National (USA) Poetry Month

[Tzara]

Here's a poem in honor of our sometime (and always brilliant) fellow poet annaswirls, who took her name from the Polish poet Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska):

I’ll Open the Window
Anna Swir

Our embrace lasted too long.
We loved right down to the bone.
I hear the bones grind, I see
our two skeletons.

Now I am waiting
till you leave, till
the clatter of your shoes
is heard no more. Now, silence.

Tonight I am going to sleep alone
on the bedclothes of purity.
Aloneness
is the first hygienic measure.
Aloneness
will enlarge the walls of the room,
I will open the window
and the large, frosty air will enter,
healthy as tragedy.
Human thoughts will enter
and human concerns,
misfortune of others, saintliness of others.
They will converse softly and sternly.

Do not come anymore.
I am an animal
very rarely.

Source: Talking to My Body, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan (1996)​

This poem is, for me, almost crazy intense and the imagery Swir uses, with its mixture of the fierceness of the sexual relation and the ensuing regret or relief the narrator feels, is particularly vivid.

The final strophe elegantly characterizes the raw need that can be sexual desire.



Come back, Ms. swirls! I miss you.

 

[Tzara]

I came across this poem by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova while reading a book of poems by Stanley Kunitz, who included his translation (with Max Hayward) of it and two other poems by Akhmatova in the volume. I have since read at least two other transations of the poem, one by Annie Finch and George Kline and one by A. Z. Foreman, who also includes the Russian original. Here's the Kunitz/Hayward translation:

Cleopatra
Anna Akhmatova

She had already kissed Antony's dead lips,
she had already wept on her knees before Caesar. . .
and her servants have betrayed her. Darkness falls.
The trumpets of the Roman eagle scream.

And in comes the last man to be ravished by her beauty—
such a tall gallant!—with a shamefaced whisper:
"You must walk before him, as a slave, in the triumph."
But the slope of her swan's neck is tranquil as ever.

Tomorrow they'll put her children in chains. Nothing
remains except to tease this fellow out of mind
and put the black snake, like a parting act of pity,
on her dark breast with an indifferent hand.

Source: Poems of Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward (1997)​

If you look at the other versions and the original, you'll notice that the Kunitz/Hayward version leaves off the epigraph from Pushkin, while the Finch/Kline version apparently adds a second epigraph from Shakespeare (assuming the Russian text posted by Foreman is accurate). Also, the Kunitz/Hayward version does not, as the other versions do, try to reproduce the rhyme pattern of the original (at least as best as I can tell, not being able to read Russian). Despite this, I find the Kunitz/Hayward version to be the best poem of the three. Is it the best translation, meaning most accurate or truest to the original? It's hard to say.

That's one of the problems, and frustrations, with reading translations.

 

[Tzara]

Tarjei Vesaas is probably better known as a novelist than a poet, though he excelled at both genres. His novel The Ice Palace is simply one of the best novels I've ever read. He lived most of his life in the Telemark region of Norway—essentially deep in the mountain range between Bergen and Oslo—and wrote in Nynorsk (New Norwegian), one of the two official languages of Norway and the one that attempts to gather the various dialects spoken in the more rural areas into a uniform language. (The other official language, Bokmål or "book language," is more common in urban areas and more closely represents the historical literary language of Norway, which is much closer to Danish.) Here is one of Vesaas' poems I particularly like:

The Glass Wall
Tarjei Vesaas

Between you and me
a soundless wind
stands like a glass wall:
The day of the glass wall has come.

Each time I look toward you
you open your mouth
and call,
but not a word gets through.

Your eyes widen
and read from my mouth
that I too
am calling bitterly.

Yes, at such moments
you press your face against the glass
like a frantic child,
and it deforms your features.
Swollen and twisted by wanting
you lie up against it on the other side
and muteness rules.

Source: Through Naked Branches, translated by Roger Greenwald (2000)​

Vesaas' poetry often speaks to the isolation one finds in rural areas, but this poem seems to extend that sense of isolation to human relationships, even intimate ones. The last line has also been translated "and everything is silent" or "and the silence is complete" but I prefer Greenwald's choice of muteness, which focuses the meaning on speech, rather than a general silence.

