.

I reach for the hammer,
but it doesn’t crack.

Evolutionarily, it makes sense.


These fishbone days, this fatty grief.

Source: Eye Level (2018)
​

Technically, I think this is quite an interesting poem. Basically, it consists of five sentences, the first three of which are split to form three couplets, while the last two are presented whole on a single line. There is also an extra blank line inserted before the final line, which sets it off from the rest of the poem.

The poem almost seems more like a Zen kōan (A . . . story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen.[Wikipedia]). Several of the poems in Xie's collection reference Buddhism, so that may not be much of a surprise. Yet the poem remains a bit mysterious--particularly the penultimate line: "Evolutionarily, it makes sense." OK, um, why?

I like poems that present me with something of a puzzle. What the heck does that mean? is a reaction that leads one to think, and thinking is always a good thing.

Also, again. The poem ends on a brilliant last line. One so brilliant it could be a poem all on its own.

Be well, everyone.

 

[Tzara]

If you've ever taken a course in creative writing or even read a book about creative writing, you've almost certainly come across some of the "rules" that one should adhere to: "Show, dont tell"; "Avoid passive voice"; or one of my favorites, from Elmore Leonard, "Never open a book with weather."

Poetry writing classes usually cite some or most of these rules (does Eliot's "The Waste Land" violate the one about never opening a [poem] with weather?), but they all seem to cite this one: "Use concrete nouns and active verbs, use adjectives sparingly, and avoid adverbs." Good advice, I think, unless focusing on foggy language is part of what the poem is about.

So, today's poem by Karen Solie, which uses the amorphous adjective "nice" as the central theme of the poem. As with the A. E. Stallings poem I posted earlier, Solie's poem is partly an indictment of loose language, but it is also about the anesthetizing (but comforting) effects of some kinds of language.

Solie is Canadian, so for my fellow Americans, the temperature reference in her poem is to the Celsius scale, where 20°C is the same as 68°F, so she's talking about a nice day rather than an effing cold one:

Nice
Karen Solie

I think I’m kind of two-faced. I’m very ingratiating.
It really kind of annoys me. I’m just sort of a little too
nice. Everything is Oooo.
—Diane Arbus

Still dark, but just. The alarm
kicks on. A voice like a nice hairdo,
sprayed. People, get ready
for another nice one. Low 20s,
soft breeze stroking through, ridge
of high pressure settling nicely.
Songbirds swallowing, ruffling,
starting in. Does anyone curse
the winter wren, calling in Christ’s name
for just one bloody minute of silence?
Of course not. They sound nice.
I pull away and he asks why I can’t
be nicer to him. Well,
I have to work, I say, and wouldn’t it be nice
if someone made some money today?
Very nice, he quavers, rolling
his face to the wall. A nice face.
A nice wall. We agreed on the green
down to hue and shade straight away.
That was a very nice day.

Source: Modern and Normal (2005)
​

The closing line defines the poem, as it has in so many of the poems I've posted here. It is both bland and wistful, with the narrator remembering a better, more mutually involving, time in her relationship with her partner.

I think that's all I want to say about it, because the poet David Wojahn discusses the poem in detail, and with much more intelligence, than I possibly can here. It's a good essay; go read it.

I'll conclude with a quote from Ms. Solie that I'm particularly fond of, from a 2010 interview with Mark Medley for the National Post: It would be nice to know what the hell one is doing once in a while, but on the other hand isn’t that why people keep doing any kind of art? Because you never quite get there. The gesture and the approach is the point: There is no there to get to. I think that’s what people respond to when you connect with a piece of writing: all of what's contained in that reach towards something ungraspable.

Goodnight, all. Stay safe.

 

[Tzara]

One of the first contemporary poets I read, ages ago when I first started reading poetry, was Anne Sexton. Her work was immensely popular in the 70s (well, popular for poetry), perhaps because of her extremely confessional style.