 

[Tzara]

The form of Japanese poetry most familiar to Americans is the haiku, the 17-syllable poem that reached the height of its development in the seventeenth century. But the haiku derived from an older, but still popular poetic form, the waka, which had been used for a thousand years before the haiku. The word waka means "Japanese poem," and it is a form so basic to Japanese literature that Japanese still study and write it today. It is also known by the name tanka, which means "short poem." (from "What Is a Waka?" at Columbia University's Asia for Educators website)

Here are two waka (or tanka), unusual in that one is written by a husband and and one, apparently in response, by his wife. Note that waka commonly are untitled:

Mikata Shami

Bound up it always
Came undone.
Unbound it was so long.
Now that I have not
Been with you for days
Is your hair all done up?


Lady Sono No Omi Ikuha

Everybody tells me
My hair is too long
I leave it
As you saw it last
Dishevelled by your hands.

Source: One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese, translated by Kenneth Rexroth (1976)​

Long hair, particularly if tangled or dishevelled, is a symbol of female sexuality in classical Japanese literature. The suggestion here is that the wife has left her hair in disarray because of the absence of her husband and her sexual desire for him to return. Or something like that.

 

[Lyricalli]

Lady Sono No Omi Ikuha

Everybody tells me
My hair is too long
I leave it
As you saw it last
Dishevelled by your hands.

Source: One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese, translated by Kenneth Rexroth (1976)[/indent]Long hair, particularly if tangled or dishevelled, is a symbol of female sexuality in classical Japanese literature. The suggestion here is that the wife has left her hair in disarray because of the absence of her husband and her sexual desire for him to return. Or something like that.

The additional information about the use of disheveled hair in Japanese literature is interesting, though not necessary to understand this particular poem. At least, to me, it is quite clear what she means. That's a sexy little poem. I love the openness of it. Good for her!

 

[Tzara]

Most of the poetry writing classes I've taken tend to focus on poems (and poets) of the twentieth century to contemporary times—roughly from Yeats and Eliot forward. (This is more or less the opposite of English literature courses, which focus on Beowulf forward through Shakespeare and Milton to end, roughly, at Yeats and Eliot.) As such, I'm much less familar with older poems, especially older poems in foreign languages.

So I'm trying to take a baby step towards remedying that. Today's poem is by the great French "decadent" poet, Charles Baudelaire:

The Jewels
Charles Baudelaire

My darling was naked, and knowing my heart well,
She was wearing only her sonorous jewels,
Whose opulent display made her look triumphant
Like Moorish concubines on their fortunate days.

When it dances and flings its lively, mocking sound,
This radiant world of metal and of gems
Transports me with delight; I passionately love
All things in which sound is mingled with light.

She had lain down; and let herself be loved
From the top of the couch she smiled contentedly
Upon my love, deep and gentle as the sea,
Which rose toward her as toward a cliff.

Her eyes fixed upon me, like a tamed tigress,
With a vague, dreamy air she was trying poses,
And by blending candor with lechery,
Her metamorphoses took on a novel charm;

And her arm and her leg, and her thigh and her loins,
Shiny as oil, sinuous as a swan,
Passed in front of my eyes, clear-sighted and serene;
And her belly, her breasts, grapes of my vine,

Advanced, more cajoling than angels of evil,
To trouble the quiet that had possessed my soul,
To dislodge her from the crag of crystal,
Where calm and alone she had taken her seat.

I thought I saw blended in a novel design
Antiope's haunches and the breast of a boy,
Her waist set off so well the fullness of her hips.
On that tawny brown skin the rouge stood out superb!

—And when at last the lamp allowed itself to die,
Since the fire alone lighted the room,
Each time that it uttered a flaming sigh,
It drenched with blood that amber colored skin!

Source: The Flowers of Evil, translated by William Aggeler (1954)​

This poem was originally meant to be part of Baudelaire's most famous collection Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil), which originally appeared in 1857. But censors suppressed this and five other poems for indecency, which six poems were later published in Belgium under the title Les Épaves (Scraps).

The imagery seems perhaps a bit overwrought, but that is in keeping with the "decadent" style of the work, which serves as a precursor to the later work of poets like Rimbaud.

You can read Baudelaire's original French along with several translations (including this one) here.

 

[Angeline]

Just wanted to add this lovely poem for your reading pleasure.

Words for Love
Ted Berrigan

for Sandy

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow
as like make me tired as not. I go my
myriad ways blundering, bombastic, dragged
by a self that can never be still, pushed
by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
ness of clouds at one o'clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh.

By day I sleep, an obscurantist, lost
in dreams of lists, compiled by my self
for reassurance. Jackson Pollock RenÈ
Rilke Benedict Arnold I watch
my psyche, smile, dream wet dreams, and sigh.

At night, awake, high on poems, or pills
or simple awe that loveliness exists, my lists
flow differently. Of words bright red
and black, and blue. Bosky. Oubliette. Dis-
severed. And O, alas

Time disturbs me. Always minute detail
fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston
it is 2 pm. It is time to steal books. It’s
time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalpyse
the year of parrot fever! What am I saying?

Only this. My poems do contain
wilde beestes. I write for my Lady
of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely
but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If
I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless

my heart still loves, will break

 

[Tzara]

Just wanted to add this lovely poem for your reading pleasure.

Words for Love
Ted Berrigan

for Sandy

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow. . .

Oh.

That is such a good poem.

I know that sounds stupid, but that is my comment. That's a really, really good poem, Angie.

Thanks for posting it.

 

[Angeline]

Oh.

That is such a good poem.

I know that sounds stupid, but that is my comment. That's a really, really good poem, Angie.

Thanks for posting it.

That was my reaction. I don't think I'd seen it before last night when I happened across it online. It's just beautiful. It's all over the place with images and references, but has an underlying solidity that works to convey the narrator's sense of self and the need to explain it to his beloved.

I so Ted Berrigan!

 

[todski28]

That was my reaction. I don't think I'd seen it before last night when I happened across it online. It's just beautiful. It's all over the place with images and references, but has an underlying solidity that works to convey the narrator's sense of self and the need to explain it to his beloved.

I so Ted Berrigan!

I’m glad you did, it was damn fine reading!!

 

[Tzara]

Today I want to talk about something I find kind of odd about the translation of poems. So let me start with the original text by Rainer Maria Rilke, who though born in Prague, wrote in German, like Kakfa. This is one of his early poems:

Das Lied des Zwerges
Rainer Maria Rilke

Meine Seele ist vielleicht grad und gut;
aber mein Herz, mein verbogenes Blut,
alles das, was mir wehe tut,
kann sie nicht aufrecht tragen.
Sie hat keinen Garten, sie hat kein Bett,
sie hängt an meinem scharfen Skelett
mit entsetztem Flügelschlagen.

Aus meinen Händen wird auch nichts mehr.
Wie verkümmert sie sind: sieh her:
zähe hüpfen sie, feucht und schwer,
wie kleine Kröten nach Regen.
Und das Andre an mir ist
abgetragen und alt und trist;
warum zögert Gott, auf den Mist
alles das hinzulegen.

Ob er mir zürnt für mein Gesicht
mit dem mürrischen Munde?
Es war ja so oft bereit, ganz licht
und klar zu werden im Grunde;
aber nichts kam ihm je so dicht
wie die großen Hunde.
Und die Hunde haben das nicht.

Source: The Book of Pictures (1902; 1906)​

I don't read German, but notice some things about the form of the poem—it is in three strophes of seven, eight, and seven lines, and it has a distinctive rhyme scheme (assuming I'm sounding this correctly, aaabccb, dddefffe, and ghghghg). There seem to be some other intricasies as well, but I'm kind of way out of my area of expertise even noting this much.

The standard English translation, if there is one, would probably be that of Stephen Mitchell:

The Dwarf's Song

My soul itself may be straight and good;
ah, but my heart, my bent-over blood,
all the distortions that hurt me inside—
it buckles under these things.
It has no garden, it has no sun,
it hangs on my twisted skeleton
and, terrified, flaps its wings.