Today's poem is not by Sexton, but rather is about Sexton. The "Kayo" referenced in the poem is Sexton's husband, Alfred Muller Sexton II:

On Safari in the Serengeti with Her Husband Kayo,
Anne Sexton Writes Letters to Her Therapist
Amy Newman

On safari in the Serengeti with Kayo, Anne Sexton writes letters
to her therapist, with whom she is having an affair.
While Kayo hunts, she types in the Land Rover,
having come here for Kayo’s sake, for the marriage’s last great gift.
It’s too terrible, heat, sweat, flies, death,
blood running in bucketfuls out of the car.
At night I eat the game I watch die slowly.
The doctor writes poems to her,
makes copies for her. He’s fallen into her wildness,
her wet summer madness, her tiger eye, tender machine,
all instinct and language stammering her body,
untying the cold, intensive heart,
that mystified, smoky-eyed, trance-heavy heart,
that heart that beats! Blood has to go somewhere.
Each morning on safari she and Kayo wake in an eyeless,
remarkable dark, so he can stalk one perfect impala,
reddish-brown like a summer tan, exquisite horns shaped in a lyre.
The female impala twitches like a question, and she wanders,
hungry, curious, widening each delighted eye.
Territory is an abstraction of grass shoots, of available water,
a mating dance of cocktails and Thorazine.
On the portable typewriter, Anne’s tan hands
spread out their fine bones in her amnesia of love,
while zebras move in and out of Kayo’s gun sight,
tossing their pretty hair and cantering inked bodies,
their brief, incendiary hammers ringing angry and sublime.

Source: On This Day in Poetry History (2016)
​

This poem is from Amy Newman's fascinating collection On This Day in Poetry History, which takes as its subject(s) events in the lives of various important poets of the later twentieth century, many of whom suffered from mental illness. Newman includes an extensive bibliography, so presumably the events of the poem are accurate (she cites Sexton's letters, for example).

One of the things I find interesting about this poem (about Newman's whole book, actually), is the question of artistic temperament and experience. Does one need to experience awfulness in one's life in order to have something to write about? (Think of Tolstoy's opening to Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.")

That's all I have to say today. Well, other than I'm planning on watching a rerun of the Seattle Seahawks' Super Bowl win tonight.

Which is probably more fun than watching a Mariners' game if the MLB season had started on time. Go figure.

Be safe, all.

 

[Piscator]

Thanks again for an interesting poem and analysis. Do you think there might be echos of Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa in the poem, at least with respect to marital turbulence.

Before mortgage and children, my partner and I made it to Tanzania to visit the Serengeti and walk up Mt. Kilimanjaro (she had spent time volunteering at a park in Zambia and it was on her list). But our shooting was with cameras not guns. We also learned that while Tanzania has great local beer, one should stay away from home brewed millet beer and that there was a reason the locals mixed Tanzanian wine with cola.

It was 1985, the first year the Blue Jays made the playoffs and when we left they had a 3-1 lead over the KC Royals. We lost connections with baseball in Tanzania, but eventually met some Americans who told us of the Jays collapse to KC who then went on to win the World Series.

Here in Ontario, the sports station is replaying all the games of last year's Raptors triumphal playoff series. I almost missed the last game of the series as we were embarking on a canoe/fishing trip that day. But our partners were late and the weather turned so we decided to stay at a motel that night and watched their victory from our room. It was a great moment for teh Raptors and somehow for Canada. I can't watch the replays however, for me much of the attraction lies in not knowing the outcome.

 

[Tzara]

Thanks again for an interesting poem and analysis. Do you think there might be echos of Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa in the poem, at least with respect to marital turbulence?

Before mortgage and children, my partner and I made it to Tanzania to visit the Serengeti and walk up Mt. Kilimanjaro (she had spent time volunteering at a park in Zambia and it was on her list). But our shooting was with cameras not guns. We also learned that while Tanzania has great local beer, one should stay away from home brewed millet beer and that there was a reason the locals mixed Tanzanian wine with cola.

It was 1985, the first year the Blue Jays made the playoffs and when we left they had a 3-1 lead over the KC Royals. We lost connections with baseball in Tanzania, but eventually met some Americans who told us of the Jays collapse to KC who then went on to win the World Series.

Here in Ontario, the sports station is replaying all the games of last year's Raptors triumphal playoff series. I almost missed the last game of the series as we were embarking on a canoe/fishing trip that day. But our partners were late and the weather turned so we decided to stay at a motel that night and watched their victory from our room. It was a great moment for teh Raptors and somehow for Canada. I can't watch the replays however, for me much of the attraction lies in not knowing the outcome.