Nor are my hands of much use. Look here:
see how shrunken and shapeless they are:
clumsily hopping, clammy and fat,
like toads after the rain.
And everything else about me is torn,
sad and weather-beaten and worn;
why did God ever hesitate
to flush it all down the drain?

Is it because he’s angry at me
for my face with its moping lips?
It was so often ready to be
light and clear in its depths;
but nothing came so close to it
as big dogs did.
And dogs don’t have what I need.

Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (1982)​

I want to compare this to a translation by Lucia Perillo:

Song of the Dwarf

Maybe my soul is straight and good,
but she’s got to lug my heart, my blood,
which all hurts because it’s crooked;
its weight sends her staggering.
She has no bed, she has no home,
she merely hangs on my sharp bones,
flapping her terrible wings.

And my hands are completely shot,
shriveled, worn: here, take a look
at how they clammily, clumsily hop
like rain-crazed toads.
As for all the other stuff,
it’s all used up and sad and old—
why doesn’t God haul me out to the muck
and let me drop.

Is it because of my mug
with its frowning mouth?
So often I would itch
to be luminous and free of fog
but nothing would approach
except big dogs.
And the dogs got zilch.

Source: Poetry (June 2011)​

Both translations match the original lineation of 7, 8, 7, and both make an attempt to follow the rhyme pattern, though both have lines in which the end rhyme is simply not there. Perillo's translation seems to me to have a more casual diction and makes more use of near-rhymes than does Mitchell's. Both seem to convey more or less the same poetic ideas, though in quite different styles.

Here's the thing that is weird. While Mitchell learned German specifically to read Rilke, Perillo admits "I don’t speak a lick of German except what I learned from watching Hogan’s Heroes," and indicates "[m]y poem is more properly a version, rather than a felicitous translation."

How does one "translate" a poem when one can neither read nor speak the source language?

One finds this all the time in poetry. A poem is "translated," usually by a famous English language poet, even though they don't read the language they're translating from. Sometimes they will credit a co-translator, presumably someone who does read the language, but often the co-translator is not only not given equal credit, but may be relegated to an acknowledgement on the page where the author thanks editors and friends as well. (Note: Perillo, who was herself an outstanding poet, credits the assistance of two people in her notes on the translation.)

I find this odd, because my experience is that you do not find this with fiction or literary non-fiction. In those genres, the translator is usually an expert in the language being translated. I suppose the argument is that "it takes a poet to craft a poem," but I'm a little suspicious of that.

Anyway, that's my rant of the day. Be well, people.

 

[Lyricalli]

Just wanted to add this lovely poem for your reading pleasure.

Words for Love
Ted Berrigan

I have to join in and be the third to say that I liked this very much, and the end is perfect for me. Though, I have to admit, my brain, doing what my brain does, tripped me up on the bit about what time it is in NYC and Houston, because that math doesn't compute. Took me a minute or two to move on.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Today I want to talk about something I find kind of odd about the translation of poems. So let me start with the original text by Rainer Maria Rilke, who though born in Prague, wrote in German, like Kakfa. This is one of his early poems:

Das Lied des Zwerges
Rainer Maria Rilke
<snip>​

From my point of view, mixing both would make a good translation. In general, Perillo stays closer to the original, e.g. 'scharfes Skelett' is about the threat that the soul might be cut by the sharpness of the bones, but ' Knochen' doesn't rhyme well with 'Bett'. On the other hand, Mitchell's 'terrified' on the next line is the better choice.

But there are some other nuances too. In the second stanza, Mitchell easily jumped on the rhyming pair of rain/drain, but Perillo's 'muck' transports the original idea better. A drain quickly flushes the whatever out of sight, while be put (Rilke doesn't imply a self-inflicted 'drop' there) on the dunghill means slowly rotting away in the open public.

Well, the last line...In my opinion, Rilke goes back to line number one, to 'my soul', since that is what God would care about, wouldn't s/he? About the state and shape of the body (represented by hands) and the face, that's of human concern, isn't it? But of course, one could argue that dogs neither have hands or a face or a soul...even in post-Rilkean ages.

(Sorry for the terrible (not terrified) English)​

 

[Piscator]

So I'm trying to take a baby step towards remedying that. Today's poem is by the great French "decadent" poet, Charles Baudelaire:

The Jewels
Charles Baudelaire

..........................................................................

You can read Baudelaire's original French along with several translations (including this one) here.​

First I must confess that according to Doulingo, my proficiency in French is limited to "You can get the gist when someone describes something or gives instructions using common language" and "You can express simple opinions and emotions in a clear, concrete manner"

But what really struck me in comparing the translation with the 'poème en français' is the loss of rhyme, which is critical to the flow of the poem. Thus in comparing the first stanza.

"La très chère était nue, et, connaissant mon coeur,
Elle n'avait gardé que ses bijoux sonores,
Dont le riche attirail lui donnait l'air vainqueur
Qu'ont dans leurs jours heureux les esclaves des Mores."

becomes

"My darling was naked, and knowing my heart well,
She was wearing only her sonorous jewels,
Whose opulent display made her look triumphant
Like Moorish concubines on their fortunate days."

I'm not sure how one gets around this.​

 

[Tzara]

It's a lovely spring day here in the PNW and, inspired by Angie's last poem and Moochie's paean to the Skagit tulip fields, I'm posting an old favorite:

Pied Beauty
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
....For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
........For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
....Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
........And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
....Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
........With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
................Praise him.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (1985)​

Hopkins' poems often go overboard on alliteration and assonance, at least for my taste, but here their abundance seems appropriate as expressing the poet's sheer joy of natural beauty. The poem is a "curtal sonnet," a form Hopkins invented, which is a kind of cut-down Italian sonnet.

I hope it's nice weather where you are all as well.

 

[Tzara]

This one is an obvious follow-up to yesterday's poem:

Fried Beauty
R. S. Gwynn

Glory be to God for breaded things—
....Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,
........Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim
With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings,
....Hushpuppies, okra golden to the eye,
........That in all oils, corn or canola, swim

Toward mastication’s maw (O molared mouth!);
....Whatever browns, is dumped to drain and dry
........On paper towels’ sleek translucent scrim,
These greasy, battered bounties of the South:
................Eat them.

Source: Dogwatch (2014)​

Parody is, like all light verse, something that seems to be always a little embarrassing to the Poetry Community. Poetry (capital "P" poetry) is serious and speaks to deep emotions, of which laughter notably is not one.

I like it anyway. Besides, it's fun.

 

[todski28]

This one is an obvious follow-up to yesterday's poem:

Fried Beauty
R. S. Gwynn

Glory be to God for breaded things—
....Catfish, steak finger, pork chop, chicken thigh,
........Sliced green tomatoes, pots full to the brim
With french fries, fritters, life-float onion rings,
....Hushpuppies, okra golden to the eye,
........That in all oils, corn or canola, swim

Toward mastication’s maw (O molared mouth!);
....Whatever browns, is dumped to drain and dry
........On paper towels’ sleek translucent scrim,
These greasy, battered bounties of the South:
................Eat them.

Source: Dogwatch (2014)​

Parody is, like all light verse, something that seems to be always a little embarrassing to the Poetry Community. Poetry (capital "P" poetry) is serious and speaks to deep emotions, of which laughter notably is not one.

I like it anyway. Besides, it's fun.

Laughter is one of the most serious things, it’s just hard to do poetically and if you take it too serious you miss the punchline, thanks for this paring I enjoyed both about the same.

 

[Lyricalli]

Parody is, like all light verse, something that seems to be always a little embarrassing to the Poetry Community. Poetry (capital "P" poetry) is serious and speaks to deep emotions, of which laughter notably is not one.

I like it anyway. Besides, it's fun.

I disagree with laughter not being deep emotion. Laughter can be quite deep, especially the first time you really, truly laugh in the midst of grief or sadness, where it reminds you that, yes, life goes on. Or when you spend an evening cutting up and laughing so hard with someone that it hurts, and you realize that you love them just a little more, or maybe just more aware of how much you do. I think that's pretty deep.