I've not read Dinesen's book nor watched the Meryl Streep film adaptation, so I can't speak to whether the poem or Sexton's experience echo anything about Out of Africa. I can say, though, that a poet who used to be here who had lived in Africa for many years once wrote a poem that referenced Chibuku Shake Shake, which is a commercially produced sorghum beer that sometimes also contains millet. It sounded awful.

As to almost missing sports events, I was a graduate student in Los Angeles in 1979 when the Seattle Supersonics won their one NBA championship. The NBA was no way near as popular then as it is now and the games were only presented (at least in LA) via delayed broadcast at something like 11:30 PM. I had a tiny black and white TV and no one to celebrate with, but it was one of the few high points in Seattle sports history.

I happen to like replays, but then live action games make me extremely nervous.

 

[Tzara]

Like, I suppose, many of you, I am spending more time than usual watching TV. We don't subscribe to any of the popular streaming services, though, as my wife likes to watch shows she already knows well as background while she works on crafts and I prefer old movies. So we sometimes end up watching things like Turner Classic Movies or some other film rerun channel.

Yesterday one of the films was Alfred Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest, with Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and the sublime James Mason as the urbane villain. At one time NxNW was my favorite film and I could pretty much recite the entire dialogue a half-second before the on-screen characters produced their lines.

The wife pretty quickly put a stop to that.

The poet Kim Bridgford produced sonnets on a number of Hitchcock films (and Billy Wilder films and a selection of American Film Institute top 100 films) in her volume Hitchcock's Coffin. Most, perhaps all, of them would qualify as light verse, that bastard child of Literary Verse, but sometimes that's what some readers are looking for:

North by Northwest
Kim Bridgford

This compass mark is not a literal fact;
So many things are misidentified,
The wrong man’s kidnapped, and an auction’s wrecked,
While crops—and Roger—take on pesticide.

And Eve is used to tempt and also save,
A woman who can conjure the idyllic,
Yet in her constant riding on the train,
She cannot help connection with the phallic.

Ah, well. Film does that, with a drop of voice,
Along with Rushmore rearing up its heads,
Disguising the transferral of the beds.
There is an aura underlying choice.

It’s why Hitchcock made movies: to blur the line
Between what’s good and evil, by design.

Source: Hitchcock's Coffin: Sonnets about Classic Films (2011)
​

I think this poem is a pretty good example of light verse, though it's something of a strain to rhyme "idyllic" with "phallic." That could be Bridgford's point; one of the characteristics of some light verse is to wrench rhymes. I don't think it works well here, but you can decide for yourself.

Bridgford ran the West Chester (University) Poetry Conference for four years (2010-2014) before being abruptly relieved of her duties by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at WCU. Her removal created something of a kerfluffle at the university and among at least some of the conference regulars, as the WCU student newspaper reported here.

Don't let anyone tell you poets are kindly older folks who affect berets and ascots (men) or tweed suits and cats (women). We're actually a passionate, killer breed.

And I prefer ball caps. Current favorite: a stylish white Seattle Dragons (ex-XFL team) number.

Be well, all.

 

[Tzara]

I've always been interested in the question of why one picks up a particular book in a bookstore and, then, why does one decide to buy it? (This assumes you are just browsing, not looking for something in particular.)

Today's poem is from a book I bought for two very specific reasons. (Well, I think I bought it for two very specific reasons. I bought it quite some time ago, so I'm doing a bit of retroactive justification.) Those reasons? First, the book has a really great title--Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room. That is just so literarily evocative that I had to pick the book up. And then, second, it has a really beautiful cover (this link should show you the cover, but it actually looks even better in real life.)

What's especially cool is that the poem I picked from the volume kinda speaks to that thing about why one picks out a particular book:

Song of the Sorry Lovers
Kelli Russell Agodon

Ted Hughes was resting on his side,
bottom shelf and dusty.
Birthday Letters, now $5.50,
slightly more than the caramel Frappuccino
I purchased just to use the Starbucks' bathroom.
The barista with the mermaid tattoo
on his forearm handed me the key
attached to a giant spoon and said,
There's room in there for two, if you're lonely.

Ted Hughes was saying, You want this,
but what I wanted was the half-Cuban firefighter
whose license plate read Fuego.
Earlier, I visited the station
hoping for a glance, but he was asleep
in his bunk room, deep in the back
and didn't hear me when I dropped my purse.
I imagined him, undusty,
on his side dreaming of women
he's not married to.