I liked it, too, very much, and since I'm from the south, I totally relate, and agree... eat them

 

[Tzara]

I think Angie mentioned a while back that the PF&D used to occasionally have a variety of challenges in which everyone who participated wrote a poem based on the same title (called, if I remember correctly, a Same Title Challenge or STC). There were other challenges in which one borrowed a line from some other poet's poem and used it in a new poem of one's own (I think called something like Lift a Line) and one where two different poets would team up to write something together, usually by alternating lines or strophes.

Today's poem is kind of a combination of these latter two techniques, where two poets choose a line from some other poem and then write alternating strophes to complete a sonnet:

"Here in the electric dusk your naked lover"
Simone Muench and Dean Rader

Here in the electric dusk your naked lover
high on jazz and gin, body slack as a victim
in a Victorian novel, reclines before
an open curtain where light plays narrator:

In the beginning was light. Let there be
the word. Let there be, there, at the very
beginning (pre-chapter, pre-verse) the first
of something, before hunger, before thirst.

A long time nameless, sitting in an animal’s
imprint—feverishly hot with indecent
plots, where hunger is its own geography.
Let there be new endings to old stories.

O to turn the pages of your body.
O to add this map to skin’s bright atlas.

Source: Suture (2017)​

The source line in this one might seem familar, as it's the first line of Denis Johnson's sonnet "Heat" which I posted earlier this month. While Johnson's poem has a overall rhyme pattern (abcabcddefgefg, with some near rhymes), Muench and Rader's poem has only a kind of vestigial rhyme scheme, where the last two lines of each quatrain rhyme.

Muench and Rader describe their process this way: "We refer to our poems as 'Frankenstein Sonnets' because we cut lines from other poet’s sonnets, then graft our own sonnets onto the originating skein of flesh. When we first decided that Frankenstein would be the umbrella concept for our sonnets—the suturing together of other’s flesh/words with our own—we addressed how much should be cannibalized and how much should be our own. We ended up being minimally cannibalistic, deciding only to swap lines from other people’s sonnets to employ as the first line (which also serves as the title)."

Perhaps when we finally finish the NaPoWriMo thread, we might try something like this, either in conjunction with Piscator's upcoming nine-line monthly challenge or as a separate thread.

Anyway, it's another beautiful day here. Hope you all have nice weather as well.

 

[29wordsforsnow]

Dr. & Dr. Frankensteins' Monstrous Challenge?

Go and make a poem from as many body parts (aka lines) found on the cravejard of "dead" challenges?

 

[Tzara]

One of the things I envy about certain poets is their ability to write longish narrative poems. Despite trying, I've never been able to write fiction at all because I just don't seem to be able to come up with a plot even skimpy enough for a sustained poem, let alone a decent five page story.

Here's a "longish narrative poem" I really enjoy from a few years ago:

My Father's Nightmare
Beth Gylys

His daughter's a poet. (Lord save us!)
And he's sitting at some big reading event,
held in some big city. She's reciting
a long narrative poem about an abortion,
and she keeps saying the word fuck.
Fuck, in fact, seems to occur three or four times
in every sentence she reads.
He can't stand the thought of her doing that.
Why does she need to say it in front of everyone?
He happens to be the honored guest.
She keeps telling jokes about him.
She talks about his martinis,
and how he always falls asleep on the sofa,
newspaper covering his chest.
He smiles wanly. She reads another fuck poem.
She reads a poem about kissing a woman.
It's clear she must have done this.
She describes the tenderness of lips,
the splendid hue of skin, the curves
and the moistness all so vividly.
He wonders, Why can't she write poems about nature,
something along the lines of Robert Frost?
He can't believe that's his daughter.
She winks at him. She asks him up on stage,
but he refuses. Now she gyrates her hips,
moving, he notes grimly, like a dog.
Why didn't she become a lawyer like her brother?
Or even a waitress—they make decent money.
He thinks, Maybe I should go to the bathroom
and sneak out the back door,
wonders, Why did I fund all those years
of college English? He's reading his menu,
holding it up so it blocks out her face.
She recites a poem about a married lover.
He thinks he's going to puke.
She says the word fuck twice really loud,
and he's had enough. He gets up, turns,
knocks into somebody's arm,
but it's only my mother shaking him awake.
"Honey, are you coming to bed?"
kitchen light behind her like a halo.
Life couldn't be better really,
house by the shore, endless martinis,
children gainfully employed.
Sure, his daughter's a little strange,
with her poetry, her divorce,
but she works hard, never asks
to borrow money. She seems
all right, he tells himself,
as he climbs the stairs to go to sleep.
She's always been a pretty good girl.

Source: Bodies that Hum (1999)​

I don't have children, but I could imagine having this kind of nightmare if I had a daughter (or son, for that matter) who wanted to write confessional poetry. For that matter, I'm none too keen of writing (and especially not keen on reciting) confessional poetry myself, despite what I've written and recorded here.

But it's nice to see other people (including several poets here) do it well.

 

[Tzara]

There have been some very good poems about losing family members and loved ones posted here during NaPoWriMo. This poem by Jack Gilbert is an excellent example of a poem about grief. I came across it a while back while reading an essay by the late Tony Hoagland about tone in poetry in his critical collection Real Sofistikashun:

Married
Jack Gilbert

I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
this long black hair tangled in the dirt.

Source: Collected Poems (2014)​

Gilbert's wife, sculptor Michiko Nogami, died at a very young age. The poem illustrates how grief can reassert itself after a period of healing through personal objects encountered unexpectedly.

I particularly like the concreteness of the imagery in this poem in the form of the very oridinary objects named—drain, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator, clothing. I also appreciate how the poet does not detail his reaction to finding his late wife's hair in the potting soil, but leaves it to the reader to sense the poet's grief by implication.

 

[todski28]

There have been some very good poems about losing family members and loved ones posted here during NaPoWriMo. This poem by Jack Gilbert is an excellent example of a poem about grief. I came across it a while back while reading an essay by the late Tony Hoagland about tone in poetry in his critical collection Real Sofistikashun:

Married
Jack Gilbert

I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
this long black hair tangled in the dirt.

Source: Collected Poems (2014)​

Gilbert's wife, sculptor Michiko Nogami, died at a very young age. The poem illustrates how grief can reassert itself after a period of healing through personal objects encountered unexpectedly.

I particularly like the concreteness of the imagery in this poem in the form of the very oridinary objects named—drain, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator, clothing. I also appreciate how the poet does not detail his reaction to finding his late wife's hair in the potting soil, but leaves it to the reader to sense the poet's grief by implication.

My reactions of grief are so much removed from this I had visceral Disgust reaction to this man looking for his wife’s hair, now I’m over the initial reaction I’ve read it again and I’m starting to think there’s something wrong with me.

Scratch that, I know there’s somethings very wrong with me, but didn’t realise this was one of them.

Once again thank you pulling double poetry duties here with both stellar writing yourself and finding and commenting on such a wide variety of pieces I would probably never found on my own

 

[Tzara]

There have been a number of poems about memories on the NaPoWriMo thread, not that that's surprising. Here is one of my favorite poems about memory, by Dorianne Laux (surname pronounced like "locks"), who taught for a number of years at the University of Oregon and is now on the other coast, at North Carolina State University:

Learning to Drive
Dorianne Laux

The long miles down the back road
I learned to drive on. The boy riding
shotgun. His hand on my hand on

the gear shift knob, our eyes locked
on the dusty windshield, the cracked
asphalt, old airstrip, the nothing spreading

for miles: scrub brush, heat waves, sky,
a few thin contrails. His patience
endless. My clumsiness: the grinding

gears, the fumbled clutch. The wrench
of it popped like an arm from its socket,
his blue, beloved '57 Ford lurching,

stalled in the dirt. I was 16, he was older,
his football-player shoulders muscular,
wide. Where did he get his kindness?