Ted Hughes was begging, sale price,
You've avoided me so far, but I've felt you finger
my pages. I tried to tell him
about my relationship with his first wife,
how I met her in high school,
even named my cat Sylvia.
If I brought him home,
they'd have to share a shelf
and if I pulled out Sexton, they'd touch.
Still, I could hear him whispering as I left,
Take me. You know you want to.

Source: Letters fom the Emily Dickinson Room (2010)
​

Oh, yeah. Books and sex, or books and implied or potential sex, or books are sexy, or something like that.

I like how this poem takes a kind of nothing situation (should I buy this remaindered/used copy of a book of poems?) and builds a whole story around it, drawing in such things as Hughes' relationship to Sylvia Plath, the narrator's relationship to Sylvia Plath, the sexual implications of the barista and the narrator's desire (real or fantasized) for the firefighter, and Mixmasters the whole mess together as a coherent narrative.

I wish I could write like this.

And, yeah, buying books for me is kind of like sex, though not nearly as sweaty.

 

[Piscator]

I've always been interested in the question of why one picks up a particular book in a bookstore and, then, why does one decide to buy it? (This assumes you are just browsing, not looking for something in particular.)
............................................................................................................................

And, yeah, buying books for me is kind of like sex, though not nearly as sweaty.

Nice. As long as one maintains appropriate self-distancing.

 

[Tzara]

I have long had a kind of fascination with Socialist Realist art--be it the hyper-idealized paintings of North Korean soldiers, the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's embarrassing oratorio celebrating the forestation of the Russian steppes, or my own city's triumphal statue of Lenin, striding earnestly towards a Marxist utopia.

Such art is controversial in the USA, for good reason, but I find it both interesting in itself and because of its historical value.

My interest extends to literary work as well. Gladkov's Cement is a weirdly stirring account of the early post-revolutionary days centered around the (classic?) setting of a cement factory.

Which brings me to my poem for today, which is by Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Revolution, general, Marxist scholar, despot. Mao, in the tradition of educated gentlemen in his country, also wrote poetry, including poems written during the period of revolution. Here's one:

First Siege
Mao Zedong

The forests are a red blooming in the frost sky.
The anger of our good soldiers climbs through the clouds.
Haze hangs over the Brook of Dragons and a thousand hills
........are dark.
We all cry out:
The general Zhang Huizan is taken at the front!

Our huge army pours into Jiangxi
Wind and smoke whirl through half the world.
We woke a million workers and peasants
to have one heart.
Below the mountain of Buzhou an anarchy of red flags.

Source: The Poems of Mao Zedong, translated by Willis Barnstone (1972)
​

This poem is a curious combination of the disaffected, neutral observational tone of classical Chinese poetry (think of Li Po, for example) crossed with the kind of political exhortation and glorification typical of socialist realism. The poem dates from the early 1930s, predating the Long March, when Mao's forces had allowed the creation of the Southwest Jiangxi Provincial Soviet Government in the region under his control (Wikipedia), so the poem probably reflects his sense of triumph over the counter-revolutionary forces led by Zhang (who ended up being beheaded, by the way).

I think one of the things I like about this poem is that it helps illustrate the complexity of historical figures. Mao could be quite ruthless and awful, but he also was someone who had an appreciation for poetry.

That wouldn't change the mind of anyone whose family suffered under any of his various atrocities, but it does give his historical presence a hint of something else.

Anyway, curious.

Stay safe.

 

[Tzara]

Marilyn Hacker is an interesting figure in the poetry community for several reasons. She was something of a prodigy, having enrolled at New York University when she was just 15 years old. At 18 she married the science fiction author/cultural critic/polymath Samuel R. Delany who referenced both her poetry and aspects of their living arrangements in some of his novels (Delany identifies as gay and Hacker as lesbian, and for some of their years together they lived in a kind of triad relationship with a young man named Bobby Folsom). Hacker is unusual among contemporary poets in that she primarily writes in form (as does A. E. Stallings, whose poem "Sestina: Like" I posted earlier). Her first published volume of poems, Presentation Piece, won the National Book Award in 1975.