Why spend it on a girl like me: skinny,
serious, her nails bitten, her legs
bruised. Hours under summer's

relentless heat, his car stumbling
across the barren lot until I got it,
understood how to lift my left foot,

press my right hand, in tandem, like dancing,
which I never learned to do, never wanted
to turn circles on the polished floor

of a dark auditorium, the bleachers
hemming me in. I drove toward the horizon,
gravel jitterbugging under his tires. Lizards

skittering. Jays rising to the buzz
of telephone wires. He taught me
how to handle a car, how to downshift

into second, peel out from a dead stop.
His fist hung from the open window,
knuckles clamped on a lit cigarette,

dragging smoke. We couldn't guess
where we were going. He didn't know
he was flying to Vietnam

and I was learning how to get out of there,
The Byrds singing "Eight Miles High"
when he turned up the radio

and told me to brake, opened his door,
slid out and stood on the desert road
to let me go it alone. His back pressed

against all that emptiness.

Source: The Book of Men (2011)​

I find this an especially evocative poem, perhaps because of my age (Laux is only a year older than me), partly because it could serve as the scenario for art film like Two-Lane Blacktop.

Notice that it basically is a scene, rather than a complete narrative. We learn the boy will be off to fight in Vietnam, that he smokes, that he plays (or played) football, but nothing much else about him. We presume that he and the narrator are boyfriend/girlfriend, but other than him teaching her to drive we don't really learn anything about their relationship.

I love the ending.



OK. One week to go. Chin up, people!

 

[todski28]

There have been a number of poems about memories on the NaPoWriMo thread, not that that's surprising. Here is one of my favorite poems about memory, by Dorianne Laux (surname pronounced like "locks"), who taught for a number of years at the University of Oregon and is now on the other coast, at North Carolina State University:

Learning to Drive
Dorianne Laux

The long miles down the back road
I learned to drive on. The boy riding
shotgun. His hand on my hand on

the gear shift knob, our eyes locked
on the dusty windshield, the cracked
asphalt, old airstrip, the nothing spreading

for miles: scrub brush, heat waves, sky,
a few thin contrails. His patience
endless. My clumsiness: the grinding

gears, the fumbled clutch. The wrench
of it popped like an arm from its socket,
his blue, beloved '57 Ford lurching,

stalled in the dirt. I was 16, he was older,
his football-player shoulders muscular,
wide. Where did he get his kindness?

Why spend it on a girl like me: skinny,
serious, her nails bitten, her legs
bruised. Hours under summer's

relentless heat, his car stumbling
across the barren lot until I got it,
understood how to lift my left foot,

press my right hand, in tandem, like dancing,
which I never learned to do, never wanted
to turn circles on the polished floor

of a dark auditorium, the bleachers
hemming me in. I drove toward the horizon,
gravel jitterbugging under his tires. Lizards

skittering. Jays rising to the buzz
of telephone wires. He taught me
how to handle a car, how to downshift

into second, peel out from a dead stop.
His fist hung from the open window,
knuckles clamped on a lit cigarette,

dragging smoke. We couldn't guess
where we were going. He didn't know
he was flying to Vietnam

and I was learning how to get out of there,
The Byrds singing "Eight Miles High"
when he turned up the radio

and told me to brake, opened his door,
slid out and stood on the desert road
to let me go it alone. His back pressed

against all that emptiness.

Source: The Book of Men (2011)​

I find this an especially evocative poem, perhaps because of my age (Laux is only a year older than me), partly because it could serve as the scenario for art film like Two-Lane Blacktop.

Notice that it basically is a scene, rather than a complete narrative. We learn the boy will be off to fight in Vietnam, that he smokes, that he plays (or played) football, but nothing much else about him. We presume that he and the narrator are boyfriend/girlfriend, but other than him teaching her to drive we don't really learn anything about their relationship.

I love the ending.



OK. One week to go. Chin up, people!

To me this is such an Australian poem, the language just enough to put me in the back seat and giving me a full panoramic of the landscape that tastes and feels so familiar

The ending is so damn good in that it almost forces me to visualise his back with military gear attached, and all that emptiness alluding to both The Australian outback in general and the emptiness of death, or the loss of oneself as often happens to those who suffer war.

A brilliant find Tzara