The volume I'm posting from today is Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, a verse novel written primarily in sonnets (both titled and untitled) with the occasional villanelle or stanzaic form thrown in. The novel documents Hacker's love affair with a much younger woman, from the beginning of the relationship to its abrupt ending a year later. The book contains some of the more erotic poetry I've ever read (which is saying something) yet never feels prurient; it feels closer to reading the diary of an affair than an erotic novel, one in which the author lays bare her rawest feelings, completely unfiltered.

I'm actually going to post two poems from the book, the first a villanelle from the early pages of the story, before the actual affair has commenced:

Wagers
Marilyn Hacker

I bet you don't wear shoulder pads in bed.
I bet when we get over, we'll be bad!
I bet you blush all over when you come.

Although the butch coach gave them out, and said,
they're regulation issue for the team,
I bet you don't wear shoulder pads in bed;

and if I whispered something just unseem-
ly enough, I could make your ears turn red.
I bet you blush all over when you come

to where I say, I slept on what we did,
and didn't, then undressed you in a dream.
I bet you don't wear shoulder pads in bed.

I bet my blue pajamas split a seam
while I thought of my hand on you instead.
I bet you blush all over when you come.

Maybe I'll spend Bastille Day feeling bad,
deferring fireworks till the troops get home
—I bet you don't wear shoulder pads in bed.

Don't give me any; just promise me some.
I'm having nicer nightmares than I had.
I bet you blush all over when you come,

but I can bide my time until it's bid-
dable (though, damn, you make me squirm;
I bet you don't wear shoulder pads in bed),

wait till the strawberries are ripe for cream,
and get to give, for having kept my head.
I bet you blush all over when you come.
I bet you don't wear shoulder pads in bed.

Source: Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986)
​

I wanted to post this poem because it illustrates Hacker's unusual approach to the villanelle form. The classic villanelle is 19 lines long, divided into an opening tercet which defines the rhymes for the poem and establishes the repetons (repeating lines), four tercets in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet alternate as the closing line, and a four line closing stanza, in which the repetons end the last two lines of the closing stanza (usually A1 A2, though the reverse order is not uncommon). So the form usually looks like this:

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1 (or A2)
A2 (or A1)
​

Hacker's poem is odd in that the poem is 25 lines long, with an opening tercet, six tercets with alternating repetons, and a four line close.

Fair enough, but then she also varies the form's rhyme pattern by not having the repetons rhyme, giving the poem a kind of intertwined feel:

A1
a
B1

a
b
A1

b
a
B1

.
.
.

b
a
B1
A1
​

The effect is to give the poem something of the feel of terza rima, where the rhyme pattern switches back and forth each stanza. I think this is intended to give the poem the feeling of the narrator and her (potential) lover circling each other, as if gravitationally bound together, like a binary star system.

It's an unusual, and I think very effective, technique.

The other poem is a sonnet from about a third of the way through the book. The affair is by now in full flare, and the narrator muses on her desire for her partner:

Saturday Morning
Marilyn Hacker

While you sleep off the brandy, little one,
my hand could find its way back to the place
it knows so well, now. Even with your face
turned away from me, sleeping in till noon,
you move right through me. After we were done
talking (thence the brandy) until four
you, in the dark, played three songs for
me while I dozed—so tired I couldn't come
when you'd tried for me. So you sat on the floor
with the guitar, beside me, troubador,
and then, naked, you woke me to you, brought me
down on your mouth, brought it down and caught me
in the gray dawn, whose sunburst was your name
like brandy in my mouth as I came and came.

Source: Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986)
​

This is a very tender, yet erotic, poem with quite lovely phrasing. The rhyme scheme, unlike a number of the sonnets in the book, is very regular: abbacddceeffgg. I wonder if the closing sestet, composed of couplets, is intended to mirror the closeness of the lovers. It's the kind of thing that can be especially effective in form poetry.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It's not only excellent poetry, it's an affecting novel as well.

Tough thing to do.

 

[AmericanTrash]

Thank you!

I love Marilyn Hacker so so so much. She is astonishing. Thank you Tzara.

 

[Tzara]

I love Marilyn Hacker so so so much. She is astonishing. Thank you Tzara.

You're welcome, AT. Obviously, I'm very fond of Ms. Hacker's poetry as well.